Red Epic x or red Raven

[Joe Cage]

Hello,

Next year I will have saved up some money to buy either a used red epic-x or a new red raven? I am leaning on the red epic-x. Mainly due the crop, I feel I could get a lot of more shallow depth of field out of the red epic x, as I shoot a lot of stuff even on fstop 1.4 on a full frame camera. I mainly shoot short films, music videos, commercials and travel videos.

Do you think that is the right choice, or would you rather go for a dragon sensor (raven or scarlet)?

Any input would be helpful

 

[Daniel Stilling]

Dragon sensor is the way to go. Absolutely. The crop on the Raven is really not that bad. Eye in the sky was all shot at 4K. Take a look at it...

 

[Joe Cage]

Thanks for your feedback. Just for better Dynamic Range and noise improvement, any other reason to go with a dragon(not that is not a big deal lol)? Yeah the eye in the sky was shot with a red epic dragon, so the crop factor isnt there. Is there an aesthetic difference between the epic dragon and raven dragon besides the crop?

Also wasnt blown away with the look of "the eye in the sky", "the girl with the dragon tattoo" shot on a red epic x looks way better (probably due to the DOP).

 

[Christoffer Glans]

(probably due to the DOP).

There are no films that are shot by a camera... all of them are shot by a DOP.

 

[Nathan DuMoulin]

Just for better Dynamic Range and noise improvement, any other reason to go with a dragon?

It's not just the sensor that you need to take into consideration, but also the DSMC1 versus DSMC2 feature set. For instance, Epic-X (DSMC1) requires manual black shading calibration, while Raven/Scarlet-W (DSCM2) do not.

Depending on your shooting style, the different features may be as relevant as the differences between the sensors.

 

[Joe Cage]

Thanks Nathan, yeah I need to take that in consideration.

Are there any videos out there where they compare each red camera to each other? like Red dragon EPIC vs RED dragon raven( and even red epic-x vs raven, and so on)?

Thanks!

 

[Daniel Stilling]

At 4K, the Epic Dragon and the Raven are using the exact same sensor size. With the Raven's image being slightly better due to different processing of the DSMC2 cameras, but, not taking into consideration the lenses, Eye in the sky, could have been shot with a Raven.
without taking into account which movie looks better, it goes to show you that even a Hollywood studio movie with a decent budget can and will use a 4K cut of the Dragon sensor to it's movies.

 

[Tarquin Cardona]

There are no doubt a lot of improvements in the DSMC2. The only thing that comes up a lot is that in testing for resolution it is well documented that the sweet spot for Red broadcast etc is to shoot 5K for 4K. That at 4K straight the Red can be a little underwhelming. That is not to say it is bad, but the 5K approach is best practice and where it really starts to shine. So to make things more tricky (sorry) I feel for the 3K body premium the SW is the kitty and if you just follow the herd here rather than listen to me, you will notice a lot of happy folk who switched.

 

[Joe Cage]

Well in the end a good 1080p image is the only thing that really matters for me. As I render/view/upload to vimeo on 720p or 1080p.

Thanks guys for your help, I am waiting to see some good videos that are shot on the raven, as I did not see any good video from it with very shallow depth of field yet. (I did see a good one with deep focus, but I even shoot at 50mm F1.4 on full frame cameras, and I did use the GH3 and GH4 a lot, but they have MFT mount which I could use f0.95 lenses on to even that out, then again the crop on this one isnt that bad as on a GH4, so I might get away with 1.4, 1.8 on the raven) Anyways I still got a lot of time to think about it, as probably ravens are back in stock in 2017

 

[David Peterson]

If you come from the GH world, then think of the RED Raven as having more or less the same crop factor as the GH2