M8 (aka 008)...

[Steve Gibby]

Thank you kindly Phil...

That sequence was shot around 3:30p. You'll notice the deep shadows on parts of the cliff faces, especially on the right, mid way up the frame. Though the shy was clear and blue to the north, behind me (to the south) there was a nice layer of very thin overcast, which cast darker light on the cliff faces, even though the shy ahead was clear and blue.

IMO Epic is a scenic cinematographer's dream camera. But then again, I found out the next day it is also a sports cinematographers dream camera when I shot 5k overcranked skiing, snowboarding, and snowmobiles. I'm guessing that whoever shoots this camera in whatever style and genre of production will be quickly thinking the camera is excellent for their work.

To me, the camera is like a chameleon - it morphs into what you want to do with it - just add the right lens, filter, VF or EVF, and set it up for what you need - and go get the images.

I'd like to demystify Epic for everyone right now - it isn't inherently any more complicated to use than Red One is. Being smaller, having higher frame rate capability, and lots of other capabilities, It can naturally do more things than Red One. The first time out with the camera is somewhat intimidating - but a short time into that session and you realize it won't bite you, realize the menus are quite similar to Red One, and then you just relax and dream up shots and setups - and that's the point where the fun really begins!

 

[Steve Gibby]

In checking further, the ND I used in that canyon still frame taken from a motion sequence was a .6, not a .9

 

[Mike Van Laanen]

Steve, Could I ask which filters you use on your Canons? I've heard the thin, stackable ones are the best - verses the IR/ND combination filters. Is this true?

 

[Steve Gibby]

I use multi-coated, screw-on filters from B&W, but I also have had surprisingly good results from Hoya multi-coated, screw-on filters. I don't stack filters, and I don't use IR/ND combination filters. In fact, all I've ever used with Red One are ND and polarizer filters - and my results have been excellent - no IR problems in the environments and natural lighting conditions I regularly shoot in.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I use multi-coated, screw-on filters from B&W, but I also have had surprisingly good results from Hoya multi-coated, screw-on filters. I don't stack filters, and I don't use IR/ND combination filters. In fact, all I've ever used with Red One are ND and polarizer filters - and my results have been excellent - no IR problems in the environments and natural lighting conditions I regularly shoot in.

Hoya makes some very good filters as I have found out. Apparently their glass is also in other brands of filters such as Nikon. So, no surprise they worked well for you. Personally, I have a lot of B+W screw-in filters I use with my Nikons and R1. I have used the Tiffen IRND filters and the trick with those is to have a white or grey reference chart so you can balance out the tint. I only use these combos on M-X when going to ND 1.5 or above. M-X is actually pretty good with anything lower than 1.2. Of course, shooting environment can affect those numbers but as a general rule that is what I have found.

Nice shots and grades guys!

 

[Ketch Rossi]

RED EPIC M8 First Test Footage is Now LIVE!!

Wanted to Thank all involved, beginning with Steve and Pamala Gibby for their Hospitality, and for bringing
us to the Beautiful sites of Zion National Park, and Eagle Point Ski resort, Utah in a fantastic Experince that was
this first Test Shoot of RED EPIC M8!! And off course a big thanks also goes to the boys,
Michael Thornton, Joseph Hutson, Aaron Peak at Hollywood DI.

NOW LETS ENJOY IT!!


RED EPIC M8 First Test Footage

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Another RED WOW moment ... M8 hits a home run!

Another RED WOW moment ... M8 hits a home run!

Today we had the pleasure of grading our first EPIC footage .... and again, I had one of those amazing RED WOW moments .... the footage that Steve and Ketch shot of the Zion park canyon is utterly amazing .... it is so detailed and immersive it looks like it's been shot in 3D .... I stood in front of our DI screen and literally shook my head in wonder ... it truly is something special.

Great job, Steve and Ketch and many thanks to Michael Thorton for allowing us to be a part of this history making time .... we were the first to grade RED footage back in the summer of 2006 and I was stunned then ... we then graded RED M-X footage when it first came out and showed it to the ASC and we were all impressed with the improvements .... but this EPIC footage is a quantum leap in terms of image quality and color science ... Jim and Graeme have really pushed the envelop forward in terms of digital acquisition and RAW image capture.

If you're impressed with the Zion park canyon scene when you see the HD video on your computer monitor, you will be truly amazed when you see it projected in a calibrated theater environment.

Great work guys ... looking forward to more EPIC moments!

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Today we had the pleasure of grading our first EPIC footage .... and again, I had one of those amazing RED WOW moments .... the footage that Steve and Ketch shot of the Zion park canyon is utterly amazing .... it is so detailed and immersive it looks like it's been shot in 3D .... I stood in front of our DI screen and literally shook my head in wonder ... it truly is something special.

Great job, Steve and Ketch and many thanks to Michael Thorton for allowing us to be a part of this history making time .... we were the first to grade RED footage back in the summer of 2006 and I was stunned then ... we then graded RED M-X footage when it first came out and showed it to the ASC and we were all impressed with the improvements .... but this EPIC footage is a quantum leap in terms of image quality and color science ... Jim and Graeme have really pushed the envelop forward in terms of digital acquisition and RAW image capture.

If you're impressed with the Zion park canyon scene when you see the HD video on your computer monitor, you will be truly amazed when you see it projected in a calibrated theater environment.

Great work guys ... looking forward to more EPIC moments!

Cheers,
Neil

Thanks for the very kind words Neil

Thanks also to the guys at Hollywood DI that staid up and work thru Lunch
today to get this done, as we wanted not to miss out on posting this Today

 

[Steve Gibby]

Today we had the pleasure of grading our first EPIC footage .... and again, I had one of those amazing RED WOW moments .... the footage that Steve and Ketch shot of the Zion park canyon is utterly amazing .... it is so detailed and immersive it looks like it's been shot in 3D .... I stood in front of our DI screen and literally shook my head in wonder ... it truly is something special.

Great job, Steve and Ketch and many thanks to Michael Thorton for allowing us to be a part of this history making time .... we were the first to grade RED footage back in the summer of 2006 and I was stunned then ... we then graded RED M-X footage when it first came out and showed it to the ASC and we were all impressed with the improvements .... but this EPIC footage is a quantum leap in terms of image quality and color science ... Jim and Graeme have really pushed the envelop forward in terms of digital acquisition and RAW image capture.

If you're impressed with the Zion park canyon scene when you see the HD video on your computer monitor, you will be truly amazed when you see it projected in a calibrated theater environment.

Great work guys ... looking forward to more EPIC moments!

Cheers,
Neil

Thank you for the very kind words...and thank you for the excellent color work you and Aaron did on this piece...very much appreciated

Naturally thanks to Michael for his hard work in getting tis done.

Obviously Epic is really a pleasure to shoot with. Even now I feel like we've just scratched the surface of what the camera is capable of. In the weeks ahead I can't wait to push it even further than we did in Utah...

Thanks again for the excellent work done at Hollywood DI :thumbup1:

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Our site Crashed two times, so unfortunately Vimeo will have to do it for now, working on Re-Building an entire new
Site for High Traffic with our own super sized Server

After which all current and future Vids will be directly loaded and hosted on site at full 1080p

We just were not prepared to have our videos in over 100 Countries and spread across over 50 web sites, but we have
learned the Big lesson, and fixing it for things to come, so that you can enjoy EPIC in its Glory, well, at list 1080p Glory

 

[Steve Gibby]

Wow that was beautiful and inspiring. Can't wait to see features shot on this. Congrats to the whole team for involving us with this experience

Thank you very much...glad you liked it

 

[Steve Gibby]

Nice, nice. But honestly because of the nasty Vimeo compression, you could've told me this was shot with an ALEXA, Red One, F35, S35, Anamorphic, hell even a well used 5D MK II and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Is a large juicy 1080p file in the likes of Dino's quick night footage on the way?

I know what you're saying...but I also watched it in HD mode on Vimeo and my opinion of what it looks like on there is higher than yours. For today Vimeo will have to do. Sometime soon we'll post a full-pop 1080p version for download. Until then, re-read the comments on this page of Neil Smith of Hollywood DI which did the color work - the comments about how it looked in their 4k monitors. His comments should help you to understand that the full-pop 4k version (and clean 1080p version) of it does stand out as being quite stunning. You'll get to see this kind of footage from Epic in 4k at NAB.

 

[Steve Gibby]

Ketch and Steve, my congratulations to you for your new baby. Thanks so so much for taking the time to do all these work for us dorks here at Reduser. I'm so excited to get my Epic as soon as Stage 4 starts shipping in 2028 (at least that's what it feels like).

My first question for either of you would be... Why 29.97?

Also, Steve, it blows my mind that you can hold focus on a skier coming towards you at high speeds. Bravo, sir.

Thanks Jonathan...

Among other types of shots, I've shot a lot of slow motion throughout my career - for sports, wildlife, etc. The largest portion of what I shoot ends up on television, thus my leaning towards 29.97 to smooth out motion. My images with Red One have been very filmic, even though most of my images were shot with a project frame rate of 29.97. I'm not a fan of too much judder. When I shoot slow motion overcrank footage, whether I'm shooting from a helicopter, or tracking some fast moving objects via tripod, I prefer a project frame rate of 29.97, then overcrank it up to the frame rate I'm after. In this case, for 5k/2:1 aspect ratio, the current build max fps is 96, thus that was my overcranked frame rate. The shutter speed is the third element. For that project rate/overcrank combo I selected 1/144th second. You'll notice how smooth the slow motion is in all those shots - except naturally the undercranked tunnel shot. That's a product of a good combination of project frame rate/overcrank frame rate/shutter speed.

Racking focus on fast moving people, objects, and wildlife is something I've done throughout most of my career. The genres I work in are action sports, adventure travel, wildlife, music, tourism, nature, and various documentaries. A lot of that work has involved locking onto and tracking fast moving things. But with a manual camera like Red One, and when shooting manual with Epic like I did, simultaneously panning, tilting, zooming in, zooming out, and racking focus all at once takes some practice. The cool thing about my stock Canon FD 150-600 zoom I used to shoot the snow sports is that that stock lens has an all-in-one sliding lever on the lower left side of the lens case - push the lever to zoom in, pull the lever to zoom out, and twist the same lever to rack focus.

I've been eye focusing Red One in 4k by racking lens barrels since I received my first Red One camera (August 2007), so I've had a lot of practice focusing that way. You have to anticipate the subject's movement, rather than react to it - otherwise you get behind the action.

Its a fun way to work - and way different from cine style production. It is really hybrid EFP style production. I'm not alone in that shooting style though - in fact there are tons of people who shoot EFP style with Red One, and will also with Epic.

Horses for courses...

 

[Steve Gibby]

Wow, this is truly fantastic footage... and thats after web compression.

Steve, now I know why you and Pam moved to Southern Utah!. God's Country indeed!

I spent a summer in Hurricane, UT and explored both Zion and Kolob canyon. If you haven't been to the latter yet, just wait! It will take Epic to another planet!

Kudos Ketch and Gibby and Nice work on the edit young Joseph! It is hard to believe we al have the same chip in the R1-MX. The 60% resolution gain of 5K is truly a game changer

and this is all Alpha Beta stuff, wow, wow, wow is all I can say. CANT WAIT to take that camera to the PAC NW coast at night during a storm.

Thanks Tim! We had some unreal fun as a crew out there in those beautiful locations! Yes, you knew it would take a special location to get me to move form my last home on the California Central Coast just below Big Sur. We just decided that rather than live there and vacation here in Southern Utah, we'd buy a ranch up here and do it just the opposite. We love it up here - and Vegas is only a few hours away to fly out for work, and L.A. is just about 7 hours drive - a cakewalk when I need to.

Funny you'd mention Kolob Canyons. I've shot there many times with Red One, and that slow right to left pan in this new montage was shot in Kolob Canyons. Most people don't now it, but Kolob Canyons was annexed into being part of Zion National Park back in 1992. Unbelievably beautiful part of the country...

Yes,, we had an great crew of guys last week, and now in L.A. for the color work. Everyone donated their time out of pure passion to be involved.

Yes, this is alpha beta stuff - and I can't sleep at night because my brain is spinning with a myriad of other locations and situations I want to out Epic into. Its really a new world in many ways...

With Epic's dynamic range, especially with HDRx, the shots you mentioned on the Oregon coast will be stunning. BTW - I didn't use HDRx in that undecranked Zion tunnel shot sequence. That was shot without HDRx - and with no artificial light except naturally just my own headlights on my Xterra.

 

[Steve Gibby]

Did you use HDRx™™™ with the skiing footage? I don't know how it look before gradeing and that the clip is a webb clip. But it looked very dark in the shadows. I would have liked a flatter look. But I guess vimeo eat up alot of details in shadows and highlights. The first two shots rocks! Looking forward to the 1080p download able version! By the way I loved the unboxing clips!

Can you move this to the thread under reddiscussion instead? I posted it here by accident.

Thanks Joel...

The sky was overcast for those snow shots. I knew the edge between the top of the snow-covered ridge, and the darker forest behind would be a good test for the camera. I wanted to see the results without going to HDRx™. I routinely do a lot tighter sports action framings than those presented, but in this case I wanted those side-by light and dark areas - a real tight framing on the skiers would have only left light snow as a background. Yes, the Vimeo compression does naturally eat up a fair amount of detail in the shadows and highlights. The raw and graded footage, before compression for the Web, show tons of more detail - as you can see in the still frame grab of the snowmobile guy we posted earlier in this thread.

my intention with these shots was to push the camera into challenging light/dark/detail areas in cold temperature situations. IMO the camera performed extremely well.

For the red rock canyon shots - car top driving, panning, and speed ramped - I was looking to see what the camera could do with scenes with intricate detail, with a wide range of light/shadow areas in the frame. Again, the camera performed extremely well.

The tunnel driving sequence was a pure experiment - and it worked! We were about to drive through a long tunnel which goes directly through a mountain. One of the crew in the car jokingly said "Hey, maybe we should leave Epic on and drive through the tunnel!". I got out, re-set the ISO to 1600, set Varispeed to 12 fps, and I then drove through the tunnel with the camera recording - using just my Xterra headlights to light our way ahead - and it worked! It not only worked - but I didn't use HDRx™ for that shot either.

The range of shots I did last week with Epic M8 was calculated to put the camera to demanding composition, lighting, temperature, and altitude conditions - we achieved that - and the camera performed extremely well on all counts.

If you click into my Artbeats Red footage library link in my signature below, you'll find a much more broad range of types of shots I regularly have done with Red One - and I've done many more types of shots than are even represented there. Looking forward, now that these initial first field tests with Epic M8 are done, I'll be consistently pushing the camera out into more genres, scenarios, and situations. Fun times ahead...

 

[Steve Gibby]

Thank you Joel. Yes, in full-pop 4k, or even 1080p on a good monitor, those Zion shot sequences look amazingly immersive and organic. It really sucks you into the frame. Neil Smith of our color team described that quite well in his post #52 on this thread.

As a crew we were really happy to take the time to donate our time to these first field tests of Epic M8. We all naturally lost money because we took several days away from our normal work to do this - days in which me and Ketch could have been putting M8 to high-paying work. Its disappointing to take a little flak here and there by people with unreal expectations for what we were trying to do out here with this first field shoot - but posts like yours really remind us of why we donated our time to this.

Thanks...

 

[Richard_Lentz]

I wanted to also thank Steve, Pam, Ketch, Joseph, Et. all for all their work. They gave us many of the things we've been longing for a long time!
Unboxing pictures/video, Comparisons to the Red One, Color corrected footage, their time, expertise; they answered many of our questions....

I hope your partnership not only works well but also brings you both to the next level in your work, you now have the camera for it! :grouphug:

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Thanks guys for the very kind words

You make al the cold I suffer up in the Utah Mountains worth it

We had a blast, and there is Ton more were this came form, we will not stop here, we in fact just Begin our EPIC Adventures, and
Steve and I will bring you footage form all over the place, and from Steve's EFP style to my Cine Style we will bring you some
crazy cool stuff, and oh... off course the BTS wil never stop either, Joseph has moved in with me, and will be shooting many
of the BTS videos

 

[Steve Gibby]

I just wanted to take a second, and Thank the M8 crew; Steve Gibby, Ketch Rossi, Michael Thornton, and Joseph Hutson. And also to Thank Dean (Dino) Georgopoulos with his M87. You have put your work, experience, and money to make a series of TEST outside of RED’s control, it’s like an independent reaffirmation of everything Jim and Jarred have been saying, it’s always good, reaffirmation that is.

I, like many other people have been watching your TEST results from afar, keeping quiet, and just paying attention, “Thank Again”!

Humberto Rivera

Thank you Humberto! Our crew was in the unique position of getting to field test an early Epic, so we all worked without pay for those days based just upon our passion for the camera, a desire to shoot and edit the footage, then share it with our friends here. Posts like yours make it all seem worthwhile...

We're way happy to get this chance to test out Epic M8, and thus happy to contribute our impressions and images of the process to our friends here on Red User.

 

[Steve Gibby]

Those leafless trees in the foreground with Zion behind--jaw-drop, 3D-like!!

As a nature videographer I can't wait...even if my budget can't exceed the Epic-S.

Many thanks for sharing your adventure.

Thank you Arthur..

As one nature shooter to another - believe me, Epic will blow your mind as a tool for many genres of production, including nature production. Being smal and portable, with a wide selection of frame rates, shutter speeds, ISO settings, and lens types you can use, IMO Epic is ideally suited for nature and wildlife production - and tons of other EFP genres too.

Fun times ahead my friend...