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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Helium 8K Fire Test - PROTECT HIGHLIGHTS / CLEAN SHADOWS

Brad Grimm said:
I hate to admit it but I am not loving what I am seeing here. I know this is not the final color science, exc. But why would RED send these out with these highlight issues? Its all about first impressions...
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Um. No issues with highlights!

I have seen great highlight roll off and highlight retention with this sensor as well as DR, but the way we expose for helium sensor or arri sensor or dragon sensor is different. I'm going through the same learning curve that i went through when i went from MX to Dragon. You just need to shoot some extremes and play with the raw to figure the best ways to work with any particular sensor. I'm learning i can't apply my knowledge of the Dragon to the Helium, still figuring out how to make the Helium sing.

You can't expect a Honda Civic to handle like a Tesla, you got to get behind the wheel and see what it can do.

Jacob
 
Burning Man 2013

Burning Man 2013

If the source of fire is very large it's easier to expose because it creates it's own fill light.
A small source as seen in the OP is very difficult to expose.

This image was shot with Epic M-X:
 
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Dominik Bauch said:
Little bit worrying about the highlight clipping... my biggest hope for Helium was a softer highlight roll off with improved retention. Shadows are great but I'd rather a more filmic highlight roll off ala Alexa than low light filming capability.
I bet this will all be made clear with official announcements. Can't imagine that the smart guys at Red would allow the new sensor to have worse highlight performance than Dragon.
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Have you ever shot RED? You should know how exposure works on this camera. If you shoot RED at 50 iso you'll have problem it's not the camera but poor exposure experience with RED. There is NO soft highlight roll off with digital, but there are some post-curves than can be applied. This is NOT a sensor quality but how you handle your sensor data.
 
jacob.schwarz said:
Um. No issues with highlights!

I have seen great highlight roll off and highlight retention with this sensor as well as DR, but the way we expose for helium sensor or arri sensor or dragon sensor is different. I'm going through the same learning curve that i went through when i went from MX to Dragon. You just need to shoot some extremes and play with the raw to figure the best ways to work with any particular sensor. I'm learning i can't apply my knowledge of the Dragon to the Helium, still figuring out how to make the Helium sing.

You can't expect a Honda Civic to handle like a Tesla, you got to get behind the wheel and see what it can do.

Jacob
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I get it totally, but I was making my assessment based off other tests I have seen as well... I am sure a lot will change in October with the color science and so forth.. I personally want Helium to be the game changer I know it can be.. and that means leaving no cracks for the naysayers.
 
Brad Grimm said:
I get it totally, but I was making my assessment based off other tests I have seen as well... I am sure a lot will change in October with the color science and so forth.. I personally want Helium to be the game changer I know it can be.. and that means leaving no cracks for the naysayers.
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There are Helium naysayers?
 
I guess the question you have to ask your self is how would the Dragon sensor preform in the same situation with regards to the highlights and shadows?? With the adjustments to the exposure.
Thank you Jacob for the test looksee.
 
As the op said, this is just an exposure problem. Clearly he let the highlights go. This would happen on MX and dragon if you exposed this way. I shoot a lot of fire and it's always tough finding a balance between keeping detail in the fre and getting enough information for the rest of the scene. The real question is what would happen if you exposed for all of the highlight info? Could you still pull a reasonable amount of information out of the shadows. Seeing how clean helium shadows are so far, I would imagine it might fair better than dragon. Curious to see by how much...
 
Luke Neumann said:
Just key out the whites, use the eye drop tool and select a shade of orange just outside of the key and drop a color solid underneath the clip.
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That's a crutch at best. Real fire that's well exposed -- with the surroundings given enough fill -- has many, many different shades of orange and yellow and red (and occasional flickers of white). Keying it orange merely makes a brick of orange, which real fire isn't. It can be done -- it just takes some experimentation and careful exposure.

Mark L. Pederson said:
It's all about shooting a test yourself. Everyone shoots and test differently. ARRI ALEXA Mini clips highlights faster than my Helium 8K. Why would ARRI send those Mini's out ...
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I did a feature about six months ago featuring a killer with a flamethrower, and we had quite a few stunts with people on fire running around, stuff like that. Zero overexposure problems with Alexa XT -- it all looked fine. But this was broad daylight. No flamethrower stuff at night.

It is possible sometimes to recover some highlight detail with soft clipping, but that's kind of a hail mary pass. I've seen Red Dragons clip even worse, particularly in extreme light/dark situations. But again, I think it's more of a key-to-fill ratio problem.
 
jacob.schwarz said:
Um. No issues with highlights!

I have seen great highlight roll off and highlight retention with this sensor as well as DR, but the way we expose for helium sensor or arri sensor or dragon sensor is different. I'm going through the same learning curve that i went through when i went from MX to Dragon. You just need to shoot some extremes and play with the raw to figure the best ways to work with any particular sensor. I'm learning i can't apply my knowledge of the Dragon to the Helium, still figuring out how to make the Helium sing.

You can't expect a Honda Civic to handle like a Tesla, you got to get behind the wheel and see what it can do.

Jacob
Click to expand...

Jacob, I have had the same thing. I shots some footage of Niagara Falls a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of it clipped. I was pretty sure I was always with the DR range, but there was a spike within the highlight area that clipped. It could be what we see on the histogram is not what we are getting from the sensor. Mind you I was shooting in some extreme harsh light, mid day with lots of white mist. I found with my forged, I could never get the it to touch the goal posts on both sides. I'm sure updates will sort this out, or helium colour and gamma
 
Marc Wielage said:
That's a crutch at best. Real fire that's well exposed -- with the surroundings given enough fill -- has many, many different shades of orange and yellow and red (and occasional flickers of white). Keying it orange merely makes a brick of orange, which real fire isn't.
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Yeah, but this example would have been fine. I have done it many times with smaller flames and it works like a charm. Add some alpha glow on top of it and very few people could tell the difference. Looks better than pure white, IMO.
 
Marc Wielage said:
That's a crutch at best. Real fire that's well exposed -- with the surroundings given enough fill -- has many, many different shades of orange and yellow and red (and occasional flickers of white). Keying it orange merely makes a brick of orange, which real fire isn't. It can be done -- it just takes some experimentation and careful exposure.


I did a feature about six months ago featuring a killer with a flamethrower, and we had quite a few stunts with people on fire running around, stuff like that. Zero overexposure problems with Alexa XT -- it all looked fine. But this was broad daylight. No flamethrower stuff at night.

It is possible sometimes to recover some highlight detail with soft clipping, but that's kind of a hail mary pass. I've seen Red Dragons clip even worse, particularly in extreme light/dark situations. But again, I think it's more of a key-to-fill ratio problem.
Click to expand...

i am assuming you could have done this with a Red as well. Obviously much harder in the dark when you are trying to get your subject to expose properly too
 
Patrick Tresch said:
Have you ever shot RED? You should know how exposure works on this camera. If you shoot RED at 50 iso you'll have problem it's not the camera but poor exposure experience with RED. There is NO soft highlight roll off with digital, but there are some post-curves than can be applied. This is NOT a sensor quality but how you handle your sensor data.
Click to expand...

http://indiecinemaacademy.com/create-sekonic-dts-profile-light-meter-video/

around 26:24. Ryan did a Sekonic dynamic range profile of the Dragon sensor. It clearly shows a moderate highlight roll off. The M-X is a brick wall in comparison. Not sure if he compares them in this video (didn't watch all the way through again.) The Alexa had a softer roll off compared to Dragon also.
Sure he's using RG4 or similar to represent the sensor data but my point is that I would love to be able to have a softer, more filmic image out of the box without initially resorting to luts or grading to get there. If it's just CS then great, looking forward to October.
 
Steve Conry said:
i am assuming you could have done this with a Red as well. Obviously much harder in the dark when you are trying to get your subject to expose properly too
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Yes, although the problem is that digital cameras tend to be noisier in the low-lights. If you can get a decent exposure with fill on the low-light areas, the fire can be preserved pretty well.

On the other hand: I just watched a Dragon campfire sequence from Fear the Walking Dead, and all the fire details were clipped. The people seemed to have tons of fill and they looked fine, so you wonder what happened. You can always make the argument that a creative decision was made to blow out the fire, but that's the kind of thing I always try to work a little bit to fix when possible, and it doesn't take that much effort to do if the details survive in the camera file.

Luke Neumann said:
Yeah, but this example would have been fine. I have done it many times with smaller flames and it works like a charm. Add some alpha glow on top of it and very few people could tell the difference. Looks better than pure white, IMO.
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We did it for real on Lost (lit by the great John Bartley), and never had to resort to any tricks. All the visual information was there, and this was on Kodak 5219 negative -- just 500 ISO. It just takes effort, skill, and experience.
 
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