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Helium - All in One Thread

Fabricio Morato

Fabricio Morato

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Hello everyone, I'm starting this thread because there seems to be a lot of confusion about Helium and it's difference towards Dragon. I don't have any inside information from Red, so everything in here is from what I've read.


So first, what is Helium?
Helium is the forth sensor released by Red (before was M, MX and Dragon). So far we know that it's a new design that has a pixel size of 3.65 microns and it comes in 8K (8192x4320) flavor with a size of 29.9x15.77mm (which is a little bit bigger than S35 and almost the same as Dragon 6K size). As of now, Helium only comes in 8K and therefore to have the same FOV as S35 you would have to shoot at around 7K.
More indepth Helium specs: http://nofilmschool.com/sites/defau...erwide/public/red_wle-specs.jpg?itok=le0OuXuo


Last week (July 29th) Helium was sold in "stormtrooper" body, with the same specs as Weapon Carbon (being able to achieve 300MB/s using the faster miniMags) for $59k. But it was stated that a rumored, not yet announced, Epic-W will have Helium sensor inside. Besides the lucky few who were able to buy Helium, there are some productions out there that are also using it. If you want to know who got Helium go to this thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?147717-Helium-squad


What are the benefits of Helium compared to Dragon?
If you look at the specs, Helium have the same DR (16.5stops) of Dragon and the same Signal to Noise Rratio (80dB). But without testing one against each other we will not know how close (or far) they are. Some that have used Helium claims that it looks cleaner and have a more usable DR in the shadows. Weather this is because of a better sensor design or from a bigger super sampling (shooting 8k instead of 6k and delivering in 4k/2k) remains to be seen.
So far the advantage is being able to shoot 8K with most of existing S35 lenses.


For those worried about Helium smaller pixel size (regarding noise, image sensitivity, DR, etc), in my opinion Red would not have released it if it had a weaker IQ compared to Dragon, so I imagine that Helium at least is able to hold it's own against Dragon, if not even take it a notch or two above.


Why was Helium released now?
From the information we have, Helium is ahead of schedule, and it appears that its easier to manufacture than Dragon at 8K. In October Red will be releasing more information on Helium and will hopefully announce new product (Epic-W?), upgrade paths... They hope that by releasing Helium sooner, they will alleviate some orders from the Dragon sensor line and shift them to Helium and deliver cameras with the Dragon sensor faster. From what I could understand, Helium and Dragon will be coexisting for quite some time.


I have an 8K Dragon upgrade, what should I do?
Red announced that people who paid for the 8K Dragon upgrade will be able to, free of charge, change to the Helium sensor while they wait to the 8K Dragons. And that people who bought Helium (stormtrooper) will be able to upgrade to 8K Dragon.
Whats interesting from this is that 8K Dragon is still an upgrade from 8K Helium, which seems to reaffirm the longevity of the Dragon sensor.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?147786-Helium-8K-s35-Dragon-8K-VV


Can I see some Helium footage?
Yes, so far one is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayxanuuq2-k


Some Helium R3D

From Erich Roland:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o0xkjzvi3r6a2ls/AAByWu66qudmGaQh1XlqQljAa?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/91ividf1zni0adu/AAC96lPMPatTL3Luq81oZVjJa?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b3ocmyiudafznh2/AAAkhRnC0zUoSntEjEx_VZEia?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/91un76tz84a15v1/AAC9XJ_RbNL7VJa-ZQ1g4Ll5a?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zqdsk83opc8biu2/AADk5LB5KiqLVCisiTpMvNxwa?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lc6equ3j4f9htz4/AAA1w94piSC7qz_kfEfZR0rVa?dl=0

From Jacob Schwarz:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp6u9nl8nylqgo9/A002_C010_08071C.0000000F.R3D?dl=0



8K Dragon vs 8K Helium
The main difference (for me) is the aesthetics from a S35 image to a VV image. Other than that, Helium colors and DR seems to be on par with Dragon.
As I said before, once we get more people shooting Helium and they stress more the sensor, we will know how much they differ (or not).



To current Weapon owners about any upgrade path:

Jarred Land said:
Mg will have a path to Helium 8k s35 yes.
Click to expand...


Epic-W
Not much is known about it, but on a post from Jared that was later deleted he stated that Epic-W will have Helium DNA. What this means is still unknown. But it could be that its a smaller cut from the 8K Helium, or that they will use Helium technology to make the same pixel size of the Dragon. For this only in October we will know.



Once Red delivers more info about Helium, I'll update here.


Hope this helps some of you that don't have the time to dig through the forum searching for answers. And if I missed something or messed up feel free to point it out.
 
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Read out from sensor could also be improved. In the short boxing film I don't see much of jello effect so this could be another improvement to be confirmed.
Pat
 
w00t w00t Helium for all..:party:
 
If anyone have the specs posted for helium (for the short time it was on sale), maybe we could have those listed here, I am very interested in continuing my RED journey by getting this camera ;-)
 
Patrick Tresch said:
Read out from sensor could also be improved. In the short boxing film I don't see much of jello effect so this could be another improvement to be confirmed.
Pat
Click to expand...

I had the same feeling when watching the short as well, but since I only worked with Dragon and not Weapon I didn't knew if this was something that Weapon made it better or if Helium really has a faster readout than Dragon. Lets hope someone from Red can answer this in the near future.
Thanks for pointing this out.
 
Eirik Tyrihjel said:
If anyone have the specs posted for helium (for the short time it was on sale), maybe we could have those listed here, I am very interested in counting my RED journey by getting this camera ;-)
Click to expand...

I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but the first link (the one from nofilmschool) in the post is a screenshot of the Helium page when it was still active.
 
The Helium sensor at 3.65 microns vs the Dragon sensor at 5 microns - both roughly the same physical size at S35. Now I don't know, nor does anyone else just how the low light sensitivity is in Helium equipped cameras is other than that JL has stated ". . this completely new sensor design with half sized pixels squeezed down into S35", but I've always known that the larger the photosites (pixel pitch) then the more light they can acquire. This is what makes a 12MP Sony A7s so much more efficient in low lighting than the 40MP A7r cameras. So I guess the real question is what about those "half-sized pixels" ? Are they powered by more advanced circuit processing power to achieve the seemingly impossible?

It's counterintuitive to me that less light gathering pixel size equates to better sensitivity in low light, so I'll have to reserve judgement for some real-world testing and samples to show up which hopefully will be soon since the Storm Trooper models have been out in the wild for 2 weeks now. Until then, I remain somewhat skeptical but would be glad to be shown that the Helium does indeed represent a paradigm change in sensor technology.
 
I don't know how these pixels are put together, but the Helium is absolutely, definitely more light sensitive, thus cleaner in much higher ISO's. I saw it with my own eyes, and it was hard to believe how clean it was...
 
Daniel Stilling said:
I don't know how these pixels are put together, but the Helium is absolutely, definitely more light sensitive, thus cleaner in much higher ISO's. I saw it with my own eyes, and it was hard to believe how clean it was...
Click to expand...

Really?! More resolution and less noise. If this is true I am sooo in.
 
Im just happy I no longer have to sift thru hundreds of clips of a movie starring Anthony Hopkins in order to see what this sensor looks like on Youtube haha
 
Also Helium is a few years younger than Dragon, and in technology years that's a fair good time. So by this cycle its totally possible to have a smaller pixel and being just as good as Dragon.
 
Thanks for putting this together. Great thread!

I haven't been able to find an answer but I would like to know if in October (when Helium is officially released) we will be able to upgrade our Weapons to Helium sensor... for those who are not on the 8KVV upgrade list.
 
Eric Oh said:
Thanks for putting this together. Great thread!

I haven't been able to find an answer but I would like to know if in October (when Helium is officially released) we will be able to upgrade our Weapons to Helium sensor... for those who are not on the 8KVV upgrade list.
Click to expand...

I'm fairly sure that Jared said somewhere that Weapon owners will have a Helium upgrade... I'll try to dig it up and post it here!
 
Daniel Stilling said:
I don't know how these pixels are put together, but the Helium is absolutely, definitely more light sensitive, thus cleaner in much higher ISO's. I saw it with my own eyes, and it was hard to believe how clean it was...
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing this in person myself, as well as having a Red technician chime in to explain the technology behind these "half-sized pixels"
 
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