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Netflix - The Laundromat - Monstro camera and lenses?

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Will Vazquez

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I love look of "The Laundromat" on Netflix. Does anyone know what RED camera and lenses this was shot on? The IMDB says Red Epic, but the colors look too saturated to be Epic. The film looks beautiful, lovely colors. The lenses are gorgeous too. I've searched everywhere and there is no info on the gear used. In a recent interview in Filmmaker, Soderbergh talks about shooting his latest movie on Komodo and not knowing what do do with his 3 Monstro bodies. Was Laundromat shot on Monstro?
 
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The colours where too saturated? What does that have to do with the camera? I sincerely hope you are familiar with the concept of post production, including image processing?

That said, everyone that has an professional opinion about the look of moving images, should see this:

http://yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/index.html
 
Jens Jakob Thorsen said:
The colours where too saturated? What does that have to do with the camera? I sincerely hope you are familiar with the concept of post production, including image processing?

Yes I am very familiar with image processing. Newer bodies after Epic have better dynamic range and color fidelity and saturation. This is not an opinion, but fact. You can only push saturation so much, but if the meat isn't there, it isn't there. There is a difference in color on Season 1 "stranger things" shot on Epic Dragon and Season 2 shot on Weapon Helium. Even Tim Ives says "“The new RED Helium made the look a little less muddy, it seemed a little clearer and little more filmic.." Here is link.

https://www.definitionmagazine.com/journal/2017/11/8/stranger-returns

The sample Yedlin uses are shot with Alexa and 35mm film, no RED cameras there. I know what your saying about processing. But I'm sorry, not matter how much you try to post process footage from the RED One MX, the color is never going to look as good as Helium.

I guess the camera and lenses used on "The Laundromat" will remain a secret mystery, as no one seems to know for sure. If it was shot on Epic Dragon, I'll be impressed. Never liked the look of that camera's colors. Maybe it was the old pipeline processing.
Click to expand...
 
On a pure level, it is true the newer bodies and sensor have improved color. But I think there's more minutiae to explore here than that nuance.

The real spicy improvement has been in color, linearity, IR elimination as well as various improvements in the image pipeline both on a hardware and optical level which even helps the REDCODE RAW encoding.

Lots of advancements over the years. Some subtle, some big.

My personal take, and most here know this and most of the industry agrees with me. Dragon onward = pretty damn good color off of RED cameras. It was the first sensor RED made that got some film purists to switch even. And that was in the DSMC1 days.
 
Phil Holland said:
The real spicy improvement has been in color, linearity, IR elimination as well as various improvements in the image pipeline both on a hardware and optical level which even helps the REDCODE RAW encoding.

Lots of advancements over the years. Some subtle, some big.
Click to expand...


Thank you Phil. My main point for the OP is that "The Laudromat" is so beautiful that I would love to know what Camera and Lenses were used. I'm an Alexa owner and although a couple of years ago I favored the Alexa over the RED cameras, I'm really impressed by the images that I'm seeing lately coming for REDs. If it's the new image pipeline extracting that lovely color from the Epic Dragon, then it's awesome that one bought a camera 4 years ago and it's gotten better and better. I'm still hoping to find out the camera/lens combo for the film, as I'm interested in renting it for some tests to see if I used it for my next project. Rock on.
 
I found this higher res photo of behind the scenes in Variety. The cameras appear to be DSMC2. So high probability it was shot on Monstro. Especially because he mentioned in the Filmmaker article about loving Komodo and no knowing what to do with his 3 Monstro bodies. Wonder what the lenses were? Leica, Sigma FF?

steven-soderbergh-the-laundromat-netflix.jpg
 
Will Vazquez said:
I found this higher res photo of behind the scenes in Variety. The cameras appear to be DSMC2. So high probability it was shot on Monstro. Especially because he mentioned in the Filmmaker article about loving Komodo and no knowing what to do with his 3 Monstro bodies. Wonder what the lenses were? Leica, Sigma FF?

steven-soderbergh-the-laundromat-netflix.jpg
Click to expand...


That's what I thought... I remember him also talking about using the Monstros and figured it was on that film.
 
Maybe the lenses are Sigma. There are only so many lenses that cover Monstro 8K. If they were Cook S7 they would have yellow markings and if they were Leica they would have neon green. They could be CP2 or CP3. Damn man, if the lenses used on that show were Sigma I would be blown away, especially how cheap they are. You can get a set for peanuts.
 
Will Vazquez said:
Maybe the lenses are Sigma. There are only so many lenses that cover Monstro 8K. If they were Cook S7 they would have yellow markings and if they were Leica they would have neon green. They could be CP2 or CP3. Damn man, if the lenses used on that show were Sigma I would be blown away, especially how cheap they are. You can get a set for peanuts.
Click to expand...

In the pic his lens does have white markings like Sigmas....
 
Most likely Monstro. They had the budget, don't see why they wouldn't. Agreed, you can't trust IMDB with all the info. -- And on the topic of the Epic Dragon or even the Epic MX sensor, I've captured and seen footage that leaves some guessing if it's film or digital. You can get beautiful imagery with both sensors. Operator Error and Post can fuck up a good thing really quick. I own a Weapon Helium and have shot back to back with both cameras, after matching the looks, it's hard to tell between the two. Trust me, I know there's advancements with Helium and the color pipeline. They're all great cameras.
 
In Yedlin’s resolution demo (not that display prep demo) he compares a bunch of different cameras - Alexa, Alexa 65, Sony F65 (or F55), Weapon 6k, etc - to 35mm and 65mm film, and the differences are negligible/indistinguishable after his emulation. The Alexa 65 was the sharpest/cleanest, but only when you zoom-in 1:1 at full resolution and compare back to back with the others... with the exception of 35mm & 65mm (which were way noisier/grainier and much softer regardless of scan resolution.)

I’m with Phil in that Dragon and newer are what I consider “contemporary” RED sensors. They’re all in the same ballpark in terms of colour and DR, but their sensor size/max resolution/cleanliness all differ (Monstro having the best of those variables, but also being twice the cost of the others.)

More on topic, Laundromat was clearly DSMC2, but that means it could be anything from Dragon to Monstro (likely depends on when production was... Weapon 6k was out for a ~year+ before Helium/Gemini/Monstro). Also I think it’s just a smarter move using lenses with FF35/VV coverage since then you can use full Dragon 6k/Gemini 5k/Helium 8k/Majority of Monstro sensor, so even the lenses aren’t a bulletproof indication.
 
The DSMC1 Epic Dragon definitely looks better with the newer IPP2 colour processing in post.
Hadn't used it for some time until a no-budget music video I shot a few months ago. I was pleasantly surprised when grading it in resolve using the IPP2 pipeline from the RAW. Without using any secondaries, it got me 90% there, even with loads of out of gamut coloured gels lighting. I even pushed it beyond iso800 in places (LL OLPF).

But yes no doubt helium &, even more so, gemini colours are even better too. Though the prices that used epic dragons (and used Alexa Classics!) are going for now, it's a great time for young budding DoP's to get plenty of bang for their bucks, both in terms of colour fidelity and great-looking footage overall.

It feels like just the right time for RED to be bringing out the lightweight Komodo for $5-6K. Especially when there's so many good options out there on the used market (with a lot less financial depreciation to worry about too ; )).
The tiny lightweight form factor, 12G SDI, rad lens mount that seems to be just about adaptable to anything (personally I would love to see someone have a go at a B4 mount : )) plus the EXT port is going to be massive. Hydrogen discount is fab too.

Craig Lees
UK
 
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