Red = Canon Digital SLR CMOS Chip?

[vidalsosa]

The Canon CMOS chip in the 1D/1Ds mkIII would be an insane chip to have. Unfortunately, RED is unlikely to ever get close to Canon's CMOS chip. As Canon unifies thier consumer/pro still/motion platforms on CMOS chips, Canon's R&D budget will be nearly impossible to compete with, and equally impossible to have such an enormous base of consumer products upon which to recover R&D costs.

As someone who has reserved a Red camera and visiting this forum to learn new things about the camera that's soon to ship, I don't see the relevance of this line of argument, quite frankly. I'm learning nothing new here, especially when you make blanket statements like "Unfortunately, RED is unlikely to ever get close to Canon's CMOS chip" The Red One is a given and the Canon CMOS chip applied in 4K motion photography, unfortunately is NOT.

This is not a Canon VS Red board, its supposed to be a board where we learn as much as possible form each other about applying Red to our individual filmmaking needs.

The facts:

- Red One - Ships in 30 days or less...

- "Canon Unified CMOS range" (or whatever) - Ship date unknown

Canon already has a market niche, one that has an ardent and satisfied consumer base... but until they come out with their own 4K camera capable of even half of Red's proposed specs, then its a no brainer for me with regards to a viable choice. Red One will do for now.

 

[Corey Culp]

As someone who has reserved a Red camera and visiting this forum to learn new things about the camera that's soon to ship, I don't see the relevance of this line of argument, quite frankly. I'm learning nothing new here, especially when you make blanket statements like "Unfortunately, RED is unlikely to ever get close to Canon's CMOS chip" The Red One is a given and the Canon CMOS chip applied in 4K motion photography, unfortunately is NOT.

This is not a Canon VS Red board, its supposed to be a board where we learn as much as possible form each other about applying Red to our individual filmmaking needs.

The facts:

- Red One - Ships in 30 days or less...

- "Canon Unified CMOS range" (or whatever) - Ship date unknown

Canon already has a market niche, one that has an ardent and satisfied consumer base... but until they come out with their own 4K camera capable of even half of Red's proposed specs, then its a no brainer for me with regards to a viable choice. Red One will do for now.

Stop making sense!

 

[Ramesh Jai]

"I have no argument with that at all. But there's no shortage of people who want a RED who would be completely satisfied for a very long time with 35mm DOF, 1080p and a clean CMOS image. I'm betting that if you took a poll and asked how many people wanted a 1080p RED today rather than a 4K RED in seven months, an awful lot of hands would go up, including mine."

Give me 720P with a 35mm DOF today and I will take it. 3 years from now majority of people across the world (not just the US) will still be watching SD TV. By then I would have more than recovered my investment in RED 1 and moved on to RED 3.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Then again, if you're aiming at the silverscreen, 4k is a good thing.

 

[E.J. Sadler]

Hi E.J,

First, the Canon 1Ds Mark IIis a 16 mega pixel DSLR, not a "mammoth 22meg." Second, although a Nikon guy myself, I do admire Canon's CMOS sensor--especially its handling of noise in lowlight situations.
Mike

The 1Ds mkII's chip will be 22, based on the current 1d mkIII chip.

I've got some ISO 6400 images washed through some post noise reduction that's cleaner than we used to get from 400 speed film. What I don't know is if the level of noise reduction seen in the raw 6400 images can be accomplished @24fps. If you could bring that level of light sensitivity to motion capture, even at ISO1600, people would adopt CMOS capture just for the lighting budget reduction. Hell, if you could shoot at 1.2, you could just hand out flashlights to the grips and be good to go.

As for Canon passing on the cost-savings resulting from the economics of scales it enjoys over other companies such as Red in producing a full frame CMOS sensor, I can't say I see the evidence of that just yet. Even if Canon realizes a truck load savings over Red and other CMOS chip makers/buyers, I suspect Canon would probably elect to keep most of the additional profit for itself.

They've just started to move to CMOS, so it's not here yet, but it will be. My primary point was that with all of their products using CMOS, Canon's CMOS R&D budget will be difficult to complete with to say the least.

However, everybody will be able to benefit when Canon can design and sell glass for their entire range of products and have a broader base of consumers help subsidize the cost.

Of course, based on the motion picture grabs I've seen so far, if Red were to make a full sensor DSLR, the new camera would probably emerge as a serious competitor to Canon and Nikons DSLRs.

Although I'm completely stoked about having RED quality motion footage, the stills from Crossing the Line just weren't nearly as good as stills from our DSLRs. Is it far better than any other motion camera out there? Yes. Is it more quality and resolution than I'll ever need from motion capture? Yes. I'm just not going to pretend the stills are as good as what we're getting from our stills.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Hell, if you could shoot at 1.2, you could just hand out flashlights to the grips and be good to go.

Hi,

At 500 asa you could already.

Stephen

 

[E.J. Sadler]

As someone who has reserved a Red camera and visiting this forum to learn new things about the camera that's soon to ship, I don't see the relevance of this line of argument, quite frankly.

My initial response was to jing who said he guessed RED is using better CMOS chips than Canon has in it's DSLRs. The ensuing posts revolved around how Canon's CMOS R&D budget was about to get much bigger, and much harder to compete against.

I'm learning nothing new here, especially when you make blanket statements like "Unfortunately, RED is unlikely to ever get close to Canon's CMOS chip" The Red One is a given and the Canon CMOS chip applied in 4K motion photography, unfortunately is NOT.

That must be why I said "Not that it matters though. The footage from the RED is better than anything out there and more than enough to work with, so nobody's going to be complaining."

I'm all about the RED and can't wait to be shooting with one. But if anyone thinks the still frames from the RED are as good or better than Canon's current generation DSLRs, they're just hittin' the kool-aid a little too hard.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Why are people bagging on this Sadler guy? Give him a break. Generally speaking, he's correct in what he's saying.

 

[Dave Cooper]

Seems some people in here don't want to hear about a company having a better CMOS chip than another company. It makes them see RED.

 

[Joe Carney]

Once again, apples and oranges. Stills captured from a frame of Video will never look as good as a still from a DSLR. That's an established fact.
The same applies to film based sources.
You don't want each frame of video to look perfect, you want it slightly soft so motion looks smooth from frame to frame.

I say again, comparing DSLR stills to a video frame capture is pointless. Their purposes are entirely different.

 

[Yannick Hagman]

Of course, based on the motion picture grabs I've seen so far, if Red were to make a full sensor DSLR, the new camera would probably emerge as a serious competitor to Canon and Nikons DSLRs.

In 4k?

E.J. Sadler got the point. The danger for RED is not Sony nor Arri, it's Canon, Hitachi, JVC and Panasonic. And Canon did a really great job so far. I wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger CMOS pretty soon from them.

 

[Julian Banos]

The RED Standard

The RED Standard

For me to see a real thread from any other company they need to achieve not only a 4K + image, but also a camera that is so flexible, in both its workflow and its structural design.
Maybe Canon or JVC will come up with something in the next years that comes close to the RED One (maybe better). But for now there is a reason why we are all reading throuh this forum. Seriously when was the last time a Canon forum attracted so much attention and feedback that was taken in consideration?

 

[Yannick Hagman]

www.hv20.com

 

[androbot2084]

I don't think you can compare the image from a 12 megapixel Canon still camera to RED because a moving image will always have more apparent resolution than a still image. For example a lot of still photographers sneered at my high definition 720p camera and called it low resolution because it cannot resolve even 1 megapixel. But in my opinion I think the 720p image quality can hold its own up to any 3 megapixel digital still image. If this analogy is correct then the motion pictures from RED should compare with images obtained form a 30 megapixel Hasselblad.

 

[Yannick Hagman]

30 megapixel Hasselblad

LOL. This gave me a good laugh.

 

[Jack Wester]

But in my opinion I think the 720p image quality can hold its own up to any 3 megapixel digital still image.

Right you are, the eye perceives several frames together and makes out more detail. Just as when you look through a fence standing still or driving in your car. You perceive more of whats behind the fence while driving. Freeze your DV footage and a single frame looks way worse than when playing. But there is still a problem with your reasoning as 22 megapixel images at a decent framerate and given reasonable motion blur will look more like 100 megapixel to the eye.

Still, in my opinion, the RedOne is the coolest thing on the market. A superior product and a company you want to do business with. A canon cmos does not a red make.

 

[Eddie]

Calls for speculation...

You are comparing a camera that hasn´t been released with one that isn´t announced....

Maybe its time for some new material from the red team.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Not just in the abstract

Not just in the abstract

How about practicality and workflow? Unless Canon can get Graeme to write them something like RedCode what are you planning to do about the giant data set your spiffy new Canon CMOS head generates? What about the operational and ergonomic advances we've been reading about in this forum?

Even if the chip is the most critical piece it is essentially useless without the rest of the infrastructure.

RED has committed to making a camera of "Cinema" quality designed to work with industry standard lens and accessory tools that enable professional craft levels. With RedCode and Final Cut there should be a very effective post pipeline that offers a huge leap forward in the quality to cost equation over existing options (props to SI2K - Cineform due here as well).

To paraphrase Mike Curtis - the RedOne is a point of inflection in the biz.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

They're different now, but I don't think they're going to stay that way. Canon is moving to a unified CMOS platform for all of their products. Having this broad base of products is going to allow Canon to produce better chips in larger sizes and larger quantities at lower costs.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/21

 

[E.J. Sadler]

How about practicality and workflow? Unless Canon can get Graeme to write them something like RedCode what are you planning to do about the giant data set your spiffy new Canon CMOS head generates?

I'm not trivializing the amount of work this is, but it's not like Graeme is the only codec engineer in the world. But, this is part of the reason Canon will probably continue with 1080p for a while.

What about the operational and ergonomic advances we've been reading about in this forum?

Well, Canon knows a little about the EF mount, so you could obviously expect wireless FF and aperture control with no external motors. Also, it wouldn't be much of a leap for Canon to stream camera and lens meta data into the data stream like they do with their DSLRs. Canon's systems are integral in the generation of the projected first down and scrimmage lines you see during televised football so they have a little experience with camera information systems. If Canon would offer this system to a larger audience, you could have frame accurate axial POV, GPS, elevation, focal length, focal distance, aperture, shutter speed and just about everything else rolled into your data stream. That kind of CIS would make your post guys giddy.



-------------------------

Just for entertainment, I'll throw this out there. If Canon introduced a full 35mm frame(36.0mm x 24.0mm) CMOS motion camera, and decided to stick with EF lenses and forgo the use of PL mount lenses, they would have a significant physical advantage over any PL sized sensor.

Regardless of your chosen resolution, 720p, 1080p, or 4k, a 36.0mm x 24.0mm sensor just has more real estate than a 24.4mm x 13.7mm sensor. This larger chunk of sensor real estate allows you to have significantly larger sensor pixels. Bigger pixels have two significant advantages over smaller pixels. First, the larger surface area allows more physical light to fall on the pixel, which increases the sensitivity of the chip and provides better low light performance and a wider dynamic range. Secondly, larger pixels are less susceptible to quantum noise and thus provide a much cleaner image.

Sensor size is a big deal. It's why DSLRs with six meg chips outperform pocket digital cameras with ten meg chips. It's why 2/3" cameras outperform 1/3" cameras.