Having owned my Epic-W for a year, I've only seen smearing once. It happened when I was testing extremely low light stuff at a dinner party at my house. We had some small table-top torches set up for each table so this was a pretty large flame. 1600 ISO v2 (3200 v1), STH OLPF, firmware version 6.4.21.
The two sources you see in frame are the only ones lighting the shot. I found it interesting that the flame showed the smear but the lightbulb in the back which is also clipped doesn't. Perhaps it's a contrast thing, the lightbulb doesn't show it because there's still something to expose for immediately next to it. The flame only has pitch black behind it so it shows the streaking? I dunno.
In my case, it was more blue than green.
None of the other footage that I have with clipped highlights show the same thing. Maybe tomorrow I'll test and see if I can replicate it.
Whelp, here's the other thing that I can officially classify as useful information. Specifically in regards to comparing RED Epic Dragon to RED Weapon.
I spent the first half of my day at Camtec with Christopher Probst going over our Weapon notes and shooting a few tests. We had 3 Weapons and 2 Epic Dragons on hand.
My focus today was on a specific stress test. CMOS Smearing. Like I said earlier RED Weapon has an improved optical path and some other voodoo that has changed things for the better on this front in a few ways. Here's a sample image:
[URL="http://www.artbyphil.com/phfx/cinematography/2015_REDWeaponCameraTest/bigs/phfx_REDWeaponTest2015_CMOSSMEARCompare.jpg"]
[/URL]
A few things to take note of here:
- This is a stress test and I'm doing my best to make an ugly image, the key light in frame is +6 Stops over exposed.
- This example is of the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF, which does indeed exhibit CMOS Smear easier than the other OLPFs due to it's profile/calibration.
- To show the "extremes" this is ISO 4000, DRAGONcolor2/REDgamma4.
- CMOS Smear is indeed significantly improved on RED Weapon compared to RED Epic Dragon.
- IR Blocking and/or Cutting has also been improved.
Remember that Helium is now one stop brighter than Dragon. So that 4000 ISO is like 2000 ISO on Helium.
For what it's worth:
ISO 800 v2/1600 v1, IPP2 med/med, standard OLPF
ISO 6400 v2/12,800 v1, IPP2 med/med, standard OLPF
I personally am not pushing the Helium sensor any further than 800-1280 for noise reasons anyway. The 6400 ISO image above is already unusable, so it's not like the smearing is ruining an otherwise great shot. So I guess if you shoot in a way to minimize noise you'll also minimize the smearing effects.
Edit: An interesting thing to note in my testing: I had to use my flashlight's dimmest setting to provoke the smearing. If it was on any of the brighter modes, the lens would flare, filling in the nearby shadows and eliminate the effect.
