Red Fashion Photography Dead?

[Iain Philpott]

As a beauty/fashion photographer 1st and foremost I've shot my fair share of RED pulling stills from motion. RED would always be my first choice if we HAD to pull the stills from motion but if it wasn't I would always prefer to shoot stills on a stills camera. Trying to shoot portrait with Dragon is a nightmare compared with a proper stills camera. I never got to use one but I believe it was much easier with RED's R90 but I believe there was so little demand it was dropped from production? Increasingly clients (at the moment) want to reflect imaging from social media trends, selfies etc which dictate lightweight portability and a reportage approach which is pretty far away from handholding a Dragon and trying to be inconspicuous out in the street!
Increasingly I've come to the opinion that it is easier to use separate cameras. You think you are saving time but invariably you are not. Also the notion to me is always slightly compromised by shutter angles/frame rates to get sharp still frames.
As for problems with heat and HMI's I have never come across that problem and we regularly burn 40k of HMI on hair ads.
As for fashion photography being dead……….. I've never heard such…… The fashion industry is currently worth $3000 trillion. The English women's magazines producing the right content are actually now growing readerships. There will always be a stills market and print is certainly not going to die, it will decline and sadly it will become the preserve of the rich. Ironically exactly where print began.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

I think the original poster meant it as RED-Fashion shot projects and not as Fashion in itself as been dead... As any one outside of a cave or actually even those in some caves I know of do know that Fashion is at his highest in Global following and sales with the largest variety of presence that ever was...

Having said that...

RED,

Will soon also be at it's highest ever presence in Fashion... No, not a fact yet, but a very strong opinion based on things I have been talking with some Industry heavy wait and content distributors of a series of projects that will include the Weapon 8k, including but not limiting to 8kVentuRED...

And while I haven't shot a fraction of the Fashion I intended to, things will be much different, soon...

And while I'll also make use of MF still cameras with a partial return to that workflow, lighting will still be Continuos, fit specifically for a combined workflow of Still & Motion, form both the Weapon and MF still camera of choice...

One thing for sure is that the feature of Fashion, and not only that, it is about to become much brighter for RED then it ever was...

 

[Mike Finegan]

I think the perspective that RED can't be used for stills should be re-evaluated now that 8K is available. Yes Red is much more expensive than say A7Rii, but if you do both fashion photography and also film, it has lots of advantages.
IMHO

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Shot this last week

 

[Mike Finegan]

Looks good!
Weapon 6K straight out of camera - just converted from .tif to jpg? What compression, lens, etc.?
Did you use multi frame capture mode (I ask as it seems there would be camera shake on single frame button press).

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Epic Dragon 6kHD 83fps 13:1 compression (It's a lovely moving slow motion shot)

1/120th shutter for flicker. Skintone highlight @ 800iso

Sony Cinealta 50mm wide open with 1/4 black pro mist

DEB + My own LUT + vignette in the corners + minor sharpening, all in Resolve. This is just a .jpg exported from resolve to show the client

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

Anton, try using ADD on this one, @ 1:1 (and maybe even lower) it's unusable...
STH @ 800 is noisy as hell (chroma noise unfortunately) and moreover the aggressive OLPFs approach used by RED in reducing resolution to avoid artifacts
is usually producing stunning and organic results in motion but for stills you'd have better used a simple DSLR or MirrorLess body...imho

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Yep, for stills I would do exactly as you said as well as use 2:1 or 3:1 compression. This is a slow motion shot primarily so the loss in exposure and compression were necessary.

 

[Josh Wilkinson]

Since making this thread I've had my Scarlet about 4 months, I'm totally blown away by the results I've been getting for my stills work (almost exclusively modeling work). In my indie level market my clients are loving the ability to do hybrid shoots and being able to pull frames. It's landed me a lot of work.
So I have answered my own original question. High end or Photography focused shoots will always go towards the best possible stills bodies, but for my market its serving me well.

I'm to the point of selling my Sony gear because I have no use for it anymore. I've only been working out usablitiy, going to try a belt clip and gradical to make it more handhold-able.


Anton the grab looks great, love how you lit that. Looks like a large silk or bounce?

 

[Anton Shavlik]

So now I'm going to out that shoot as being virtually 0 budget but,

I took the white backdrop supplied by the studio and hung it from the rafters. I own 3 fiilex p360ex which I shot into the center of the paper backdrop. The backdrop sagged so it naturally flagged itself off the back wall. If you look at the chair on the left you'll see it's only lit by a soft overhead light.

Next I took the 3 LED tubes I own, put one on the floor and clamped 2 to a c-stand. I also clamped a flag to keep the two upright LED tubes off the back wall and left chair, you can see the shadow this creates on the floor in the final image.

Finally there's a single ordinary light bulb directly behind the model just off camera right in one of those silver clamp work lights, snooted to just hit the back of the chair and model's head. All the lights were daylight balanced.

 

[Michael Crain]

It's Not Dead, just needs new blood.

It's Not Dead, just needs new blood.

I would say that fashion photography in general is dead. It's there and still visible, so perhaps thats hard to come to grips with, but from someone who has been successfully shooting it for 20 years - i consider it over. I think fashion was a 50 year era and fascination that it is no longer relevant.

I mean everywhere i Look I see Greg Kadel, Ben Watts, terry Richardson, Walter Chin, Guy Aroch photos everywhere.

Its not dead but hidden in many layers of shitty work.

 

[Michel Jaumin]

Fashion photography, cinephotography and film is definitely not dead. It is morphing into several new form of media art and use of technologies . By combining the stills and film, fashion is evermore in demand. The incredible response to fashion film festivals is growing daily .

The ability to work with stills and video and produce content for the fashion industry is only going to grow. Every major city has Fashion weeks, now, and there will be more. RED equipment is uniquely positioned to provide incredibly good images, for all formats of printed, still, film mediums.

 

[Keith B Plummer]

I have been shooting a lot of stills with my Scarlet lately. I'm using it more with less experienced models and people who just can't get comfortable. The ability to let them move around and relax feeling like they don't need a countdown, 3,2,1, seems to work. It's working out pretty well.