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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 :)

Noise

estebanred said:
David Mullen stated in that thread that using the 80's filter wouldnt be much of a solution because it eats a lot of light, so optically filtering is really not an option unless you have a 1.3 lens.
Click to expand...

The 80C filter would lose you one stop and correct tungsten light to 4900˚K (very close to the Red's 5000˚K native colour temperature). Alternatively you could go part of the way with an 80D (and CC the rest of the way) which only loses half a stop which is pretty negligible in most situations.
 
The other option, of course, is to color balance your lights with CTB.
You loose some of the lights power, but I prefer loosing a stop from the lights rather than from the lens.
 
Noise is ridiculously unusable

Noise is ridiculously unusable

I have tried all sorts of lighting setups. Less fill light, more fill light, overexposing. I tried crushing the blacks way down. I tried color correcting to 5000K so as not to gain up to much on the blue channel. But I guess you just can't shoot with normal 3200k lights without filtering. The noise is just so prevalent in the shadows - I can't use this on a project with noise like I'm getting. Until I crush all the midtones into blackness there is too much noise. I recently bought a Red camera and am very disappointed so far. If I can't figure out how to control the noise I will have to sell this Red camera and go back to my trusty sony EX1. I wish I could upgrade the sensor, but I'm sure Red is too busy to get to my camera.
 
Hi Seth,

Sorry to hear about your frustration. Red is like anything, with experience you will discover the ways to get the best out of it. Just persevere and you will get the results you are after.

Thousands of us are using it every day and marvel at the results.

When I look back at my earliest Red footage, and what I know now, it's night and day.
 
Seth Zwiebel said:
I have tried all sorts of lighting setups. Less fill light, more fill light, overexposing. I tried crushing the blacks way down. I tried color correcting to 5000K so as not to gain up to much on the blue channel. But I guess you just can't shoot with normal 3200k lights without filtering. The noise is just so prevalent in the shadows - I can't use this on a project with noise like I'm getting. Until I crush all the midtones into blackness there is too much noise. I recently bought a Red camera and am very disappointed so far. If I can't figure out how to control the noise I will have to sell this Red camera and go back to my trusty sony EX1. I wish I could upgrade the sensor, but I'm sure Red is too busy to get to my camera.
Click to expand...

Seth, more details needed. A screen capture of your shot in whatever app you are using to process it would help. Also, this information:

Color Space/Gamma
ISO
Lens used (aperture shot was set to)
Shutter speed
Debayer settings


RED footage can be noisy if you are not controlling exposure properly. But, when you do expose properly, even under tungsten the results are usually great. Add in the new color science, and the results are even better. The sensor responds most favorably to daylight as the native color temperature is around 5000K, but that doesn't mean tungsten shots will automatically suffer. Filtering, such as an 80D will help but you also lose light when you use these filters, so you have to compensate. I have seen some very nice footage that was lit with tungsten only, especially in Build 20 and beyond.

It takes some getting used to the sensor's response, as well as understanding the processing part of it. The new M-X sensor and the new color science/FLUT should mean even less noise issues moving forward. One thing I always recommend when you are seeing noise is to do a full debayer to an uncompressed codec and see if the noise improves. Sometimes it can improve a lot. Doing quick debayers to compressed formats with footage that is pushing the envelope in terms of exposure can lead to noisy footage.

Hope this helps. If you haven't already, try using Redcine-X Build 90. Run the footage through that using Red Color/Gamma and use the FLUT control to adjust your shot's exposure.
 
frustrated with trying to figure out how to get rid of noise

frustrated with trying to figure out how to get rid of noise

I know I still have a long way to go with learning how to expose the Red properly. I just thought I would get a little better results.

I'm using Red with an older build. I'm on build 16. I bought the camera used, it was never taken out of the box. But I'm not upgrading it until I can get a decent image on this build, I can't justify the cost of the upgrade yet.

I had the ISO set to 320. I can't recall but I may have dropped it to 250 even. I'm using build 84 of redcine-x.

set to RedColor and RedGamma.

I used the curve to crush the blacks and some the lower mid tones to decrease the noise a bit.

Here are a couple of sample pictures I took a few days ago with the red. I exported this from redcine-x to apple pro res. Then exported a bmp from final cut.

noise_1.bmp

noise_2.bmp

noise_3.bmp


I was trying a few different levels of lighting all with the same aperture. F2.8 on a Tokina 11-16mm. I'm using a nikon mount. The backlight was about 2/3 of a stop overexposed. Key light in one shot was right on. And in another was about 2 stops under.

There is so much noise in the underexposed background. Is there a way to have the background go dark a bit and not get noise?
 
it does not cost anything to upgrade b21...

you are seeing noise when you "raise" underexposed areas...

prevent this by adding more light when shooting. for instance raise your shadow levels when shooting and bring them back down in post. that way you get the level you want and it will be noise free. this is not RED specific.

3200 K you can certainly shoot that but again... if you underexpose and "wb" you will get even more noise because of the lack of blue light.

you really have to know your acceptable noise floor - meaning how low you can before you see noise that is unacceptable to you.

the background in your images look very underexposed, so if you raise them they will certainly be noisy...
 
Upgrade to Build 20 or higher. You can always go back to earlier builds (16 moving forward). There has been some improvement in how tungsten is handled, well specifically some work was done in the blue channel. But overall, I think you really have to look at how you are lighting your scenes. Make sure there is enough information in the shadow areas if you want to use them effectively. From what we have seen so far, and what Jim and Graeme have expressed in various posts, the M-X sensor will be able to dig deeper into the shadows with less noise. Hence why going to ISO 800-1000 is working well with some of the footage we have seen so far. The noise floor has changed. So, for many, this will be a worthwhile upgrade, especiall if you shoot low light material a lot. Combine that with the new Color Science and you may have a camera that is far more noise free than you are experiencing now. Although, I think the same rules still apply - to get best results, be a master at lighting. That has applied to all cameras since cinematography began.
 
Seth Zwiebel said:
does anyone know where to get a copy of Red build 20 or higher without a password?
Click to expand...

If you are a camera owner, you have an account setup with RED and that's the only way to get access to the firmware officially. You do have an account setup with them, right?
 
I got the camera used and haven't sent it in yet for ownership transfer. Is build 20 noticeably different as far as noise goes?
 
Dynamic range?

Dynamic range?

So I guess I was over estimating Reds dynamic range. What is The Red camera's dynamic range? How underexposed would you go in dark areas before you lose detail and get noise - 3/4 stops under or more? And do you have a different number depending on whether you're using daylight or tungsten lighting. And how far overexposed will you go before you lose detail in highlights?

I understand it depends on what you do in post, but i'm curious how other DPs are exposing the red. What's you're general rule of thumb?

Also, what are some if your common settings for color correction?
 
It's not a question of how dark you can let your shadows go before you get noise -- if that were a problem, no one could ever have black shadows or black objects in their movies!

It's a matter of how much overall exposure do you give your image, and how much fill light you add, so that when you set your base correction and make the blacks truly black, your dark areas are not noisy.

In other words, you color-correct the image so that there is no noise in the shadows, by keeping them dark and the blacks black. But once you do that and find that there is more contrast than you wanted and your shadows are darker than you wanted, you know next time you need to add more fill light so that the shadow detail ends up being correct once the image is color-corrected.

Noise really comes from dark areas being lifted too much to see into the shadows, and you get rid of noise by darkening dark areas in color-correction -- but you have to compensate by adding more fill light. Now you can ask why the camera then even records dark areas that look noisy before you've color-corrected them -- it's because it's always better to capture more information in the original so you can play with it in post. If the camera basically "crushed the blacks and darkened the shadows" for you to get rid of noise, you'd have less information to work with in post, you'd be "baking in" the contrast of the final image into the original image.

You can have black and really dark areas in the image, once you understand that you are lighting so that those areas look correct after color-correction, i.e. the original might be a bit flatter in comparison. For example, in film, generally shadows that are three to four stops underexposed are falling towards black on the print, but on the original negative, there is detail there around four to five stops underexposed, if not more. But you light for the printed image because no one looks at a negative image. But you know that on the negative, there is more information than on the print. But if you want shadows to be "open" with detail on the print, generally you try to not let your fill level not be much more underexposed than three-stops under.

And I'm talking about measuring the fill with an incident meter, not spot meter readings of objects.
 
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Dynamic range?

Dynamic range?

So I guess I was over estimating Reds dynamic range. What is The Red camera's dynamic range? How underexposed would you go in dark areas before you lose detail and get noise - 3/4 stops under or more? And do you have a different number depending on whether you're using daylight or tungsten lighting. And how far overexposed will you go before you lose detail in highlights?

I understand it depends on what you do in post, but i'm curious how other DPs are exposing the red. What's you're general rule of thumb?

Also, what are some if your common settings for color correction?
 
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