RED ONE to have slow shutter/intervalometer capability?

[Jim Arthurs]

Keeping the shutter open for up to 10 seconds in a step print (step record) timelapse function is a great goal. The RED-ONE control system does allow exposures longer than a single frame.

Hi Stuart... there are basically two different questions floating around in this thread, some are asking about accumulation exposure effects and the others just simply wondering what the longest time exposure you can make with the RED under any frame-rate condition (David and I fall under the second catagory at the moment).

What I'm reading between the lines on RED Team answers is that you're not ready to reveal that info, and that it's possibly a moving target still as development goes on, is that correct?

If so, let's flip this on it's head... tell us what's the longest exposure you're willing to garantee at this point. I assume that 1/24 second is a safe bet (360degree shutter at 24fps)? How about 1/12 second... Or 1/6 second, 1/4 second, or...?

Somewhere in the range of potential exposures from 1/48 of a second to "bulb", is a number that you could feel comfortable confirming, I'd think...

Regards

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I'd assume that if the camera can run normally at 1 to 60 fps, then you can be sure that at 1 fps with a 360 degree shutter, you'd get 1 second per frame exposures, which is why I was asking if its possible to go even longer when in time lapse mode.

 

[Stephen Williams]

I'd assume that if the camera can run normally at 1 to 60 fps, then you can be sure that at 1 fps with a 360 degree shutter, you'd get 1 second per frame exposures, which is why I was asking if its possible to go even longer when in time lapse mode.

Hi David,

Exactly,with timelapse I have often used 12 seconds exposures and a ND3.0 (10 stops).

Stephen

 

[Stuart English]

Timelapse max exposure

Timelapse max exposure

We'll know the maximum exposure time possible when we've performed some more specific tests. But the goal of 10 sec or so is understood.

As for "Slow Shutter" again, if someone says "i must have this feature or your camera cannot be used" then I'd just like to know what the specific effect is that is being requested. It is not clear to me what it is that SloS offers that a properly designed timelapse wouldn't.

Any specifics on that anyone?

 

[Greg Syverson]

The choice of a fraction or several seconds would allow me the freedom to capture the auroras. When they are moving fast and are very bright, I could balance the movement of the auroras with the shutter speed. When they move very slow I can let them burn in making a bright image with good detail in the moon lit foreground.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I wouldn't say the goal is "ten seconds." Frankly, 45 seconds to one minute would be a more logical goal. 99% of day timelapse shooting can be done in under 1 second. The main reason to have exposures longer than 1 second would be for night shooting, and for night shooting -- trying to capture the stars, etc, you need a 20- to 50-second exposure time. The difference between being able to shoot 1 or 5 second exposures is not what most people are asking for. The real difference kicks in once you can go over about 15 or 20 seconds, because then you can shoot at night.

 

[Jim Arthurs]

Stuart, I can't speak to the needs or wants of the accumulation folks, but for "standard" slow shutter time-lapse that I've done in the past, everything in these links is mine, all shot on 35mm;

http://www.fotosearch.com/digital-vision-video/drifting-skies/DGV711/
http://www.fotosearch.com/digital-vision-video/bumper-to-bumper/DGV717/
http://www.fotosearch.com/photodisc-film/storm-clouds/EYW766/
http://www.fotosearch.com/photodisc-film/clouds/EYW717/
http://www.timelapsesource.com/

I point these out because every shot in all these links fall into two catagories; "Daylight" timelapse (50 ASA stock, exposure times from 1/4 to 4 seconds) and "Night" timelapse (400 ASA stock, exposure times from 4 to 8 seconds). So, for me, 1/4sec to 10 seconds would be a welcome range to see, with intervals ranging from 2 frames/sec up to 1 frame a minute. Of course "more" is better, more interval choices, more exposure choices, etc.

Now I don't currently do stock work, but I'm still interested in RED filling the gap between my good 'old 35mm Wall and the DSLR's... when you want to bang out 2 frames a second at 4K rez for 1800 frames or so... well, the DSLR's are still "challenged"...

 

[Tom Lowe]

BTW if you are fitting an internal intervalometer make it versatile.
Please include shutter speed, length of shot frames and/or seconds, if possible camera power down and power up and an aperture priority mode where the shutter speed will vary depending on the light level (meaning the camera is able to be left running on it's own with very little in the way of supervision)

Sorry to go off topic a bit, but is this something that can be done in a timelapse? I've often wondered how I could leave a timelapse running from afternoon and have it transition to night. Obviously using auto-exposure with Ap priority would work, but my fear is that the changes in the shutter speed will be visible in the final result -- ie, you would suddenly notice jumps in exposure, resulting in a flickering image?

 

[anamibia]

Stuart,

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart English
As for "Slow Shutter" again, if someone says "i must have this feature or your camera cannot be used" then I'd just like to know what the specific effect is that is being requested. It is not clear to me what it is that SloS offers that a properly designed timelapse wouldn't.

Any specifics on that anyone?



the realtime feedback aspect alone radically distinguishes the slowshutter/framestore technique from the post solutions that've been suggested.

One of the fundamental differences between digital and photochemical image capture is the relative elimination of latency in digital capture. For example, by analogy, one has a musical instrument, say a trumpet. One blows into the trumpet but no sound comes out. Instead a card pops out. The card is then processed, placed back into camera and one hears "toot". Sounds ridiculous right. But, obviously, this sort of latency has been an essential aspect of photochemical image capture since it's inception. In fact, like film grain, it's been valorized as part of the "magic" of film.

A relatively few slowshutter settings (1/30, 1/12, 1/6, 1/3 sec) can produce quite a few amazing effects. I love, for example, shots which play with relative blur of figures in space and motion. Again, to use a musical analogy, slowshutters/framestore effects allow one to create images which register, sequentially, a non tempered gaze. In other words, the frame as a continuity of instances rather than a single fixed instant. Many non western musics, as opposed to western classical music, have a tendancy to "worry the note", ie. they treat notes as inherently semi-stable sonic phenomena. This tendency, this flux, for instances, is a primary source of black american music's (jazz, blues, rnb, rock, hip hop) power.

The ability to guage, calibrate, adjust, manipulate these effects in (relatively speakingy) realtime brings to bear on the creation of moving pictures the entire rich body of musical complexity and nuance. And, more importantly, would allow the creative individual an unprecedented ability to achieve signature specificity in ones moving pictures (ie. the "voice" of hendrix, streisand, aretha, cobain, miles, etc. in visual terms).

I'd readily pay an additional five grand for the abilty to select slowshutter speeds(/framestore) in any fraction of a second. (Imagine the ability to expose individual frames, in sequence, at different shutter speeds)

I could go on, but simply put, red, by bringing this feature to 4k capture has a real opportunity to fundamentally enrich the future of moving picture making.

 

[Keith Brust]

1 minute exposure if possible

1 minute exposure if possible

I shoot lots of time lapse for documentary work. It would be extremely useful to have at least a 40 second exposure. While I can do great time lapse with digital slrs (especially nightscapes), I can't transition the shots to real time. If the RED had a long exposure I could (and certianly would) use it for senic shots flowing from starscapes to realtime sunrise. With my moco head I can see the shots already.... camera panning as stars cross sky (also reflected in pond) as sun rises ramp to real time, pan ends as moose comes into frame with water dripping from antlers. I would have used this technique several times on the sequence I shot for PLANET EARTH. I would love to be able to do this. So, if possible please, please, please on long exposures.


keith@wildtimemedia.com

 

[Keith Nealy]

What exactly is frame accumulation?

What exactly is frame accumulation?

Jim, your time lapse stuff is beautiful.

But as one who is interested in going beyond those time-honored techniques with new technology let me offer these quotes from two articles to help Stuart understand what we are talking about with Frame Accumulation.

From :

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/minisites/xdcamhd/f/mwhatsnew/6335.html

Interview with Cameraman Mark Falstad

What exactly is frame accumulation?

It’s a variable setting on the camera that lets you decide how many frames’ worth of light you can accumulate before you lay down to the disk. In my case, it worked as a light amplifier. I had 60 frames of light making up one frame, so I was multiplying the light that was there times 60. One of the Sony support engineers volunteered to babysit the camera overnight while we were doing the Northern Lights, so I set it up on 9 dB wide open, set up 60-frame accumulation, and added time lapse to it. That night the Northern Lights were fairly faint. It wasn’t a spectacular show by any means, and this camera was able to capture that.

I used it in one other place — Squentin, a checkpoint, and there’s no light there but the Teklights that you wear on your head, the little LED lights, and the mushers have slightly bigger headlamps that they wear, but there’s no other light at the checkpoint. With frame accumulation, the checkpoint was clearly lit up by these little lights. To compose the frame, there was a tree 20 or 30 feet from me, and I turned my tek light on it and illuminated the tree. We shot some other buildings at night, set at 9 dB or 12 dB wide open, and you don’t see them at all. But you turn frame accumulation on and, boom, they’re there. Obviously it’s a tool that has specific uses.

How many frames were you shooting in each case?

We were shooting one frame every five seconds at the checkpoint, and one frame every 10 seconds for the Northern Lights.

What other ways does this camera change your job?

To go look at [our frame-accumulated shots], you look at a thumbnail and see the shot instantly, and that’s wonderful. As a person who shot tape for a gazillion years,

From another article:
My favorite pictures were the time lapses of teams arriving using the frame accumulation feature. The camera was set up to record one frame every five seconds for time lapse. With frame accumulation, each recorded frame was made up of 60 frames of video. This basically amplified the light 60 times without any noise. We turned off the Ultralights, and in almost total darkness, I shot a time lapse of teams arriving in Skwentna lit only by the headlamps.

--------------
this from

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=598277

Matthew Ernest Adams


the frame accumulation actually takes place in the within the camera and you'll see the result immediately in your viewfinder.

Say you're using the 60 frame accumulation (shooting 60i or 30p), the image will not change for two seconds as it is using the light value from all 60 frames on one single frame. Essentially, you only want to accumulate enough frames to make the picture viewable and not too dark, so if five frame accumulation gives you a properly exposed image use just five frames. If you push it up higher than needed, you'll get more motion blur and IMHO a less fluid shot.

When used in combination with time lapse, frame accumulation becomes a great tool for night time lapses.

Stuart I'm sorry I can't give you the actual technology that they use but hopefully you can glean enough from this thread.
Sony puts out free demo DVD's on XDCAM-HD with all these videos and descriptions of the techniques. It might be worth it to get them and compare your tests with their results as a benchmark.

Aloha,

Keith

 

[ColinSmith]

For interest I've put up a little clip of "frame accumulation" worked up in post.

1sec_rolling_exposure.mov (43mb) (right click, save as...)

It's a Sony FX1 HDV piece, shot entirely as 25p (well, cineframe but you know what I mean) and reworked in post.

Background was worked to a simple timelapse.
Foreground had 25 frames blended for each new frame. It runs at 25fps, but each individual frame has a 1 second exposure.

So, fun stuff to play with, could be done in camera, but is it a better option?
By doing it in post you have complete control over how many frames to blend, and fade, whether to blend or add frame, or some mix of the two.... all things you would have to preselect on camera.

Only real advantage is reducing the amount of footage to capture.... and the duration of the shot will determine if that is a big deal or not.

 

[tj williams]

David can someone jump in and explain this to me??????

If you accumulate 24 frames and blend them together into one frame....
or
If you keep the shutter open for 1 second and record the result as one frame....

if you do this over and over and play the results back at 24 fps....

how do you tell the difference????? I gotta admit I'm boggled.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I shoot lots of time lapse for documentary work. It would be extremely useful to have at least a 40 second exposure. While I can do great time lapse with digital slrs (especially nightscapes), I can't transition the shots to real time. If the RED had a long exposure I could (and certianly would) use it for senic shots flowing from starscapes to realtime sunrise. With my moco head I can see the shots already.... camera panning as stars cross sky (also reflected in pond) as sun rises ramp to real time, pan ends as moose comes into frame with water dripping from antlers. I would have used this technique several times on the sequence I shot for PLANET EARTH. I would love to be able to do this. So, if possible please, please, please on long exposures.


keith@wildtimemedia.com

You shot for Planet Earth?? :w00t:

Which sequence?

 

[ColinSmith]

A traditional timelapse with 1s exposure could only be shot at 1fps, so playing that 1fps clip back at 24fps would speed things up, show clouds moving faster etc.

A frame acculation giving 1s total exposure is still recorded at 24fps, so can playback at 24fps with realtime motion, just now with motion blur equal to a 1s exposure.

My clip a few posts up shows both techniques in the one shot.


If you are asking about the difference in a single FRAME between a 1s exposue and 24 blended 1/24 exposures? There is none at all.
The difference comes by being sneaky and blending CONTINUOUS groups at 24 frames to get the 24fps playback instead of 1fps.

Or of course with Red you could shoot at 60fps, mixing it up and add blending to get a slo-mo shot, but with controllable amounts of motion blur, or....... lots more options.... ;-)

 

[Morning Glory]

Bolex single frame variable shutter

Bolex single frame variable shutter

I'm SO glad this thread exists. More than any other so far. I own a few bolexes, and my favourite feature is the single frame variable shutter, where the shutter stays open for as long as you hold the shutter button. I've often stopped down 3 stops from what I would expose 24fps and then animate or pixelate an object or person, using a slightly different shutter speed for each frame. sometimes adjusting the aperture, sometimes not. so yes, you get some over and underexposed frames in there, usually I would choose a rhythm for my variable/manual shutter speeds, long long long short short for example, which gives a wonderful visual rhythm. As well I loved staying on the object for 3/4 of the exposure and then quickly twisting away, or pushing in, pulling out, etc. very poetic and dreamy. Perhaps not a wide use of this possible addtition to the functionality of RedONE, but one I would use often and perhaps the one 'effect' I would otherwise use film for.

So, I guess my addtion to the requests in this thread is, is there is a variable shutter setting, esp one that goes into the seconds, a wonderful option for me would be to have the shutter speed tied to the record button, or a user assigned button on the super grip, that would open the shutter when pressed and the release it when released.

Thanks for listening.

 

[JohnF]

Stuart,

As for "Slow Shutter" again, if someone says "i must have this feature or your camera cannot be used" then I'd just like to know what the specific effect is that is being requested. It is not clear to me what it is that SloS offers that a properly designed timelapse wouldn't.

Any specifics on that anyone?

There are many different effects slow-shutter can produce, it is a creative tool that is often requested or is needed to deliver a shot required by a client. It can vary from a natural world landscape shot capturing stars over a landscape to a frenzy of motion blur in a music video.

Ron Fricke's photography in "Koyaanisqatsi" is a great example of the creative potential of slow shutter filming.

The model shots of 2001 were shot on slow shutter so the camera team could stop the lens right down to give the correct DOF to allow the correct perception of scale to the audience.

There is a (very good) shot of a thunderstorm using this technique that is used in almost every doc on the weather. (it's probably made a fortune for the person who shot it) The cloud is illuminated from the inside whilst it billows upwards and approaches camera - whilst stars move in the BG.

There was a BBC doc on the history of Rock last night and low and behold there were shots using slow shutter that bridged sequences. In this case a camera driving down a road in New York set on slow-shutter. Whilst the car was moving everything was a trail of various colured lights when it stopped the landscape revealed itself.

I get asked to produce these kinds of shots for even mundane work like corporate work. (The HQ building at night with cars streaming past as rays of light)

Slow shutter work generally breaks down into two types:

1. Obtaining shots of subjects/landscapes where the light level is such (low) that a "normal" exposure simply wouldn't work.

2. The want for more motion blur be it light trails of moving objects (cars at night) or the subject(s) to appear blured.

All the above would not be possible without slow shutter. Normal shutter speed t-lapse would only "freeze" action per frame or not capture enough light to reveal the subject.

I hope that gives you enough info!

Sorry to go off topic a bit, but is this something that can be done in a timelapse? I've often wondered how I could leave a timelapse running from afternoon and have it transition to night. Obviously using auto-exposure with Ap priority would work, but my fear is that the changes in the shutter speed will be visible in the final result -- ie, you would suddenly notice jumps in exposure, resulting in a flickering image?

Tom,

Aperture Priority surprised me by not producing sudden changes in look or feel when I experimented with unattended cameras. The playback overall seemed fine. What's more by locking the lens in this mode it prevented anykind of "breathing" in the lens which can also change the feel of a shot (eg changing DOF or diffraction). What I did notice were things like birds flying through frame at the time of shot would look like dots in the middle of the day but as dusk came they would have a little more in the way of blur. But note this way of shooting only applies to certain subjects some require more than just "automatic" care!

Back OT:

Post based frame accumulation has issues too. Sometimes the algorithm (or whatever) can "average out" the very subject you wanted to capture. Point sources or distant lights are subject to dissapearing using this technique. Cam based frm-acc quality will also depend on the maths of processing (it might be very good for certain subjects but rubbish for others)

In the end slow shutter would definitely capture the subject.

JohnF

 

[tj williams]

Ok Colin so I'm a little slow here.
So you play the frame accumulation of the 24 frames per second which have each frame identical to the a 1 second exposure. Or you, write a macro and blend the 1 second exposures in a series of dissolves and play the result in real time....

The difference is????

 

[ColinSmith]

No worries, I have this feeling I am not explaining it very well at all ;-)

The 24fps frame accumulation really does have 24 different frames per second, it is just that they overlap each other.

You have a bunch of regular 1/24 frames.
Frame 1 of the accumulation blends together the regular frame numbers 1 to 24.
Frame 2 of the accumulation blends together frames 2 to 25
3 = 3 to 26

Each accumulation is effectively a 1s exposure, but the "zone" being blended moves at 24fps too.....


If instead you cross fade a series of 1second exposures to give a 24fps playback then you are loosing the intermediate motion. If I am on one side of the room for the first 1s exposure, and on the other side for the second exposure, no cross fade will be able to show me in the middle, where in the frame accumulation take I would be a blur moving from one side of the room to the other..... a 1s long motion blur, but the "front edge" still moving at true speed.

How different it looks depends on the subject

 

[Jim Arthurs]

To all, in regards to the accumulation effect... isn't it also achievable in post with exactly the same results?

Using Colin's example above, take a recorded stream of 1/24sec exposures (360 degree shutter) and simply use your compositing app of choice to do the same effect?

Depending on the blending method (additive or normal, or...), you can either make the resulting stream effect an additive accumulation of originally under-exposed images that jointly build up to a normal exposure (light accumulation), or properly exposed images simply blended together... each of these blending methods have their place, but if done "in camera" then you are locked into the look the camera gave you with no option to change it.

Here's an example... let's say you're having to under-expose three stops because you simply can't get enough light... and you want to shoot the RED at 24 fps, with 360 degree shutter and in your compositing app blend three frames together for one using an additive blend... then you have your exposure back to normal and the motion blur length is equal to three frames worth of the original footage frames,

Of course with this example, you could simply shoot at 8 frames a second properly exposued with a 360 degree shutter in the first place! The only visual difference would that any individual frames noise is blended over three frames so the noise floor is perhaps smoother...

As far as I can see, there's no magic with frame accumulation that can't be achieved in post as long as you can record at 360 degree shutter at your desired frame rate.

Of course there are times when you just want lots of footage processed quickly and be done with it, and see the effect real-time on your evf, and hardware based in camera processing is good for that, BUT you aren't excluded from the ultimate final result of an accumulation effect with the existing operation of the RED as we currently understand it.