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New RED Dragon - Sony F55 Color Science

Daniel Peters

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Ok...so being a RED SCARLET owner/shooter, like most scarlet owner/shooters we've been saving up to go EPIC.

Then RED release the new Dragon sensor, besides the DR, K's, lowlight and more frame rate abilities, I have been mainly interested in the new color science it has, skin tones etc



From Gunleik Groven's footage:

https://vimeo.com/74358938


Same goes with, I know...shouldn't mentioned it haha, but Sony's F55 footage


From Reuben Steinberg's footage:
https://vimeo.com/groups/163442/videos/60927476

Then I was doing research and found out that Sony F55 owners/users get better color results from using ACES rather then the traditional REC709 MLUT with Sony SLOG2


So I thought I'll try messing with some R3D files I shot with my Red Scarlet, trying to grade them in different color space to see what results I can get similar to the Dragon/F55

Info in My Blog post below:
http://danieljohnpeters.com/2013/09/15/red-dragon-sony-f55-color-space/
 
Can't truly compare until REDDRAGONCOLOR and REDDRAGONGAMA comes out into the wild. Until then we need to play the waiting game. The amount of time their putting it in, it's gonna be worth it.
 
what we have seen of the Dragon looks outstanding, but that video of the F55, ungraded and from the measly 50 mbps proxy looks incredible too...
 
Am I missing something or Dragoncolor/Dragongamma is out already?
 
Right now Red material doesn't work correctly with ACES, unlike SONY or ARRI.

What do you mean exactly Jake ? I saw the ASC image control assessment series presentation last weekend in 4K at the Oslo digital cinema conference with all modern digital cameras that they used, and though Red does not have an ACES setting, all cameras behaved very well with the ACES workflow. Hardly any difference between them (very little tweaking only), no secondaries. F3 a bit softer (being 1920) C300 a bit purple in the reds, Sony F65 a bit more yellow, Epic having trouble with underexposed fluorescent green, but very good as well. F65 a clear winner, Alexa always good.
 
Right now Red material doesn't work correctly with ACES, unlike SONY or ARRI.

Define Correctly, I don't think its supported for Epic so would not work correctly Id guess. That does not mean the images arn't good though. We will have to await till Dragon is fully implemented to fond out more about that.
 
I will comment on the color thingy when I get back from IBC.

Thing is I wanted to release the piece as a piece, and not dig into the tech stuff first, but I see from my runthroughs with photographers here, that it is a good thing to explain exactly why I find it so stunning.

That said.

One very important thing can be mentioned "out of the box"

If you cram all the DR and fidelity of a Dragon into a h.264 container, it starts looking dull or tonemapped. Not allways, but easilly.
And as I did not want that, I did not do that.

Not so when you go to a higher DR format like DCP, and I guess RedRay (have not tried RR, but I hope I will)

That is formats intended for higher "real" contrastratios.

There are actual lumens limits to what an iPad or computer desktop screen can represent well within an 8bit container.

But I will try to explain this with some breakdown posts later this week.

In so far, I think everyone I broke it down to, kinda just got it.

As to the ACES thingy, i have no inside info, but I know RED does not recomend it, and to me the input transforms/normalisation pass kinda killed the idea I was originally very fascinated by, quite a bit.


Cheers

G
 
What do you mean exactly Jake ? I saw the ASC image control assessment series presentation last weekend in 4K at the Oslo digital cinema conference with all modern digital cameras that they used, and though Red does not have an ACES setting, all cameras behaved very well with the ACES workflow. Hardly any difference between them (very little tweaking only), no secondaries. F3 a bit softer (being 1920) C300 a bit purple in the reds, Sony F65 a bit more yellow, Epic having trouble with underexposed fluorescent green, but very good as well. F65 a clear winner, Alexa always good.

Yes, many cameras work very well with ACES. I just used ACES to grade a commercial shot on ARRI and it worked perfectly. Red doesn't participate in the ACES program and because of that the Academy had to "guess" the settings for the Red material. Regardless, Red themselves do not recommend using ACES with Red material. You can get significant color distortions, while using ACES and Red. On top of that Resolve itself has a serious bug, while working with ACES. If you tried to used HSL curves, it will clip the highlights. There is a work around, but I wish BMD would fix it. Come to think of it, I will check it if it fixed in V10 right now and will let you know:-)
Never mind, it's not even enabled yet in V10. So, there:-)
 
Yes, many cameras work very well with ACES. I just used ACES to grade a commercial shot on ARRI and it worked perfectly. Red doesn't participate in the ACES program and because of that the Academy had to "guess" the settings for the Red material. Regardless, Red themselves do not recommend using ACES with Red material. You can get significant color distortions, while using ACES and Red. On top of that Resolve itself has a serious bug, while working with ACES. If you tried to used HSL curves, it will clip the highlights. There is a work around, but I wish BMD would fix it. Come to think of it, I will check it if it fixed in V10 right now and will let you know:-)
Never mind, it's not even enabled yet in V10. So, there:-)

Thanks for your insights, Jake. Have you seen the tests yourself ? Then again ACES has not been finished itself, but it will be soon. Regardless if RED would not recommend it it, it does work, and I would not be ashamed looking at the results form these series.
 
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