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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 :)

New Dragon....crop factor & windowed sensor?

Is that also the reason that the lens coverage on scarlet dragon will be less (even though the max image area is still 5120 x 2700)?
 
robert browning said:
Is that also the reason that the lens coverage on scarlet dragon will be less (even though the max image area is still 5120 x 2700)?
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The pixels are smaller on Dragon, so new 5k will be nearer old 4k in size
 
Marcello Altieri said:
I would like to know if RED kept the crop factor & windowed sensor effect on new Dragon!
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The Dragon sensor is 6144x3160 and it gives a cropping factor (not the right term but we'll go with it) of 1.2 were MX is 1.3, meaning that al your Full Frame non Cine lenses will have this to be factored in, were a 100mm FF Still lens will give a focal view of a 120mm on Dragon and 130mm on MX.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
The Dragon sensor is 6144x3160 and it gives a cropping factor (not the right term but we'll go with it) of 1.2 were MX is 1.3, meaning that al your Full Frame non Cine lenses will have this to be factored in, were a 100mm FF Still lens will give a focal view of a 120mm on Dragon and 130mm on MX.
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Compared to photo ideas about what is 100mm not 35mm cine film- but FF photo is also a different aspect ratio.

I'd love to see a diagram comparing MX 4k/5K to Dragon 4K/5K/6K
 
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"Cropping factor" is a really odd terminology for describing the size of a sensor. Wish everyone just could use millimeters for height and width instead.
 
Marcello Altieri said:
I wish they took off the windowed sensor effect...at 2k my epic looks worse than a cheap hd camera...
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This may change a bit with the new sensor. The increase in DR and sensitivity could make cropped modes much more usable. If you consider that cropping from 5k to 2k throws out about 80% of the light hitting the sensor which should basically reduce sensitivity by over 2.5 stops, meaning your 5k camera with clean ISO800 and 13.5stops of DR at 5k when cropped becomes effectively a 2k camera with sensitivity closer to ISO160 and DR closer to 11stops, which is pretty difficult to deal with when that is far below the performance than even most modern small chip cameras and its very hard to shoot scenes lit for 5k sensitivity and DR at 2k without drastic lighting changes. With dragon, the sensitivity and DR of 2k may likely be close to what EPIC-X's was at 5k. This should make modes like 2k and 3k much more useable even if the crop factor and sharpness is still lower than 6k. Then again with a new OLPF, its also possible the sharpness of cropped modes may improve somewhat even if it increases chances of aliasing a bit (though it may not be likely since RED has proven very serious about protecting against aliasing).

I definitely think they should implement line-skipping 3k, 2.5k, and 2k modes since I'd rather risk a little aliasing than have to deal drastically different FOV's and DOF in every different resolution. I can't be carrying around multiple sets of lenses for different crop modes. Most of the time I end up using the same lenses for all the modes and it only exacerbates the issue that I'm using lenses designed for FF35 even on 2k S16 crop modes which hardly takes advantage of the smaller sensor size in that shooting S16 means I could have faster, sharper lenses designed for 16mm. The other option is RED could build their own focal length converters so people can use the same lenses to cover different resolution modes to some extent.
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
This may change a bit with the new sensor. The increase in DR and sensitivity could make cropped modes much more usable. If you consider that cropping from 5k to 2k throws out about 80% of the light hitting the sensor which should basically reduce sensitivity by over 2.5 stops, meaning your 5k camera with clean ISO800 and 13.5stops of DR at 5k when cropped becomes effectively a 2k camera with sensitivity closer to ISO160 and DR closer to 11stops, which is pretty difficult to deal with when that is far below the performance than even most modern small chip cameras and its very hard to shoot scenes lit for 5k sensitivity and DR at 2k without drastic lighting changes. With dragon, the sensitivity and DR of 2k may likely be close to what EPIC-X's was at 5k. This should make modes like 2k and 3k much more useable even if the crop factor and sharpness is still lower than 6k. Then again with a new OLPF, its also possible the sharpness of cropped modes may improve somewhat even if it increases chances of aliasing a bit (though it may not be likely since RED has proven very serious about protecting against aliasing).

I definitely think they should implement line-skipping 3k, 2.5k, and 2k modes since I'd rather risk a little aliasing than have to deal drastically different FOV's and DOF in every different resolution. I can't be carrying around multiple sets of lenses for different crop modes. Most of the time I end up using the same lenses for all the modes and it only exacerbates the issue that I'm using lenses designed for FF35 even on 2k S16 crop modes which hardly takes advantage of the smaller sensor size in that shooting S16 means I could have faster, sharper lenses designed for 16mm. The other option is RED could build their own focal length converters so people can use the same lenses to cover different resolution modes to some extent.
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Sensor cropping does not affect dynamic range, really - the only effect is you are zooming in on noise in the noise floor, the same noise that exists at any crop factor, but now more visible because you are using a smaller bit and stretching it across the whole screen. You are not "losing stops" of exposure. If exposure is correct at, say f4 needing 0.3 ND to get to f2.8 that will be exactly the same, whether at 2K 5K or 1K. You don't change ND levels when you crop in, in camera or in post.
 
Björn Benckert said:
"Cropping factor" is a really odd terminology for describing the size of a sensor. Wish everyone just could use millimeters for height and width instead.
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I don't because then you need to do a lot of math in your head. 1.4, 1.5, and % area less and more are simpler notions, and more usable interpretations of data.

We should agree on what "1" means though. I say "1" should mean cine s35.
 
I have an entirely different point of view on this, which has likely influenced my decision to be a Red shooter. First here's a link to the Data Sheets that I have and will continue to update as more information flies in for Dragon: Dragon Data Sheets and Info

Okay. Now here are my thoughts. The reason I publish "crop factors" (horrible term) is mostly so cinematographers, producers, and visual effects artists can understand and visualize the variation in field of view for different formats that Red cameras shoot.

The key word there is formats. Long ago I got my start in this industry scanning S35 motion picture film at a studio. We initially scanned at 4K, then eventually went up to a 6K film scanner. 4-Perf S35 Full Aperture film always resolved around 4K of pure resolution. Academy S35 slightly lesser than that. We found that scanning the film at 6K yielded slightly higher results due to "super sampling". Even though at 6K film grain appeared to be "globular" and larger than individual pixels.

Stay with me here. Dragon in general seems to be designed from the ground up to be a motion picture film alternative camera. For a "proper" 4K finish via debayer you want to essentially shoot at 5K and downsample to 4K. 6K essentially allows for that same super sampling effect from the film scan with the added benefit of giving you options for re-framing, cropping, or post stabilization (not to mention very high resolution still extraction). S16 never seemed to top out past 2K-2.5K resolution and you needed real good glass to get to that even.

This is pretty much why Dragon and Mysterium-X for both the Epic and Scarlet (and previously the Red One) make so much sense.

The windows that Red has designed for Dragon seem to be more film format friendly while opening up the option to shoot at higher frame rates if necessary. This is something experienced DPs were asking for over the last few years.

Here's what I recently explained to an Academy Award Winning DP on how to visualize Dragon as a whole:

- Dragon 6K is "fairly close" to 8-perf VistaVision
- Dragon 5K is "extremely close" to 3-perf S35 Full Ap
- Dragon 4K is "pretty close" to Academy S35
- Dragon 2.5K is "pretty close" to S16

So, the way I look at things is that Red has made a multi-format camera. The "windowing" is just different formats that allow higher frame rates.
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
Sensor cropping does not affect dynamic range, really - the only effect is you are zooming in on noise in the noise floor, the same noise that exists at any crop factor, but now more visible because you are using a smaller bit and stretching it across the whole screen. You are not "losing stops" of exposure. If exposure is correct at, say f4 needing 0.3 ND to get to f2.8 that will be exactly the same, whether at 2K 5K or 1K. You don't change ND levels when you crop in, in camera or in post.
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For all practical purposes, it is affecting usable dynamic range very directly, though. I understand that if you are taking into account the very bottom of the noise floor and nothing else, then there is no change in DR, but we don't shoot images with only one pixel. However, in reality, anyone who tries to shoot at ISO800 at 2k on MX will clearly see that the appearance of noise is much higher than at 5k and as a result they will not be able to expose the same way, since detail will begin being lost to noise much more quickly than at 5k. So you shoot at a much lower ISO but the white clip point stays the same, and for all practical purposes you have less usable DR for your images since the acceptable range between white clip and shadow noise is much narrower.

You should change ND levels if you want to have similar noise performance. If you shoot ISO800 with ND.6 at 5k, and keep everything the same at 2k, you'll have a hell of a time trying to get them to match since the 2k will likely be so much noisier, you'd be much better off shooting at ISO200 and removing ND to get clean images that match the noise performance of the 5k. Of course you'll also have to watch out for whites clipping 2 stops earlier.

No you don't lose f-stops of exposure, but you are losing light. if you shoot the same scene at 5k and 2k at the same f-stop, at 2k the amount of light hitting one pixel on the sensor will be the same, but total photons hitting the active sensor area will be 6x less light than on the 5k image.
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
I don't because then you need to do a lot of math in your head. 1.4, 1.5, and % area less and more are simpler notions, and more usable interpretations of data.

We should agree on what "1" means though. I say "1" should mean cine s35.
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To me a millimeter mesurement of the sensor says it all. For one thing you can hold your thumb and index finger 27. something mm apart and pretend thats your imaginary sensor of the epic. then you just hold your other index finger for example 50mm away from that imaginary sensor and viola you then see a triangle that shows the FOV of a 50mm lens on your epic.... A really good way to judge roughly how wide a lens will be is actyally just moving that second indexfinger away from the other two fingers as the mm focal length of your lens. But when talking crop factor, it's just confusing I think, I then as you say really need math to visualize how a lens will the set for a given sensor size.
 
Just my opinion, I will always use the highest resolution that fit my output ratio, like 4800*2700 for HD output on MX sensor. I really do not understand why people want to use 2K in 5K sensor(unless you do not care the quality, just want speed up the post works like n a tv show, then a BMCC2.5K will be far beyond your needs). Scale down those image in post work can give you much much better result than just shot in 2K.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I don't think the Dragon sensor is close to being Ff35/VistaVision i.e. 36mm x 24mm, that would a huge increase in size over the MX 5K sensor.
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Agreed but it should be getting pretty close in the width.

I think it's 30mm x 15.8mm which is getting close.
 
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