Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RED, please don't close down threads...

ignition

ignition

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 6, 2008
Messages
226
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Victoria, Australia
Website
www.ignition.com.au
I stumbled across the "alexa mini VS red weapon the hope is over" thread and whilst it predominantly read (to me) as a pointless debacle of slings and arrows I felt a tad jilted by the final "closing this down as it's run it's course" dialog and closed thread.

I wholesale disagree with this bizarre nature of people to split creative digital technology into factions they feel compelled to align themselves to and then defend (usually by slagging the shortcomings of the opposite). It reminds me dreadfully of modern politics. I don't think it has any place in the arts; IMO the more you defend your position based on technical criteria, the less I think you care about tangible outcomes - simply because I've never watched anything with anyone outside of filmmaking circles and *ever* heard them talk about what it was "shot on" and certainly not "loved it but wished it was shot on".

In the end, the images speak for themselves; the filmmaker chooses the aesthetic that faithfully supports their vision.

I think the pro industry as a whole (Arri, Sony, RED, etc.) has a lot bigger fish to fry with the prosumer tech and the "good enough" sensibilities that seem to dictate a lot of productions these days. The craft of curating moving images has very much changed from aesthetic perfection to content generation. That's a far more dangerous proposition than the kinds of arguments I see people spilling blood over.

I own a Dragon, and am upgrading to Weapon, jointly because I love the innovation and I love the images it produces to tell my stories. I'm wholly excited by Arri, love what they're doing and love how it keeps RED on their toes. Some of my favorite film and TV experiences over the last year have been shot on Arri; it lets me acknowledge the beauty of their format, but it doesn't suddenly make me want to jump ship in some foolhardy belief that the stories I'm hoping to tell will be better if I use what they did. I look at what my Dragon shoots, and I love it, and I'm excited about how it conveys my own stories.

Anyhow, to address the subject of this post, setting aside my pragmatism outlined above, I do believe companies deeply connected to their customers produce the best products. "Voice of the customer" is important (insomuch as it's the common customer) but not nearly as important as embracing modern design thinking principles that embrace the extremes - naysayers and advocates - who demonstrate the greatest strengths and faults in what you do.

So shutting down threads of debate - however trivial, technical or slanderous they might seemingly become - seems (to me) very counter intuitive to the kind of innovation RED has pioneered a market in, become renowned for, and has built such a strong reputation and following because of.
 
In something of a bit of irony, I doubt this is the right section to place the thread. LOL
 
Probably. I'm on the Weapon upgrade and a RED advocate.

Please share your interpretation of irony and suggestion for a better thread?
 
I didn't close that one, but........

It really helps in threads such as that if the thread starter has any experience or owns the cameras being talked about. In this case neither of those things were "real".

Trolling is sometimes just trolling.
 
Phil Holland said:
I didn't close that one, but........

It really helps in threads such as that if the thread starter has any experience or owns the cameras being talked about. In this case neither of those things were "real".

Trolling is sometimes just trolling.
Click to expand...

+1

Very nice way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
 
Not sure about moving this to the complaints department as clearly I'm happy with the RED ecosystem I keep investing in.
 
What amazed me in that thread was the patience and willingness senior redusers showed in giving the OP the benefit of the doubt before it became clear that he could not, or would not back up his assertions. If you believe what you say, that supporting factions is something to be avoided, re-read that OPs posts. They were clearly antagonistic, biased towards design choices he thought the other manufacturers made, the acceptance he was shown here at reduser.net, notwithstanding. I thought it was trolling too.
 
Yes, they close threads for no reason!.

More than a year ago I started a thread about a feature that Alexa sensor has, that I believe is the reason why, Alexa cameras blown less highlights compare to Red cameras.
One moderator took it personal for some reason, and closed the thread after some discussion.
But that only tells me one thing: I was right and he didn't want to admit it.
After reading the specs over and over again, I came to the conclusion, that Alexa sensors do HDR, even when they don't advertise or emphasize that feature much.
And the only reason why I posted that, is because I thought Red engineers could take advantage of that, but obviously was a mistake, still, is not a reason for somebody to close a thread, only because he has a different opinion!.
You can read it by yourself at Arri's website (bottom of the page), and make your own conclusion. Anyway here's an excerpt (copy-paste) of the feature again, even if I get banned once again, I don't care:


Dual Gain Architecture on Alexa Sensors.


"The Dual Gain Architecture simultaneously provides two separate read-out paths from each pixel with different amplification. The first path contains the regular, highly amplified signal. The second path contains a signal with lower amplification, to capture the information that is clipped in the first path. Both paths feed into the camera's A/D converters, delivering a 14 bit image for each path. These images are then combined into a single 16 bit high dynamic range image. This method enhances low light performance and prevents the highlights from being clipped, thereby significantly extending the dynamic range of the image."
 
Last edited:
Hi.

I closed that thread. I rarely do that. But I can explain why and don't mind being beat down for it :)
I really like discussions of pro's and cons of different systems, and wish them welcome.
I learn a lot from them, and so do others.

BUT
There is a record of loopy discussions where one part
a) Comes with opinions about systems (GREAT!)
b) Does get passionate responses (GREAT!)
c) Rebutes those responses with even more opinions (GREAT)
d) Gets asked to document some of the wilder and more obscure claims, to let others evaluate what has given he/she that impression (GREAT)
e) Doesn't even comment on that but loops back to a)

Thing with these circles is that they can become "truths", without merit. And if they are true, they should be documented and dealt with.

The OP has two main complaints about weapon:
Lack of internal NDs and FIZ motor controls.
Both valid. :)

But then it develops into a general undocumented bashing of the RED system, color science and all.
I for one am (even here on reduser) fine with that. But as those arguments are bordering on subjective "taste" issues, I would prefer them to be backed up with image examples so that at least it's possible to discuss what he/she sees.
That's partly why I have been very supportive of Geoff Boyle and his work.
He shows the cameras in a way which is very likely for a user to use them, and Geoff does post in very probable ways. And documents how he did things in all parts of the chain.
Now if he "fucks up" as some claim, I know it's not out of bad will or spite, but because he does things the way he'd do them.
And as users go, Geoff is not the most incompetent I know. (understatement...)
So if he "fucks up", there is probably something in the RED approach which maybe should be made clearer/moe obvious to some users.

It is actually a lot to be learned from his criticism on any system.
Now, he isn't always the most polite commentator, and he doesn't mind a brawl.
Then again, there are other with large enough egos around, who actually have a bit of merit with their statements.
Look at what he does.


On the other hand there is a lot of hearsay harming many brands. Things that happened years ago and have been rectified, but those experiences live on as current FUD, because people repeat them often enough. And those should be addressed here, and not be fed further.

REDone was a buggy little camera when it was released as an announced BETA
And was (to me) Dead stable through hundreds of shootingdays since I think september/october 2008.

Unfortunately in some way, RED re-did that experience with Epic. It was buggy when released as BETA in 2011, and was again stable from October/November that same year.

These experiences I have and I have no issues with them.
Also I have the experience that RED fixed both, and when RED said "release", the cameras worked well.
Personally I don't mind some bugginess to get early access to tech, but I can also see that that can hurt the release products reputation.

(As a side-note I shot a bit with prerelease and early release Alexas, and they weren't necessarily the sturdiness they now are at the time either.)

These experiences have (at least around here) been postulated into:
RED cameras are buggy and crash a lot.

My Dragons have been dead stable since prototype...
RED has learned, but the FUD lives on.

I have had people telling me that you have to blackshade when you change batteries...
No wonder if people find RED cumbersome if that's what they believe to be true... :)

So I am somewhat weary against repetitive statements without backing up mixed with valid arguments, if there is no will to look into the maybe-not-so-right part of the argument.
The valid side gives the FUD credit.

Now there are a lot of valid things to discuss (and I am not saying that the OPs points are not valid, but when he repeatedly does not do anything to document them, but still bashes on...)



As a different example (which I didn't moderate):

Pablo Moreno said:
Yes, they close threads for no reason!.

More than a year ago I started a thread about a feature that Alexa sensor has, that I believe is the reason why, Alexa cameras blown less highlights compare to Red cameras.
One moderator took it personal for some reason, and closed the thread after some discussion.
But that only tells me one thing: I was right and he didn't want to admit it.
After reading the specs over and over again, I came to the conclusion, that Alexa sensors do HDR, even when they don't advertise or emphasize that feature much.
And the only reason why I posted that, is because I thought Red engineers could take advantage of that, but obviously was a mistake, still, is not a reason for somebody to close a thread, only because he has a different opinion!.
You can read it by yourself at Arri's website (bottom of the page), and make your own conclusion. Anyway here's an excerpt (copy-paste) of the feature again, even if I get banned once again, I don't care:


Dual Gain Architecture on Alexa Sensors.


"The Dual Gain Architecture simultaneously provides two separate read-out paths from each pixel with different amplification. The first path contains the regular, highly amplified signal. The second path contains a signal with lower amplification, to capture the information that is clipped in the first path. Both paths feed into the camera's A/D converters, delivering a 14 bit image for each path. These images are then combined into a single 16 bit high dynamic range image. This method enhances low light performance and prevents the highlights from being clipped, thereby significantly extending the dynamic range of the image."
Click to expand...

There are many opinions on this little trick done by ARRI on the Alexa cameras.
I happen to think it is a supersmart and pragmatic approach to many image-creation challenges and can explain a lot of the dynamic and color-performance seen in the Alexa.

As this has been a well documented and known side of the ALEV sensor since before its release, I highly doubt RED isn't aware of it. Hey... Even I am :) And I am hardly an engineer. If you were hammering down this as an "Eureka, I saw it: BIG BEWS" thing... I guess it was not.
The subject of the different and documented approaches itself, can hardly be very controversial, unless one starts to postulate hilarious conclusions from it and bang these conclusions down as general "truths".

Some consider ARRIS dual readout approach "Cheating", I look at it more like a brilliant way of extending the performance of an image capture-container beyond its theoretical limit, and one can discuss the side-effects (there are some), but there is still little doubt that this approach has given ARRI a pretty dedicated userbase. :)

There have been discussions elsewhere on how RED fits the data they do into the container given to us. The way RED does that is not as publicly stated and documented as in this ARRI document, and is generally explained by RED as "magic sauce". I like magic sauce. It gives us "more than we could normally expect based on base tech-specs alone".
But I think it's an interesting thing to look at what magic sauce has which gains and tradeoffs.

This documented (by ARRI) feature, and the RED RAW capture/compression "magic sauce" signal-chain, could be what the OP started talking about in some of his posts, and would be an issue I wouldn't mind being discussed at all.
There are many artistic and technical sides to that particular line of thoughts.

But from how the OP approached it, it didn't seem very productive to me. More like... eh... trolling....
Hey. Post those side-by-sides from your mini and Dragon and let's look at them files!

When the "argument" boils down to: "RED sucks because they have disappointed me and thus are generally unusable because ARRI is so great"
On repeating loop...
I guess at a point I think that is more like a late Night discussion on a post-NAB convention, than something that belongs here.

If people think me radically wrong, I have no issues with that thread being re-opened.

For RED and everyone around:

All moderator choices I make are totally me and not REDs mistakes :) I am not employed or engaged by RED in any way.

And this is one moderator choice I am totally willing to be talked into accepting being wrong, but not really without seeing something backing up the OPs claims about the two systems outside what is said on the box:

ARRI mini has internal ND's and focus motor controls, Weapon does not have those two features.

It's kinda:
Yup. That's right and that's what the manufacturers state.
And if these are dealmakers or breakers for you: then they are.
Glad you reached a conclusion and hope you'll be happy with your choice!
Peace bro'...

And that's where I ended it.
 
Last edited:
Gunleik, are you sure it was you who closed that thread?, because I thought it was someone else, I don't remember you on that discussion, anyway it was a long time ago, and my only intent was to give Red engineers a good tip to implement on the next sensor, and that was before the magnificent Red Dragon by the way.
Red has come a long way, now they have Weapon, 3d luts and so on. My only complain has been always about color science. They have to work a little more on that, and I'm sure they are.
But those are only personal opinions; at the end of the day, they are going to do, whatever they have to. Cheers!.
 
I am sure I did NOT close your thread.
And I haven't looked it up.

But as you brought up the subject (of the ARRI dual-exposure) in this context, and I think it was a good example in the context of the thread I did close, I wanted to comment on that.

I will also not re-open it. Moderators work on their own discression. :)
 
ignition said:
Not sure about moving this to the complaints department as clearly I'm happy with the RED ecosystem I keep investing in.
Click to expand...

It's a complaint on a moderator choice. And despite not having moved it, that makes a lot of sense to me :)
 
ignition said:
So shutting down threads of debate - however trivial, technical or slanderous they might seemingly become - seems (to me) very counter intuitive to the kind of innovation RED has pioneered a market in, become renowned for, and has built such a strong reputation and following because of.
Click to expand...
I think the answer is: don't expect freewheeling discussions on several different cameras on a site devoted to one specific camera. (I would say the same thing about a pro-Red thread on the Alexa forum.)

The Cinematographers Mailing List (Cinematography.net) is not camera-specific and does have widespread discussion and sometimes heated arguments on the merits of one camera over another. I think it's fair to say that as time goes on, digital cameras begin to resemble each other more and the differences become more subtle, simply because manufacturers are getting smarter and are figuring out how to push the technology further. If you told me you could buy a halfway-decent 4K camera for $5000 7 years ago, I would've said you were crazy... but there's several of them out there now.
 
Just to clarify RED doens't close threads, the REDUSER moderators do.
(once I even had a thread deleted and another time I was banned 3 months ;-) )
Peace.

Pat
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top