Noise on the low end but even worse scary megenta lines

[Elsie N]

I already received 3 emails from customers asking to send their camera in for the new calibration... You don't need to send your camera back , The Calibration Graeme is getting ready to release is not a hardware calibration, it is a downloadable firmware calibration. When the new build is ready you just download the firmware and then do a new blackshade like normal.

Just for claritys sake, you of course mean the firmware is for the new OLPF? What would it do for those who still have the old OLPF?

 

[Phil Holland]

As a sidebar, I am a big proponent of using lenses with high telecentricity to get fewer artifacts with CMOS/Bayer/OLPF imaging devices. YMMV.

Suddenly you land on the reason I'm "all about" certain lenses too.

I already received 3 emails from customers asking to send their camera in for the new calibration... You don't need to send your camera back , The Calibration Graeme is getting ready to release is not a hardware calibration, it is a downloadable firmware calibration. When the new build is ready you just download the firmware and then do a new blackshade like normal.

This is good news. Looking forward to the new update for sure.

 

[Jarred Land]

Just for claritys sake, you of course mean the firmware is for the new OLPF? What would it do for those who still have the old OLPF?

Nothing... those guys that think the old OLPF is better for them can keep it if they want. None of the new stuff Graeme is doing applies to the old OLPF. You will still get the RED in the shadows and loose the stop at top and wont have the best skintones and won't have the best IR performance / flares. But you will get a bit less noise on the bottom.

Chief,
do you think we can have it by the end of the week

Heh heh.. not sure yet we need to update RCX and the SDK for the new calibration obviously or you wont be able to see what you shoot.

We will do our best.. I hear it is pretty nice outside but we are all inside working away over here.

 

[Elsie N]

Nothing... those guys that think the old OLPF is better for them can keep it if they want. None of the new stuff Graeme is doing applies to the old OLPF. You will still get the RED in the shadows and loose the stop at top and wont have the best skintones and won't have the best IR performance / flares. But you will get a bit less noise on the bottom.

Heh, heh... during the recent period of alarmism would have probably been a good time to get an OLPF upgrade since a lot of folks probably put off getting theirs done. '-)

This should serve as a lesson to trust RED's response to complaint rather than to focus on hyping the complaint. It should serve as a lesson... but it won't .

 

[David Battistella]

Not wanting to raise expectations to high,BUT,

I'm feeling like this is going to be one of those, "better than anyone expected" kind of things.

battistella

 

[Martin Stevens]

Thanks Jared for the update.

Even though I don't have the Dragon update yet, it is great to read your posts relating to these issues.

 

[Elsie N]

Not wanting to raise expectations to high,BUT,

I'm feeling like this is going to be one of those, "better than anyone expected" kind of things.

battistella

+1.0

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Go Phil Go!

Go Phil Go!

The impact of lens telecentricity when using current digital cinema sensor tech is one of those things that most folks don't even consider (or even understand). Another related issue is whether the lens is designed to vary the focus nodal point by wavelength (color) to match the layers in film emulsion vs aligning them to work best with current digital sensors/OLPFs.

The Angie DP short zooms have good telecentricity which is one of the reasons they perform so well on REDs (or Alexas). The 16-42 is particularly impressive as wide angles are the most problematic to keep telecentric.

Cheers - #19

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Right on David. Once the "distraction" of the red/orange chroma noise in the bottom is neutralized the myriad strengths of the Dragon sensor will dominate the discussion - as they should.

Cheers - #19

 

[Jarred Land]

Not wanting to raise expectations to high,BUT,

I'm feeling like this is going to be one of those, "better than anyone expected" kind of things.

battistella

Yes it is pretty great but I dont want people to have unreal expectations... the color in the noise is substantially better... no more red sparklies and red tone. but there still is noise. And there is still the extra stop on the top over the old OLPF. We didn't do the easy thing and just add Noise Reduction. Graeme spent alot of time making the noise better.. making the color better in the noise and more neutral as you wander deeper and deeper into the gutter.

Thats one of the reasons we chose highlight protection over lower noise... Noise you can deal with if you are under-exposed. Some people like a bit of noise some people don't. Blown Highlights though... there is nothing subjective about that. Once its clipped, its clipped. No getting it back unless you hire some VFX guru to rebuild what is gone.

It might look the worst but I think it might be a good idea to also post the dynamic range charts @ 12800 ISO along with 800 ISO just to magnify the difference between the old calibration and the new calibration as well as the MX.

 

[Charles Bergquist]

Yeah, there's a lot of tech that's over my head when it comes to camera engineering, that's why I give Red my hard earned cash, they've been doing innovative stuff since the start. I definitely try and understand the basics of CMOS sensors, but my thing however is making pictures, and the magenta line is a new unwanted characteristic on Dragon to me. I never witnessed it on Epic so barring any of the other smaller gripes such as noise / etc...this is something that prominently effects the image. My wonder is if this affects anyone else at the moment or if I've got an anomaly.

It's not quite a "random" occurrence since I just fired it up and shot it towards a diffused window trying not to fully clip the window. Fully clipping it shouldn't matter though. The DP in me says you wouldn't be able to shoot towards any source in a dark environment on Dragon. Epic was fine with this cause I used to do it a lot.

I just want to know what's going on here and if I got a bad sensor or there's something up with my OLPF. Can anyone replicate this?



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/161718/A001_C001_0621X6.mov

 

[David Battistella]

I know I can sometimes harp on the benefits of REDcode, but for shits an giggles last week I pulled out a camera test shot on the r1m in 2007 I think.
Applying the new color science to that footage was shocking. I could not believe the skin tones and how pleasant the images was and that 4k REDcode could easily intercut with dragon. That is no small task.

The he whole "imagining system" with RED is impressive, from the sensor right through to the team that write RCX as well. The whole image is being considered from capture to export. There might be those who say, hey, "no big deal", but probably at least half of the footage still being captured on other systems won't have this advantage of getting better over time.

And nd dragon too, will just get better and better as the red zen gods practice imaging Kaizen! (Insert sinister laughter here)

battistella

 

[Jarred Land]

Hey Charles.. that is the "blind test" that I was telling you about earlier... it is the easiest way to show this.. trust me ( or don't ) it happened on Epic. If I was trying to hide something I wouldn't of told you exactly how to re-create it...

That said... You shouldn't see this on everything you shoot that has highlight in the frame though.. if that is the case we might want to take a look at your camera.. and the lenses you are using to shoot these with as lenses do make a difference.... specially since the sensor sizes are different on Epic and Dragon .

I don't think it has anything to do with your OLPF.. the new OLPF actually helps with the optical magenta flares... as Phil showed here:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?112230-the-New-Dragon-OLPF

 

[David Battistella]

Yes it is pretty great but I dont want people to have unreal expectations... the color in the noise is substantially better... no more red sparklies and red tone. but there still is noise. And there is still the extra stop on the top over the old OLPF. We didn't do the easy thing and just add Noise Reduction. Graeme spent alot of time making the noise better.. making the color better in the noise and more neutral as you wander deeper and deeper into the gutter.

you know what the disadvantage dragon has to film.

People would never order a couple of rolls of vision stock, power up their camera in their kitchen or living room with available light and judge that image and call it a camera test. If you were to put up a roll of film shot and processed under those circumstances it would be frightening to see the images a film stock might produce.

In this way we are a bit spoiled, when comparing to film. If you treat dragon with the same respect (and lighting)as film, you will get those filmic images you really want. A lot of the noise is from underexposure issues rather than real sensor or color science issues.

When comparing dragon to baked in, noise reduced, sharpened images from video camera recorders one has to always consider that we are getting raw, unprocessed images with extremely high resolution that now look (I really feel) better that film.

Battistella

 

[Jan Reiff]

i have not the feeling that the footage of my dragon is VERY noisy, and when i compare to my MX the image isnot more sensitive, indeed, but it looks simply better

... bit surprised about some footage here, it´s not what i see in my footage, i shot some slowmotions with high shutter last week at a barbeque and the footage looks really nice and every still is like photography pure, ...

edit: sometimes, when i see the massive noise in some footage- i think - maybe i have the old OLPF inside ...
no, camera was send in when the new OLPF was already available, ... ;-)

so, i don´t get really into it ...

 

[Charles Bergquist]

Hey Charles.. that is the "blind test" that I was telling you about earlier... it is the easiest way to show this.. trust me ( or don't ) it happened on Epic. If I was trying to hide something I wouldn't of told you exactly how to re-create it...

That said... You shouldn't see this on everything you shoot that has highlight in the frame though.. if that is the case we might want to take a look at your camera.. and the lenses you are using to shoot these with as lenses do make a difference.... specially since the sensor sizes are different on Epic and Dragon .

I don't think it has anything to do with your OLPF.. the new OLPF actually helps with the optical magenta flares... as Phil showed here:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?112230-the-New-Dragon-OLPF

Thanks Jarred, absolutely appreciate the response. I'll do some tests here on different sources / conditions and follow up with service and see if it's something specific.

I just tried a C100 into the same window and you can see a similar thing, but gain applied on green to cover up the magenta band. Interesting.

 

[Chris Purka]

Hey Charles.. that is the "blind test" that I was telling you about earlier... it is the easiest way to show this.. trust me ( or don't ) it happened on Epic. If I was trying to hide something I wouldn't of told you exactly how to re-create it...

That said... You shouldn't see this on everything you shoot that has highlight in the frame though.. if that is the case we might want to take a look at your camera.. and the lenses you are using to shoot these with as lenses do make a difference.... specially since the sensor sizes are different on Epic and Dragon .

I don't think it has anything to do with your OLPF.. the new OLPF actually helps with the optical magenta flares... as Phil showed here:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?112230-the-New-Dragon-OLPF

Why has not anyone pointed to that Phil test from the beginning? reading that first could of saved me 22 pages of unnecessary panic and his test squashes any concerns I had. I have seen too much wonderful footage with the new olpf on dragon versus the few people here posting trouble footage that i can now relax.

 

[Jarred Land]

I just tried a C100 into the same window and you can see a similar thing, but gain applied on green to cover up the magenta band. Interesting.

No sweat. Its not the Canon C100's fault or Arri's fault or Sony's fault or Reds fault.. it happens to almost all CMOS sensors and people just deal with it differently and it happens more or less depending on what you shoot.

Just one of those things like rolling shutter artifacts that are inherent to the technology. I know post houses deal with this every day... maybe I will visit one soon with Graeme and see how they correct this... might be something we can add to post-processing in RCX to help out. Along the same lines I did just see some rolling shutter post-correction last week that was better than anything i have seen before, it is great to see people working on these little things on the other side of the process.

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks Jarred, absolutely appreciate the response. I'll do some tests here on different sources / conditions and follow up with service and see if it's something specific.

I just tried a C100 into the same window and you can see a similar thing, but gain applied on green to cover up the magenta band. Interesting.

This happens on nearly every CMOS based imaging system I've tested. Here's how to make it happen.

To recreate this artifact shoot/rate at higher ISOs (you will very clearly see it at ISO 6400 for instance) with a source in frame that is "extremely hot". You will want something dark laterally next to your hot source. Vertically you won't see the streak. If you literally block light on one side of the lens that works well.

All of the CMOS motion and still cameras I have sitting here at the hut do this.

Why has not anyone pointed to that Phil test from the beginning? reading that first could of saved me 22 pages of unnecessary panic and his test squashes any concerns I had. I have seen too much wonderful footage with the new olpf on dragon versus the few people here posting trouble footage that i can now relax.

It's fairly easy to make any digital cinema camera fall apart and look undesirable. Getting a grasp on the total camera system is key to creating the best images.

Most of my efforts here on Reduser are to assist others with creating the best quality images with Red cameras because that's essentially what I'm trying to do as well.

 

[Mark Wilkinson]

Thanks for CMOS seminar Jarred, Gavin, Phil et. al. - much appreciated.