I'll be honest - Dragon disappoints me

[Rob Ruffo]

Color rendition.

I would deposit $9,000 today if you told me the new sensor will have more human colors. I.e. holds the extremes yet keeps skin tones neutral. Yes we can do this with in post or even on set with a LUT... but if we dont, and on set the director crew and client all think Scarlet b-cam looks "a little off" compared to the Alexa, no amount of resolution or DR will make that better. The simple fact is that Red uses an industrial sensor and compresses the color information, while other cameras favor oversampling and uncompressed options. Redcode is genius, but give it a better Bayer structure with more natural colors and it can only improve.

I like the fact that I can shoot 4K images on a camera the size of an old Pentax. I love the RAW workflow, and obviously I need to figure out a better one for on-set looks. But like Rob, I hope that 6k is the marketing trumpet, and more subtle and interesting changes are occurring under the hood, beautiful improvements that Red doesn't want other manufacturers knowing about.

+1 to all you said. Would gladly pay 10K even, for improved color.

@ Matt, Lol and snort all you want. I suppose your approach would be to wait until the product is released, and its' too late to easily change anything, and then comment.

 

[Paul Russell]

Computer technology is not really advancing, in terms of speed, all that much any more. Something that would beat a 2010 12 core Mac Pro would be very expensive today as expensive as a 2010 Mac Pro in 2010 -

maybe for the forgotten world of mac pro user. But PCs are still steaming ahead.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

That's not exactly correct.

There are more cores, more efficient ways of executing the instructions, more high speed cache on the chips, more of the functionality of other chips integrated into the CPU so that moving data is faster, faster RAM, faster interfaces to hard disk and peripheral devices, etc.

The days of faster clock speeds is over due to the power and heat requirements (speed and heat produced are not linear).

But the days of system speed increases is certainly not over.

---

BTW - as the Dragon is more sensitive, how is the increased density of ND filters going to affect the image?

--

As to some who have concerns about the cost differential between Epic and Scarlet and their 'investment' evaporating ....

Epic/Scarlet are basically high speed computers. What has historically happened to the power and price of computers in the free market where there is a lot of competition?

If you base the 'worth' or value of your business on the price of your camera, maybe you need to think instead about offering value to your customers and a quality product. If the cost of the camera goes down, that's just more money and better tools in your pocket.

It's a good thing, not a bad thing. It is inevitable.

The top DaVinci graders are still making money, even though their $100K system is now given away for free - or $1K for the full version. They are selling their skills, not the price of their tools.

And more development will probably go into DaVinci, so the $100K owners will end up with a better product that will provide them with more power.

They are winning from the price reduction, not losing.

Well actually graders are making maybe 1/5th what they were 5 years ago and in many markets you can't make a living with it anymore at all.

A camera is not what I sell myself with as a D.P. - I could get work with no camera at all and just rent anything I wanted. My Epic is a business investment, and I a merely a rental customer among others for this investment. I am a frequent "rental customer" of our Epics, because save a few times when a C300 was needed for extreme low light, the Epic almost always is the best camera choice overall.

Rentals are much more akin to commodities - it has nothing to do with my talent. If I have direct competition from Scarlet owners for rentals I will be in trouble. Arri openly holds back new models to give time to their buyers to recoup their investments first. Some people here seem to have no idea about how business investments are supposed to work. They talk about talent and art. This has NOTHING to do with the issue.

A $34 000 camera is not just "for creative expression". Maybe others here are that rich, but for me if I were not given reasonable time to amortize my $34 000 I would feel burned. Only a fool invests more than a few K in something and doesn't care if it is worth 1/5th the next day.

If Red burned me by making my Epic worth the same as a Scarlet right after I bought it I would not buy any more Red cameras. I'd just rent agnostically. They won't do that. That is not their style. I sincerely doubt they see the target market for Epics as a bunch of fools with no basic business sense and money to throw out the window.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

maybe for the forgotten world of mac pro user. But PCs are still steaming ahead.

Yes and no. We have PCs here - I am 100% agnostic when it comes to computers. What is faster than a 2010 12 core Mac pro in PC land, and how much is it? Not much less than that same Mac Pro was two years ago. Take that same two year gap 10 years ago and the difference would be huge.

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

This is the first time that I have seen this (from the red.com store):

"Any collection or group of items placed as a single order that includes 1x EPIC brain and totals over $50,000 in invoiced value will receive the DRAGON sensor upgrade at no charge."

Which means that all EPIC M packages receive the DRAGON for free?? When did that happen? I musta missed the memo.

Wow - RED knocks me over again.

Guess I'll be getting that DRAGON upgrade after all - back on the carousel! Let's ride!

Very cool, RED!

 

[Paul Russell]

i upgraded my last machine, a twelve core 2.4GHz dual xeon, after 18 months, and built a 24 core 3 GHz Xeon and a shed load more RAM for the same amount of cash. Threw out the Quadra 4K and put in a GT580 at 1/4 of the cost and more than double my performance in line with Moore's law. That's not standing still.

Granted, hard discs aren't getting much faster, but the bottleneck has always been there.

 

[Robert Hart]

As a bit of an ignorant who comes to there and other web places to learn, maybe someone might answer my following question which is in response to this quote extracted from a post a few pages back by Ryan De Franco.

"Yes we can do this with in post or even on set with a LUT... but if we dont, and on set the director crew and client all think Scarlet b-cam looks "a little off" compared to the Alexa, no amount of resolution or DR will make that better."

My question. - Is there any impediment which makes not using a LUT ( we call them looks in SI2K speak ) the better choice for previewing and replaying footage.

Two of us in Western Australia operating SI2Ks routinely select the look "on" for display on our monitors. If there is a mixed bag of cameras on set, we have the option with ours of using a colour chart and customising a preset look in Speedgrade On Set to match the display of other cameras if need be. My personal preference would be to do this routinely, rather than take a chance with uneducated people getting all distressed and torn over a grey desaturated RAW image. When our RAW image has been sighted during false colour exposure checks and commented on, we have toggled the look and got the "aahhh, I see" response.

The look accompanies the vision file but is not baked into the image and I understand the same applies with the RED camera family.

As there may be a technical and professional reason for not doing this, I would like to know for my own selfish benefit for the future. Yep I know. In this query, I am treating this site as an extractive resource to educate myself and appreciate muchly that the company has made it available and does not lock out us heathen operators of other equipment types.

 

[Curran Giddens]

If Red burned me by making my Epic worth the same as a Scarlet right after I bought it I would not buy any more Red cameras. I'd just rent agnostically. They won't do that. That is not their style. I sincerely doubt they see the target market for Epics as a bunch of fools with no basic business sense and money to throw out the window.

I imagine Red will give all Epic owners the opportunity to upgrade before even the first Scarlet gets upgraded. Should give at least a bit more time to amortize your investment.

Which means that all EPIC M packages receive the DRAGON for free?? When did that happen?

I am under the assumption that there is a cutoff date for this offer. But I would be so happy to hear that even Epic-M packages bought over a year ago will get the upgrade for free.

 

[Max M.]

This is the first time that I have seen this (from the red.com store):

"Any collection or group of items placed as a single order that includes 1x EPIC brain and totals over $50,000 in invoiced value will receive the DRAGON sensor upgrade at no charge."

Which means that all EPIC M packages receive the DRAGON for free?? When did that happen? I musta missed the memo.

Wow - RED knocks me over again.

Guess I'll be getting that DRAGON upgrade after all - back on the carousel! Let's ride!

Very cool, RED!

i really think this starts for orders purchased now, not previous purchases, it's like giving free os x or windows update when you buy a computer a few month prior upgrade date. But yes this is a good offer from red, that they already offer it so early!

 

[M Hsu]

Rob's post opens up an interesting discussion, what would everyone pay $6000 for right now?

Since I use primarily canon lenses on my epic, I would happily pay for better low light, full frame and higher res at higher frame rates in that order. (300fps at 3k?) If it was possible, in a dream world I could still use less rolling shutter.

In no way does this mean that I am less than thrilled with my epic or Red.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

As a bit of an ignorant who comes to there and other web places to learn, maybe someone might answer my following question which is in response to this quote extracted from a post a few pages back by Ryan De Franco.

"Yes we can do this with in post or even on set with a LUT... but if we dont, and on set the director crew and client all think Scarlet b-cam looks "a little off" compared to the Alexa, no amount of resolution or DR will make that better."

My question. - Is there any impediment which makes not using a LUT ( we call them looks in SI2K speak ) the better choice for previewing and replaying footage.

Two of us in Western Australia operating SI2Ks routinely select the look "on" for display on our monitors. If there is a mixed bag of cameras on set, we have the option with ours of using a colour chart and customising a preset look in Speedgrade On Set to match the display of other cameras if need be. My personal preference would be to do this routinely, rather than take a chance with uneducated people getting all distressed and torn over a grey desaturated RAW image. When our RAW image has been sighted during false colour exposure checks and commented on, we have toggled the look and got the "aahhh, I see" response.

The look accompanies the vision file but is not baked into the image and I understand the same applies with the RED camera family.

As there may be a technical and professional reason for not doing this, I would like to know for my own selfish benefit for the future. Yep I know. In this query, I am treating this site as an extractive resource to educate myself and appreciate muchly that the company has made it available and does not lock out us heathen operators of other equipment types.

We never do any of this. We educate clients as best we can instead. why? Set time in unbelievably expensive, and all you mention is a nutty waste of time and money if the client get it.

 

[Ben Smith]

I guess we should talk about the elephant in the room...

Hate to say it but the announcement of the Dragon was bittersweet for me as well. Higher dynamic range and better low-light performance? Yes, sign me up. 6k? Eh...

Seeing as 4k distribution has at least 5-10 years before it becomes mainstream, why are we moving on to 6k? Handling 5k files is already such a hassle. The Dragon will probably double the number of hard drives Epic owners will have to buy over the next decade and we're already buying twice as many hard drives as people shooting on Alexa. I'm going to have to buy a storage unit just to put all my hard drives in.

And all for what? Even when it does become mainstream, I have creative issues with the idea of 4k as a cinematic medium. It will be good for sports, I suppose, but it's kind of hard for the illusion of movies to work if you can see every pore and hair on the talent's face (see: the initial reaction to The Hobbit).

Creative differences aside, I don't understand this push for more "k"s. Was anyone even asking for 6k? If anything, go back to 4k to reduce the unnecessary post-workflow headaches.

There's a reason TV producers love the Alexa. The number of "k"s it has doesn't even come into the equation. Or, I should say that it does, because it has fewer, which is why it gets chosen a lot more often. That and it's superior color rendition (hint hint)...

All this being said, I understand Red is pushing the limits of the technology and some trade-offs are to be expected and, as always, I appreciate their passion for innovation. Dragon just seems like two steps forward and one step backwards.

My real worry is that it will drive away renters trying to avoid having to deal with 30 TB worth of backups...

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Back when I was young and fit and living in Scotland, I did a wee bit of ice climbing.

We had a saying: 'you can hold a long axe short, but not a short axe long'.

Hmmm

I wonder why the Scarlet was called the Scarlet? It doesn't bear any resemblance to the Scarlet concept; it's an EPIC-lite.

Nikon have D3X and D3S.

EPIC-X and EPIC-S at some point maybe?

Nikon get it; let the customer pick the right sensor for the job.

Mike

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Seeing as 4k distribution has at least 5-10 years before it becomes mainstream, why are we moving on to 6k? Handling 5k files is already such a hassle. The Dragon will probably double the number of hard drives Epic owners will have to buy over the next decade and we're already buying twice as many hard drives as people shooting on Alexa. I'm going to have to buy a storage unit just to put all my hard drives in.

And all for what? Even when it does become mainstream, I have creative issues with the idea of 4k as a cinematic medium. It will be good for sports, I suppose, but it's kind of hard for the illusion of movies to work if you can see every pore and hair on the talent's face (see: the initial reaction to The Hobbit).

5 to 10 years? I'm on location in Eastern Europe and the main cinema chain here has installed 4k projectors on 2 screens already. When I was last in the US a theater I went to there had all new 4k projectors on every screen. Sure feels like 4k is here to me. I am excited about having the OPTION to shoot 6k. It is just that... an OPTION. Shoot 4k if you are worried about storage space and don't think more in necessary.

The argument about seeing every pore of an actors face was made when HD was introduced. They use masks to soften up the skin already for TV and film. This was not an issue with HD, as many feared, and will not be with 6k. The initial reaction to The Hobbit was based on the frame rate the film is played back at and not the resolution of the cameras used to shoot it.

Do you own a RED camera?

 

[Ben Smith]

5 to 10 years? I'm on location in Eastern Europe and the main cinema chain here has installed 4k projectors on 2 screens already. When I was last in the US a theater I went to there had all new 4k projectors on every screen. Sure feels like 4k is here to me. I am excited about having the OPTION to shoot 6k. It is just that... an OPTION. Shoot 4k if you are worried about storage space and don't think more in necessary.

The argument about seeing every pore of an actors face was made when HD was introduced. They use masks to soften up the skin already for TV and film. This was not an issue with HD, as many feared, and will not be with 6k. The initial reaction to The Hobbit was based on the frame rate the film is played back at and not the resolution of the cameras used to shoot it.

Do you own a RED camera?

Uh-oh, I've stirred the hornet's nest.

I'm still pretty sure that I won't see a 4k projector at my local theater for at least 3-5 years, at least. Even if there are two somewhere in Eastern Europe.

And it's not technically "just another option" if by having a 6k sensor and shooting at windowed 4k compromises the intended focal perspective and resolution of the lenses being used and potentially dynamic range and high iso performance as well.

The sharpness of HD was and still is an issue it's just that the use of softening filtration and soft light has become more common to counter-act it.

I used The Hobbit as an example. I doubt the many criticisms of it looking too sharp and clean would be diminished by increasing the resolution to 4k.

And not that it's any of your business or relevant to the discussion but yes, I do own an Epic, if you really want to get into a "what gear do you own" pissing match.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

I guess we should talk about the elephant in the room...

Hate to say it but the announcement of the Dragon was bittersweet for me as well. Higher dynamic range and better low-light performance? Yes, sign me up. 6k? Eh...

Seeing as 4k distribution has at least 5-10 years before it becomes mainstream, why are we moving on to 6k? Handling 5k files is already such a hassle. The Dragon will probably double the number of hard drives Epic owners will have to buy over the next decade and we're already buying twice as many hard drives as people shooting on Alexa. I'm going to have to buy a storage unit just to put all my hard drives in.

And all for what? Even when it does become mainstream, I have creative issues with the idea of 4k as a cinematic medium. It will be good for sports, I suppose, but it's kind of hard for the illusion of movies to work if you can see every pore and hair on the talent's face (see: the initial reaction to The Hobbit).

Creative differences aside, I don't understand this push for more "k"s. Was anyone even asking for 6k? If anything, go back to 4k to reduce the unnecessary post-workflow headaches.

There's a reason TV producers love the Alexa. The number of "k"s it has doesn't even come into the equation. Or, I should say that it does, because it has fewer, which is why it gets chosen a lot more often. That and it's superior color rendition (hint hint)...

All this being said, I understand Red is pushing the limits of the technology and some trade-offs are to be expected and, as always, I appreciate their passion for innovation. Dragon just seems like two steps forward and one step backwards.

My real worry is that it will drive away renters trying to avoid having to deal with 30 TB worth of backups...

Someone who gets it!

Also... For the bulk of us, longevity is really just not relevant. Do I really care if music and fashion videos done now will be of the latest resolution tech in 2 years, let alone 4-5? Do my clients? No and No. Not everyone is producing features and TV.

 

[Tom Lowe]

"Most camera makers have understood that the "megapixel race" has become silly. In my personal opinion, at the current 5K, Red should too."

Question: Are you shooting and post-producing films at 4K? If so, what kind?

 

[PatrickFaith]

7 Words I'd like to see implemented
Parallel High Low ADC with Digital Summation

I think the Dragon spec's are currently serving two very different segments ... one high end photography (i.e. fashion) and high budget cinematography, but the sensor summing would allow the "inbetween" needs for things like tv/cable/satellite/dvd/blueray/cell/pads. The very cool thing of the dragon is one camera could fulfill the needs of what were traditionally - completely different market segments.

I really appreciate what RED is doing for us independents, allow us to compete with the big boys as far as quality. In the old days, independents kind of had a excuse for low quality(i.e. I shot this on 16mm and have crappy sound because I couldn't afford the film), the turn around now is, independents can do higher quality content then the traditional studio's. Thanks all to RED .

 

[Scott Crawley]

6k may not seem relevant right now as a distribution size but consider what it is good for; as Patrick says there is the stills consideration, stabilization, reframing to name a few and...

Look around area, we had it on Red One, and now it's gone with the scarlet... that's an incredibly important operating tool, that should not have been left out. Whether its "coming soon" or not possible, I think any "professional" camera MUST have this feature.

On one hand we have people bitching that 6k is not necessary and on the other we have folks complaining that the 4k camera has no look around area. Like the adage says there is no way to make everybody happy.

 

[shashbugu]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the 6k sensor. I see it more as new sensor technology for Red, as opposed to a race more resolution.
I think Red is using this new sensor program to tackle concerns and limitations surrounding its old sensor.
Reduction in the noise floor is a concern we have all voiced. Better low light sensitivity and dynamic range
; a whopping 15 stops, whats not to love..
6k will not beat out f65 8k for sure.
So I don't think Jim is worried about getting yet more resolution. He already has that in his sensor road map. I think he is more interested in color and light fidelity at this point. I too hope a 4:3 variant of the dragon sensor will be released.