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  • 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's militaristic branding and marketing.

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Christoffer Glans said:
.... Hydrogen and Helium are the first in the periodic table. So maybe DSMC3 or its sensor should be named Red Lithium since it's the third element. There are lots of good names to be found on the periodic table if Red would continue down that line. I would like to see something along the line of light. Let's say that Red's next sensor is a very light-sensitive sensor in the way of Gemini. So maybe as I mentioned before, Red Spectrum, Red Kelvin or Red Photon.

There are so many other types of themes and names that I think fits Red's systems much better than military and skulls. I would definitely want to see an overhaul of Red's design philosophy going into DSMC3.
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This is a great idea, and a much better contribution to what should be a simple exchange. Of course, RED doesn't have to change anything, but what other ideas might be interesting if they did consider doing that?

It's much more constructive than the snide, personal comments that float in and out.
 
Aaron Lochert said:
snip:

So as long as RED keeps pushing the bar, I'll continue to roll my eyes but purchase the cameras anyway.
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But are they really pushing the bar?

Sony F55 had global shutter 7 years ago; BMD has 12K for not much more than Komodo and 6K/compact form factor at a third of the price (and they provide pro sound inputs!); my new $3900 R5 has 8K and 4K full frame scaled in camera, smaller/lighter more power efficient, RF mount, excellent RS reset time for a full frame sensor (BTW rolling shutter hasn't been a deal killer for any previous RED), IBIS, better monitor AND eye VF, much faster CFexpress, better AF that incl. eye and animal focus that works with every lens I've tried (inc. Sigma, Tokina) with phenomenal stills and flash synchronization - admitted heat/time limits at 8K but all of these can be easily implemented by Canon in a more "cinema" and heat friendly form factor. And dozens of other cameras slightly larger or smaller, less expensive etc.

Komodo is a nice camera at a nice price point if you are a committed RED user, but it doesn't even use the vaunted wavelet based R3D format that has often been cited as a prime advantage of RED cameras. It doesn't seem that RED really is pushing the bar as it has in years past - nor does it seem that the other companies are looking at RED as their prime competitor/market leader.

The point is that as products become less and less differentiated by actual features, branding becomes even more important. The effectiveness of the current approach if continued will be judged by the marketplace in the next few years.

Setting aside the political stuff, some of us are simply suggesting there may be a better way.
 
Michael Hastings said:
But are they really pushing the bar? [...]
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Komodo's image quality to power usage (and sound generation) ratio is a Big Deal to me, so I appreciate that. I can complain about other things it does not do, but it's a huge step forward in areas I care about.
 
Michael Tiemann said:
Komodo's image quality to power usage (and sound generation) ratio is a Big Deal to me, so I appreciate that. I can complain about other things it does not do, but it's a huge step forward in areas I care about.
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But neither is really "pushing the bar". :wink5:
 
Michael Hastings said:
But neither is really "pushing the bar". :wink5:
Click to expand...

Komodo has about 3-4 stops more DR than the F55 if you're curious. Is 2lbs, 25Wh draw, small, and records actual compressed RAW internally for $6-$7.5K.

I purchased the R5 and enjoy it, but it's not Monstro or even Dragon when it comes to DR. It's a cool camera, but far from a motion picture oriented digital cinema camera. Now if Canon made something like the C70 with the R5 sensor, the world would be set on fire. Similarly if Komodo was 6K 60p or 8K 30p the world would be set on fire. Both of those cameras would be noticeably more expensive however if that's how they manifested. More power hungry to boot too.

As for the other cameras, the BMD 12K is a great value proposition, but I'd take Komodo or Helium over it. Though some of the data and image related issues are slowly being tended to.

On the long stride of features coming to cameras, I'm curious if top tier digital cinema cameras will utilize IBIS. There are pros and cons to the tech that aren't totally suitable. It's freaking useful though, but it can cause issues in other applications that are everyday territory for film, television, and streaming shoots.

Other tech is certainly coming. I'm curious to see what the next big boy camera from RED will feature. I think Komodo is a slight tease of what's to come. Full wireless monitoring and control being as good as it is already in Komodo was a bit of a surprise. I imagine that will be part of the future moving forward. Media is a changing landscape and Komodo also alludes to that. It's not 10 or 5 years ago. We'll see what's next there. Not too worried about AF. Canon and Sony are many generations into it and RED's like barely 2 generations into evolving the tech. Certain that will improve. Lots of voiced wants over the years. Internal ND comes to mind just reading discussion here, but rear ND isn't always the "best" solution as many learn over the years. But it's bloody useful and certainly the integration of how the Motion Mount worked through the camera shows some of the possibilities there. And I'll want that for sure, even though on narrative I'll likely role front of lens filtration more often than not.

Just a note on heavy reliance on AF. It's gotten to an impressive place, but I've had Canon and Sony fail to achieve critical focus or track in the last few months and that's frustrating. And even this mini lidar thingy gets fooled. It's impressive as hell, but when it doesn't work it shows why clearly it can't be relied on purely. Komodo side I've been doing tests combining the in camera focus assist tools with AF a bit. Somewhere there's a solution. Likely a couple of new features can be added into the mix to make everything more cinema and motion friendly. Got a few ideas on that front actually that I should forward to somebody.

It's nice to pick out features from the new cameras, but what is more shocking is people still working with DSMC Dragon or whatever and choosing to do so. Monstro is now 3+ years old and still arguably the king. And we don't discuss things like ProRes recording, dual REDCODE RAW + Intermediate Codec, etc.

We'll have to see. The gears of the camera world are spinning again, though slowly. We'll have new cameras from the big 4 relatively soon. Lots to look out for.
 
Phil Holland said:
snip:
It's nice to pick out features from the new cameras, but what is more shocking is people still working with DSMC Dragon or whatever and choosing to do so.
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Phil: As always, you make a bunch of good points.

This one sort of makes one of my points which was that we have IQ that is suitable (or at least very acceptable) for high level cinema at almost every price point - and why RED has some tremendous challenges ahead. It will be very interesting to see what rabbits come out of the hat at RED later this year if DSMC3 can happen.

PS question:
How much DR does a capable cinematographer, with normal time and lighting budget need? (beyond the obvious "as much as s/he can get")
 
Michael Hastings said:
How much DR does a capable cinematographer, with normal time and lighting budget need? (beyond the obvious "as much as s/he can get")
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Depends on how it's used :)

*runs and hides*. But yeah. Kodak Motion Picture Film's rated 13-15 stops is also including some of the magic of film to create images, which isn't exactly a straight to digital comparison.

I've seen decent 15 stops and awful 15 stops for example. Also interesting to see luminance versus chromatic response in highlights as well as shadows. Big bag of worms.

The industry as a whole looks at the sensor, color science, and other image related hardware first. Checking off IQ related boxes is the most important thing no matter what. Don't care if there's a coffee maker on there if there's IR contamination for instance or spectral issues under tungsten or whatever.

Sort of like a first date test. Like there's no 2nd date if they chew with their mouth open spitting food at you during the first moments of hope. Which is why I stopped taking alpacas to dinner. Ugly eaters, comfy sweaters :)
 
Phil Holland said:
snip: Which is why I stopped taking alpacas to dinner. Ugly eaters, comfy sweaters :)
Click to expand...

:lol:

Is that how the spoon arsenal came about? :wink5:

Phil: thanks for all the research and great info you provide here. And the evenhanded moderation you provide.

We've probably pretty well exhausted the subject of the thread.

Better days ahead. Take care.
 
Phil Holland said:
Komodo has about 3-4 stops more DR than the F55 if you're curious. Is 2lbs, 25Wh draw, small, and records actual compressed RAW internally for $6-$7.5K.

I purchased the R5 and enjoy it, but it's not Monstro or even Dragon when it comes to DR. It's a cool camera, but far from a motion picture oriented digital cinema camera. Now if Canon made something like the C70 with the R5 sensor, the world would be set on fire. Similarly if Komodo was 6K 60p or 8K 30p the world would be set on fire. Both of those cameras would be noticeably more expensive however if that's how they manifested. More power hungry to boot too.

As for the other cameras, the BMD 12K is a great value proposition, but I'd take Komodo or Helium over it. Though some of the data and image related issues are slowly being tended to.

On the long stride of features coming to cameras, I'm curious if top tier digital cinema cameras will utilize IBIS. There are pros and cons to the tech that aren't totally suitable. It's freaking useful though, but it can cause issues in other applications that are everyday territory for film, television, and streaming shoots.

Other tech is certainly coming. I'm curious to see what the next big boy camera from RED will feature. I think Komodo is a slight tease of what's to come. Full wireless monitoring and control being as good as it is already in Komodo was a bit of a surprise. I imagine that will be part of the future moving forward. Media is a changing landscape and Komodo also alludes to that. It's not 10 or 5 years ago. We'll see what's next there. Not too worried about AF. Canon and Sony are many generations into it and RED's like barely 2 generations into evolving the tech. Certain that will improve. Lots of voiced wants over the years. Internal ND comes to mind just reading discussion here, but rear ND isn't always the "best" solution as many learn over the years. But it's bloody useful and certainly the integration of how the Motion Mount worked through the camera shows some of the possibilities there. And I'll want that for sure, even though on narrative I'll likely role front of lens filtration more often than not.

Just a note on heavy reliance on AF. It's gotten to an impressive place, but I've had Canon and Sony fail to achieve critical focus or track in the last few months and that's frustrating. And even this mini lidar thingy gets fooled. It's impressive as hell, but when it doesn't work it shows why clearly it can't be relied on purely. Komodo side I've been doing tests combining the in camera focus assist tools with AF a bit. Somewhere there's a solution. Likely a couple of new features can be added into the mix to make everything more cinema and motion friendly. Got a few ideas on that front actually that I should forward to somebody.

It's nice to pick out features from the new cameras, but what is more shocking is people still working with DSMC Dragon or whatever and choosing to do so. Monstro is now 3+ years old and still arguably the king. And we don't discuss things like ProRes recording, dual REDCODE RAW + Intermediate Codec, etc.

We'll have to see. The gears of the camera world are spinning again, though slowly. We'll have new cameras from the big 4 relatively soon. Lots to look out for.
Click to expand...

Great post as always Phil.

I'm really looking forward to where DSMC3 will take us.

Here, I placed an order for the ST Komodo and it was mind blowing how it could match Helium , Monstro and Gemini footage. There were places it was obviously inferior, but it interacted well, and the global shutter and form factor really opened lots of creative possibilities in a big project.

The Komodo impressed so much that at least , from what I know of, 10 of the biggest local production houses have purchased or ordered one. There are TV Commercial Production houses that are switching from Arri to Red because of how impressed they were with Komodo. Its crazy. Red really hit a homer with it.

I'm hoping DSMC3 provides us an option of going modular or Ranger like- two different bodies- ike they are now. The DSMC2 form factor is one of the attributes I like most of my Monstro due to its versatility. As for the internal ND's, Kipertie proved this works and the only reason I still didn't go for it is that I really like my main hardware components to be first party. Its something I stick to since my early camera purchases and has never failed me.

Global Shutter, Higher 8K frame rates ( the bottleneck now is due to media speed and cpu, modern advancements could very well brake this barrier, no?) the same Dynamic Range (seriously is there more dynamic range needed than what we have on Monstro?) and even better color and I'm all set.

Being a Carbon Fibre DSMC2 Owner I would hope for a Carbon DSMC3 but heard Red sold all their Carbon making gear. I love the extra few gains in lightweight as well as the texture of it.

Anyways, challenging times, but still, people demand more and more content, which is somehow reassuring for those of us doing a living with this.

Would love for Vertical Shooting to be a criminal offence, but more and more deliveries are going for this format. I remember RED made a fantastic DSMC Vertical and Horizontal Head. Would love for RED to remake this... Maybe GDU @Jarred Land?

Stay safe everyone. Keep creating!
 
Sergio Perez said:
Would love for Vertical Shooting to be a criminal offence, but more and more deliveries are going for this format.
Click to expand...

Me too...I have an L shaped mount so I can shoot vertically. I call it my 8K iPhone. Glove and Boots calls it VVS.

 
Raymond Zananiri said:
Do you have an actual proof of that? Can you provide it?
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It's been years since I've shot or tested the F55, but testing methods haven't changed. Let me see if there's one laying around in town I guess. It sat around ~14 stops max. With the ways people measure things these days who knows, that might be 11. But I'd say 14 was a good number if you're looking for one.

If there was any validity to testing every camera to date that's still being used somewhere it would be fun to blow a few weeks grabbing all the DR, color response, etc stuff all at once. Short of a consistent shadow box and controlled cave for DR tests it's tricky to maintain consistency for real world tests over the years.

Got a decent round of camera tests coming up for a project mid-year, but I doubt highly the F55 will be in the mix.
 
William Long said:
Have to say I agree with the opening post. And now face masks with skulls on them? This is definitely not a highlight for RED.
I guess you have to laugh, I mean really...?!

https://www.red.com/red-face-masks-parent-black?quantity=1?size=1
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I could care less about the skulls - the concerning part is people are buying and using these type of masks routinely. The original idea of not wearing masks in the early days and then cloth masks was that there were not enough n95 masks available even for the front line first responders and medical people to protect themselves and they didn't want the average Joe buying up the small supply.

With the massive levels of infection around the country (and particularly the LA area) people should be using n95 level masks whenever possible.

Cloth masks do little to prevent the spread of the aerosol virus, as the virus is too small. Cloth masks help a little bit because they stop actual spittle and such and they shorten the distance your breath (and therefore the aerosol virus) travels but overall doesn't really protect the wearer or others particularly well.

Half my family are firefighter/paramedics and the other half are medical workers and I can tell you this virus/pandemic sucks (daughter's 34 yo boyfriend has been hospitalized since Christmas and on ventilator for almost 2 weeks with not great chance of survival and certainly heavily damaged lungs and organs if survives)

It's not just the 400,000 deaths, it's the several million survivors that will have serious health issues the rest of their lives.

my suggestion is buy the $35 skull mask and hang it next to your RED hat as a cute souvenir and then buy some N95s to actually use.

PSA over.
 
Personally I think the cameras visually looks great, but I do not like names like "weapon" and I dislike the skull. When we got our second Helium I showed it to a female cinematographer and she did not react well over the skull. Some of the names I think are great are: Geimini, Monstro, Dragon. I think the cameras look great otherwise, maybe they could bring in more ideas from Space. I want DSMC3 SATURN!

I think the other manufacturers have improved a lot but for wildlife Red is still the best for what we film. The resolution is great, it is great to have 60fps in 8K, the codec is brilliant. Red has so many features that are really awesome when you need it like HDRx, pre record is also great which is something not all other cameras has.

Still plenty of things that can be improved in the future:
- Make it possible to verify focus. To verify 8K focus on a flying bird on a 2k screen is very hard. A small zoomed window would be great.
- Less loud fan. Causes so much problems when recording audio at the same time
- Better audio inputs
- Faster Interface.
- The shadows have a bit greenish tint on Helium that is a bit tricky to get rid of
- Redundancy with media. I want to have 2 disks written to at all times
- Being able to delete takes, and trim clips in camera. I can with Canon and Phantom, so hope Red will let us do this too.
- Less power hungry
- Internal ND would be great, but we use the Revolva filters which are great so not really missing it that much.
- More slow motion

Looking forward to when we can film more again, but plenty to edit in the meantime!
 
Michael Hastings said:
Cloth masks do little to prevent the spread of the aerosol virus, as the virus is too small. Cloth masks help a little bit because they stop actual spittle and such and they shorten the distance your breath (and therefore the aerosol virus) travels but overall doesn't really protect the wearer or others particularly well.

Half my family are firefighter/paramedics and the other half are medical workers and I can tell you this virus/pandemic sucks (daughter's 34 yo boyfriend has been hospitalized since Christmas and on ventilator for almost 2 weeks with not great chance of survival and certainly heavily damaged lungs and organs if survives)
.
Click to expand...
Good post Michael, sad to hear about the sick young man, hope he recovers. I have suffered to some degree, the last 8 years, with something that looks like Post Viral Syndrome and it is not pleasant when it strikes. Many seem to get similar symptoms with long Covid and it is worrisome since it can last for such a long time.

In my family we use N99 masks, but we do not spend any time around people, we use them when food is delivered or if out walking and people get to close. I wish more would do the same. It is so easy and you can reuse the masks for a long time as long as you have them in a safe place.

Best,
Andreas
 
Karim, I don't think it is about being offended but it can be about caring. And perhaps context.

Personally, I don't like the skulls - I think they are really bad taste - but I've had young people come up and think they were really cool. That's fun. Conversely, filming in old peoples homes and in hospitals with the terminally ill - not so cool. That's why I have them covered up.

Perhaps it is worth caring about?
 
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