Raven & Stills questions

[Richard Williams]

In terms of using the Raven to take stills;
1. Can you elect to take one frame at a time?
2. Can you elect to take a burst of frames - 4-6 frames for example?
3. Can you choose the file - a TIFF or DNG for example?
4. Can you choose the camera to display shutter speed or will it only display as shutter angle?
thanks for your help
cheers Richard

 

[jordan levy]

i wasnt even aware that the raven takes stills, do you see that written somewhere?

 

[Marco Hanna]

If you choose the highest (lowest) compression ratio, such as 3:1 or 2:1, you can take lower frame counts. You can then use REDCineX to capture the frame you want. The camera will only record R3D and ProRes files. In the future it will record Avid DNXHD and DNXHR (sometime in mid-2016). You have the option to use shutter speed or shutter angle, its all in the settings of the camera.

Hope I could help! Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Phil Holland]

In terms of using the Raven to take stills;
1. Can you elect to take one frame at a time?
2. Can you elect to take a burst of frames - 4-6 frames for example?
3. Can you choose the file - a TIFF or DNG for example?
4. Can you choose the camera to display shutter speed or will it only display as shutter angle?
thanks for your help

Hi Richard,

I can help a bit.

1. There is a "Stills Mode" which will allow Single and Multi Shot Modes.
2. You can also limit recording to a specified amount of frames. I actually do this for more VFX driven things as well.
3. In camera at the moment you have REDCODE RAW (RED's compressed raw format similar to DNG, but for motion) and in REDCINE-X Pro (which is a free download) you can export 16-bit TIFs for instance.
4. Yes, you can show Shutter Speed or Shutter Angle.

There's a lot of ways to tackle stills and you may find simply recording in bursts suits your way of working. But it really depends on your needs and what the shoot needs. There's a lot of options though.

 

[jordan levy]

Hi Richard,

I can help a bit.

1. There is a "Stills Mode" which will allow Single and Multi Shot Modes.
2. You can also limit recording to a specified amount of frames. I actually do this for more VFX driven things as well.
3. In camera at the moment you have REDCODE RAW (RED's compressed raw format similar to DNG, but for motion) and in REDCINE-X Pro (which is a free download) you can export 16-bit TIFs for instance.
4. Yes, you can show Shutter Speed or Shutter Angle.

There's a lot of ways to tackle stills and you may find simply recording in bursts suits your way of working. But it really depends on your needs and what the shoot needs. There's a lot of options though.

whaaa? for some reason i thought that was perk of the scarlet, the raven will have stills as well??? that is really nice, especially when that director says i want true stop motion

 

[Richard Williams]

Thanks everyone for your answers. This gives me a lot of confidence in the flexibility of the Red system. While I am buying a Raven primarily for motion, as time goes on I can foresee upgrading to a true universal stills/motion camera. I currently have too many different systems, different lens mounts, different batteries so its time to simplify my gear a bit.

 

[Omar N]

Does anybody know the slowest and fastest shutter speeds available in stills mode? Will I be able to do a 30 second exposure like I can with my DSLR?

 

[Sabovic Adis]

i wasnt even aware that the raven takes stills, do you see that written somewhere?

DSMC => Digital Still and Motion Camera. :biggrin:

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Does anybody know the slowest and fastest shutter speeds available in stills mode? Will I be able to do a 30 second exposure like I can with my DSLR?

I don't know what the exact fastest and slowest shutter speeds are, but I do know that the DSMC cameras can't do long exposures the same way DSLR's can. However, there are two capture options you may want to look into testing instead. The first is Frame Summing and the second is Frame Averaging. If you google those terms in combination with "reduser", you should be able to find the threads that dive into those shooting modes in detail.

Graeme himself has gotten brilliant results using these modes so I would definitely suggest exploring them!

 

[Med D]

I would be interested to know if the new blackshading makes stills/video more practical. With the Epic it is really not practical to try and mix the two formats on a shoot because BS takes so incredibly long, and you must do a new BS for every significant exposure change. Even loading already completed BS data takes forever -- on the order of ten minutes or more. This just does not work on a set for example. If there is any one problem that I would have liked RED to address before moving to the next generation it is blackshading.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

While black shading is annoying, RED has improved it with every generation since the MX chip. I don't know what firmware you are on, but it takes about 15-30 seconds for me to switch between presaved blackshades on my Epic Dragon.

Also, auto blackshading is exactly the fix you are looking for, so I don't understand your statement that RED hasn't addressed this yet?

Seems to me you are just surprised/annoyed that a digital cinema camera can't be a DSLR at it's own game?

Hope I'm not misinterpreting what you are saying

 

[Med D]

I meant addressed it in the Epic series rather than creating a new camera. Blackshading is a deficiency in the older cameras. By that I mean it is a problem that just should not exist.

I'll check but I believe I am on the next-to-most-recent release. I did not upgrade to Dragon though, I have an Epic MX. I don't know if that impacts BS times or not.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Oh ok that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.

Yes black shading sucks but even the Alexa has to basically reboot itself to switch to it's high speed modes. I think it's an unfortunate limitation of the current advanced tech but it's not even close to the first time in history that advanced imaging has come at the cost of a major annoyance. Think about blimping cameras that were too loud, or using cranes to lift cameras that were too heavy. All for the sake of image quality.

Do you think F-1 drivers complain that they have to warm up their tires before they go 200mph around a corner? Or do you think they understand the physics behind cornering, and the limitations associated with it? Everything has a cost and for the Epic, the cost of a 5k sensor that can shoot 96+ FPS in a tiny box, in 2011, was that you needed to calibrate the sensor when you changed the temporal resolution. That's really not the worst trade off in the world right? Especially when in 2016 it's not really a problem anymore, really more of a nuisance.