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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 :)

Red Dragon: Candle and Match Low Light Tests

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  • #21
Bobby Farokhzad said:
As always, thank you for all your insight Phil. I am trying to imagine the candle light scenes from Barry Lyndon shot on Dragon...... Kubrick would have undoubtedly been impressed.
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I imagine Kubrick would have been equally fascinated with camera tech and lens tech these days. He didn't live in the world of clean ASA 500, 800, or 2000 stocks because they just never existed. I imagine he would have still shot film here and there, but knowing the tech nut he was he would have grasped onto modern digital cinema cameras and taken them to impressive heights. Probably would have freaked out about the creative potential of motion control as well. We'll never know really.

The cool thing about Barry Lyndon is that Kubrick went on that lens journey for a storytelling purpose to add to the period's aesthetic. He wasn't shooting shallow to shoot shallow, the inherit quality of the low light in the period would have led to a similar amount of depth in day to day life indoors. Oddly, I've got a Leica 65mm f/0.75 I've been slowly working on that shoots some extremely bizarre low light images. I pull it out to abstract work mostly.

I know Fincher and Cronenweth have been shooting wide open on the Master Primes and more recently with the Leica Summilux-C Primes at T1.4. It's a hard way of shooting in reality, but very much worth it.


Elsie N said:
Thanks Phil... copied and pasted into my notes.
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Anytime. I think we're going to see an interesting tug of war coming up with HFR. Not so much on the adoption or if it's it's better than 24fps, but more on the how to do it right and make it look good side of things.
 
Looks really good, Phil. Thanks for sharing...
 
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  • #25
Awesome stuff Phil. Thanks a million! And A Happy New Year to you and your!

Kubrick used motion control in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
 
Phil Holland said:
It's all over the frame :) Schneider Cine-Xenar III, the 35mm and 75mm wide open.


I have added a link to a few seconds of my ugly mug with the match for y'all to play with:


https://copy.com/DardI9mWHxEg

6KHD R3D = 1.4GB download
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Thanks Phil! Great footage to play pushing ISO to limits + NR to get a great grasp of Dragon!!! Happy New Year 2014!
 
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  • #32
Ricky Guing Senen said:
Thanks so much for sharing. A new motivation for 2014. Look like Dragon plus Schneider Xenar is a match made in heaven.
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Now that things are locked down and we have production Dragon's flying out of Red HQ I'm feeling even better about my glass investment. I shoot mostly wide open through T4 most of the time. To date I think they have perhaps one of my top 3 out of focus bokehs that you can get out of a lens.


Martin Stevens said:
Awesome stuff Phil. Thanks a million! And A Happy New Year to you and your!

Kubrick used motion control in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
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Oh yes! But imagine what he could do now with things like Bot and Dolly! Happy New Year Martin!


Justen Nguyen said:
Great tests Phil! Always nice to see what the tech is capable of.
Also the rainbow gave me a good chuckle.
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Heh. Well I have to shoot something :) Actually I've been totally holding out on you guys in terms of footage. I've been shooting and testing nearly everyday I've had Dragon thus far. Different lighting conditions, random content, overexpose, underexpose, skin, etc... Trying to figure out just exactly where Dragon likes to play really.

If you really want to see what you can do with Dragon..... Well here's a few fully processed shots at 6K FF :) I've been experimenting a lot with post techniques to really make the beast sing!

Leica Summicron-C 35mm @ T2

Link to 6K FF JPG

Schneider Cine-Xenar III 95mm @ T2 with Motion Mount

Link to 6K FF JPG

Leica Summicron-C @ T2 might be the 25 or 35? Can't remember.

Link to 6K FF JPG

Leica Summicron-C @ T2 might be the 25 or 35? Can't remember. Might even be the 18 based on this shot.

Link to 6K FF JPG

Schneider Cine-Xenar III 75mm might be T5 with a regular ND of some sort.

Link to 6K HD JPG

Schneider Cine-Xenar III 75mm might be T5 with a regular ND of some sort.

Link to 6K HD JPG


These are compressed and optimized for the web, but you can get the idea.

If you consider that literally every frame you shoot with Epic Dragon can transform magically into a 6144x3160 111.11MB 16bit image you start thinking rather differently on what a motion picture camera is. I know I am. These are moving pictures and in a sort of poetic way bridging my cinematography and photography backgrounds into one capture device. Sort of really bringing out the concept of what DSMC is really.

I'll have to get you some stills with lots of detail to show off exactly how nuts this is.

The color is there. The skin is great. The DR is crazy. The resolution is bloody impressive. I mean..... Who's not going to want to shoot with Dragon?
 
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Nice tests Phil. Do you still have an MX to compare against ? I know once you have the new camera it would seem like a chore to go back to the old one, but still, it's useful data, perhaps as an up-sell to your clients, etc.
 
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  • #37
Nick Morrison said:
Phil great test, and awesome shots.

How you liking the motion mount?
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Thanks Nick. I like the Motion Mount. It's both a useful tool and a creative curiosity. Still playing with the Soft Shutter. I'm damn sure anybody doing small octocopter or Movi work would like it. I see some potential in the device that can be added in a future firmware update. Aliasing is a concern due to the cancelling out of the one axis on the AA Filter (on the OLPF), but I've given Red my test images and I think they'll have a unique solution soon.

I really do enjoy just picking up the camera and leaving the matte box off. So nice and portable.


AndreeMarkefors said:
Yes… that's the problem right there…
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We'll see how this all plays out. Once more critical shooters do side by sides with the other cameras out there we'll see the results and so will they. Dragon right now is the king of the mountain in many of the categories that people look at in motion capture. A few quirks do exist, but it also yields to character and that could be argued. I think Red has something up there sleeves regarding a few things that we haven't even seen yet on Dragon. I'm actually confident of that. So perhaps that's a firmware thing or maybe a color science thing or perhaps something out of left field.

One thing that concerns me is the rampant amount of misinformation and very opinionated people out there. A good deal of which aren't even shooters who have testing any of these cameras. Some just have brand loyalty and run with that. It's an interesting thing. There's a crazy psychology to me about those who have strong feeling about a camera system that they have never touched before. Freaks me out.


KETCH ROSSi said:
Nice Phil!!
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Thanks Ketch. Here's to a big 2014 for you sir!


Les Dittert said:
Nice tests Phil. Do you still have an MX to compare against ? I know once you have the new camera it would seem like a chore to go back to the old one, but still, it's useful data, perhaps as an up-sell to your clients, etc.
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When I paid for my upgrade I brought my Epic with Mysterium-X down to Red Irvine and guys down there gently performed brain surgery and placed the Dragon bits in there. So that camera is executed and dead. I could probably find an MX to do a serious side by side.

It's nice to have the side by side and I'm sure me or others will do a thorough comparison, but I'm standing on firm ground saying that Dragon is an improvement in every way. Some of those ways are glaringly obvious. Luckily the vast majority of my clients allow me to chose my own camera. They don't care if I shoot with a watermelon with a lens sticking out if it as long as the images are solid.
 
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