Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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 :)

My Dragon Thoughts

David Kruta said:
This is what I was most curious about - the claims of a "Penalty Free" ISO adjustment. Seems like there is still a "sweet spot" (read: mandatory) ISO range to constrain yourself to as you start introducing all sorts of weird shifts at the lower end of the ISO spectrum. Looks like I wont be shooting 50 ISO in the daytime.

Thanks for these, Christopher and Phil - very informative!
Click to expand...

"Penalty Free" is an interesting term. One I was a bit thrown off by first. However, what Red's stating in the specifications is "cinema ready ISO 200-2000" performance. Obviously within a proper exposure range. The one image that sort of shows exactly what that's all about is the T22 ISO 200 sample where color information is retained in broad daylight without any distortion or clipping. The sky is the easy place to spot how that's working, however, if you look at the sidewalk and pretty much everywhere you can see what that actually means.

To me it means essentially a workable latitude and clean image at ISO 200-2000. That's pretty much what we see here.
 
Awesome stuff Phil.

THANKS!
 
Thanks guys. I know that Penalty Free statement was hard to wrap your head around.. it's much more complicated than that, as the pixels respond differently as you can see here... and we still have a bit of work to do tweaking the knobs.

Dragon color is getting closer though.. the combination of the latest sensor calibration along with the new color science. Phil.. you should swing by Friday and do a test of the new calibration on a Dragon vs the calibration you are using here... if you are happy now I think it will be worth the trip.
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
any chance to post low light test?
Click to expand...

That was all I had time to do by myself prior to my job. I also was strapped with shooting lens profiles at various aspect ratios across 4 sets of lenses that I specifically use ( from 14mm to 32mm) to chart image circle coverage at 6K. I have some very interesting results from that, but will have to wait to post that info for a later date.

I have conducted many tests in the past but simply haven't had time to process and present the results into any relatable fashion.

Which is why I called Phil up last night to put his presentation skills to task.

Best of both worlds.
 
Jarred Land said:
Thanks guys. I know that Penalty Free statement was hard to wrap your head around.. it's much more complicated than that, as the pixels respond differently as you can see here... and we still have a bit of work to do tweaking the knobs.

Dragon color is getting closer though.. the combination of the latest sensor calibration along with the new color science. Phil.. you should swing by Friday and do a test of the new calibration on a Dragon vs the calibration you are using here... if you are happy now I think it will be worth the trip.
Click to expand...

Nice Jarred! I have a Dragon coming your way around that time too!
 
Dragon keeps on giving :)

FWIW that's part of the very reason I've been reluctant to share some of this kind of info- even though Dragon makes great images there's still more, I feel it in my bones :D
 
Jarred Land said:
Phil.. you should swing by Friday and do a test of the new calibration on a Dragon vs the calibration you are using here... if you are happy now I think it will be worth the trip.
Click to expand...

I'll be there with bells on.
 
All this information is awesome! Thanks guys for taking the time to show us all this test. So happy about the magenta shift in the highlights fix with with the dragon. It was always correctable, but super happy to see that i don't have to worry about it anymore.

Phil or John, what the min compression ratio that for each frame rate for the dragon? Any change from the Epic MX or about the same? I shoot a lot of 60fps content for our television clients and try to keep the compression as low as possible for our nature shoots where leaves fall apart at higher compression with the MX.

Jarred, glad to hear that DragonColor is coming along, i was just about to ask about it.
 
jacob.schwarz said:
Phil or John, what the min compression ratio that for each frame rate for the dragon? Any change from the Epic MX or about the same? I shoot a lot of 60fps content for our television clients and try to keep the compression as low as possible for our nature shoots where leaves fall apart at higher compression with the MX.
Click to expand...

I don't know if minimum compression ratios are "bolted down", however, they are published now in the Red DSMC Ops Guide for Dragon.

One thing I will say though, Mysterium-X REDCODE is very different than Dragon REDCODE. The lower noise floor and whatever other voodoo is in there yields more detail at higher compression ratios. It would appear the folks shooting on features with Dragon at the moment are using the good old tried and true 5:1, but in my little test shoot I went all over the place and higher frequency detail held real nice. When it's time we'll do the proper REDCODE compression tests, likely with diagonal metal blades and all that to showcase what's going on.

Or John can do it now :)

Another thing I'm observing in some of the clips I've posted and more recently in Chris's shots here is it's clear to see that Dragon's OLPF is seeing more detail as well. That combined with higher pixel density is part of the equation. I think 5K for 5K Dragon's going to be a hair sharper overall straight out of the box compared to Mysterium-X if you take the lens and sensor size out of equation.
 
lookin good, guys... thanks again for presenting all this info and thank you red team for all the ongoing refinement of details
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
any chance to post low light test?
Click to expand...

Once I'm able to have the camera around me longer I'll go out and shoot some evening/night scenes. Chris looks like he shot a night shot of a building for this commercial with some ground plane in there too.


Justin O'Neill said:
Oh man, can't wait for Phil to put Dragon Color through it's paces!!
Click to expand...

Heh. I can't wait to see what Graeme's been up to actually. The finer aspects of tuning the matrix has to be some tricky business. New calibration bodes well. It's one of the tricky things with a sensor such as this. Lots of room to play, but where exactly do certain "bits" go?

The thing that allows me to at least sleep at night is that Dragon with it's current implementation of REDcolor3/REDgamma3 already looks extremely nice. You can clearly see the advantages of the sensor right there. I imagine it can only truly get better from here.
 
Cross posting from another thread- but here's my killer compression test. Bear in mind this is very much worst case and is shown 1:1 crop.


one if the most interesting things to me is how redcode stands up at higher ISO on Dragon
 
Yes, great thread.

Thanks guys.
 
John Marchant said:
Cross posting from another thread- but here's my killer compression test. Bear in mind this is very much worst case and is shown 1:1 crop.


one if the most interesting things to me is how redcode stands up at higher ISO on Dragon
Click to expand...

So just got back on my desktop and finally was abe to view this. Nice test John. It's nice to have a group effort devising different tests that we can then use in our own strategies in handling our cameras.

I'm keeping these results in the back of my head.
 
Peter Majtan said:
I would refuse to work as DP for any production where POST is dictating what camera I should use...
Click to expand...
Totally.
I got into a discussion today with an editor who claimed that material shot in Progressive format would be rejected by the local TV stations. Some people just have low intellects and less technical ability than their title would suggest.
 
Well, i don't get it..

are these tests supposed to show how good the Dragon is.. or how bad footage can be produced with an MX Camera?
We all know, Dragon is supposed to be better than MX.. But making tests to let the Dragon shine in parameters outside of anything that makes sense for an MX Sensor??

Showing how bad MX can look is a big service to all us that want or must stay on mx for some time..

I!! know how good my footage looks.. but these tests wil spark the discussions that only Dragon delivers and all our MX are worthless..
So, its not Sony, Canon and Arri against RED.. we are making our own cameras bad..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top