Charles Bergquist said:
I use both the current IB/E extenders since I don't have a full set of MP Anamorphics(i have the 35 and the 50), but since the extenders are T stop limited I was wondering if I needed to add a T stop to the IB/E recommended T stop values for Master Prime Anamorphics(i.e. Even though the 50mm MPA says 1.9T, is that really a 1.4T stop with an adjust T value based on the light reduction of the anamorphic lens element) ? I.E. with the IB/E 1.4 I'm finding I need to be around T4 on the MPA 35mm.
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.
