Phil Holland Weapon Test

[Björn Benckert]

Thanx , downloading.


edit: yes broken link, not downloading just yet I guess.

 

[Phil Holland]

There was a glitch in the matrix, changed the link address slightly. Proceed.

 

[Ryan Hamblin]

I've been playing with the files for a half hour or so and I gotta say I can not tell a difference between the 2 files as far as grading goes. That being said these are exposed perfectly... so there really isn't much to dig for. I guess the biggest thing to take away from that is if you shoot right in camera RAW is a bit less important.

Phil any insight on this?

 

[Phil Holland]

Whelp, here's the other thing that I can officially classify as useful information. Specifically in regards to comparing RED Epic Dragon to RED Weapon.

I spent the first half of my day at Camtec with Christopher Probst going over our Weapon notes and shooting a few tests. We had 3 Weapons and 2 Epic Dragons on hand.

My focus today was on a specific stress test. CMOS Smearing. Like I said earlier RED Weapon has an improved optical path and some other voodoo that has changed things for the better on this front in a few ways. Here's a sample image:

[URL="http://www.artbyphil.com/phfx/cinematography/2015_REDWeaponCameraTest/bigs/phfx_REDWeaponTest2015_CMOSSMEARCompare.jpg"]
[/URL]
A few things to take note of here:
- This is a stress test and I'm doing my best to make an ugly image, the key light in frame is +6 Stops over exposed.
- This example is of the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF, which does indeed exhibit CMOS Smear easier than the other OLPFs due to it's profile/calibration.
- To show the "extremes" this is ISO 4000, DRAGONcolor2/REDgamma4.
- CMOS Smear is indeed significantly improved on RED Weapon compared to RED Epic Dragon.
- IR Blocking and/or Cutting has also been improved.

I'm seeing less IR contamination in the crushed shadow, which is also lending it's hand to create a slightly cleaner image. Something that is harder to describe is that I was seeing more colorful and solid lens flares on this deep end of the exposure. If you look at the Weapon image you can see more of the greenish flare not getting washed out by IR. And on a more subtle note a bit more contrast seems to be held in the image with more color purity in the highlight clip and roll-off. Which made me want to compare the top end Highlight Roll-Off at the clipping point.

I was seeing something "different feeling" on the Weapon images. Like a smidge more Dynamic Range was in there. So let's inspect the linear light at T8 from both cameras:




There appears to be some tweaking done somewhere. Could be within the camera's signal processing, internal color science, sensor tweaking. Hell, it could be anywhere. But that is indeed more retained highlight information there in the Weapon image. Which, right when I thought I was done with testing, makes me want to test total captured DR again. That takes a long time to do effectively, but if that's the case, it's got me curious enough to inspect it closer. I measured 19 visible stops in the "total range" previously, which nets about 16/17 usable stops. Somebody or somebodies at RED has been tweaking something. The noise floor is visibly lower and now there's more highlight detail right at clip. This is news to me. If I had to guess we might be looking at somewhere between 17-20 stops of "total captured" Dynamic Range because I know exactly what's in Epic Dragon and that's at least a couple stops in the highlights. Thinking of the positive effects of this I imagine this is going to be rad for HDR display shoots and certainly will add a bit more meat to the highlight roll-off. It's the top end of things, so hard to fully define, but it's there.

 

[Joel Voelker]

Ryan - Spoken like an Alexa convert

 

[Joel Voelker]

Phil - these are great tests! Gonna make the wait for the upgrade feel really long...

 

[Phil Holland]

I've been playing with the files for a half hour or so and I gotta say I can not tell a difference between the 2 files as far as grading goes. That being said these are exposed perfectly... so there really isn't much to dig for. I guess the biggest thing to take away from that is if you shoot right in camera RAW is a bit less important.

Phil any insight on this?

A fun thing to do Ryan is outside of say a +/- 1-5 EV adjustment, try pushing up/down ISO/FLUT within the REDCODE RAW data and emulating that in the ProRes. The REDCODE RAW metadata has more information in it and is specifically tuned towards the color science.

That's one thing you'll notice. I agree if you shoot well, it's less of a panic party. I very rarely get paid to shoot poorly

 

[Ryan Hamblin]

Well said.

Thanks so much for these tests

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Well this spot light test is telling us a lot of stories...

Higher DR, lower noise level, better CMO smear handling,

Thx

Pat

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Cool. Thanks Phil and team.

 

[Christopher Probst]

Lots of good info gleaned today at Camtec! Thanks Phil for posting so quickly. It only further confirms what Weapon owners already are enjoying... It's like their familiar Dragon, just everything is better. Better form factor, better module options, better calibrations/auto cal options, better cooling and fan usage, quieter camera, lighter, less compression, better PL mount, better OLPF latching mechanism, better placement of the color layers/quartz on the OLPF, better CMOS smear characteristics, better noise performance, more dynamic range... And the list goes on and grows as Weapon is further rolled out, optimized and more accessories ship.

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Well, I know I really want a weapon now

 

[Charles Bergquist]

My focus today was on a specific stress test. CMOS Smearing. Like I said earlier RED Weapon has an improved optical path and some other voodoo that has changed things for the better on this front in a few ways. Here's a sample image:

Have you tried with a square window or a horizontal source such as a kino? That's where the CMOS smear really kicks into high gear on the Epic Dragon over the Epic MX. Only thing that's really holding me back on Weapon Dragon is the unknown with that.

Otherwise, excellent tests and information for everyone Phil, thanks again for all the work you put in to get every Red cameras capabilities out there for us to see.

 

[Jeff McCoy]

Phil, great to meet you and thanks for posting your test so quickly. Interesting to see the results. Just curious, were either of these images processed with ADD?
Thanks to you and Chris for letting me hang around (and Camtec too).

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Whelp, here's the other thing that I can officially classify as useful information. Specifically in regards to comparing RED Epic Dragon to RED Weapon.

I spent the first half of my day at Camtec with Christopher Probst going over our Weapon notes and shooting a few tests. We had 3 Weapons and 2 Epic Dragons on hand.

My focus today was on a specific stress test. CMOS Smearing. Like I said earlier RED Weapon has an improved optical path and some other voodoo that has changed things for the better on this front in a few ways. Here's a sample image:

[URL="http://www.artbyphil.com/phfx/cinematography/2015_REDWeaponCameraTest/bigs/phfx_REDWeaponTest2015_CMOSSMEARCompare.jpg"]
[/URL]
A few things to take note of here:
- This is a stress test and I'm doing my best to make an ugly image, the key light in frame is +6 Stops over exposed.
- This example is of the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF, which does indeed exhibit CMOS Smear easier than the other OLPFs due to it's profile/calibration.
- To show the "extremes" this is ISO 4000, DRAGONcolor2/REDgamma4.
- CMOS Smear is indeed significantly improved on RED Weapon compared to RED Epic Dragon.
- IR Blocking and/or Cutting has also been improved.

I'm seeing less IR contamination in the crushed shadow, which is also lending it's hand to create a slightly cleaner image. Something that is harder to describe is that I was seeing more colorful and solid lens flares on this deep end of the exposure. If you look at the Weapon image you can see more of the greenish flare not getting washed out by IR. And on a more subtle note a bit more contrast seems to be held in the image with more color purity in the highlight clip and roll-off. Which made me want to compare the top end Highlight Roll-Off at the clipping point.

I was seeing something "different feeling" on the Weapon images. Like a smidge more Dynamic Range was in there. So let's inspect the linear light at T8 from both cameras:




There appears to be some tweaking done somewhere. Could be within the camera's signal processing, internal color science, sensor tweaking. Hell, it could be anywhere. But that is indeed more retained highlight information there in the Weapon image. Which, right when I thought I was done with testing, makes me want to test total captured DR again. That takes a long time to do effectively, but if that's the case, it's got me curious enough to inspect it closer. I measured 19 visible stops in the "total range" previously, which nets about 16/17 usable stops. Somebody or somebodies at RED has been tweaking something. The noise floor is visibly lower and now there's more highlight detail right at clip. This is news to me. If I had to guess we might be looking at somewhere between 17-20 stops of "total captured" Dynamic Range because I know exactly what's in Epic Dragon and that's at least a couple stops in the highlights. Thinking of the positive effects of this I imagine this is going to be rad for HDR display shoots and certainly will add a bit more meat to the highlight roll-off. It's the top end of things, so hard to fully define, but it's there.

great seeing these stresstests, Phil.

Those tell me a lot more than anything else.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Phil, any word on the STH focus distortion I've pointed out in the Red Discussion? How does the Standard OLPF perform and Weapon compared to Epic Dragon?

 

[Brian Boyer]

Phil, Epic/Scarlet Dragons eliminated the magenta highlights one would sometimes experience on overexposed material and, therefore, the need for the DRX adjustment in RCX.

The Weapon example has gone slightly magenta around the additional (and welcome) detail. Has the tweaking to extend DR at the top reintroduced the possibility of magenta highlights and the need for DRX, or is this something we'd really only see in Linear light?

 

[Guan Jin Sen]

Thanks for the test Phil! What lenses were used for the test?

 

[Phil Holland]

I survived a weird Halloween, here's a few answers:

Phil, Epic/Scarlet Dragons eliminated the magenta highlights one would sometimes experience on overexposed material and, therefore, the need for the DRX adjustment in RCX.

The Weapon example has gone slightly magenta around the additional (and welcome) detail. Has the tweaking to extend DR at the top reintroduced the possibility of magenta highlights and the need for DRX, or is this something we'd really only see in Linear light?

Agreed, though realize this is Linear and not RLF or one of the RG varieties. In the standard Gamma Curves it appears that the Color Science "rolls-off" the pink to a desaturated highlight as expected. Linear more clearly shows the difference in highlight retention between the two cameras, otherwise we'd be staring at white highlights and trying to judge that.

Phil, great to meet you and thanks for posting your test so quickly. Interesting to see the results. Just curious, were either of these images processed with ADD?
Thanks to you and Chris for letting me hang around (and Camtec too).

Good to meet you too Jeffrey. Fun day there.

None of these images are processed using ADD or DEB.

Have you tried with a square window or a horizontal source such as a kino? That's where the CMOS smear really kicks into high gear on the Epic Dragon over the Epic MX. Only thing that's really holding me back on Weapon Dragon is the unknown with that.

Otherwise, excellent tests and information for everyone Phil, thanks again for all the work you put in to get every Red cameras capabilities out there for us to see.

I've had a few shoots with Weapon at this point and honestly outside of the crazy light stress test, which is rather extreme, I just haven't come across the smear under typical situations.

Here's an ISO 800 image with space between the blinds at full clip, previously the blinds themselves would streak across my face. Heck, even the base of the window should be doing it here as it's also really clipped:



I'm not seeing it in that example image. I would say the CMOS Smearing Artifact has been vastly improved on Weapon, perhaps all DSMC2 cameras.


Side note. I've been chewing through some recent test images for the last couple of days when I haven't been busy Halloweening. I'll likely make a new post tomorrow as this is pretty important stuff that everybody will want to see.

 

[Elsie N]

Great Halloween mask Phil!

Just kidding '-)... that is actually the perfect picture of camera-nation treasure.