Getting full Dynamic Range from Dragon

[Martin Stevens]

I was wondering the same thing about highlight DR and the 11th stop reference for middle grey.

Yes... Also, perhaps I really should have said 9, and not 8, for middle gray.

So... Does the GIO SCOPE behave differently depending on what OLPF is used?

 

[Mark Toia]

This augument makes me laugh,
13 , 16, 18 stops. Alexa better than Red, Red better than Alexa ..?
I look at a camera's over all best points and weighup the winner.
Thats when you see a clear difference between Red and Arri.

I've shot both side by side and to be honest. I cannot really see any difference between the two when we have finished in HD.
However what I cannot do is blow up shots or reframe Alexa without serious problem and if outputting a 4k project. That's when I see major differences. Dragon Sharp , Alexa soft. Simple as that.
Which has more depth or DR... Always will be debatable. The more I learn how to shoot Dragon, the more DR I can dig out of it.
16stops.. No worries at all.
I'm not going to go into ease is of use, weight, price or handling.. Because that's not fair to Arri...

Since this is a sensor discussion only. I still think the sony f65 has the edge over them all.

Red just ticks every other box, hence why it wins hands down for me.

 

[Martin Stevens]

I would still like to know... Does the GIO SCOPE behave differently depending on what OLPF is used?

 

[Phil Holland]

I would still like to know... Does the GIO SCOPE behave differently depending on what OLPF is used?

Yes and no.

Yes they behave the same in the sense that the camera is still seeing the same amount of Dynamic Range.

No they don't due to the fact that the SKin Tone - Highlight OLPF is holding onto those clipping highlights just a bit longer than the Low Light Optimized OLPF.

 

[Martin Stevens]

Yes and no.

Yes they behave the same in the sense that the camera is still seeing the same amount of Dynamic Range.

No they don't due to the fact that the SKin Tone - Highlight OLPF is holding onto those clipping highlights just a bit longer than the Low Light Optimized OLPF.

Thanks Phil. So is middle gray mapped to 11 in GIO view with both OLPFs? Or is one at 11 an another at 10 or something?

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

This augument makes me laugh,
13 , 16, 18 stops. Alexa better than Red, Red better than Alexa ..?
I look at a camera's over all best points and weighup the winner.
Thats when you see a clear difference between Red and Arri.

I've shot both side by side and to be honest. I cannot really see any difference between the two when we have finished in HD.
However what I cannot do is blow up shots or reframe Alexa without serious problem and if outputting a 4k project. That's when I see major differences. Dragon Sharp , Alexa soft. Simple as that.
Which has more depth or DR... Always will be debatable. The more I learn how to shoot Dragon, the more DR I can dig out of it.
16stops.. No worries at all.
I'm not going to go into ease is of use, weight, price or handling.. Because that's not fair to Arri...

Since this is a sensor discussion only. I still think the sony f65 has the edge over them all.

Red just ticks every other box, hence why it wins hands down for me.

This is not an Alexa vs Red thread....

Anyway, Dragon is a great camera. We all acknowledge that. But Red's marketing department likes to exaggerate things to impress the not-so-tech-savvy indie film maker / DSLR crowd. IMO it kinda hurts Red's image as a professional company and the way people look at Red... It wouldn't be the first time seeing Red get rejected in favor of Alexa because of this. Even though Red would've been the better choice.

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks Phil. So is middle gray mapped to 11 in GIO view with both OLPFs? Or is one at 11 an another at 10 or something?

Remember that's what the sensor itself is mapped to. And there's room there. Both the LLO and STH OLPF are calibrated to the same target and the sensor itself sees the same Dynamic Range (approximately) between both OLPFs. The difference mainly between the OLPFs are the coatings which results in light loss and color variation between the OLPF Profiles. This is essentially why and how you get the cleaner image with the LLO OLPF with more potential reflected light artifacts and also why you get more top end Highlight Roll-Off with the STH OLPF.

Essentially due to the calibration and coatings of the LLO OLPF profile you get a cleaner image because it is cleaner closer to the noise floor by about 1 to 1.3 stops.

 

[Mark Toia]

This is not an Alexa vs Red thread....

Anyway, Dragon is a great camera. We all acknowledge that. But Red's marketing department likes to exaggerate things to impress the not-so-tech-savvy indie film maker / DSLR crowd. IMO it kinda hurts Red's image as a professional company and the way people look at Red... It wouldn't be the first time seeing Red get rejected in favor of Alexa because of this. Even though Red would've been the better choice.

I don't shoot RED cameras because of loyalities , hype or exaggerated bullshit.
I shoot Red cameras because they do alot more than most other cameras on the market for the price.
Simple math....
Image quality + price + size & weight + ease of use + multitude of other ticked boxes = Red Dragon.
Until something better comes out from another manufacture. It will do me just fine.

 

[Björn Benckert]

As I see it there is a difference in the olpf's in the way they filter the light. And to me (I don't have any charts or such to prove it) it seams like the the lowlight olpf is doing less "balancing" of red, green and blue and then let the color science dial the image right, where as the skintone olpf is doing more filtering and provide a better balanced image for the color science, but as for any kind of filtering, thats done with a loss of light so to make the two show somewhat the same image at the same exposure the skintone color science is mapped with higher gain which gives the skin tone olpf more noise in the darks and when pushing it that noise is hurting the red channel the most. i.e. we get images that has the need for DEB processing.

So I think if the different olpfs where tested side by side they would give very different results and also if the RGB channels where tested one by one for each olpf the results would differ even more... That makes it all very difficult to say that dragon has so and so many stops of DR. Also how many of the stops that is actually useful is a debate that involve shooting resolution, compressions, mastering resolution, color grading and the image post processing.

So its much more difficult to give an exact number for a red camera then most other cameras... simply because RED leaves us with so many more options. Something I really like but something I also think cause most of the confusion. especially when comparing to other cameras. But i think it's easy to see that Dragon has a huge DR. It also easy to understand that the dragon applies quite a heavy compression when it allow us to push 80 something frames per second of 6k down to a normal SSD / redmag over something thats equivalent to a E-sata connection.

 

[Clayton Burkhart]

I don't shoot RED cameras because of loyalities , hype or exaggerated bullshit.
I shoot Red cameras because they do alot more than most other cameras on the market for the price.
Simple math....
Image quality + price + size & weight + ease of use + multitude of other ticked boxes = Red Dragon.
Until something better comes out from another manufacture. It will do me just fine.

Bottom line, in order to shoot RED today, it means being able to pay back this tool within two years time because basically all cameras are expendables these days. When I see all the Dragon packages for sale with extremely low hours on them, I know that the owners have come to the realisation that they cannot do this. Usually they have lost 30-40% value already when you factor in the cost of the accessories. I still love my F3, at about $3000 on the market today, I just might buy another one. Why? Because most 4-6K resolution outputs get scaled down anyway and I don't shoot much slo-mo. I like to compose in camera, not in post and guess what? It's all gravy today. Pure profit as a return on investment and I'll be damned if the F3 still doesn't look good to boot. I have often heard of venture capitalists, however as an image maker I think I would describe myself more as a vulture capitalist - as it happens circling some Dragons right now.

I think as one's signature and style grows, the kind of client one attracts grows with the image maker. Hopefully the tools follow suit. But I will say this though, in my experience I have yet to have been hired by a client because of the camera I use. However, I have had many who have been willing to pay for the camera I need when they really care about their project.

In terms of getting the most out of the dynamic range of the camera is that it requires a controlled environment. Controlled environments cost money. However, my sense is that Sony and Arri are also providing top notch DR now, so the nature of that controlled environment, in terms of prestige and reputation is what really determines the choice of the camera, not their technical strengths. In the end it truly is a battle of hype and marketing, because when I go into the grading suite I know any one of these camera lines can provide most of what we need.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Bottom line, in order to shoot RED today, it means being able to pay back this tool within two years time because basically all cameras are expendables these days. When I see all the Dragon packages for sale with extremely low hours on them, I know that the owners have come to the realisation that they cannot do this. Usually they have lost 30-40% value already when you factor in the cost of the accessories. I still love my F3, at about $3000 on the market today, I just might buy another one. Why? Because most 4-6K resolution outputs get scaled down anyway and I don't shoot much slo-mo. I like to compose in camera, not in post and guess what? It's all gravy today. Pure profit as a return on investment and I'll be damned if the F3 still doesn't look good to boot. I have often heard of venture capitalists, however as an image maker I think I would describe myself more as a vulture capitalist - as it happens circling some Dragons right now.

I think as one's signature and style grows, the kind of client one attracts grows with the image maker. Hopefully the tools follow suit. But I will say this though, in my experience I have yet to have been hired by a client because of the camera I use. However, I have had many who have been willing to pay for the camera I need when they really care about their project.

In terms of getting the most out of the dynamic range of the camera is that it requires a controlled environment. Controlled environments cost money. However, my sense is that Sony and Arri are also providing top notch DR now, so the nature of that controlled environment, in terms of prestige and reputation is what really determines the choice of the camera, not their technical strengths. In the end it truly is a battle of hype and marketing, because when I go into the grading suite I know any one of these camera lines can provide most of what we need.

As I remember the Epic MX came out around 2011 and I still think you can charge a a few coins per day for it. So for epic MX that's 4 years of production use and counting. Still its really difficult to find a substitute that does more or better at the same cost. DR is one thing but also size and weight. Its quite easy to see how well RED apply to camera gimbals, UW housings, flying RC camera rigs, wire cams etc, etc. It's also easy to see that pixel count now more than ever starts to make a huge difference. Even the Red One is still a ver usable camera and that has been around for how many years?

This film:

Won a Gold Lion for best film in Viena this year and it shot on REDONE MX and I find the imagery is quite a appealing. So 2 years for a red camera is a bit short calculated I think.

 

[Clayton Burkhart]

As I remember the Epic MX came out around 2011 and I still think you can charge a a few coins per day for it. So for epic MX that's 4 years of production use and counting. Still its really difficult to find a substitute that does more or better at the same cost. DR is one thing but also size and weight. Its quite easy to see how well RED apply to camera gimbals, UW housings, flying RC camera rigs, wire cams etc, etc. It's also easy to see that pixel count now more than ever starts to make a huge difference. Even the Red One is still a ver usable camera and that has been around for how many years?

This film:

Won a Gold Lion for best film in Viena this year and it shot on REDONE MX and I find the imagery is quite a appealing. So 2 years for a red camera is a bit short calculated I think.

You have about as much chance showing up on set with a Red One as I do with an F3 for the majority of the advertising clients. They would rather you rented the latest and greatest. But that is fashion, not technology which dictates rentability.

Pixel count means more to people here on this site than it does to the vast majority of viewers, and frankly it's overrated. I'll take bigger pixels and less of them for better color and DR any day. Which is why the Sony A7S delivers a nicer image than it's larger A7 megapixel cousins, and the Alexa is not too shabby at a measly 2K resolution for instance.

Nice film by the way, looks a lot like Roy Andersson in style. Minus the nice grain of his film stock. You wouldn't happen to be from Sweden would you?

Just pulling your leg. Andersson has been my favorite ad guy forever, and his films are great too. I'm sure it's a privilege to work with him. But it kind of proves my point. The thing that I feel is missing is that the extra resolution and detail means that his old tricks for obscuring detail through real grain and fog and whatnot can't fly in the same way. All those old studio techniques to hide painted backdrops are even harder to apply as soon as you are into 4k+ territory. I actually think his work benefits from LESS detail and resolution, not more.

 

[Björn Benckert]

You have about as much chance showing up on set with a Red One as I do with an F3 for the majority of the advertising clients. They would rather you rented the latest and greatest. But that is fashion, not technology which dictates rentability.

Pixel count means more to people here on this site than it does to the vast majority of viewers, and frankly it's overrated. I'll take bigger pixels and less of them for better color and DR any day. Which is why the Sony A7S delivers a nicer image than it's larger A7 megapixel cousins, and the Alexa is not too shabby at a measly 2K resolution for instance.

Nice film by the way, looks a lot like Roy Andersson in style. Minus the nice grain of his film stock. You wouldn't happen to be from Sweden would you?

Just pulling your leg. Andersson has been my favorite ad guy forever, and his films are great too. I'm sure it's a privilege to work with him. But it kind of proves my point. The thing that I feel is missing is that the extra resolution and detail means that his old tricks for obscuring detail through real grain and fog and whatnot can't fly in the same way. All those old studio techniques to hide painted backdrops are even harder to apply as soon as you are into 4k+ territory. I actually think his work benefits from LESS detail and resolution, not more.

It is Roys latest film and I actually worked a bit on it and it was finished in 4k and Roy really like the noise structure the RED ONE MX provide....

Also Roy is probably one of the biggest fans of 4k and RED that I ever ever talked with. Quite easy to understand as his takes are very often more than 10 minutes long and it's not rare that there is over 100 retakes before he is happy. He use the RED Drive and empty the mag once a day and he pretty much never turn off the camera, so I think it must be one of the most used red one's on the planet. He also says he likes the camera as it behaves so much like film and he thinks the REDONE MX let him use the exact same technique as they did with film. But the RED gives him the benefit of seing the direct result on the monitor. He does it all like he did with film, very low exposure, soft filter, 16mm ultra prime... and all the in camera tricks like matte paiting backgrounds, diffusion cloth etc are all used just the same. Also he do hardly any grading, every shot is, in lack of a better description, built up in camera, so light, set design and makeup is altered until he has a picture on the monitor that he is happy with. Sound like just about any shoot but this guy have the setdesigners paint away shadows in the set and such.

But yes, he could probably made the same film look really nice using an iphone. And on the other end, if he wanted I have no doubt that he could raise the budget to do the 4 years of shooting on 35mm film but he decided to do it on the MX and he decided to finish it in 4k and yes he had quite a few tests made before they decided how to do it...

But if you are running a rental company and try to attract the most demanding clients then they naturally go for the latest and greatest. But I think if they had to pick one of the two, a 8 year old sony or a RED ONE MX then I think most would go for the MX.

For us pixel count has made a huge difference. We got in line early for the epic MX, got it and used it when we where pitching for a 360 panorama project for City Bank. The task was to make a 3xUHD panorama interactive thing that was shot in Kuala Lumpur and then displayed in some of the banks offices. We would not have been able to win the pitch if we did not own the camera and we made back the full cost of the camera on the shoot and probably that x5 on the post for the project, HDRx was needed, Highspeed was needed and having the camera available in house was needed. So simply put the camera was more than paid of the first month of use and been in quite heavy use since then. Tomorrow morning we shoot some hamburgers. Mac Donalds want the exact same images for their high resolution prints as for their films... So Dragon and 6k is perfect for them. Same thing with a Swedish clothing brand that we work with. 5 times a year they shoot their collection with hyper expansive models, the clothing line is quite big so it's about 50 clothing changes for each model and for them to be able to use a few dragons and get motion and stills out at the same time is making it possible to do it in half the time which is quite a difference as they can book the models and photographer for less days. Also again, their web films got the exact same color treatment as their films, they find clothes colors very important. Also for every turnaround they show their web films on a fashion show sort of event the films are then projected using really fat barco 4k projectors. They find it important to show the fabric in detail...

And I can only say that there is no other motion camera than RED that I been able to sell towards still photographers, not even by a long shot. But when they get a good run trough how to shoot with light and are shown how a 6k r3d's work with ADD and raw in photoshop etc they like it... Why? Because it works not much different from their still cameras in terms of DR, resolution shutter speeds, etc. Simply I would not be able to throw them the same sales pitch with a sony, alexa or any other camera that I know of.

Of course all projects does not need a 6k camera or needs to be rendered with ADD on etc, but for me personally I can only say that I'm sure the Epic took me to quite a few places I would never even have known existed if I would back then picked a sony camera instead. And I'm sure that sony camera would not feel like the latest and greatest today... our Epic M MX upgraded to dragon a year a go. The demand for it in last january was so high that I really regret that I did not buy a few carbon dragon, I think they would have all been paid of long before the dragons where available to buy in the red store.

 

[David Battistella]

There is a lot of DR talk all the time here but never enough real world shots to support the wide dr.

Can someone post a bunch of images with 16-18 stops of DR that is not a wedge chart that are not heavily treated with some HDR stills plugin? Just a 16 stop image out of the camera.

This last exchange was nice to read. Don't mean to derail that conversation.

Battistella

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

I'll take bigger pixels and less of them for better color and DR any day. Which is why the Sony A7S delivers a nicer image than it's larger A7 megapixel cousins, and the Alexa is not too shabby at a measly 2K resolution for instance.

Not true. As we can see in the DXOMARK http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Comp...versus-Sony-A7S-versus-Sony-A7R___996_949_917 the A7R is a better camera from the A7S. I think because of the 14 bit raw that the A7R has over the 12 bit raw of the A7S. Just for the record Alexa is a 12 bit raw camera http://www.arri.com/camera/alexa/workflow/working_with_arriraw/arriraw/format/ Dragon is 16 bit raw camera. Every extra bit doubles the file size. Lets do our math. 16 times more color on our pallet.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

That's not particularly accurate...

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

Not true. As we can see in the DXOMARK http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Comp...versus-Sony-A7S-versus-Sony-A7R___996_949_917 the A7R is a better camera from the A7S. I think because of the 14 bit raw that the A7R has over the 12 bit raw of the A7S. Just for the record Alexa is a 12 bit raw camera http://www.arri.com/camera/alexa/workflow/working_with_arriraw/arriraw/format/ Dragon is 16 bit raw camera. Every extra bit doubles the file size. Lets do our math. 16 times more color on our pallet.

Dragon is 12 bit in a 16bit wrapper.

 

[David Battistella]

Are we down to talking about bits ! Again! Sheesh!

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

Are we down to talking about bits ! Again! Sheesh!

Indeed, enough talking. Show me some 16+ stops images with and without noise reduction. :- )

 

[David Battistella]

Indeed, enough talking. Show me some 16+ stops images with and without noise reduction. :- )

From any digital camera.