How to Properly Black Shade an Epic?

[Terry VerHaar]

I agree with Will. It should not be something we should have to worry about it.

And I'll bet you never change the oil in your car, either.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

And I'll bet you never change the oil in your car, either.

In all fairness, that attitude is probably because some of the cameras on the market (you know who you are) do this automatically. Then again, they are not doing 5K in a small box like the Epic. However, it would certainly be a welcome addition if RED engineers can figure out a way to do precise temperature regulation within the Epic body.

 

[Rob Castiglione]

Hi Terry. Thats a pretty presumptious comment but no matter. Lets assume your analogy has some merit. At least i dont have to change the oil every time i want to drive my car or when the temperature changes...

 

[Aaron Bernakevitch]

AC POWER

When i'm doing a black shade i always run the ac power through my ups when I do the black shade. If you camera powers down (not that i have tested this) I am pretty sure they only way to bring it back from black shade purgatory is send it to red (someone please correct me ehre if I am wrong).

So I take the upmost precaution when black shading.

Anyone else do this?

A

 

[Carlos Reyes]

Thanks for the replies guys. It does suck when on location without A/C power. You could spend a little less than half of a red brick's charge on just black shading between letting it warm up and then the actual calibration. Its not the end of the world but even if it was ten minutes as the manual suggests would be a big time and battery saver as it currently takes me about 20 minutes after warming up

 

[ericyoung]

AC POWER

When i'm doing a black shade i always run the ac power through my ups when I do the black shade. If you camera powers down (not that i have tested this) I am pretty sure they only way to bring it back from black shade purgatory is send it to red (someone please correct me ehre if I am wrong).

So I take the upmost precaution when black shading.

Anyone else do this?

A

I doubt losing power during black shade would brick the camera, but you'd certainly have to start again. With a black shade currently taking 24 minutes after warmup, your precaution still makes sense! If mains power was suspect at the location, I'd certainly consider doing the same.

 

[Dominik Muench]

unfinished black shading does not brick your camera. it just wont be a successful black shade. repower the camera and do it again.

there was a post a little while ago that explained that apparently black shading works "upwards" in terms of framerates. so lets say you blackshade your camera for 300fps at 2K and you then decide to shoot in 25fps 5K, your black shading settings are gone.
thats why it was suggested to always get your camera up to working temperature, and then blackshade at 1fps 1 second exposure time at 5K.

 

[Tony Rudenko]

A little tidbit I picked up....

"A possible reason why there were issues in the field with getting your black shading attempts to remove the blue channel issue are:
- Black shading was attempted without a lens cap or without blocking out external light

o If a PL mount cap has any sticker on the inside or any writing, a black shading will not be applied properly

- A bad black shading could have been applied at some point prior, which resulted in the blue channel issue, and a restore was not applied

o Each time the camera is black shaded, it applies this new calibration on top of previous black shades

o If the new black shading is applied to a bad foundation, i.e. one where light leaked in, a sticker was inside the mount cap, not done in the shooting environment, etc., the image could be affected

o The most reliable and personally, the most recommended method for black shading, is to first do a factory restore and then apply a new black shade on this base layer

I hope me describing black shadings as building layers upon the foundation of a factory calibration makes this understandable."

....It was also conveyed to me to that it was best to do your blakshading without a lens but rather the body cap alone and a black cloth (duvitine) covering the entire port area to prevent any indirect light leakage...

EDIT: Just spoke to my camera house & they performed the above steps but achieved the same bad results, until they did a force firmware update (same version), and it appears to have fixed the problem...