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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 :)

Point of weapon? Full Frame?

I hope we get the specs just before nab so we have a few days to decide while actually knowing what weapon is. I did not go dragon last time since I was concerned about its lowlight. To much buzz around it and while im happy with the epic. Also i wished it would have atleast the same fps in 6k as epic in 5k. That said im intrested to find out whats been cooking. love the epic and im sure this will be something something spectacular!
 
Phil Holland said:
As somebody who has seen it, I can say only one thing.

Wait 43 days. (Or sooner if Jarred get's too excited, and he really is excited)
Click to expand...

Hi Phil,

Since you know a lot of the history and the future of RED products, I pose to you and anyone else...who may wish to comment, the following question.

Does Red Dragon, in it's present state-all factors considered-been maxed out, regarding performance, including such features as HFR, colour science, output options? This asks if anything is in the pipeline for Dragon, that will make a significant change in its performance?

Thank you very much

Fury
 
Just spitballing here but it would make sense to me based on the current and soon to be shipping competition that Red would develop a flexible body system with respect to sensor options. There are a number of solutions that given Red's innovative approach that I would imagine could be packed into a new upgradable body and processor.
1. 4 by 3 aspect in a 65mm format. taking full advantage of medium format stills lenses. I would expect them to build this sensor with comparably large photo sites and not exceed 6K which would make it killer for low light. This would answer the call for Imax and 3D Imax production as well as fully capable for all anamorphic lenses and formats.
2. Full frame 8K sensor version for production and cinema 2D allowing improved anamorphic. Coupled with this sensor I'd imagine a 6K cropped format similar to dragon but with really fast frame rates.
3. built in wireless monitoring, wireless follow focus and iris, etc.
 
I don't think the Weapon upgrade is so much about about image or sensor, which of course will improve with better electronics, but a better designed body that most camera assistants won't dislike as outputs and controls are not in a place they are accustomed to. From what I've seen and heard here this seems to be the case, or at least I hope so. This is one of the reasons RED cameras haven't been widely accepted in the industry. The Dragon sensor is a huge improvement in color rendition and it will only get better as the color science improves.

I recently had a meeting with an executive from a major network and he said he would never shoot anything on a RED camera. This, unfortunately, is what we need to work hard to overcome. I am a big supporter of RED. I have lobbied, fought hard for, and succeeded in shooting over 100 episodes of television on the RED One MX, Epick-MX and now Epic Dragon, but the sell was not easy. I hope Weapon gets us a step closer to having RED cameras be a choice that is no longer questioned.
 
While I don't see much increase in FPS with the Weapon and current Dragon sensor, after all the limitation is the sensor itself, I hope we can get lower compression ratios. What is the bottleneck of recording lower compression ratios for higher frame rates? Its not a sensor issue. Its the encoder? The speed of media? The bus? Maybe with more RAM they can buffer the frames so the encoder can do its thing. Or have a more powerful, or simply more, encoding HW.

I see the Weapon as the body for the next gen sensors, post Dragon. I do hope its quieter for doc interview scenarios. Lighter for my long hikes. More power efficient for longer battery life. Better stability to failures. A nice OLPF swappable system. Overall I am super excited. I just hope their upgrade system has better throughput that pervious upgrades. :) And that RED is ready to deliver when they announce it.

I would joke that maybe this year at NAB they can have a clean room showing cameras being upgraded to Weapon, but to some it might not be funny. ;-)
 
Nick Fury said:
Hi Phil,

Since you know a lot of the history and the future of RED products, I pose to you and anyone else...who may wish to comment, the following question.

Does Red Dragon, in it's present state-all factors considered-been maxed out, regarding performance, including such features as HFR, colour science, output options? This asks if anything is in the pipeline for Dragon, that will make a significant change in its performance?

Thank you very much

Fury
Click to expand...

I certainly can't answer all of those points.

However, I will talk Color Science. Color Science is "ever evolving" and Graeme works rather tirelessly to help push that to new levels. Just this week I commented to him about the "OG" DRAGONcolor, because it's damn good. The Dragon sensor + DRAGONcolor + Dragon's new IR cutting abilities changed the game for me. DRAGONcolor2 is here and there are bits of improvement and difference there.

Color is enormously complicated, but Dragon compared to everything else is actually pretty damn good and to me it's the most "film-like" camera on the market.

Down the line? Who knows exactly, but there will be certainly progress. Firmware and features will continue to develop.

Dragon is far, far from EOL and you'll be able to buy new ones for some time. And the same could be said for the forth coming Weapon Upgrade. While it starts summer/fall 2015 it's going to go on for a bit. Then at some point way down the line there will likely be a price increase shortly after "new cameras" are being sold and after the first massive influx of upgrades occur.

Red works in a pretty straight forward way in reality. For people who have been on board for not as long all of this stuff is "new and different" though, for others it's certainly nice having a pattern to work with when it comes to camera advancement and new technology so we can plan somewhat accordingly.
 
... Surely everyone can remember Red noteing that putting the dragon chip in the epic body curtailed it's performace some what?

Better body ? Better S/N = sensitivity and latitude

Add a 3rd way OLPF and a extra 50% frame rate bump (with a lot more bandwidth capabilty)

Seems plausible

M
 
Russ Fill said:
That's kind of funny, that was the same words used by most of my DOP friends when I told them about my new Red One and how it had a 4k sensor.
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I'm just sayin, can your computer even handle 8K footage? Let SSD's drop in price first before we get too carried away into the 8K world.. i'm sure it's in the near future, but probably not for another year and a half 2 years.
 
I'd take 8K in a heartbeat if I can afford it. But I would probably use it for stills mostly or short clips or specialty sequences.
My sweet spot for shooting motion at the moment is 5-6K and will stay that way until I a) make enough money that I don't get too concerned about hardrive real estate or b) hard drive space will be so cheap I don't care ;)
 
Larry Kelly said:
J
1. 4 by 3 aspect in a 65mm format. taking full advantage of medium format stills lenses. I would expect them to build this sensor with comparably large photo sites and not exceed 6K which would make it killer for low light. This would answer the call for Imax and 3D Imax production as well as fully capable for all anamorphic lenses and formats.
Click to expand...

+ 1000

it would prob increase DR and help with highlight roll-off...
 
My hunch is Weapon may be truly modular - and at some point can have sensors swapped in/out like modules - current 6K, full frame 8k, medium format 10/12k.

I can't imagine RED would ever abandon a focus on s35 entirely...to many high end productions require it...but providing full frame and medium format sensors as "options" could turn the market upside down..

Maybe thats why the Weapon is a "skull" - and the sensors are the brains that drop in?
 
Joel Arvidsson said:
I hope we get the specs just before nab so we have a few days to decide while actually knowing what weapon is. I did not go dragon last time since I was concerned about its lowlight. To much buzz around it and while im happy with the epic. Also i wished it would have atleast the same fps in 6k as epic in 5k. That said im intrested to find out whats been cooking. love the epic and im sure this will be something something spectacular!
Click to expand...

Doesn't exactly matter if you know a few days before or later. You'll have some time to upgrade to Weapon if you are a Dragon owner.

The real people the timeline effects are the Mysterium-X people as the discounted price of the MX to Dragon upgrade ends around NAB and the upgrade path from MX to Dragon all together ends summer-ish 2015.
 
FF Weapon Questions to be answered only '43 days away - Yay :)

My Christmas list is:
+) A lighter camera - more feline friendly (like rounded corners)
+) A better way to know exactly where the focus is in frame (tricky with the EVF)
+) Ways to control the camera that are less fiddly (might require some headscratching with the SDK)

:D

AJ
 
There is precedent for a change in sensor size. Moving from the Red One to Epic saw the same MX chip grow from 4K to 5K. There is little doubt in my mind that the Dragon chip will be in the weapon but there is the possibility of it growing towards FF coverage.
 
Tom Gleeson said:
There is precedent for a change in sensor size. Moving from the Red One to Epic saw the same MX chip grow from 4K to 5K. There is little doubt in my mind that the Dragon chip will be in the weapon but there is the possibility of it growing towards FF coverage.
Click to expand...

size of the MX xhip was exactly the same on R1 MX and Epic - R1 MX uses 4.5K max, while Epic uses the full 5K available...

internal bandwidth and boards of the R1 MX couldn't handle more data (as in: more pixel and lower compression), but u got the look around area...

Epic Dragon already uses the full physical size of the Dragon sensor.
 
Tom Gleeson said:
There is precedent for a change in sensor size. Moving from the Red One to Epic saw the same MX chip grow from 4K to 5K. There is little doubt in my mind that the Dragon chip will be in the weapon but there is the possibility of it growing towards FF coverage.
Click to expand...

If memory serves... the R-1 MX was 4.5k, but your comparison is still valid. Plus, I never heard if the sensor was changed, that is if the upgrade in pixels was done by a sensor re-design or board/firmware tweak.
 
My guesses:

Complete electronic overhaul- like adding a "turbo" on an engine: could mean less compression and faster frame rates.
Internal proxies
No need for mirrowing in lower resolution modes
Internal noise reduction to achieve better low light (like the competition)

Complete ergonomic overhaul:

We saw a glimpse of this already: more connections on camera
Built in reference audio
Future Ready for next sensor jump.
 
Internal NR doesn't seem part of the RED ethos...as it comes at the expense of picture quality and resolution. Alexa doesn't do it. F65 doesn't do it. I can't see RED jumping into this semi-pro solution either.

Everything else I agree with - less compression, more framerates, and possibly better S/N ratio resulting in cleaner signals at higher ISOs (5000 iso the new 2000iso for lowlight olpf?).
 
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