RED Shooting 4K

[Daniel Holl]

Hi together,

I just have a question. We shot with the RED in 4K last week. Now the movie production sent me the footage in HD. I just wonder why the picture does look like sh...
I am sure that they made a mistake with the motion blur. The production agency said that this is normal! They are kidding me, right?
Is anyone there who could help me with this? Please take a look at the pic I attached.

Thanks
Daniel

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

With the RedOne you can shoot 350 degrees, or in terms of exposure 1/24 sec. or 1/25 sec in Pal Land when shooting 24/25 fps. This typically creates a lot of motion-blur. Most people avoid this and shoot filmstyle 180 degrees or 1/48 , 1/50.

From a still you cannot tell really wether this is the case.

If you find the picture flat and washed out, that's fine, IMO. 35mm scans look even more washed out and off-WB.

If they added no sharpening (doesn't seem the case) and did not WB the shot in RA (increasing the noise in the blue channel) you wll have good fooatge to pull a key.

Personally I prefer shooting moving objects in a green box with 1/100 sec. Adding missing motion-blur later in post is easy today.



Hans

 

[Graeme Nattress]

All I can see is an out of focus llama. Motion blur is dictated by shutter speed - what was the shutter set to?

Graeme

 

[Daniel Holl]

Hi guys,

first thank you for your fast reply. I have no idea what was the shutter speed! But I think the camera guy should have noticed it. They told me that it is normal that all raw files should be resharpened after importing???????

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I don't know what you've been told, but look at the llama on the left - it's much sharper than the one in the middle. Looks like focus to me. Also, how did they downsample to HD for you? That can certainly effect how things look if not done right.

Graeme

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

It appears the Llama on the right's legs that are moving have a good amount of motion blur, but the other legs that are stationary are sharp. IMO, I'm not sure this is a focus issue.

The production company is right in that in the transcode process sharpening is usually added as part of the Optical Low Pass Filtering step, taking the bayer pattern information and converting it to your transcode. However, motion blur is a very separate issue and if that is what your dealing with, it can complicate pulling keys.

I've dealt with a similar issue before, a Zoo spot with lots of running animals on green screen. Shot some time ago on 16mm @ 24 fps with 180 deg shutter, it had too much blur to pull a decent key with and I needed to roto out a lot of areas in the image. They didn't have enough light to shoot with a tighter shutter angle or faster frame rate which would have yielded less motion blur. Your image shows a well light environment, should have been able to shoot to avoid this blur.

Question for those intimate with the camera, is there metadata in the raw file that would reveal what shutter angle it was shot with?

 

[Noah Kadner]

Ask for the original camera files- it's easy to make your own down converts. Looks like they botched it. Hopefully it's just a transfer error and not bad camerawork.

Noah

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I don't know what you've been told, but look at the llama on the left - it's much sharper than the one in the middle. Looks like focus to me.

Graeme

I don't think it's a focus problem. Lamas are quite tall animals. As tall as a 10 year old kid or even taller. Thus, the DOF must be pretty deep, even if shot on a T1.3. Plus, both animals are surely not on the same focus-plane but not enough off from aech other that the lama in the center would be as much out of focus as it obviously is.

Given that no shift and tilt lenses were used I think the lama in the middle is moving pretty fast, hence the focus/motion-blur issue.

Only a video clip would give an answere.

Hans

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Looks like focus problem to me, or a bad lens, but in terms of the motion blur of the legs, that would depend on the shutter speed selected (and how fast the llama moved its legs.)

The lack of flatter focus suggests either the shot was made wide-open on a mediocre lens and perhaps misfocused as well, or it was stopped down, not mounted properly, or was defective.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I agree with David's analysis. It also looks like the whole frame may be under exposed. That could potentially explain some things too. Not enough light may mean they shot wide open or even increased their exposure time. DOF appears to be pretty shallow, but not exceptionally so. Too shallow for an unpredictable subject like parading llamas, IMO. The llama on the right is definitely out of focus.

Nothing can really be done at this point about the motion blur. That's a camera operator and crew error if that amount of motion blur was not desirable. It's difficult to see motion blur to that extent when monitoring in 720p. But it's something that experienced ops / AC's / DoPs learn to account for and lighting / exposure are controlled to give the desired image.

This is a bad example... But it's possible to bring some details out with some sharpening. Hard to show with the poor quality of the low-rez compressed image you posted. But there is detail there to be brought out. Not only can sharpening in post help, but some detail enhancement and sharpening can be achieved with various downsample filter settings and OLPF compensation settings.

 

[Shawn Booth]

To me it looks like both creatures are on the same line, side-by-side if you will? At least enough so that DOF is relatively the same? I think the llama on the right is angled just so that the light reflects off its fur back at us?

I don't think it's so much focus... I'm not arguing though.

I can say the greenscreen and subjects are poorly lit. (Also, there isn't enough distance between subject and screen.)

But this raises a few really good questions.

We know sharpening is not added unless we add it. Most say it's up to you as to how much to add - fine. But the question is, Should we add sharpening? Should it be added in RC/RA? Why not at this point? I understand waiting until the final step, but it makes logical sense that if it's added when 1 lighting, the image stays sharp and can withstand the riggers of post production all the way 'til the end. I don't see how creating a Quicktime that has been sharpened will adversely affect the footage.

Perhaps I need to take this to the sharpening thread...

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

We know sharpening is not added unless we add it. Most say it's up to you as to how much to add - fine. But the question is, Should we add sharpening? Should it be added in RC/RA?

Personally, I usually add sharpness back in to some degree in Redcine when I am generating my conformed transcodes. Depending on how much scaling I am doing I might add more or less sharpness. I also adjust the detail and if i need to I add noise reduction. I would much rather add sharpness while reading the raw files than affecting the transcodes later on. Sometimes I would choose to hold of on noise reduction till Color, but I rarely need this with RED footage anyway.

 

[Eki Halkka]

If i was handed footage for keying that was sharpened in transfer, i'd probably ask for the original - sharpening and keying do not mix well. In composite shots, sharpening should be the last step, not the first.

As far as motion blur goes, it's impossible to say anything from a still image - there might be too much MB, or not. It all depends on how fast the motion was, and that can't be deciphered from a single frame. My guess is it's OK.

From keying standpoint, that footage isn't the best i've seen, but certainly not the worst either. It should key pretty easily, motion blur or not.