New to the field of RED and crippled with indecision

[Ben Scott]

In fairness, and just playing Devil's Advocate here, but if you need to make a living out of your camera, image quality is not the only deciding factor. Otherwise we'd all be shooting IMAX

 

[Kevin D'Haeze]

As a FS7 owner, and Scarlet owner, and Epic dragon (Mostly Rental..) user,

How would you compare the FS7 vs. Dragon sensor in terms of light sensitivity?

 

[Simeon T Geyer]

From my experience the FS7 has a much higher low light sensitivity. I shot some early morning shots in the middle of nowhere at around 5am and had to push the ISO to 2000 on the FS7. Taking a look at the footage on my PC at home it looks very clean. Especially after grading (I shot Cine EI) it looks really great.
With the Dragon I rarely go above 800 ISO if I can avoid it at all. With the Low Ligth Optimized OLPF I go a bit higher but normally I don't hit the 2000 ISO at all. I'd say that RED's are not made to shoot in very low light sitautions (unless created on purpose and therefore controlled). Then again I've seen dragon footage in REALLY low light situations that looks fairly clean but it's a mistery to me how they managed that...

 

[Minu Park]

How would you compare the FS7 vs. Dragon sensor in terms of light sensitivity?

You know that A7RII's super 35 sensor iso capacity is really crazy - Only one stop lower than A7SII.

Here is the iso test link between fs7 vs A7rii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRkt1b72KnE

In summary, Dragon sensor is imperial to Sony sensor's in terms of ISO capacity. - I really don't like to use Imperial, but... It's not as good as sony, but I love red's image. What an ironic.

P.S: I own both A7RII and fs7. FS7's iso capacity is simply greater until 6400 ish, than fs7 goes crazy around 12000... A7RII keep holding it nicely.

 

[Ben Scott]

If you are shooting CINE-EI on the FS7 - as far as I'm concerned the only way to use it - then you are locked to EI 2000 and you need to control exposure with elements other than ISO. That said, EI2000 is certainly not precisely ISO2000. I'd say in real terms it is 1250/1600 ISO. I shoot everything at that and use ND or lighting to get correct exposure. Can get you very nice clean images, but the FS7 is not a low light monster.

Unless you are doing news and there's a shot at night in a warzone you have to get, to all intents and purposes the A7rII and A7s II have identical 'usable' ISOs. I'd never ever go over 6400 on them for a video even if I have done plenty stills at 25,000iso on the A7s 1, but that in itself is very impressive.

 

[James Bendkowski]

My view is that although outdated my FS100 will be fine for any low-light situations I need it...If not then i'll get hold of a used A7S MK1.

However, as I shoot in more and more controlled environments I really am starting to see the benefits of the Raven!