RED One slammed in Feb issue of AC?

[Jon B.]

The article title 'working with the Red' and the cover slug 'Assessing the Red' were both unenthusiastic and inaccurate headlines (as in working with the Red involves more than constant pain in the ass, and their coverage suggests that working with is nothing but) for a camera that garners a lot of positive attention.

 

[Nick Gardner]

The article was honest and to say that because it didn't try to put a positive spin on the facts that were reported, therefore Christopher and the magazine are "biased" is nonsense.

David, It didn't put a realistic spin on shooting with red. All points were valid at one point, based on early experience. If you choose to hire members of your team, that don't know the best ways to use a tool, that's on you, not the camera system. I thought the article might have made sense 12 months ago, but it was just ridiculous now.

Nick

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Just finished reading it. I guess I don't see the hubbub.

- The camera can overheat. If you're shooting in death valley bring cold packs. *Ding!*
- Bayer patterns can't deliver 1:1 resolution. Always shoot 4k if possible for supesampling *Ding!*
- The Red Drive can lose frames due to vibration or loud noises. Shoot Solid State or CF in such situations. CF Cards offer less space but the RAM is significantly more expensive. *Ding!*
- There are battery issues. They've been fixed but there are still old cameras in circulation be careful. *Ding!*
- The camera is daylight balanced. Shoot tungsten lighting, especially with largely warm colored sets, without accounting for the lost dynamic range or sensitivity and you'll get noisy underexposed images. *Ding!*
- Mysterium-X and Epic promise to help solve this problem. *Ding!*
- When you shoot highspeed you're using a 16mm portion of the sensor. Image quality will suffer and if you need to shoot wide you'll want s16 lenses on hand. *Ding!*
- Mysterium is a rolling shutter. Photo strobes can case split frames. Fast motion can cause skewed geometry. *Ding!*
- Startup takes 90 seconds. If that's a problem. Consider running off of larger batteries or a mainline to avoid restarts. *Ding!*
- Redcode is compressed. You can lose some subtleties of tone as a result. *Ding!*
- Hire knowledgeable and competant people to handle your r3d files. These are your negatives. *DING! DING! DING!*
- "Digital cinematography is evolving daily, and as the specifics of the tools we use change, the need for cinematographers to embrace that change and maintain our role as the author of the image is critical." *Ding!*
- "Just as Film has evolved and matured over the last century, so, too, will digital capture and that is something I'm very excited to witness and embrace." *Ding!*

I would say that's a pretty good summary of what someone selecting RED should know before shooting.

 

[Jon B.]

The points are and may be valid but it does not dismiss that an 'assessment' and 'working' with the Red involve much more than what he stated in his assessment. As in he disregarded any benefits. Completely biased assessment of working the RED ONE.

EDIT: And for the record I found his comments completely insightful and accurate as I could tell. He only forgot any positive assessment... yet continues to work with Red on projects. Hasn't he a choice as the cinematographer?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

After reading the article, I'm left wondering what he actually likes about the camera, and why he used it on 50 shoots when the article lists nothing but complaints.

If I was about to borrow your car I wouldn't ask you your favorite thing about its handling you would probably give the run down on what I need to know before heading out.

"It leaks a bit of oil, be sure to check it at every refuel. The cruise control is kind of confusing, you have to turn it on by using the switch to the left of the steering wheel then turn on cruise on the steering wheel. The fuel gauge isn't very constant, the first half of the tank goes a lot slower than the last half."

Guess what footage just came in for me to pull greenscreens from today? Shot by a reasonably famous DP.

Underexposed 2K footage shot with tungsten lighting at RC28.

And the best part: NOT A SINGLE SHOT AT 120FPS.

Haha, I feel your pain. Time to break out the ol' furnace denoise!

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The points are and may be valid but it does not dismiss that an 'assessment' and 'working' with the Red involve much more than what he stated in his assessment. As in he disregarded any benefits. Completely biased assessment of working the RED ONE.

Maybe he assumes that you've already seen RED footage and that's why you want a seasoned veteran's advice on what you should pay attention to.

But since you bring it up. What positive assessments would you (limited by word count and editorial considerations) have written in your article? Besides just saying "It creates really nice pictures!" I would say the fact that the fact that he said some of his best work was shot on the RED covered that adequately.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

The article was honest and to say that because it didn't try to put a positive spin on the facts that were reported, therefore Christopher and the magazine are "biased" is nonsense.

With all due respect David (which I say with complete sincerity) I agree that it is honest to report facts without putting a spin on them, but don't you think the article was quite focused on the negative facts, largely ignored the positive facts, and most importantly gets many of the technical facts completely wrong?

Graeme pointed out the technical errors here:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=546480&postcount=29
And what he says is not at all RED biased, it is purely technically correct.

The problem I have is that an AC article is full of technical inaccuracies and errors, stated as facts. Ignore whatever camera is being discussed, it's spreading mis-information from a supposedly authoritative source. And sometimes it's repeating those errors again in a really large font!

Technical topics the article gets completely wrong:
1) The physics of silicon photodetectors
2) Optical sampling theory
3) Data compression theory

I have no problem if he hasn't always had good experiences with the RED in practice on his 50 shoots.

I do have a problem if he thinks the RED shouldn't be good in theory because he's misunderstood some of the base technical theory, and the magazine is presenting that incorrect theory as fact.

 

[Tom Lowe]

You can politely take issue with a writer and facts (as Graeme has done) without disrespecting a revered, legendary publication and pillar of cinematography knowledge like American Cinematographer. You guys realize that David basically taught himself cinematography by reading hundreds of back issues of AC cover to cover?

That might help to explain why David hit the ceiling when he saw people dissing AC like it was some fly-by-night, two-bit, biased blog.

 

[Dan Graetz]

The article was honest and to say that because it didn't try to put a positive spin on the facts that were reported, therefore Christopher and the magazine are "biased" is nonsense. How can telling the truth be a sign of bias? If being honest is a "hatchet job", then we need more hatcheting and people need to develop a thicker skin. Sure, he could have been more politically correct and put a happy spin on everything -- in fact, a number of times in the article he mentioned that things were changing, being improved, etc. But not enough I guess to please people.

This is just the downside of releasing a product that is being refined and upgraded in the open air, in public. You can't have it both ways, get to participate in this grand experiment in developing this camera and yet expect people to not report on the problems they have run into.

I knew when I read the article that Chris was going to take a lot of crap from people here for daring to actually enumerate all of these real issues in a single article. He's a braver man than I am.

Fault him perhaps for not making a better effort to look on the bright side of the Red experience, but he wrote an honest account and we don't need to make the RedUser site look pathetic by posting a bunch of paranoid rants about how the ASC is "out to get Red" -- because it simply is not true. The magazine will only be valuable when it tries to avoid sugar-coating the filmmaking experience and report honestly. We get enough of those politically-correct "offend no one" puff pieces in industry rags and I was happy to read Chris' no-nonsense direct approach. I hope there are more articles like his -- about every tool out there -- but we won't get to that state if we slam articles that report the facts, even unpleasant truths, rather than try to sell people something. Leave the marketing to marketers.

The only problem with Chris' article is probably that it's six months too late; it would have been more valuable if it had come out in the midst of the main problems with the Red rather than at the tail-end of these problems just as they are being fixed. But that's the nature of magazine publishing and their lead times.

David, admittedly in my original rant I described Chris' points as obsolete - which in retrospect was a bit harsh. As others have noted since - he does make some good points. I suppose the source of my angst came more from AC's consistency (or lack thereof) in judiciously representing each emerging digital film technology that receives mainstream usage. With the sheer volume of R3Ds that have been shot at the highest levels of the industry, one would think that RED deserves to be covered more accurately, substantially and evenly by a publication as established as AC.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

If I was about to borrow your car I wouldn't ask you your favorite thing about its handling you would probably give the run down on what I need to know before heading out.

Actually, it just so happens that I'm constantly annoying people by telling them my favourite things about my car's handling, but that's also the reason why I won't let anyone borrow it! :driving:

It is a good analogy, though, and you're spot on that he's got many of the usability facts about working with the camera correct, but the problem I have, as outlined in my message above, is that he got many of the technical facts wrong, and to me, that's the equivalent of saying:

"Sure, borrow my car. Just so you know... In the real world, the only way it could hit 200 mph like the speedometer says would be if you filled the tires with helium, the car designers' decision to make a car that obeys Newton's laws of motion was a little shortsighted, and unfortunately it gets 30 miles per gallon while my Dad's truck gets, on average, 3.75 mpg."

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I might say something about the CF workflow and ability to look at your footage and edit it within feet of the camera with a laptop.

That's not terribly exciting anymore. Every digital camera system lets you play back on set. This has already been covered to death by AC. Read the article on shooting Zodiac. Practically half of the article was devoted to how great it is with digital technology to view your footage right there on set. So why waste precious print space to layout the obvious?

What about color science changing and being able to view and change old footage?

Maybe useful to people shooting stock photography, but how often do you ever change old footage? I just finished archiving a RED project this afternoon in which I bundled together all of the exact settings I used in case I needed to re-render footage for some reason in the future and so that I could get exactly *THE SAME* image as the old footage.

What about having hard drives full of images at your desk?

Again though, not unique to RED so much as digital in general. I have hard drives full of images from all manner of cameras including DPX files from film.

What about a user forum where the entrepreneurs behind the camera system respond to criticism and keep their users relatively up to date?

Or they could just read the AC article and get up to speed in about 20 minutes on most of the important information on REDuser.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

I don't think AC is biased against the RED ONE:

1) Mentioned in the Editor's Note
2) Mentioned in the NYFA ad
3) Mentioned in the Clairmont ad
4) Mentioned in the Dollhouse article
5) Mentioned and shown in the Cavision ad
6) Featured in a large article illustrated with some fantastic shots
7) Mentioned and shown in the Offhollywood article
8) Mentioned and shown several times on 3 pages of the New Products & Services section
9) Mentioned and shown in the studentfilmmakers.com ad

In fact, there are more images of the RED ONE than any other camera model, or any series of cameras from one manufacturer.

It's just a shame that the feature article on the RED got several base technical facts about digital imaging (not just the RED specifically) wrong.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

I just finished archiving a RED project this afternoon in which I bundled together all of the exact settings I used in case I needed to re-render footage for some reason in the future and so that I could get exactly *THE SAME* image as the old footage.

A tip that I learned the hard way: also bundle up all the versions of whatever software you used, like RED apps, other companies' apps that use the SDK, and editing software if you are saving project files.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

A tip that I learned the hard way: also bundle up all the versions of whatever software you used, like RED apps, other companies' apps that use the SDK, and editing software if you are saving project files.

And with REDCine at only 3MB it's practically nothing!

 

[Jon B.]

You are correct Gavin, but the things that drive me to use the camera justify what I need to learn in order to be successful.

Many criticisms are correct but they also elude to the fact that people/businesses take shots at RED for ulterior reasons. I hear it all the time, 'well I hear this' and 'I hear that'... It actually tickles me to hear them complain as if someones forcing them to talk about it. Life sucks. Screw it all.

Ha ha. Goodnight y'all. Read you tomorrow.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

And with REDCine at only 3MB it's practically nothing!

Thankfully, RED keeps old versions of that, and Red Alert! on their site, but I do worry that one day that might not be the case... I did find myself scrambling for an older version of Clipfinder at one point, and couldn't find it anywhere!

 

[Dan Graetz]

I don't think AC is biased against the RED ONE:

1) Mentioned in the Editor's Note
2) Mentioned in the NYFA ad
3) Mentioned in the Clairmont ad
4) Mentioned in the Dollhouse article
5) Mentioned and shown in the Cavision ad
6) Featured in a large article illustrated with some fantastic shots
7) Mentioned and shown in the Offhollywood article
8) Mentioned and shown several times on 3 pages of the New Products & Services section
9) Mentioned and shown in the studentfilmmakers.com ad

In fact, there are more images of the RED ONE than any other camera model, or any series of cameras from one manufacturer.

It's just a shame that the feature article on the RED got several base technical facts about digital imaging (not just the RED specifically) wrong.

Yikes - clearly I haven't been paying enough attention. So I guess my rant can claim justification on this article alone. (what's the emoticon for sheepish grin?)

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You guys have cut Red slack for over two years to "get it right" and let them keep improving the camera... then why not cut AC magazine some slack? You know they are going to keep covering Red productions over time and that the coverage will only get better. Red is not the only one evolving over time, so is the industry's response to it. AC published that article because they want to give more attention to Red due to reader interest... and slamming them for this will only cause them to think twice about covering the Red in the future. Sure, it's a mixed blessing because it's a mixed article, but as I said, it's an evolutionary process going on here, just as Jim Jannard opening the Red Studio in Hollywood is part of an evolution.

Taking a partisan attitude of us vs. them is only going to slowdown the process. If you guys keeping shouting at every critic like rabid fans at some pro wrestling match, you're only going to marginalize the camera and the company because it will be harder to take it seriously.

 

[Dan Graetz]

You guys have cut Red slack for over two years to "get it right" and let them keep improving the camera... then why not cut AC magazine some slack? You know they are going to keep covering Red productions over time and that the coverage will only get better. Red is not the only one evolving over time, so is the industry's response to it. AC published that article because they want to give more attention to Red due to reader interest... and slamming them for this will only cause them to think twice about covering the Red in the future. Sure, it's a mixed blessing because it's a mixed article, but as I said, it's an evolutionary process going on here, just as Jim Jannard opening the Red Studio in Hollywood is part of an evolution.

Taking a partisan attitude of us vs. them is only going to slowdown the process. If you guys keeping shouting at every critic like rabid fans at some pro wrestling match, you're only going to marginalize the camera and the company because it will be harder to take it seriously.

Fair points David. But how can we expect AC's coverage to improve if no-one points out technical errors and the lack of balance? If by your estimation we've got enough power to marginalize a camera and an entire company through nothing more than forum postings - then surely that same power could have a positive effect in pushing AC to better journalism?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Fair points David. But how can we expect AC's coverage to improve if no-one points out technical errors and the lack of balance? If by your estimation we've got enough power to marginalize a camera and an entire company through nothing more than forum postings - then surely that same power could have a positive effect in pushing AC to better journalism?

There is a lot more than pointing out "Technical Errors" though. Calling AC a biased rag that one will never buy again doesn't encourage an editor to court that audience. If this thread had been. "Hey just read an Article on RED in AC that was full things to avoid doing but provided very little advice on getting the best image out of the camera" then you would probably have the full ear of the editors.

In fact I'm not sure I remember reading a single "Techincal Error" in that article.

EDIT: Oh right he said that dynamic range was affected by REDCode. That one might be a legitimate technical gaff.

EDIT EDIT: No I take that back. That's not a gaff. There are shots I would have been willing to dig a lot deeper into but the noise was getting too muddy due to REDCode. I'll disagree with Graeme on that one. It's an aesthetic decision whether or not noise is tolerable and personally fine noise is ok but compressed noise less so.