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Red Dragon ISO Texture Versus Film Grain

Phil Holland

Phil Holland

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Jim isn't around much these days, but he has in the past said some interesting things about Dragon.

A couple of good reads in regards to Dragon:
RED Dragon vs 65mm Film
RED Dragon vs. 65mm Film cont'd


I've shot and scanned a good chunk of film in my life and I know a couple others here who have too. There's a lot of talk going on lately, but I do want to bring up some relevance to motion pictures, film, and cinema production.

Let's talk film.

S35 4-Perf resolves about 4K of resolution. We have scanned it at 2K, 4K, 6K, and 8K up until now. 4K and 6K being the most popular.
Film on a good day (depending on ASA and how well it's shot) is grabbing you 13 stops of Dynamic Range. On it's absolute best day you can squeeze 15 stops out of it.
Film does roll-off into highlight and overexposure and it of course has character than many love to this day.


Let's talk Dragon.

Things we know.
Resolution. Dragon out resolves S35 film at 5K inside of the S35 3-Perf format. Dragon is actually out resolving 65mm 5-perf at 4K too. There's a ton of resolution/format relevance to film with Dragon. Easily one of the best things I noticed once the sensor size was announced really.
Color. Dragon's color right now is really, really good. There's a technical and subjective answer here, so I'll leave it at that.
Dynamic Range. I've measured as deep at 19 visible stop variations though 17 is a better number that we can actually experience and use in real life conditions.
Image Character. Red has clearly done a lot to remove that digital fingerprint with Dragon. Highlights roll-off naturally. The images have texture. A pleasing texture.


That brings me to this post. Lots and lots of talk about noise, texture, grain lately. I want to show a bit of reality. Dragon is a digital cinema camera first after all.


Where does texture come into play with Dragon at each ISO? How does it compare to modern motion picture film stock?

Keeping in mind Red recommends a "cinema ready" ISO range of ISO 250-2000. Let's take a look.


Red Dragon ISO Texture Versus Film Grain

You can click each image and it will open into a new tab or window.


































I have a good memory.

Red's initial promise was to bring to market a viable "digital film alternative".

Perhaps now with Dragon we are looking at a potential realistic digital medium that surpasses film.
 
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Grain like this is very hard to judge because it's not moving. There's a difference between how digital noise is moving and how film grain is moving. The alexa is free of fixed pattern noise and it's "noise" is the closest to film I've seen. I haven't seen Dragon noise moving yet so I cannot tell if it's "good noise" or "bad noise". How it is on a blow up still image is very hard to judge compared to 35mm.
 
Great stuff! Thank you, Phil!

I do understand it correctly, that the 4K and 2K downscales of 6K are from the 6K 250ASA scan, right?
 
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Peter Majtan said:
Well done Phil!

Would be nice to show peeps the grain on 500 ASA stock compared to 500 ISO on Dragon (or even MX!) - just saying... :reddevil:
Click to expand...

Cheers Peter. I'll see what I can do. I no longer have an Mysterium-X on hand, but who knows. Maybe I can find one and a short end and a camera and a lab and a scanner :)


Christoffer Glans said:
Grain like this is very hard to judge because it's not moving. There's a difference between how digital noise is moving and how film grain is moving. The alexa is free of fixed pattern noise and it's "noise" is the closest to film I've seen. I haven't seen Dragon noise moving yet so I cannot tell if it's "good noise" or "bad noise". How it is on a blow up still image is very hard to judge compared to 35mm.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This is mostly to show the granular quality and visibility of the grain. In motion I find it pleasing. However, there will be other who don't want any texture at all.

Interestingly enough the newer digital delivery codecs play nicer with grain. I'll show that maybe in a week or so.
 
Thanks Phil,

I think its the color noise that starts to show up below middle grey in the bottom stops at around ISO 800 that people are talking about mostly. Like there is an area between zero black and the first and second stop above that has color noise.

The best part of this is to know about it so we can adjust accordingly. But this might all change in a week.

Battistella
 
Thanks, Phil.

BTW - I hate chroma noise :mad5:.
 
This is great to see, and important as well, Dragon vs Film comparison.
Thanks Phil!
 
Christoffer Glans said:
Grain like this is very hard to judge because it's not moving. There's a difference between how digital noise is moving and how film grain is moving. The alexa is free of fixed pattern noise and it's "noise" is the closest to film I've seen. I haven't seen Dragon noise moving yet so I cannot tell if it's "good noise" or "bad noise". How it is on a blow up still image is very hard to judge compared to 35mm.
Click to expand...

Most of the dragon noise moves and yes it looks far better than MX ans alexa noise especially if we talk alexa compressed / proress.


But there is a big / huge difference with film and digital. The sensor stands still and got all it's pixels in the same spot for every frame. Film on the other hand has silver particles that is randomly placed over the image plane. This gives film an upper hand when looking at a clip. So film resolution mesured on a single frame can look far less than what you see on a digital image but when you look at the clip in playback things will change as the silver layout is changing from frame to frame where as the Cmos sensor does not have such feature.
 
AWESOME Info and post Phil!

Wow.... Love it.
 
You know your stuff Phil and your posts are clever .

One thing though is being forgotten when compare films vs any other digital camera , in my experience as colorist , FILM pretty much never disappoint , it """"always""" have a good pleasant image , any other digital camera i have seen so far produce results that varies BIG time , sometimes great nice and rich , sometimes very much washed out , sometimes big color casts hues etc.. (Especially in pure straight daylight (and i am talking well exposed off course ), i have worked on ALEXA material that right off the camera was really great but other material from the same shoot where Horrible (again exteriors daylight well exposed ) , Same is for Red and F55 (did not had much of experience with dragon though )

on Film that never happen (unless is we'll over or well under exposed )

i've just finished to grade a feature film that has been shot part on film and part on Alexa and i cannot tell you how easier was to grade the film ... the alexa material sometimes was easy too , but sometimes was ""a nightmare ""...

so, to me feels that film response to various situations is much more organic and adaptive , while digital works well only under certain circumstances (image have to be naturally well contrasted + more)

g
 
Is the film grain from 5207?
 
Gabriele Turchi said:
You know your stuff Phil and your posts are clever .

One thing though is being forgotten when compare films vs any other digital camera , in my experience as colorist , FILM pretty much never disappoint , it """"always""" have a good pleasant image , any other digital camera i have seen so far produce results that varies BIG time , sometimes great nice and rich , sometimes very much washed out , sometimes big color casts hues etc.. (Especially in pure straight daylight (and i am talking well exposed off course ), i have worked on ALEXA material that right off the camera was really great but other material from the same shoot where Horrible (again exteriors daylight well exposed ) , Same is for Red and F55 (did not had much of experience with dragon though )

on Film that never happen (unless is we'll over or well under exposed )

i've just finished to grade a feature film that has been shot part on film and part on Alexa and i cannot tell you how easier was to grade the film ... the alexa material sometimes was easy too , but sometimes was ""a nightmare ""...

so, to me feels that film response to various situations is much more organic and adaptive , while digital works well only under certain circumstances (image have to be naturally well contrasted + more)

g
Click to expand...

Great point Gabriele.
 
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Gabriele Turchi said:
You know your stuff Phil and your posts are clever .

One thing though is being forgotten when compare films vs any other digital camera , in my experience as colorist , FILM pretty much never disappoint , it """"always""" have a good pleasant image , any other digital camera i have seen so far produce results that varies BIG time , sometimes great nice and rich , sometimes very much washed out , sometimes big color casts hues etc.. (Especially in pure straight daylight (and i am talking well exposed off course ), i have worked on ALEXA material that right off the camera was really great but other material from the same shoot where Horrible (again exteriors daylight well exposed ) , Same is for Red and F55 (did not had much of experience with dragon though )

on Film that never happen (unless is we'll over or well under exposed )

i've just finished to grade a feature film that has been shot part on film and part on Alexa and i cannot tell you how easier was to grade the film ... the alexa material sometimes was easy too , but sometimes was ""a nightmare ""...

so, to me feels that film response to various situations is much more organic and adaptive , while digital works well only under certain circumstances (image have to be naturally well contrasted + more)
Click to expand...


Heh. While I agree that film was "always" pleasant. It was a big pain in the butt for me back when I was a colorist. Pushing out color wedges, bath/lab variance, NG prints, getting the damn lightbox calibrated to the projector and the monitor, calibrating the laser recorder, etc.....

It was chaos. Chaos that got better over time, but I remember sitting in a theater about 27 miles from the studio and nearly pulling my hair out because what I saw on screen varied from what I had in a can back in the office.

Digital cinema cameras and digital delivery potentially eliminates much of that chaos. Exposure can be precisely nailed in camera in a way it hasn't been able to before.

Dragon rights a lot of the wrongs in my mind. You still need to shoot well, expose well, and take the appropriate steps when shooting.

I do think some digital cinema cameras have made people rather reckless when it comes to exposure which leads to colorist's nightmares, but typically in experienced hands who know and understand the cameras you're hitting home runs each time at bat. The tools are there right in front of you to do so.

graypatch.jpg



Once more film folks get to testing and shooting Dragon I'm more and more curious what their thoughts are on it. I know from a couple folks and at least two large productions going on right now where it's been used in combination with film that they have been more or less happy. Those are still shooting though.

I've done a fair chunk of tests now though and have been shooting "real stuff" too. I know what Dragon can do. I got strangely intimate with it. More so than Mysterium-X because I didn't hit as many walls and it made me want to look deeper.
 
Bob Gundu said:
Great point Gabriele.
Click to expand...


Maybe the DPs that shoot film are also just better. If you are rolling film everyone ups their game. I think each take matters just a bit more. I don't know If it's the cost or the importance or both, or maybe just film DPs know their shit.

battistella
 
Nicely done Phil, as always the time you take to do this test for us all to enjoy is always appreciated!!

I have always been one that USED to go in WAY too deep technically in to both the Gear I used and especially what it did and how it did, especially so with LENSES...

Since my near death experience I decided to change things and use my time for different things, as I was really just placing way too much importance in technical aspects and looks instead of other important things...

Now don't give me wrong, and don't miss understand me here, I LOVE what you are doing for us all... I no longer go in to so deep, and just care about Storytelling more then anything, and the reason why, is because if I go back and try to do what you do in this tests, I'll simply never GET OUT and shoot, which obviously is not your case... :)

Fact is that I amongst many here truly appreciate the time and work you put in to this detail tests and more time and work you put in actually posting it here for us all to see and take knowledge and notice of...

For this, to show you my personal appreciation, the next time I am in town I'll buy you Dinner... ;)
 
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