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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 :)

Just watched first part of zacuto shootout....

Francis Kenny said:
Where I was sitting all three of the ASC cinematographers, which included Richard Crudo, ASC, Daryn Okada, ASC, and myself, Francis Kenny, ASC all thought the Epic looked the best.
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I'd heard this as well from someone who was there, that when projected, even in this test, the Epic is the winner.
 
Whatever camera F was, wow. Very organic and film-like, totally heads and shoulders above the rest. I'm putting my money on F being the Epic.
 
Am I the only one that found all the scenes lacking? Maybe it's the Vimeo 720p downsampling/compression but none of the scenes looked particularly good to me.
 
Andrew Porter said:
Whatever camera F was, wow. Very organic and film-like, totally heads and shoulders above the rest. I'm putting my money on F being the Epic.
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We can hope. That's what I picked as best, with H being up there with F.

Come on, somebody spill the beans. Just please don't tell me F stands for iFone. ;)
 
Sid Idris said:
Am I the only one that found all the scenes lacking? Maybe it's the Vimeo 720p downsampling/compression but none of the scenes looked particularly good to me.
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Who am I to criticize Bruce Logan and all the other participants? But I found the scene ABSURD. It was composed and graded for the window in the b.g. Who in the world would ever approve a look like that? The talent was underexposed, so my eyes kept on getting drawn to the window. An utterly bizarre choice. And I know everyone involved would never actually light or design a scene like that.

Maybe the oddest and most perplexing thing I've ever watched. With such undeniably gifted people involved, it almost felt like a parody. WTF??


P.S. FWIW, I liked B, D and F the most. H the least (mostly b/c the color balance looked off in the direction of magenta).
 
Yes......WTF!

It looks like a VERY poorly designed and lit TV Show set.
 
That scene was tailor made for hdrx however based on the output it doesn't look like it was used.

Peter Moretti said:
Who am I to criticize Bruce Logan and all the other participants? But I found the scene ABSURD. It was composed and graded for the window in the b.g. Who in the world would ever approve a look like that? The talent was underexposed, so my eyes kept on getting drawn to the window. An utterly bizarre choice. And I know everyone involved would never actually light or design a scene like that.

Maybe the oddest and most perplexing thing I've ever watched. With such undeniably gifted people involved, it almost felt like a parody. WTF??
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I have to agree that F looked the best. i kept looking at the Door outside, seeing which cameras had moire, which ones just crushed the highlights to crap, and in the case of the iphone, which one didn't change focus. :)

Even though I love my Epic and Scarlet, I'm going to say F is probably the Alexa.

It's weird though. At first I though B was good, looking at the color rendition of the woman by the door, but then after looking elsewhere, it looked like it couldn't handle the dynamic range.

HDRx might have been applied with a slider, rather than a highlight key to actually use the x track. I've noticed the sliders really don't do much of anything with HDRx.

I though C to be the worst looking one with regards to the house in the background, how it totally broke apart. Other forums think that is the Epic due to the hdrx ghosting when the guy walks in front of the window. I have seen that look, when a bad key is used in post.
 
i kept looking at the lady in the striped shirt, the door pattern outside, and the detail on the china divider, also the the corner on the right of the window to see if i could see the where the walls met. Some were just down right nasty. but all in all not a super terrible divide given the cost of cameras.

I thought b and f were my faves with d coming in around third. still have no idea which is which and that in itself is saying something.
 
conducting my own longer term real world test

conducting my own longer term real world test

As I work on a LOT of studio feature and television EPK and behind the scenes projects, I have been lucky enough to see many of these cameras deployed, observe the shooting conditions, and then the final result...
I have NOT been able to follow the intermediate post on most of them... which is relevant, as that shapes the final result in a huge way.

my thoughts...
A RED handled poorly yields poor results..
I worked in the art department of pilot for 187 Detroit (which had a first rate DIT.. you know who you are), where I saw the prelim grade of shots on set looking great from a pack of R1MX cameras and a few Canon 7d and Sony EX3 shots...
We had a good DoP and Gaffer who were Red experienced.

When I returned to create enhanced versions of the major sets in Detroit on a stage, I got to watch the edited pilot before it aired, in our dailies suite, I was saddened by the job post production had done with coloring and encoding.. The show had less detail, color range, and was dim.... not the same as a RAW image, but looked like a very badly posted delivery.

As a paying customer, I saw Fair Game in a theater... again.. poor detail, poor handheld work, and mostly blown highlights.. the Washington DC and interior set work could have been done with a DSLR and yielded a similar look..
The only sequences I thought looked good were the ones set in Africa..

Worked on the CDC segment of Contagion.. home run on delivery for that one.. looked as good delivered (if not better) than the DIT cart grade
not surprised.. director was an early adopter of R1 and is a very thorough film maker.. this was on a pair or MX's as far as I could tell.. pre- epic.

As theater customer.. saw District 9... liked the grading and delivery.. once again.. experienced production company (understatement..)

OTHER cameras...
Arri D21s.. worked EPK on "Killers" with EX3s as b-camera and crash cameras.. they tested and rejected 5Dmkiis because they artifacted more than the other cameras when film our was created.... talked to Russell Carpenter about this...
We had 5 Camera Heads and 3 Decks on this show.. which wasn't that big a problem as we could not always keep more than 3 of the D21s up and running.

Arri Alexa's "Game of Your Life" tv movie, with hacked GH1s or GH2s as limited use bcams... Bill Wages, ASC.. who has a long history of experimenting with unusual camera and lens and light situations very successfully.. the grade matched these quite well... again, HD broadcast was the final goal...
I was sound and lighting on EPK.. also wrangled data and transcoded the epk footage from xdcam to pro res (well, my computer did)

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds... Alexa show to Codex.. first non 35mm film from this studio... looks nice.. very experienced DoP... who hated the reboot times vs Mag Change time... post looks to have done a nice job on grading and DI on this one.. I shot much of the BTS and cast interviews on EX3

Drop Dead Divas... Sony/Panavision Genesis cameras one year.. I think f35 this year...
Looks very "TV"... I have shot BTS with both a Sony F900 and an EX3 on this one..

Single Ladies for VH1 -- they shoot Sony, a lot on the F3... I have shot interviews for them with my F3...

I have worked on numerous projects with Jim McKinney and his R1 and his Epic (some as sound, a couple of features as producer).
and a few with film cameras and with F3's
I am comfortable with most of the post results when our clients let us use good experienced resources to finish those.... and not when they hire amateurs...
I am not sure where we stand on a couple of national spots shot with his epic, that post suddenly decided to post from a pro-res transcode.... would like to see them.

So far, I keep trying to get lower budget clients, like EPK delivery companies, and fortune 1000 corporate image pieces to consider the Red for my shoots, but they have not yet agreed.. they typically do their own post, and must consider transcoding time as a complete loss of money (rendering time they can not get paid for under any circumstance).... they can barely afford to spend time on anything but straight cuts and lower thirds graphics.

I start a long term studio camera gig for a national show later this year... and we are shooting HD, sent over fiber to our post dept.. from handheld Ex3 cameras... which they are color matching before we shoot...

I have been using my F3 with Zeiss standard lenses, and occasionally Red Pro Primes.. they intercut quite well.. both on R1 and on F3..
but, even using S-log, I find the Sony is slightly greenish in native color response... output to Ki-pro in pro res and internally to xdcam codec..

sometimes I use my 7D as a b-cam...

but.. I also want to be able to shoot 4k Raw... esp for nature shooting and music video..
60Fps 2k would also be useful to my personal projects... and that's proven well on the Red..

in conclusion
Still saving my money to buy a Red product for myself... as a personal camera I can occasionally charge rent for...
probably not a Scarlet, though.. no potential rentals on that in this market from anyone I trust not to break it..
 
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Terrible test- they changed lighting during each test? They graded them all differently? The test shot is not synced either.

For what it's worth, I took the master MP4 and lined up each first frames of the test in AE and
rendered out animation 2560x1440 (3 rows of 3 columns) (jpeg compression by imgur.com):


gallery: http://imgur.com/a/cbzxY/all

full res frames:

http://i.imgur.com/atEMI.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/mwE0u.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oKdn4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EyVXC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/d4Lja.jpg
 
yea i posted that d was third for me. clearly a mistake i meant to say c and h. im pretty sure d is the iphone. lol
 
I don't know about you guys, but the compression of the online video is too much to really make a good comparison.
It's 1920x1080p, 24fps, ~3mbps. I can't make any judgement based on this. I can barely see some resolution differences, but the compression kills it for everything else.
Only those who've been to the screenings could see the footage at its best.
 
Christopher Mills said:
I worked in the art department of pilot for 187 Detroit (which had a first rate DIT.. you know who you are), where I saw the prelim grade of shots on set looking great from a pack of R1MX cameras and a few Canon 7d and Sony EX3 shots...
We had a god DoP and Gaffer who were Red experienced.

When I returned to create enhanced versions of the major sets in Detroit on a stage, I got to watch the edited pilot before it aired, in our dailies suite, I was saddened by the poor job post production had done with coloring and encoding.. The show had lost detail, color range, and was dim.... not the same as a RAW image, but a very badly posted delivery.
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The pilot of Detroit 187 was finished twice. The original pilot finish was graded by me, directly from the original files. Although Jimmy Muro (the orignal pilot DP) was not available, I'm familiar enough with his work to know where he would want it, and we went for a very rich look. The director and myself also went for a somewhat "stylized" look for the squad room scenes that was also very rich, with a lot of character. When the show was picked up to series, a different DP was hired and the visual scheme of the show re-thought. It was decided to shoot the series primarily with Panasonic Varicam 3700 cameras, and to emphasize a "faux documentary" kind of look and feel. Once the reshoots were completed, the pilot was refinished and re-graded, and the look of the 3700's was the guiding visual force. The Red footage was made to look more like the Panasonic rather than the other way around. So the look of what ultimately aired was a deliberate decision on the part of the producers, not a grading decision made by some incompetent colorist. It's not always about making a specific camera look good. It's about telling stories, and it's about continuity in that storytelling. When a decision is made to change the visual direction for a series, the pilot is usually refinished to reflect the new creative intent. Colorists don't make those decisions, and neither do cinematographers. Producers do, and the job of everyone else on the team is to properly execute those decisions. That's what Larry Field did when he re-graded the 187 pilot to reflect the intended feel of the series.

One shouldn't make accusatory comments when one doesn't know the real story. Production isn't always perfect, and post isn't always incompetent. Creative changes happen on many pilots and it often affects the ultimate look of the series. Nobody is out to ruin the look of any show, and in general, colorists working on network level television series are highly skilled, very responsive to creative decisions, and quite capable of getting the most out of any camera's footage. To occupy a seat as a colorist on those shows takes a lot of experience and talent, especially when you consider that there are probably less than 30 people who together turn out the grading work on about 95% of the shows you see on both broadcast and cable networks. That's a pretty exclusive group. I would strongly suggest that you give them the benefit of a doubt when you see something you feel has been done "poorly," because although that's not impossible, it's rarely the case.
 
The biggest issue I saw in the test was that HDRX wasn't implemented with the Epic. Most of the DP's/Cameras were exposed for the window exterior and then they brought up the interior darks in post. With HDRX that workflow could have been reversed and the camera would have shined.
 
Tom Cheater said:
You lot are truly pathetic in your sycophantic 'brand loyalty' just perpetual ignorance
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Tom, do you have a purpose on these boards? I don't appreciate you blanket dissing this entire community. And I don't like your tone.
 
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