Rodney Charters, ASC - RED ONE, Canon 7D and 5D MkII side by side

[Roberto Lequeux]

I would have softened the girl's skin in the Red shot, though I would have hoped to retain detail beyond what the 7D shows. The trick is that with a Red One you have the detail to soften, and you don't have the other image issues which you can't do anything about other than a filter that will soften the whole frame.

Sorry for drifting off topic.

Regarding camera shake, that is an other issue, this was a moire and aliasing test, I don't think you can bring up ergonomics of a $1,700 camera as an issue as there is clearly more than enough left over money to purchase lots of support gear.

A thread about the filter on the 7D: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=189857

I've shown this video to people with no clue about anything to do with cameras and, of course, they had no idea what was going on. They thought it was just a test for wipe transitions and coloring. Nobody had any idea it was about cameras until I told them. The best response was from a girl who said "that's a dumb test, they all look the same."

I am not surprised in the least bit. Though after several scenes of 4.5k the 1.2k might be far easier to point out. However, there are ways to justify and gradually work your way to it. Making transitions organic is not about the equipment, but the filmmakers.

IMO there is in fact a use for the 5D and 7D: low light till M-X is out. What are the others people talk about though? Other than stealing locations of course. Though I bet you a million bucks you can do the same with an Epic-X with an EVF bomb. The will only look a lot more Oakley.

It remains however that for an expensive project anyone would want to capture the cleanest, sharpest, and most information packed frames possible.

 

[Andrew Walker]

Crew.... budget wouldn't allow for more people lol. Also I wanted the stills element that the 5D's provide, so we could shot better time lapse, long exposure stuff. Last one was that on the lakebed I used them as interior rigged cameras.... for space (Epic will most probably change that).

The size was a big factor for it. Secondly we used them for interesting long exposure stuff. One example was a one live action 35mm with 2. 5D's next to it. One with 1sec exposure and 1 with 1/4000 ... I will mix that together and have live action go into interesting freeze frame scenarios just to cut back out to live action (this was all the lake bed stuff, so you unfortunately missed that Andrew... a lot of nice models there :driving: female that is lol).

Sounds like the shoot got far more interesting than the days I was on it. I'm curious to see how this timelapse will cut together with the live action elements. I've used my 5D2 a couple times for video but I mainly shoot timelapse with it because its the best tool I've found for doing long exposure timelapse sequences.

Here's a couple recent frames from some timelapse shot with the 5D2.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Regarding camera shake, that is an other issue, this was a moire and aliasing test, I don't think you can bring up ergonomics of a $1,700 camera as an issue as there is clearly more than enough left over money to purchase lots of support gear.

It has nothing to do with camera price. $600 video camera will behave better handheld than DSLR body. I understand the point of this test, video was a good example for this other issue, so I wanted to point that out.

This is even more important because it concerns RED's DSMC also. Disregarding the importance of basic design leads to dependance on support gear which leads to slower workflow. All the fiddling with various support gear can and should be kept to a minimum, IMO.

Handle and body which prevent normal handheld operation are useless, IMO. It's different with large cameras, but the whole point of a compact camera is speed and practicality and dependance on more support gear just to make it usable is nonsense. I just want to grab the camera and shoot not having to construct my tool every time.

Again, sorry for the off topic.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

For the last RED/Canon Intercut reel we decided that we would use RPPs for the RED ONE and Canon Glass for the EOS 5D Mk ii and EOS 7D ... both are mediocre glass and both give an equally bad image for movie making .... but we wanted to start at the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) so we could see how much better it could get.

Given the choice, would we prefer to grade RED ONE footage over the Canon H.264? - you bet! .... but given the choice, we'd also prefer to grade Sony F35, Genesis and Arri D21 over the RED any day.

Neil

I have to say Neil, these are odd statements from someone that purports to offer "RED workflow at its best" - LOL!

Your video implies that Rodney Charters only shot the Canon footage while Christian Luna shot the RED footage? Is this the case? Luna's name is misspelled in the credits BTW.

This shoot looked expensive, who funded this test? Its implied in the text that Canon was the sponsor? Is this true?

 

[Rick Presas]

There's one thing that these stills cameras offer that will be very hard to replace, though - the "stealth" factor - being able to shoot looking like a humble tourist. Sometimes it pays not to look like a pro.

this, to me, is the single biggest advantage of a DSLR camera.

Put a good lav mic on your actor and strip your DSLR down and it's like the ultimate covert guerilla shooting.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Good question Sanjin ... the Zeiss guys approached us so I presume they'll have that figured out ... will let you know as soon as we've organized the next Canon/RED Intercut Reel.

For the last RED/Canon Intercut reel we decided that we would use RPPs for the RED ONE and Canon Glass for the EOS 5D Mk ii and EOS 7D ... both are mediocre glass and both give an equally bad image for movie making .... but we wanted to start at the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) so we could see how much better it could get.

Even using LCD glass all three cameras produced pretty good looking images.

Using decent glass on the RED ONE and the Canon EOS 7D should give us a better comparison .... we'll also shoot some charts in a controlled environment so we can measure MTF values better.

Sanjin, what's your view on where digital acquisition and post is going?

Neil

P.S. my sister lives in Wien ... next time I come to vist her I'd love to come over and see your studio. N.

Neil,

together with the Zeiss guys you would need to get involved the Canon guys too.

Why?

There was one PL mount "intervention" by Pawel Achtel, a member of this forum with a little help from Douglas Underdahl, also a member of this forum and owner of Long Valley Equipment.

This "intervention" worked somehow but "killed" Canon 50D's reflex mirror inside because the lens was so "deep" inside the body that almost was touching the mirror.

FFD (Flange Focal Distance) for Arriflex PL mount is 52m and FFD for Canon EOS is 44mm. So then count...

P.S., when you are in Vienna give me a call, also I do not have a big studio because I have such a small and an artist sort of digital production kiosk.

:cheers2:

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Clarification of RED/Canon Intercut Reel ...

Clarification of RED/Canon Intercut Reel ...

I have to say Neil, these are odd statements from someone that purports to offer "RED workflow at its best" - LOL!

Your video implies that Rodney Charters only shot the Canon footage while Christian Luna shot the RED footage? Is this the case? Luna's name is misspelled in the credits BTW.

This shoot looked expensive, who funded this test? Its implied in the text that Canon was the sponsor? Is this true?

Jeff,

You raise some interesting points ..... let me clarify some things:

1) the RED/Canon Intercut demo totally confirmed that the RED ONE is a superior camera in many respects to the Canon HD DSLRs and that the RED RAW workflow gives stunning images .... transcoding RED CODE to ProRes for offline editing and then going directly to the .r3ds for color correction in Apple Color provides an amazing amount of useful color information in a very efficient data pipeline. The Apple based ProRes/.r3d workflow we recommend to our RED filmmakers provides a very cost-effective and high-quality finishing workflow when compared to the HEAVYIRON alternatives like the Pablo used in expensive post-houses.

2) Indeed, Rodney shot the Canon EOS cameras and Cristian shot the RED ... both are experienced DPs with their respective cameras. I asked Rodney to only use Canon glass on the 5D and 7D and Cristian to stick with the RPPs on the RED ONE. Rodney was not 100% happy having to use Canon still glass but as a true professional he made the best of it .... some of the soft focus issues were the result of him not being able to use his standard wireless follow focus.

On another short movie (Indian Gangster) Rodney shot a couple of weeks before on the the Canon EOS 5D MkII he used the a 10:1 zoom from Panavision and got much better results. The Panavision lens costs $50,000 and gives a true motion picture image ... Rodney would have much preferred to use Panavision Primos for the RED/Canon shoot.

However, I asked him to stick with the Canon glass so we could make a comparison between two widely accessible lens families that many Indie shooters will use - Canon EOS on the HD DSRLs and RPPs on the RED. The purpose of the exercise was not to prove which camera/lens combination was better (we already knew that) but to see if it was possible to intercut well shot RED with well shot Canon from a story telling point of view. We didn't shoot any focus charts and we didn't measure any MTF values.

From a visual story telling point of view, the ability to intercut well shot RED footage with well shot Canon footage seemed to work surprisingly well. As a file-based, digitally oriented post-house that's always looking for ways to support Indie filmmakers, we're always looking for tools and workflows that will provide maximum bang for the buck .... indie filmmaking is tough at the best of times and any service that we can offer to help digital filmmakers make a better movie we will .... the ability to be able to shoot with both RED and the Canon HD DSLRs and know that you can make them both look good and intercut them into your movie can only be a plus for Indie filmmakers .... or am I missing something here?

3) Yes, the budget was huge on this production ... LOL! ... everyone worked for free including Rodney .... we paid the hair and make-up girls $150 and gave the Parcour acrobat $80 to cover his petrol costs .... and we bought the SubWay sandwiches for lunch .... total budget for the day was under $500 ... huge I know ;-)

Regarding sponsorship, I didn't approach either Canon or RED .... both are large camera manufacturers with a bias to promoting their own hardware and equipment ... both think they have the 'one and only' solution to digital filmmaking ... we're a small post-production house that works closely with Independent filmmakers to make great looking movies ... we happily color correct any format that Indie filmmakers use .... but tend to recommend RED whenever we can .... we love the .r3d workflow and image quality. We're never going to be a HEAVYIRON type of post-house.

We have no intention of being tied to a big company like RED or Canon - we treasure our independent spirit and our ability to serve our customers in the best way possible.

The ability to engage in this kind of open discussion on the pros and cons of shooting on RED or Canon is a testament to our fierce sense of independence ... we will not be bullied by a bunch of fanatical REDheads or by ambitious HD DSLRs shooters who are now coming after your camera rental jobs.

Moore's Law will continue to drive technical innovation and the price/performance curve in the digital filmmaking world ... if you think that either RED or Canon have a monopoly in the digital filmmaking game you're in for a big surprise.

Please note that I have now changed my signature tagline to better reflect our open approach to integrating RED and Canon footage in the service of better filmmaking.

Neil

 

[Bill Anderson]

Thanks for qualifying this Neil, for a moment I thought the
intention was to show how well the Canon held up against
the RED, budgets notwithstanding. It seems very unlikely
that anyone with a grain of savvy would deny that the canons
might have their uses in indie-land, or, even more of a no brainer,
as a desirable aesthetic for a well thought out and budgeted production.
You know, for pretty much the same reasons a filmmaker like Lynch
might choose a small interlaced camera for certain stylistic considerations,
and not because he's seen it intercut with the likes of RED.
Also, you made the right decision using typical Indie accessible gear
such as your lens choices- because it shows fairly well how a grassy
field can quickly turn into pea soup, and strapping on a 50K lens
would do nothing for real world scenarios outside the already
mentioned and generally uncontested "for a certain aesthetic" choice.
And for this same reason, my guess is that anyone who is looking
for fidelity, or anyone who has the budget for top of the line optics etc..
is not going to be seduced by the Canons.

 

[Alsone]

Owned.

I don't really know where you get "owned" from in this pic.

Sure the Red One displays superior detail as you'd expect from a camera of that price and calibre (although see my comments on compression below when comparing stills) but in the Canon's defence, the colour from the Canon is far more realistic. That blue cast is really quite offensive to my eyes. Sure you can probably grade it out, but given the cast, "owned" is not a word I'd use. I'd choose the Canon's shot out of those two pictures simply because it looks far more natural if slightly less detailed.

BTW one final comment on your earlier stills comparison of this AND the hair dryer scene, I don't think comparing stills is a fair comparison either. I noticed very little difference in the video clips of that scene but a huge difference in the detail on the stills. That could easily be down to greater frame compression on the Canon (something that's not as noticeable in a moving picture) than a true comparison of video capabilities.

If you really wanted to illustrate the greater detail of the Red One, then you should have chosen the guy's crying scene as the greater detail of the Red was there for everyone to see in the face under those lighting conditions. A clear victory to the Red here.

However, to generally call this a victory for the Red overall is overstated in my opinion. The Canon clearly excels in low light and tricky lighting conditions (read colour castes) and the Red One in sheer detail under good to ideal lighting conditions. At the end of the day its as I said above horses for courses. As a main camera with good lighting control, the Red is impossible to beat. In less favourable lighting conditions, the Canon has a lot going for it.

Hopefully the new tweaked Scarlet's will have sensors that are much more of a match for the latest DSLR's in poor lighting conditions and settle the argument in favour of Red once and for all.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

It has nothing to do with camera price. $600 video camera will behave better handheld than DSLR body. I understand the point of this test, video was a good example for this other issue, so I wanted to point that out.

This is even more important because it concerns RED's DSMC also. Disregarding the importance of basic design leads to dependance on support gear which leads to slower workflow. All the fiddling with various support gear can and should be kept to a minimum, IMO.

Handle and body which prevent normal handheld operation are useless, IMO. It's different with large cameras, but the whole point of a compact camera is speed and practicality and dependance on more support gear just to make it usable is nonsense. I just want to grab the camera and shoot not having to construct my tool every time.

Again, sorry for the off topic.

I think the HH issues might be from having to hold the camera with your wrist in a vertical position which puts a lot more strain on your wrist. As you get tired you start to shake. Little $600 cameras let you hold it with your wrist horizontal putting the strain on your arm, which is far more capable of handling the stress. The little cameras are also far lighter once you add a big lens. Then I believe theother issue is the jello, which people seem to think isn't an issue, but I continue to see, all the time. This weird effect makes bad HH work even worse, the footage looks horrible.

There is a thread on DVXuser regarding support for the 7D, and with a properly balanced shoulder rig there is some very acceptable 100mm clips posted. The clip on that thread is more about walking while pulling, but it shows that the camera can give you stable footage with no jello so long as you are a decent or good operator.

With Epic and Scarlet the issue will be lesser because there won't be discernible jello other than perhaps under the worst circumstances.

My point about the price was that you can in fact get the HH issue taken care of, and it wouldn't slow you down either. You would have several rigs waiting to just pop in the camera and go. But if you are so concerned with switching support then you are talking about other issues. In that case I would pick one type of support and leave it configured like so. Perhaps that would be some sort of shoulder mount to compare it to what you would get with other cameras without adding different support solutions. A very decent shoulder rig and a 7D would still be far less than a Red One body, and for the Red you still need a Mantis or something else. I think it ends up being more about trading light the weight of a properly outfitted 7D rig vs. the far lower jello present on a Red One.

I believe the point about price and HH that I brought up is very valid. However it does nothing to get rid of moire and other horrible image monsters, or add resolution, or add information to the files, etc. It is strictly about HH abilities.

Hrvoje I don't think this is off topic. This is a comparison between Red and the VDSLRs after all.

but in the Canon's defence, the colour from the Canon is far more realistic. That blue cast is really quite offensive to my eyes. Sure you can probably grade it out, but given the cast, "owned" is not a word I'd use. I'd choose the Canon's shot out of those two pictures simply because it looks far more natural if slightly less detailed.

That is a WB issue. The cameras were not set equally, and it has nothing to do with the Red or the Canon. I wish the WB were a little closer though because it is a very stark difference, you can't compare color at all. However, I would love to see what the RAW file contains, it might surprise you when you changed the WB in post. And I'm not sure where you get the "slightly" less detailed from.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Alsone, you do know that the RED is in a RAW mode and
that the Canon is in a half baked, baked in mode?
"Owned" is an understatement. "Offensive color"! huh?
Is there an amnesia epidemic abroad? Have we forgotten
about the beautiful feature work that has recently been
achieved with RED? And all in color no less. Good grief,
considering that RED is dedicated to bringing such high
standards to anyone with a couple of bucks to invest in
their tools, and for a company that is most definitely set
to release unprecedented options in digital acquisition at any price,
let alone for the little they are asking, there sure is a lot
of empty noise going around.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I think we need to keep in mind that all of us view these types of intercut reels and side-by-side comparisons from different points of view and different motivations.

For some of us, we are trying to figure out what we can get away with in terms of intercutting Canon H264 with Red One footage on narrative shoots, for example. Others of us might be looking at these direct side-by-sides in order to establish whether the Canon cameras are even worth using at all, based on some kind of minimum standard for 1080p.

The fact that some people are really obsessed with having maximum quality on their 1080p masters is not a bad thing. Do we criticize Ron Fricke for using 65mm? The guy just has very high standards. He knows that, for his type of film, he needs the highest image quality possible, period. You will not see any "good enough" 16mm cut into "Baraka."

So I don't think it's right to pass judgement on what other people perceive or take away from a side-by-side comparison like this Canon vs Red reel. To say that comparative pixel-peeping is "rather pointless" might be true for you, but not true for others. So if it's pointless from your point of view, just ignore it.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Good points Tom. That's one reason why I've alway been open about the measured resolution of the RED One (and shown the measurements too) because I want users to know exactly what they're getting.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Which post are you addressing here Tom ?

 

[Tom Lowe]

Bill, I was just making a general statement. It was not in response to you at all.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Cheers, I know I can spread it on like lard from time to time. ( ;

 

[Andrew Walker]

I don't really know where you get "owned" from in this pic.

Sure the Red One displays superior detail as you'd expect from a camera of that price and calibre (although see my comments on compression below when comparing stills) but in the Canon's defence, the colour from the Canon is far more realistic. That blue cast is really quite offensive to my eyes. Sure you can probably grade it out, but given the cast, "owned" is not a word I'd use. I'd choose the Canon's shot out of those two pictures simply because it looks far more natural if slightly less detailed.

BTW one final comment on your earlier stills comparison of this AND the hair dryer scene, I don't think comparing stills is a fair comparison either. I noticed very little difference in the video clips of that scene but a huge difference in the detail on the stills. That could easily be down to greater frame compression on the Canon (something that's not as noticeable in a moving picture) than a true comparison of video capabilities.

If you really wanted to illustrate the greater detail of the Red One, then you should have chosen the guy's crying scene as the greater detail of the Red was there for everyone to see in the face under those lighting conditions. A clear victory to the Red here.

However, to generally call this a victory for the Red overall is overstated in my opinion. The Canon clearly excels in low light and tricky lighting conditions (read colour castes) and the Red One in sheer detail under good to ideal lighting conditions. At the end of the day its as I said above horses for courses. As a main camera with good lighting control, the Red is impossible to beat. In less favourable lighting conditions, the Canon has a lot going for it.

Hopefully the new tweaked Scarlet's will have sensors that are much more of a match for the latest DSLR's in poor lighting conditions and settle the argument in favour of Red once and for all.

This blue cast you see on the RED footage can be changed quite easily. Remember you are shooting in RAW on the RED. The same thing can't be said about the 5D2/7D. I'm not sure why the RED footage wasn't corrected to have the same average color as the other cameras.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Not to mention pain and gout medication - road food:
I recently got back from a road trip- Utah, Salt Lake,
across Nevada, back down California and across Yosemite
to Mono Lake, then south and up down the 101 west coast
road and back to Vancouver Island; slept in the front seat
of the car the entire trip. Ouch, I'm not a young guy anymore.
Still, I made the beginnings of a few very decent images for
a scheduled exhibition next year.

 

[Roger Crouse]

The bottom line for me is this: I have a job to do. As a responsible professional, I accept that my job requires me to get the most "bang for buck" currently available for the people who pay me. For my scenario right now that means using Red One cameras.

I appreciate the people involved with posting this test. I find it interesting. Both the resulting media and the differing opinions are teaching me things. So... thanks.

Camera companies are about to enter into a whole new level of "dog eat dog" unlike anything I've ever seen. Thanks in part to the innovations and passions of those like the fine folks at Red Digital Cinema. We, as consumers, will all benefit from it. My children might be able to record 20k raw on a $500 camera with a matchbook sized drive that records 200TB. Do I care who invents it? No. Everyone has differing needs and wants and obligations. I am just grateful to have such intelligence and exciting technologies available during my lifetime.

We have tools available to make a great living in an exciting and challenging field. We have opportunities to test ourselves and our gear. Let's keep getting better at capturing the media to tell good stories. Just some thoughts and my .02 on an interesting thread.

 

[Alsone]

Alsone, you do know that the RED is in a RAW mode and that the Canon is in a half baked, baked in mode?

QED, you just proved my point. You've compared highly compressed frames from the Canon against RAW uncompressed frames from the Red. Hardly a level playing field. If you're point is that the Canon can't shoot video in RAW (I don't know whether it can or can't), then point made in that regard.

However, as a detail comparison it isn't a true comparison as the amount of compression as seen in an individual frame isn't reflected to the same amount in the video when the frames are flicking by at 24 or 30 fps. Nor are both cameras competing on a level playing field when its raw vs compressed.

If your argument is that on the Canon you can't shoot RAW video then the fact remains that even if you were to shoot in RAW on the Red and capture all that lovely detail, you're going to have to compress it to MPEG2 standard for DVD and thus lose a lot of the detail anyway bringing it down to a much lower level. So there is no way the test above is objective.

I'm not in anyway denying the Red is a good camera, however, its not as clear as some people like to make out - with the greatest respect there seems to be a lot of fanboism on here in favour of the Red rather than objective criticism and that manifests itself in back to back tests that claim to show the superiority of the Red but which are biased from the start in its favour eg. comparing RAW vs compressed footage and even more so with raw vs compressed stills.

Like I've said previously, its horses for courses, neither the Red nor Canon's are perfect cameras, they all have their weaknesses - the Canon absolutely wacks the Red for low light performance and white balance under tricky conditions. That comes out of the above test even with the unbalanced method. The Red appears to wack the Canon for detail under good lighting conditions albeit the above test can't be used as a benchmark for that given the unfair compression comparison. If you want to make a true comparison then take the Red footage and compress it using h.264 to blu ray standards and compare it to the Canon similarly compressed, then you can talk about relative detail levels and even compare stills.