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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 :)

Is DRAGON upgrade worth it??? Well.... Hell yeah!!

P

peter dalby

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I have asked my self the question many times last year... Is it worth it?... Will it make a difference for my work? I made the decision to upgrade just before the dec.1 "deadline". But I was still nervous... I already thought that my EPIC was fantastic, but I heard more and more about the Dragon. But could it all be true... I mean, I am not a tech-guy, who knows everything about algorithms, charts etc. Fantastic people like Phil Holland and others can fill us in about all that, and I, personally, appreciate guys like him, doing a lot of the hard work to show us the tech-side of things. When it comes down to it, I am visual. Does it look good under certain circumstances, If I treat it like it is supposed to, give it light, give it thought, how will the Dragon look... I received my camera yesterday. Took it home with me. Looked at it.... Looks good with the Dragon logo on it...

I blackshaded it, and thought I would start with the obvious. Since I have the LowLight OLPF , I wanted to test the standard candlelight test. My son with a candle in a pitch dark room. The lens is a Rokinon/Samyang 35mm cineprime. It was shot at f2.8. The lens is not known to be the sharpest at that f-stop. Looked fine on the 5" redmonitor. But had forgotten to bring the redmag-reader, so I had to wait till today to see the results.

So, an hour ago I imported the footage and...... Well, it is hard for me to explain... I have never seen a camera perform like this. In my opinion, this IS revolutionary. I know a lot of you already knows this, but for those you are considering, or are waiting for their camera to be Dragonized, IT IS WORTH IT!!! No matter if you shoot weddings, commercials, documentaries, nature, film etc. It is AGAIN, ALL WORTH IT! Thank you :-)

Peter Dalby
Denmark



R3D's:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c4v3opkzuvob4lq/AAC06I8aX1YoFjy1vi8sSajQa?dl=0
 

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Nice to see how pumped you are about the upgrade Peter. I remember having those same sorta feelings. Just wait until you start putting it into other situations. :)

Cheers!
Battistella
 
peter dalby said:
I have asked my self the question many times last year... Is it worth it?... Will it make a difference for my work? I made the decision to upgrade just before the dec.1 "deadline". But I was still nervous... I already thought that my EPIC was fantastic, but I heard more and more about the Dragon. But could it all be true... I mean, I am not a tech-guy, who knows everything about algorithms, charts etc. Fantastic people like Phil Holland and others can fill us in about all that, and I, personally, appreciate guys like him, doing a lot of the hard work to show us the tech-side of things. When it comes down to it, I am visual. Does it look good under certain circumstances, If I treat it like it is supposed to, give it light, give it thought, how will the Dragon look... I received my camera yesterday. Took it home with me. Looked at it.... Looks good with the Dragon logo on it...

I blackshaded it, and thought I would start with the obvious. Since I have the LowLight OLPF , I wanted to test the standard candlelight test. My son with a candle in a pitch dark room. The lens is a Rokinon/Samyang 35mm cineprime. It was shot at f2.8. The lens is not known to be the sharpest at that f-stop. Looked fine on the 5" redmonitor. But had forgotten to bring the redmag-reader, so I had to wait till today to see the results.

So, an hour ago I imported the footage and...... Well, it is hard for me to explain... I have never seen a camera perform like this. In my opinion, this IS revolutionary. I know a lot of you already knows this, but for those you are considering, or are waiting for their camera to be Dragonized, IT IS WORTH IT!!! No matter if you shoot weddings, commercials, documentaries, nature, film etc. It is AGAIN, ALL WORTH IT! Thank you :-)

Peter Dalby
Denmark



R3D's:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c4v3opkzuvob4lq/AAC06I8aX1YoFjy1vi8sSajQa?dl=0
Click to expand...


Those images look incredible. Do not feel shy or bad about your lens, at 6k 3.0 your images will be as sharp as vintage lenses.
 
low light goodness....i need the upgrade as well....just bought the new zacuto gratical though....hopefully that will be a good purchase in the meantime
 

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Ditto, the Dragon is amazing.
 
Congrats on the camera Peter, can definitely relate to what you're saying.

First experienced that jaw-dropping sense of wonder and amazement you can get from Dragon images when playing around with some of the frames other Redusers posted here.

Same deal again with some of the first Dragon footage I shot, just straight out the window -





It's crazy, in the best possible way, the image quality that RED have made available.

Totally worth it imo, if you're into that sort of thing. :thumbup1:
 
In terms of low light for cinema / tv, Soderbergh showed what Dragons capable of in The Knick. I mean in some of the scenes the light sources were ridiculously dim. Impressive stuff.
 
Great Shot! Love the detail

macroeye.jpg
 
You guys already know that I'm into Dragon, so any affirmative here is sort of a forgone conclusion.

I've got to say though, I just put Dragon through the paces and used it even in some surprising ways for two solid months of shooting on the largest budget commercial project I've ever DP'd (Super Bowl+ budget) and it was tremendous. Not to mention I was allowed to wear a couple of my other hats as well.

We even tested other systems on this gig and in several instances Dragon was the only choice for the shot. We ended up using 4 of them total with a great deal of lenses (Summilux-C, Master Primes, Ultra Primes, Compact Primes, Compact Zooms, Cine-Xenar III, Duclos Cine-Modded ZFs). Very rare to use all that on a single project. Mostly 5K-6K shooting. Just looks banging. Can't wait to show this all to you guys. It's going to be a while, but when it drops it will leave ripples.

Hell of a way to end 2014 and start 2015. If there was a better camera to use on this project we would have and Dragon was the better camera all throughout the shoot. I paid off my upgrade investment some time ago, but this job alone showed really "why" it was worth it.
 
Phil Holland said:
You guys already know that I'm into Dragon, so any affirmative here is sort of a forgone conclusion.

I've got to say though, I just put Dragon through the paces and used it even in some surprising ways for two solid months of shooting on the largest budget commercial project I've ever DP'd (Super Bowl+ budget) and it was tremendous. Not to mention I was allowed to wear a couple of my other hats as well.

We even tested other systems on this gig and in several instances Dragon was the only choice for the shot. We ended up using 4 of them total with a great deal of lenses (Summilux-C, Master Primes, Ultra Primes, Compact Primes, Compact Zooms, Cine-Xenar III, Duclos Cine-Modded ZFs). Very rare to use all that on a single project. Mostly 5K-6K shooting. Just looks banging. Can't wait to show this all to you guys. It's going to be a while, but when it drops it will leave ripples.

Hell of a way to end 2014 and start 2015. If there was a better camera to use on this project we would have and Dragon was the better camera all throughout the shoot. I paid off my upgrade investment some time ago, but this job alone showed really "why" it was worth it.
Click to expand...

where is the freakin' Like button?
 
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