Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

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 :)

Scarlet 2/3" vs. Sony EX1/EX3 low light

T2.9 is fast enough if you are good with artificial lighting but I am more interested in shooting with available light, where the faster stops will be useful.

I understand that the miniprimes are cheap compared to something like a set of Cooke S4's which is around $180,000. Still $6000 is more than I am willing to spend for lenses that I will not use often. I can understand buying if I was shooting commercials, weddings or events but I am not trying to make money off of the gear, just training myself for later work.

I did not mean the 50mm miniprime, I meant the 50mm S35 equivalent miniprime. The 50mm miniprime is a telephoto lens so I should have been more clear.

I am going to school in San Antonio but will be back in LA for graduate studies so access to rental houses will not be an issue.

DOF wise, the 2/3" will suit my needs but I hope that its low light abilities will be far above what is currently available.
 
Andrew Rieger said:
Still $6000 is more than I am willing to spend for lenses that I will not use often.
Click to expand...

It really does not make any sense to by the camera and rent the lenses. It is of course your choice to spend your cash how you see fit, but if you can't use the camera without the lenses, and you say you will not use them very often, surly that means you won't use the camera very often, so why buy one to begin with??
 
I never sad I would not buy any lenses. I said I would buy a S35 50mm equivalent in the 2/3" format so that I could learn to use the camera. I would rent the complete set when I shot a short film.

One lens is fine for practice. When new cameras come out, sites like Vimeo and youtube are flooded with "tests". No need to have a complete lens set for a test. A 50mm (In 2/3" format) is sufficient.

When my father was shooting with Nikon still cameras back in the 1970's, every camera came with a 50mm and many people used that lens quite often. The subject too small in the frame? Walk closer. I understand the need for a set but I would not get out of it what it cost me to purchase. Besides, I use a DSLR for everyday stuff so again, the Scarlet is a specialty item that I am purchasing to train myself for bigger things.

This lens discussion is far away from the original topic of low light capabilities for the 2/3" sensor.
 
I know this a big marketing thing by RED but isn't it incorrect to say RED shoots RAW? It's RED RAW, which is different from the accepted true RAW. It would be like Canon saying a propriety H264 is Canon RAW. I think its really dishonest. Or am I wrong about RED RAW?
 
This thread has nothing to do with RAW. RED RAW is "virtually lossless" and is the best format in the digital realm. What is "accepted true RAW"? The format of the dead Dalsa Origin? Cameras with "true raw" have proved almost impossible to work with and have failed accordingly.

Red is Raw, it is an acquisition format. The images are not baked in like the Canon codec. There is nothing misleading about the Raw aspect of RED's workflow. Its just slightly compressed.
 
Pocket change depends on who you are talking to.
 
Andrew Rieger said:
This thread has nothing to do with RAW. RED RAW is "virtually lossless" and is the best format in the digital realm. What is "accepted true RAW"? The format of the dead Dalsa Origin? Cameras with "true raw" have proved almost impossible to work with and have failed accordingly.

Red is Raw, it is an acquisition format. The images are not baked in like the Canon codec. There is nothing misleading about the Raw aspect of RED's workflow. Its just slightly compressed.
Click to expand...

RAW was brought up in answering your first question, thought it was appropriate to ask therefore. You answered the question anyhow. RED acquisition is slightly compressed, so it's not RAW, technically misleading. Smart marketing move by RED but not accurate.
 
No, it is Raw. The compression has nothing to do with the Raw aspect of the codec. The color is not baked in, you have true control over the image in post. Look up raw for stills cameras and then compare that to any other sub $10,000 camera and then tell me that Red is not Raw.

This is directly from Red's website:

"One of the most unusual facets of the RED ONE is the fact that it captures information, unprocessed, off of a Bayer Pattern CMOS sensor. This raw data is simply all the information that the sensor is able to "see", comprising all color information in a single channel, and is not processed. Identical to the way a DSLR still camera captures a RAW file, this enables the user to adjust parameters after the fact, as color, gain and sharpening can all be done post capture."
 
I'm not sure you can back up that info simply using information from the RED site. Of course they would say that. Technically it's not RAW, but kudos to RED for creating RED RAW and dropping the RED :-)
 
You work for Grass Valley or Dalsa?

What do you want RED to call their Raw mode? Red Raw fits every parameter of Raw acquisition with an ever so slight compression to make it easier to work with in post. It is still Raw, the presence of compression has nothing to do with that.

Red has never claimed that the One is an "uncompressed Raw" camera, which would be a lie. Besides, no one wants to work with that type of camera which is why the Dalsa Origin failed miserably and why the Viper is dying out. Im sorry you are ignorant about that fact. Red is Raw, final answer. If you still don't believe, call Jim and complain to him, but have actual information before you make claims.
 
Andrew Rieger said:
I never sad I would not buy any lenses. I said I would buy a S35 50mm equivalent in the 2/3" format so that I could learn to use the camera. I would rent the complete set when I shot a short film.

One lens is fine for practice. When new cameras come out, sites like Vimeo and youtube are flooded with "tests". No need to have a complete lens set for a test. A 50mm (In 2/3" format) is sufficient.

When my father was shooting with Nikon still cameras back in the 1970's, every camera came with a 50mm and many people used that lens quite often. The subject too small in the frame? Walk closer. I understand the need for a set but I would not get out of it what it cost me to purchase. Besides, I use a DSLR for everyday stuff so again, the Scarlet is a specialty item that I am purchasing to train myself for bigger things.

This lens discussion is far away from the original topic of low light capabilities for the 2/3" sensor.
Click to expand...

Taking things back on topic, I think you will get far better and more satisfactory low light capability with the Scarlet than you do with a Canon DSLR.

As a 7D owner, the camera gets very very noisy at higher ISO ratings.

From what I have seen of the sensor technology, and accounting for sensor size differences, I expect the RED 2/3" cameras to shoot much cleaner.

As to your plans for purchasing a camera, can I suggest a plan that should work well for a DSLR owner?

Buy a 2/3" fixed camera. When you can afford it, presumably because you have started using the gear for paying gigs, sell the camera body and keep the accessories.

Then get a S35 Scarlet brain only, and use it with your existing SLR lenses and your existing camera grip.

Having a variety of focal lengths is pretty important, and the fixed lens (t2.6 I read above) seems pretty good.

I can definitely see a used Scarlet fixed going for about $2500 without accessories, so its not a bad path to plan on. Especially if you are just "playing" for the time being.

In fact I've just convinced myself just now to take another look at the numbers for a pair of Scarlet 2/3" Fixed cameras and the logistics of using them for 3D.
 
Same route I plan on taking, as a current 7D owner. I've been wanting what Red's had to offer since the day it was announced, Its always been out of reach though. Finally something that a true starter filmmaker can get a grasp on and learn with.
 
RAW generally means a data from a sensor with a color filter array that has not be processed into a viewable color (RGB) image. There is nothing about compression not being allowed for a RAW file:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format

A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter in a wide-gamut internal colorspace where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a "positive" file format such as TIFF or JPEG for storage, printing, or further manipulation, which often encodes the image in a device-dependent colorspace. These images are often described as "RAW image files" based on the erroneous belief that they represent a single file format. In fact there are dozens if not hundreds of raw image formats in use by different models of digital equipment (like cameras or film scanners).[1]
Raw image files are sometimes called digital negatives, as they fulfill the same role as negatives in film photography: that is, the negative is not directly usable as an image, but has all of the information needed to create an image. Likewise, the process of converting a raw image file into a viewable format is sometimes called developing a raw image, by analogy with the film development process used to convert photographic film into viewable prints. The selection of the final choice of image rendering is part of the process of white balancing and color grading.
Like a photographic negative, a raw digital image may have a wider dynamic range or color gamut than the eventual final image format, and it preserves most of the information of the captured image. Raw image formats' purpose is to save with minimum loss of information the data that are obtained from the sensor, and the conditions surrounding the capturing of the image (the metadata).
 
Red RAW is not truly uncompressed. It does use a wavelet compression that in the end is about a 10:1 compression rate based off of the uncompressed format.
 
rafael de said:
Red RAW is not truly uncompressed. It does use a wavelet compression that in the end is about a 10:1 compression rate based off of the uncompressed format.
Click to expand...

The data may be compressed slightly to save space , but it is still the raw sensor data. Every pixel still has its full 12 bit luminance value represented in an otherwise unprocessed manner in such a way that it can be recovered in the deBayer process in a visually lossless manner.
Canon and Nikon also record their camera raw files in a compressed format. The raw file sizes listed in their literature don't match the size of an uncompressed file if you work it out.
 
Andrew's passion for this nonexistent camera really proves that RED have done a great job with building demand for this camera system. Andrew has flatly proclaimed the Scarlet 2/3" inch (which doesn't exist), to be better than the EX1 (which does exist).

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.

I won't get into the RAW discussion though. Graham has convinced me that no permanent settings are baked into the files as they're recorded. Even though they're compressed files, they're raw enough.
 
Aaron Newsome said:
Andrew's passion for this nonexistent camera really proves that RED have done a great job with building demand for this camera system. Andrew has flatly proclaimed the Scarlet 2/3" inch (which doesn't exist), to be better than the EX1 (which does exist).

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.

I won't get into the RAW discussion though. Graham has convinced me that no permanent settings are baked into the files as they're recorded. Even though they're compressed files, they're raw enough.
Click to expand...

Well the test bed shots from the 2/3" sensor posted a year ago before the new color science software beat anything I have seen from an under 10k video camera. The final product certainly won't be any worse than that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top