Happy 6K DRAGON Day

[Eric Santiago]

Just received my first EPIC 6K DRAGON.

I know I'm a few years late to the party but this baby will work alongside my Scarlet

Any tips are welcome.

 

[PatrickWebb]

Photos ... it doesn't exist.

I mean: Welcome!

 

[Eric Santiago]

Photos ... it doesn't exist.

I mean: Welcome!

Now to scour the RU for all the tips and tricks and possible issues I can run into

 

[PatrickWebb]

Now to scour the RU for all the tips and tricks and possible issues I can run into

What a beauty! Congrats, mate!

Now give it a stress test! run it on the highest resolution possible and a high frame rate and run out a card! Just to test out the stability on a max out recording.

 

[Eric Santiago]

What a beauty! Congrats, mate!

Now give it a stress test! run it on the highest resolution possible and a high frame rate and run out a card! Just to test out the stability on a max out recording.

Yep gonna put on a high hat and point it at a batch of kittens with a 256GB SSD

 

[Mike P.]

Tips and tricks/heads up:

-Dragon really likes when T/E are green and that it’s blackshaded for those settings. MX has way more wiggle room, and it’s actually worth waiting the ~5mins for the camera to get to temp (otherwise you could end up with not just more noise, but green/magenta colour casts).

-CMOS smear will appear easily when using STH (STND needs to be pushed before they show up).

-LLO and STND end up being surprisingly clean at higher ISOs when rendering to a 4k delivery codec (e.g. ISO1600 is noisy 1:1, until you render to ~25mbit HEVC 4k). So it’s worth test rendering out to find your ISO tipping point.

-2:1 offers a few more fps at every resolution and 6kFF can do 83.33fps (I recall the manual saying different… like only 75fps or something.)

-mini-mags give quite a few more compression ratios but nothing substantial (presuming you’re finishing for 4k). I think the biggest difference was when FPS is cranked at 6k, it gives you 14:1 instead of 17:1, so not really worth it.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Thanks, Mike, that's so helpful.

I have the Standard OLPF on it now, need to learn more about that eventually.

 

[PatrickWebb]

Thanks, Mike, that's so helpful.

I have the Standard OLPF on it now, need to learn more about that eventually.

I would leave the standard OLPF in, tbh. I've had some funky experiences with the STH ~ potentially not using it in the right way, idk. I've never used the LLO so I cannot comment there. The standard has always been my standard.

Interesting the Mike stated that the Dragon benefits from the warmup ... I know with my Epic MX that I've often had the Ton yellow and the senor on green and had no issues with noise. I feel that when the sensor gets into the yellow zone, is when noise begins to be more noticeable. I've even run my old Scarlet-MX out into the cold without a warm up and got nice results... the camera came up to temp during the shooting and had not problems.

I am curious to run a Dragon again from cold and then let it warm up and see the results.

Nice one Mike! Cheers!

 

[Mike P.]

No prob. Fortunately, Exp has wiggle room (yellow is fine), and the camera comes up to temp easily/quickly enough.

Most obvious way to see it is to just leave your body/lens cap on and watch the black screen as your camera goes from cold boot to green T. Before it hits the temp it was blackshaded at, there can be tons of pattern noise/casts/weirdness (it almost “clicks” cleaner with every degree change).

And yeah, I’d stick to STND as a nice medium; any skin tone/daylight advantages the STH has are marred by really poor ISO performance (more than “400” - which is only 200 measurable on ISOcal1 - could introduce noise depending on the scene/light quality) and/or harsh CMOS smear (particularly off of window sills). The purple orbs around light sources of the LLO are far less of distracting/less artifact looking (they’re like Leica lens flares), and ISO2000 isn’t even as noisy as ISO500 on STH.

OH! And another heads up: Dragon does suffer from gate shadow. (Only mentioning this and CMOS smear so you don’t wonder if/worry that you got a lemon or poor OLPF install or something.)

 

[Eric Santiago]

OH! And another heads up: Dragon does suffer from gate shadow. (Only mentioning this and CMOS smear so you don’t wonder if/worry that you got a lemon or poor OLPF install or something.)

Interesting, is this a major issue?

New to the DRAGON and hoping to find all this in RU.

 

[Mike P.]

Umm, not major (cause again, it’s like a lens flare, more than a harsh digital artifact), but it is a design flaw to overcome. A matte box with actual mattes helps prevent it, but if you’re used to running/gunning with bare lenses you’ll see it sooner rather than later.

There are a few threads from early on (2013~2014?), but no solution (just ‘deal with it’ and/or ‘I like them…’ and/or ‘even though you never see them, every camera has them’) and Weapon came out soon thereafter so people quickly moved on.

 

[Eric Santiago]

There are a few threads from early on (2013~2014?), but no solution (just ‘deal with it’ and/or ‘I like them…’ and/or ‘even though you never see them, every camera has them’) and Weapon came out soon thereafter so people quickly moved on.

I am looking forward to learning more as I go along.

If its anything like the experience I had with my Scarlet, I don't mind the growing pains

Thanks, Mike for the tips much appreciated.

 

[PatrickWebb]

I am looking forward to learning more as I go along.

If its anything like the experience I had with my Scarlet, I don't mind the growing pains

Thanks, Mike for the tips much appreciated.

I'm actually waiting to purchase a Dragon here in Norway. I'll let you know if it eventuates.