RED TECH - Black Shade Calibration

[Jarred Land]

Nate is back with another RED TECH showing how to run a Black Shade Calibration which ensures clean and consistent pixel sensitivity across your entire image.

• What Black Shading is and why it is important
• How to perform a Black Shade Calibration
• Navigating to Menu - Settings - Maintenance - Calibrate - Sensor
• Differences between Manual and Auto Calibration
• Which calibration is recommended
• How often should it be done

 

[FrankMcPartland]

Thanks! I need this..

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Gotta love me some Nate

 

[BrendanLeahy]

Thanks! This helps! A couple of things I always forget that I could still use refreshers on (or maybe I missed them in the vid!):

• Should we know ahead of time the compression rate we'll be filming at?
• If, say, we're going to shoot at 4K instead of 6K or 8K to get higher frame rates, should we be in that sensor crop for the calibration, or is it best to calibrate for the full sensor?

 

[rand thompson]

I don't own a Red camera , but thanks Nate!

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

• Should we know ahead of time the compression rate we'll be filming at?
• If, say, we're going to shoot at 4K instead of 6K or 8K to get higher frame rates, should we be in that sensor crop for the calibration, or is it best to calibrate for the full sensor?

Neither compression ratio nor resolution have an effect on what the black shading is doing, but higher compression ratios and lower resolutions will excentuate any issues that already exist.

 

[Sergio Perez]

This should be a sticky everywhere!

 

[Kevin D'Haeze]

Thanks, Jarred!

 

[Mark Phelan]

I have a question. Why does RED recommend a manual calibration for Gemini, Helium, etc and auto for Dragon? What difference does it make?

 

[Solomon Ato]

Thank Jarred and thanks Nate for the video. This clarifies everything for me. I had to dig deep down in the forums to understand black shading but im glad I did as this made me understand my camera better. But with this video, it even makes it better.
Asante

 

[Russ Fill]

This should be required before you can take delivery of your camera.
Nice job thanks again RED.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

I have a question. Why does RED recommend a manual calibration for Gemini, Helium, etc and auto for Dragon? What difference does it make?

Because the Dragon can do a lot of Kung-fu shit. It doesn't need to be told how to shade to black. Auto is just fine :beer:

 

[andrewhake]

I have a question. Why does RED recommend a manual calibration for Gemini, Helium, etc and auto for Dragon? What difference does it make?

It's just much faster.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

It's very nice, thanks. Just a small opinion for the next ones : please shut down the background music, it's a pain to listen to when someone's talking. I know it's quite common nowadays, unfortunately, but it makes it harder to follow the message.

Kristin

 

[gandalf de maupeou]

Great stuff!

As many, I’ve been digging in the forum to find information and it seemed that auto calibration was recommended for Monstro.
I’ll look for the post later but did anyone found the same recommandation?

 

[AndreasOberg]

This was great. I did not know that you should do a manual one on Helium. I guess it will just save time.

 

[Adam Montville]

This was great. I did not know that you should do a manual one on Helium. I guess it will just save time.

Manual also helps with the 'green tint shadows' quite a bit as well. (Still some green tint, but not as pronounced as on Auto).

 

[Chris Bone]

Is it necessary to black shade for different frame rates (not Varispeed)? In other words, should I have a calibration for 23.98 FPS in a 23.98 project and a separate calibration for 29.97 FPS in a 29.97 project, or is the same calibration fine for both? Thank you in advance!

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

Is it necessary to black shade for different frame rates (not Varispeed)? In other words, should I have a calibration for 23.98 FPS in a 23.98 project and a separate calibration for 29.97 FPS in a 29.97 project, or is the same calibration fine for both? Thank you in advance!

Short answer to your question is "Yes". You do need to black shade to whatever the frame rate you'd set the camera at.

 

[Alan Greene]

Is it necessary to black shade for different frame rates (not Varispeed)? In other words, should I have a calibration for 23.98 FPS in a 23.98 project and a separate calibration for 29.97 FPS in a 29.97 project, or is the same calibration fine for both? Thank you in advance!

No, you don't need to do this, and it's more about the shutter angle/speed than the frame rate. Calibrating at 24 fps at 180° (1/48 second) will cover a pretty wide range of shutter speeds, I think from 1/8000 second to something like 1/2 second. It would be good to do one for regular shooting, and one for longer exposures. My numbers might be off, but the point is that you certainly do not need to have separate calibrations for 24p and 30p.