Getting to know my Scarlet

[Neil Cronin]

Hi all,
I'm new to the Scarlet. I've been photographing raw stills for years, but relatively new to moving images, and I have some questions about my Scarlet and REDCODE. For reference, here's the first real film I made:

(https://vimeo.com/53267291 for the Flashless.)

I increased the Kelvin to about 6800, and lowered the "exposure" by about 1 stop. By no means did I make exhaustive and perfect adjustments, I just quickly tried to match what it looked like as-is.

- Is there a reduction in dynamic range when shooting at, eg, 120 fps on a Scarlet? That video doesn't look like 13 stops to me. Maybe I missed the exposure?
- Is there any sort of "highlight recovery" approach using CINE-X outside of the curves and exposure and ISO settings? Is this what the "FLUT" adjustment is for?
- When I "denoise" a shot in CINE-X, the clip shows up as green in FCP-X, including the final output. I assume this is just a bug that will get fixed, in the meantime is there a workaround? ...high fps shots are quite noisy.
- When I send a FCP-X project with a compound clip to CINE-X, it just shows up as black without even a clip listing. How do folks use CINE-X with a FCP-X project? Is there a workaround for this?
- I've seen folks say that FCP-X will do a full debayer if the pref "playback quality" is set to "best", but I get the same file output either way. Does this setting matter when I do a render for final output?
- How come when I set CINE-X to "full debayer" and view at 100%, it displays larger than FCP-X displays it? FCP-X interprets a 1K-WS shot as 1280x480, but setting CINE-X to display the clip at "100%" makes it display an image about 1290px wide. Is this OK, or is there cropping or scaling happening between the two views?
- Lightroom claims to support R3D files, but it's not clear to me in what sense. Are there tools for grading a clip in Lightroom? Or would I have to export all the rendered stills and do it one at a time? All I get is "Video is not supported".
- I find the Scrarlet AF to be about 1000x slower than the 5d. Is that right? Or are there non-obvious settings or modes that would help with using AF as the default mode?
- I find the distance markings on lenses to be far more accurate than using the 5" lcd for focusing. Is this normal? Or do I have bad eye sight? Even at 1:1 mode, I'm spinning the ring like crazy and end up with OOF shots.
- What wide angle EF lenses are folks using for cropped shots? The canon 10-22 EF-S looks nice, but does the Scarlet deal with the variable iris OK? I've only been shooting with EF primes so far.
- What is "DRX"? The only thing that I could find out about it is that it does nothing unless you have a Rocket card.
- My understanding is that the Rocket card is just the reverse of the cameras. Is there a thunderbolt camera module in the works that would allow us to plug our camera into our machine's PCI bus and use it like a Rocket without spending $5k?

Thanks in advance!
-neil

 

[Noel R.]

The dynamic range should be the same. All you are seeing is a cropped window of the 4K image. Try a shot at 4K with the same shutter speed, aperture, and iso then zoom in on a 1K size of the frame, it should look exactly the same. The RED has more dynamic range in the shadows. If you want greater range in the highs, the best practice is to shoot around 800 ISO.

 

[Neil Cronin]

The dynamic range should be the same. All you are seeing is a cropped window of the 4K image. Try a shot at 4K with the same shutter speed, aperture, and iso then zoom in on a 1K size of the frame, it should look exactly the same. The RED has more dynamic range in the shadows. If you want greater range in the highs, the best practice is to shoot around 800 ISO.

Thanks. My understanding is that the ISO is fixed at 800 and adjusting it at capture time just changes the monitor. Is that right?

-n

 

[Philipe Ratton]

No, iso is more to 320, 800 is for protecting the highlights
You have to give the sensor enough light but never clip highlights.
As with anything else, a nice balanced histogram is always nice.
Some people ETTR, and I do it too, but usually only in low light situations.

 

[Noel R.]

Thanks. My understanding is that the ISO is fixed at 800 and adjusting it at capture time just changes the monitor. Is that right?

-n

It depends on who you ask. Some feel that the image looks better at 320, others (including Graeme) will say 800. Several people have said that the native iso is 800. I think 800 retains more detail in the highlights, but I feel there is less noise at 320. It's an ongoing debate.

 

[Philipe Ratton]

Dont let the bars on the side of the histogram get red and watch the stop lights.

 

[Noel R.]

Yeah, nothing looks worst than clipped highlights.

 

[Philipe Ratton]

if you are going with clipped highlights for a look or something, it's better to do it in post.

 

[Noel R.]

Yes the roll off looks a lot smoother if you clip your highlights in post. If you clip them before post it looks like a blob of crap.

 

[Neil Cronin]

Thanks. As I said, I've been shooting RAW stills for years. I very well understand digital clipping. Does that video look overexposed?

-n

 

[Noel R.]

No, I don't think it's overexposed. I'll be honest, I'm not in love with the 1K image. If you think about it, after debayering it's not even a 1K image. It's too soft, but the exposure doesn't look off.

 

[Neil Cronin]

No, I don't think it's overexposed. I'll be honest, I'm not in love with the 1K image. If you think about it, after debayering it's not even a 1K image. It's too soft, but the exposure doesn't look off.

Of course. Who is in love with it? But it's what I've got.

 

[Joe Minuni]

- What is "DRX"? The only thing that I could find out about it is that it does nothing unless you have a Rocket card.

Used to be the opposite - DRX was not supported by the rocket, only software, until release 16. I struggle to find an exact quote of what it is, but I believe is to help even out the high end of channels when close to clipping; to try to have RGB all clip around the same values to avoid color cast in highlights

 

[Matt Ryan]

Joe is right. DRX is used to clip every channel equally. Sometimes when you shoot you will clip only one or two channels creating a magenta highlight, so when you use DRX it aligns all the color channels equally (at the clipping point) to make them pure white. Try a shot that is clipped and watch the histogram while you move the DRX slider. You will see the peaks line up on the right.

 

[Jason Ano]

speaking of getting to know ur Scarlet.. I was just wondering what ya'll think of my process? - I understand that the native ISO is 800, but to my eyes, 320 looks cleaner. So I've been shooting at ISO 800 (for highlight protection), but as soon as I edit my footage, I change my meta data to ISO 320 (if I can work with it) and slightly adjust exposure in my color correction phase.

 

[Noel R.]

speaking of getting to know ur Scarlet.. I was just wondering what ya'll think of my process? - I understand that the native ISO is 800, but to my eyes, 320 looks cleaner. So I've been shooting at ISO 800 (for highlight protection), but as soon as I edit my footage, I change my meta data to ISO 320 (if I can work with it) and slightly adjust exposure in my color correction phase.

I could be wrong but I believe in essence changing your exposure in post has more or less the same effect as changing your ISO to begin with. I don't think decreasing your ISO in post and then increasing your levels will provide any reduction in noise. Whether you are using levels or ISO to compensate for exposure in essence you are still manipulating the same amount of data. I think it's better to use the ISO you are exposing for. If you want to use 320, expose on that, because that gives you the best starting point for the look you are going for in post.