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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 :)

Jeff Cronenweth: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I don't understand this paragraph, since the R1-MX and the Epic share the same sensor:

"Cronenweth lensed about 80 percent of the movie with the RED ONE and its Mysterium chip. When the workflow became refined (Red Rocket compatible) and datacards readily available, he shot the remaining 20 percent with the RED Epic. He used ARRI master primes throughout, and because of the chip sensitivity variables between the two cameras, used an 80D filter in front of the lens when shooting with the RED ONE, with the lights gelled to 4000 degrees Kelvin. “The Mysterium sensor is more blue sensitive and it gave us more to grab onto and more latitude,” he explains."
 
Julio Quintana said:
I don't understand this paragraph, since the R1-MX and the Epic share the same sensor:

"Cronenweth lensed about 80 percent of the movie with the RED ONE and its Mysterium chip. When the workflow became refined (Red Rocket compatible) and datacards readily available, he shot the remaining 20 percent with the RED Epic. He used ARRI master primes throughout, and because of the chip sensitivity variables between the two cameras, used an 80D filter in front of the lens when shooting with the RED ONE, with the lights gelled to 4000 degrees Kelvin. “The Mysterium sensor is more blue sensitive and it gave us more to grab onto and more latitude,” he explains."
Click to expand...

Epic and RED One files are different to work with - it was only recently that NLEs began supporting the 5K R3Ds directly and they still don't play nice with audio. The Rocket may have been a time save - transcoding the footage to a format their NLE could work with in a decent amount of time and conforming to R3D to post.

I don't really know - but that would be my guess as to why the necessity for Rocket with Epic and not One.
 
I guess I was referring to this part specifically:

He used ARRI master primes throughout, and because of the chip sensitivity variables between the two cameras, used an 80D filter in front of the lens when shooting with the RED ONE, with the lights gelled to 4000 degrees Kelvin. “The Mysterium sensor is more blue sensitive and it gave us more to grab onto and more latitude,” he explains.

People seem to regularly mix up the Mysterium with the Mysterium-X sensor (understandably). Is that the case here? Or is it possible that Fincher was shooting on Red One cameras with the ORIGINAL Mysterium sensor? That seems pretty unlikely to me.
 
Evin Grant said:
Well since he shot Social Network on the Mysterium-X Red One I think it's pretty safe to assume he did not go back a generation.
Click to expand...

Agreed. So why is he using an 80D filter on the RED ONE but not the Epic? Or am I misreading this? It's really not that important, I'm just curious what the article is trying to say.
 
Julio I agree this makes no sense. The Red One MX camera and the Epic have the same exact chip which is the MX (Mysterium X) sensor so why is he describing the difference as if he's talking about MX to regular old Mysterium difference.
 
My guess:

On a bayer array camera, each photo site clips at a distinct point. And frequently, one channel will clip before others in the same RGB group interpolated to get a pixel. When converting from raw, if there's no data for two of the three channels because of clipping (or something like that, not sure how it's determined), that reads as white in the interpolated image, and you have less latitude than you would if each channel clipped at the same point.

The red's native WB is about 5000K, so an 80D filter would bring that, effectively to....3800K, maybe, or about what they gelled for. So that was a trick to get a little extra highlight detail, to make neutral white surfaces clip at the same point--similar to one Fincher used with the Viper, which needs either a green or magenta filter, I think... What confuses me is that there seem to be a lot of practicals used as sources and I'm not sure where you get a 4000K light bulb; photofloods are too blue, standard bulbs too warm. Furthermore, this could gain you at most, what, less than a stop of highlight detail? The 80D's filter factor is 1.5...

As for the rest of the quote there are three possibilities:

It's a misunderstanding, as is common in articles written by journalists without extensive technical knowledge.

The Epic's sensor is somehow calibrated differently or its files are read differently? Have no idea...never even seen one.

The Epic's 16 bit ADC makes up the difference in highlight detail.
 
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Colorimetry on Epic is practically identical to M-X. There's some small beneficial differences on Epic due to better analogue circuitry, and more powerful hardware in camera. "On a bayer array camera, each photo site clips at a distinct point." - this applies to all kinds of cameras, not just ones with a colour filter array.

Graeme
 
I never said it didn't. They did something similar with the Viper, after all.

Does the Epic have more highlight detail by virtue of having a 16 bit ADC (or so someone told me; I'm not even sure if this is true), or is this quote legitimately nonsensical?
 
Matt, I do believe you can hold a bit more highlight detail on the Epic.

Graeme
 
Thanks, just curious. The trailer looks great so whatever they're doing worked.
 
Trailer looks great - and from what I've seen of the movie itself, it's looking superb.

Graeme
 
Could it be that even great DOP's fumble around with the new tech and make assumptions based on ill preformed test and misinformation just like the rest of us. I think that if he was in the middle of a feature shot frenzy then swapping camera in the middle of it might have brought on some misunderstandings. Or?
 
what about the fact that Jeff is so inspired by Sven?

i mean, to see what he did with S.N.? this is going to

be something very special. sort of like a tribute. even

though in reality, every d.p. that aims to achieve a

soft, natural look is essentially paying tribute to Sven.

RG
 
The film should be an awesome ride with wall to wall eyecandy:)
 
Julio Quintana said:
I don't understand this paragraph, since the R1-MX and the Epic share the same sensor:

"Cronenweth lensed about 80 percent of the movie with the RED ONE and its Mysterium chip. When the workflow became refined (Red Rocket compatible) and datacards readily available, he shot the remaining 20 percent with the RED Epic. He used ARRI master primes throughout, and because of the chip sensitivity variables between the two cameras, used an 80D filter in front of the lens when shooting with the RED ONE, with the lights gelled to 4000 degrees Kelvin. “The Mysterium sensor is more blue sensitive and it gave us more to grab onto and more latitude,” he explains."
Click to expand...

Fits well, I think that may be why. The MX oon the Epic and R1 behaves quite differently IMHO.

As Graeme points out, the highlights are quite diferent, so are the extreme lows. In the middle, they are quite similar, but there's more to a cam than the sensor itself.
 
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