Off the chart...

[Raphael Varandas]

Amazing news...exciting times part 2
Cheers,

 

[Dane Brehm]

You do indeed need a new Chart......

I'm testing the Serious One "Wild" Chart. Once an Epic rears its head above ground then I'll get to put the HDR to the test.

Thanks for the update I love news I can't comprehend.

What Redcode will HDR mode be in as I'm sure it has to buffer the data into somewhere in order to put the HDR into a solid image sequence.

Any way the A/D converter has a higher level of precision then the Redone?

Looking forward to next years festivities Thats when Epic arrives.

Cheers,

 

[Mark Collins]

Not sure if it's been answered or not, but how many stops of dynamic range are we looking at with HDR mode? 20? 25?

 

[Justin O'Neill]

Not sure if it's been answered or not, but how many stops of dynamic range are we looking at with HDR mode? 20? 25?

At least 18 apparently. They need a new chart to see if there is more.

 

[Paul Nordin]

Yet it can still shoot great images is I light properly...

Checked out your reel Mark. Nice that you light properly...

Tech does matter. Knowing the limits and capabilities of the tools we use is the first step -towards- being a cinematographer. There are many skills that follow that. Including lighting.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

There's no need for being aggressive, Pietro, especially as mr Han, like many cinematographers, uses digital cameras a lot. I don't know if you've started practicing at professional level (with professional simply meaning that you get paid and you're responsible for what you do), but in the last years, because too many producers\clients\money people think that everything can be done in post and that digital cameras are magic robots capable of somehow fixing everything, crews and, more importantly, budgets have been drastically cut down. I guess that's what mr Han was addressing his rant towards to.

Emiliano, it was not my intention to sound agressive...

Not towards Han of course, which I've seen works that I truly appreciate, there's no doubt he's talented like many others here, nothing that I've said is about him whatsoever.

The agressiveness was in fact sarcasm directed at one of the possible interprations of what he posted. But your comments make it clearer for me.

My point being exactly what Mark expressed much better due to his experience.

I'll avoid such unclear sarcasm later... Sorry guys.

:biggrin5:

 

[David Quinn Carder]

Shooting at 2K is good enough for most films because there aren't really any consumer 4K displays available, and certainly not for very cheap either. What Jim and the guys at Red are doing is making a camera system that is future proof, one that when we all have 28K displays one day we can shoot in 28K by simply replacing the sensor rather than the camera, and that's where Red's true potential lies.

For right now though, we don't have to shoot 4K because outside of a very select few cinema's there's nothing that can display 4K, so finishing in 4K doesn't do that much good at present. With the push to 3DTV's in the home now, it will be several years before consumers will want to upgrade to 4KTV's.

And when they do, what about the content you shot in 2011?

For me personally, it's not about commercial viability or good business decisions. I want true-to-life output, and high frame rates, high resolutions, and high dynamic range, all work towards that aim. I love RED because their products are so much closer to my ideal than any other products, and at prices I can afford. I think this is because they strive to push the boundaries, and because they "get it"—they understand that as good as it is, it could be better, and that yes, it matters.

Rock on RED. :thumbup1:

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Everyday, the value of my investment in Red products grows, not shrinks. I can't say that about any other tech company's products. HDRx is just the latest example of this. Products almost never improve when they leave the factory. With Epic, I know the camera I bought will be better after six months than it will be the day I get it.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Good posting. I agree, better tools is always better. I am just not too happy if the direction is going towards more and more fix it in post rather than shooting for a certain look and and achieving that by drawing from years and years of experience.

We will continue to need both, live and post, until we achieve animation that is actually photorealistic, even for the re-production of complex things we look at and analyze the most such as a non-stylized human human face.

Once that happens we can go ahead and capture all those great performances in a warehouse with whatever the actors need to do their part. Give them enough to realize a character, and block them properly... then leave 100% the light, camera angles, movement, lens choice, atmosphere, set design, wardrobe, make-up, etc, all for post. Change it all if you want, however many times you need and your budget will permit. Just make sure you don't disrespect the actors by turning what you told them was a rock they were standing on into something offensive...

But even with all this freedom, we will always, always hire talented people like you XiaoSu Han. Because although my beloved cousin' Vinnie knows how to press buttons, he knows that doesn't make him a gifted artist. Right now you may create from the left to right, but if you can do "it", then I bet you can teach yourself to do it backwards.

All that said, this is "just" more DR... it isn't the invention of the time machine (it is just an exponentially better time machine). :emote_happyhappy:

 

[Pepper Smith]

Footage?

Footage?

Is there footage?

 

[Casey Green]

Absolutely an historic development. Yet again, congrats guys.

Can't wait to stop over sometime soon...

 

[Joel Kaye]

less jobs in media is a fallacy. I don't think there has EVER been a time with more demand for content

I agree with this. The Internet is turning into 5 million TV channels. Every company is going to have video within a few years. There's a ton more content to be created.

The current distribution model for Indie movies is pretty dim, but that's only one small type of content.

 

[XiaoSu Han]

It's probably just more a philosophy and motivation question, I got into the business because I love to light and work out the scene on set, creating a look and supporting the story by being the closest person to director and actor.

It's just that lots of people keep pushing filmmaking more and more to just recording what gets in front of the lens without thoughts and effort (of course that's just the negative side as we all know negative points stand out much more) and somehow apply some filter or grading presets afterwards (again there are so many talented graders as well).

Also because of all the DSLRs now and everybody calling themselves a DP although they just point and shoot (no pun intended) just gives me the creeps every time. So it's probably the wrong forum to fight a fight against glorifying the camera itself, but it's somehow the biggest cinematography related forum on the net now.

Back to the topic, is there any HDR related fooage on the net regarding a moving image. I can't imagine how it looks and the only examples I can find are those crazy surreal matte-thingie shots. HDR is just a really negative stimulus word in the world of still photography for me.

Amplifying the whole thing is that if someone wants to find proper information about proper techniques on the net one has to wade through so much stuff to find something proper. Therefore I read a lot of the oldschool cinematography books about the masters and maybe that's why the film defensiveness comes through sometimes .

 

[Jon Chema]

Jim any word on when the first batch of Scarlets will ship?

 

[Michael McVicar]

Emiliano, it was not my intention to sound agressive...



I'll avoid such unclear sarcasm later... Sorry guys.

:biggrin5:

I got your sarcasm. Wished I chimed in sooner. Sometimes a wink is as good as a nod.
But back to the subject, I try not to clog up these announcement posts with superlative praise. But this one is truly amazing. Name any other recording medium with this much latitude. Beyond what most can see. They said they couldn't believe their own eyes. I don't expect some will believe it verbally. The wave compression architecture of the R3D's has got to have something to do with it. Now I'm guessing.

 

[Paul Nordin]

I got into the business because I love to light and work out the scene on set, creating a look and supporting the story by being the closest person to director and actor.

My personal feeling is that these types of fears are all academic. At the end of the day, great cinematographers will rise to the top. They will light exquisitely, frame creatively, and nobody will acuse them of relying on technology, or getting things fixed in post. We are lucky for the new possibilities to generate art with new tools. But holding a new paint brush does not a master painter make.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

I see HDR as the same thing only with, well... more range captured. Really that's all it is. Literally and creatively. Say you capture 80 stops. In the end people will still have a defined concept of what they consider a realistic look, so in a scene where you want a realistic feel, you will grab your Mag packed chock-full with those 80 stops and chisel 60+ off the block.

However, now that you've captured all XX stops, you might chose to keep some of it selectively, even for realistic scenes. You will now be able to decide you want to keep that interior as seen through that window only pull it a bit closer to your exterior, as you would have with lights. You can do the opposite for when you are inside. Just make sure to check with your, DIT if possible and in doubt, that it will push clean. There are lots of similar great uses that may not be as clear cut as a that beautifully defined white window frame.

The other big benefit IMO, is the possibility of interpreting things in new creative ways. Years ago I remember being excited to use a beam splitter, but for creative interpretation of HDR footage as a dream, or a wonderful base for hallucinations!

We all agree that HDR won't solve all problems. For that we need EPIC to become self aware (and not kill us). However, HDR will give talented artists more to pick from as they help interpret and manifest a vision. It will also make it so that you can capture certain things which you otherwise couldn't have given a specific set of production limitations, and in that sense RED just saved us a bunch of money on our car insurance.

 

[fALk Gärtner]

Realtime Motion Vectors - I mean the amount of difference is really minuscule and with the different exposures could actually help generating the motion vectors - then add a sofware moblur - but all that is extremely computational expensive and might still introduce some artifacts and I don´t think RED is implimenting anything that works just sometimes because people will just point out shortcoming with the tech and that reflects back badly. So my guess its some kind of sensor magic they are pulling off.

That said - realtime motionvectors that are then saved in the R3D file for later use - yummy!!! maybe for a epic/scarlet 2.0

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

3D Renderers like Brazil, Vray, PRMan and Arnold have effectively infinite dynamic range and people still light and compose terrible, god awful shots.

If you have two lights on a subject and one of them is 1 stop too hot relative to the other, no amount of dynamic range will allow you to fix that problem (...yet).

Just as resolution will never improve your compositions dynamic range will be most useful for salvaging shots that were exposed improperly and situations where tone mapping is the easiest solution (bright window).

Tone mapping also doesn't have to look like the above examples. Just as nobody here presses "auto levels" and "auto colors" and calls it a day, just pressing "tone map" and calling it done is ignoring the capabilities of an HDR system. Yes it requires roto sometimes. Yes it requires compositing. Yes it requires garbage mattes and carefully crafted curves--but you're all big boys and girls, that's the cost of producing a well crafted product. Sometimes you have to get your elbows dirty and manually do it. You don't have to tone map your whole image just to bring a cloud down a bit. You can pretty easily track a roto, isolate it and individually tweak the exposure on a cloud. It's a different way of thinking. Instead of thinking globally with a single spinner, you start to reconstruct your plate and think locally. You have to think spatially and then you'll be leveraging your new tools-set and not just pushing the "Make Art" button and hoping for a miracle.

The one thing that concerned me though about the initial post was this quote from Jim:

And people seem very happy with the "hand and feel" of RED footage, primarily because we don't have to sharpen our footage due to lack of resolution.

I hope this doesn't mean that RED thinks they are "good enough" on #3 ("Feel") because while you might have technically defeated film in resolution and latitude I still think that film aesthetically beats RED on "Feel" and hope that RED leverages its Dynamic Range and Resolution in order to beat film in that area as well. Being able to apply the Vision 2 response curve in REDCineX would be fantastic. RED workflow. RED resolution. Vision2 Color.

 

[Antony M]

Switchable sensors with different ISO's makes sense. I'd like to see a 50 ISO sensor for exterior day without ND filters.

Or built-in behind the lens ND filters, like many other cameras.