Playing with the Forged Carbon Fiber Weapon and it's AWESOME!

[Patrick Lawler]

Over here at REDucation LA John Marchant has brought in Jarred's Forged CF Weapon brain for us to play with!

First of all I'm getting the same noise levels at 5,000 ISO that I would normally get at 1,280.


The placement of all the Ports on the back-right side resemble the placement of an Amira.
The simultaneous ProRes Recording is working well.
The wireless monitor connection is really cool!
The weight is incredibly light and the body feels incredibly sturdy.
Blackshading is significantly less of a big deal, switching between frame rates from 1fps-300 maintains a proper calibration.
Onboard audio scratch-track recording is great as well as an 1/8" audio jack for monitoring.
Smart-side controls are nice and similar to the switchblade.
New fan placement is great!
Integrated top-handle record button reminds me of my VX-1000 days.
It takes about 50 seconds to turn on.


I think the real gamechanger here is the fact that red is opening up their connectors to 3rd party companies. Mark over at Offhollywood is building some amazing 3rd party adaptors y'all should check out!

The attached photo of Matt our AC was shot at 5,000 ISO and has had NOTHING done to it in post:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qd3n1pnfs8iz18o/A001_C022_07290R.98.0000098F.tif?dl=

Screenshot of RCX settings:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yateetlxz28efi/Screen Shot 2015-07-29 at 9.12.14 AM.png?dl=0

 

[Etienne Perrin]

Thank you Patrick for these precious informations! Looks fantastic!

What do you mean by 50 seconds to turn on?

 

[Kwan Khan]

Mark over at Offhollywood is building some amazing 3rd party adaptors y'all should check out!

Agreed

 

[Patrick Lawler]

Thank you Patrick for these precious informations! Looks fantastic!

What do you mean by 50 seconds to turn on?

When you turn the camera on it takes about 50 seconds to boot up and be ready to shoot.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

When you turn the camera on it takes about 50 seconds to boot up and be ready to shoot.

Bummer. I would imagine that will improve with firmware builds though. At one point they had the Epic down to like 10-12 seconds I think...

 

[Patrick Lawler]

Bummer. I would imagine that will improve with firmware builds though. At one point they had the Epic down to like 10-12 seconds I think...

I'm sure it will improve over time!

 

[TheBied]

I'm sure it will improve over time!

We're already in the process of trimming it down. Expect improvements.

 

[Charles Bergquist]

I know it's early still, but I'd love to see some side by side RLF images from Weapon and Dragon for noise comparison as well as the CMOS smear fix that was mentioned. Forged camera body looks great!

 

[David Battistella]

We're already in the process of trimming it down. Expect improvements.

will that have a trickle down to the rest of the line up.

great thread.

 

[R. Gonzales]

will that have a trickle down to the rest of the line up.

great thread.

Yes! +! on David's question.

 

[TheBied]

will that have a trickle down to the rest of the line up.

great thread.

We'll spread the love whenever possible as we find improvements.

 

[David Battistella]

Love those quick boot times!

 

[luigivaltulini]

First of all I'm getting the same noise levels at 5,000 ISO that I would normally get at 1,280.

umm interesting
you have a R3d frame?

thanks

 

[Phil Holland]

Love hearing the early impressions.

It's the early days and I'm sure there's a few things that will be tweaked a whole lot, but the Black Shading improvements alone are going to change the way people work with and perceive working with RED cameras.

I'm guessing this is the Weapon Low Light OLPF, or whatever their new name/designation would be. Jarred and RED have stated Weapon Dragon is about .5 stops cleaner in the shadows. Combine that with lower REDCODE Compression Ratios and you'll be able to do some very interesting low light work.

Pretty damn exciting!

 

[Jacobo Martinez]

Did you use ADD to debayer this image?

 

[Demetri Zuev]

The attached photo of Matt our AC was shot at 5,000 ISO and has had NOTHING done to it in post:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qd3n1pnfs8iz18o/A001_C022_07290R.98.0000098F.tif?dl=

Screenshot of RCX settings:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yateetlxz28efi/Screen Shot 2015-07-29 at 9.12.14 AM.png?dl=0

Thanks for your impressions, Patrick! Can you please post an R3D (the whole file, not just one frame) instead of tif?

Also, does the camera give you full sensor area scaled down to 4K while recording 4K prores or it's cropped the same as in 4K raw mode?

 

[Sean Cruser]

Can't wait to see more!

 

[TheBied]

Thanks for your impressions, Patrick! Can you please post an R3D instead of tif?

Also, does the camera give you full sensor area scaled down to 4K while recording 4K prores or it's cropped the same as in 4K raw mode?

When recording UHD ProRes, the image recorded is scaled to UHD from it's original format. If the format is less than UHD to begin with, the image is scaled to HD resolution.

 

[Demetri Zuev]

When recording UHD ProRes, the image recorded is scaled to UHD from it's original format.

Awesome, that's what I wanted to hear!

The only question that's left for me is - are we going to get all flavors of 4K prores on magnesium. At least in ProRes only mode, not simultaneous.

 

[Stacey Spears]

A 5 frame R3D would be awesome, then we can run ADD on the center frame.