Scarlet questions from Nikon D3x Pro

[Don Harris]

Hello all. Just thought I would ask a few questions from a high-end still photographer's perspective. My site is harrislightcraft.com if you want to see what I do. I have been interested in RED ever since they first started making claims a few years ago. My hope was to have a video and still camera that made no compromises for either in a much smaller form factor. It doesn't seem that RED will have a camera that can match D3x specs (24mp still capture at ff35 size) for a reasonable price (less than 10k). But, I am interested in the Scarlet to add video to my business. So my questions are these...

1. I understand and do excellent lighting and manual control of all gear in a still format context. I am assuming the principles are the same for Video. Where can I learn about things like "pulling focus", etc? Also, what would I need to learn that isn't the same from the still world?

2. Why can't RED have a 4/3 camera or ff35 camera with sensor sizes like the Dslr makers? And I don't understand how a red 2/3 sensor can be better quality than a FF35 sensor in a DSLR (apart from processing, etc)

3. Is there any way RED will produce smaller cameras that don't look like weapons? haha.

I'm interested in using these in my business somehow. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I do high end weddings and would like to offer something beyond traditional videography.

Thanks!

 

[Ethan Cooper]

I'll bite:

I understand and do excellent lighting and manual control of all gear in a still format context. I am assuming the principles are the same for Video. Where can I learn about things like "pulling focus", etc? Also, what would I need to learn that isn't the same from the still world?

Basic lighting theories & experience will hold true, the main difference being the gear used since in the video/film world we use continuous sources instead of flashes. If you decide to do weddings, I'd love to see how you plan on achieving cinema style lighting at a live event.
I would think the biggest shift for you would be learning how to deal with and manipulate movement, both of subjects through the frame & of the camera itself.

Why can't RED have a 4/3 camera or ff35 camera with sensor sizes like the Dslr makers? And I don't understand how a red 2/3 sensor can be better quality than a FF35 sensor in a DSLR (apart from processing, etc)

Not sure I fully understand you here, but I'm assuming you just don't know that Red will offer different sensor sizes than just 2/3". 2/3" will be the smallest sensor size you can buy. Are you asking why Red can't offer an FF35 sensor in a package priced more like the 5DMkII?

 

[Chris Kennedy]

2. Why can't RED have a 4/3 camera or ff35 camera with sensor sizes like the Dslr makers? And I don't understand how a red 2/3 sensor can be better quality than a FF35 sensor in a DSLR (apart from processing, etc)

Red is planning to release several different Scarlets; the first is the 2/3 followed by a S35 then FF35
http://www.red.com/epic_scarlet/
amazing what has changed since this announcement...

3. Is there any way RED will produce smaller cameras that don't look like weapons? haha.

Doubt it's possible to make them any smaller, just the fact you can hold the brain in the palm of your hand is just astounding. You can also customize the brain to suit your own style and needs; you can make it a huge digital-cinema beast, or a really small & light camera, light enough to still hold with one hand & without diminishing quality.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

2. Why can't RED have a 4/3 camera or ff35 camera with sensor sizes like the Dslr makers? And I don't understand how a red 2/3 sensor can be better quality than a FF35 sensor in a DSLR (apart from processing, etc)

RED stated that there will be S35 and in the future FF35 Scarlets.

So yeah, RED has them, but they cost.

However, if you're asking why doesn't the cheap Scarlets have a larger sensor, well, that has to do with RED's philosophy: no line-skipping, no subsampling, no crappy compression, RAW, and handling RAW @ 120fps for the 2/3" and 72fps for the S35 (old statements) requires a lot of hardware power.

However, the Scarlet 2/3" Fixed will have a 8x zoom lens at a constant f-stop of 2.4, that would be similar to around f5.6 on S35, pretty good indeeed.

 

[Don Harris]

I'll bite:



Basic lighting theories & experience will hold true, the main difference being the gear used since in the video/film world we use continuous sources instead of flashes. If you decide to do weddings, I'd love to see how you plan on achieving cinema style lighting at a live event.
I would think the biggest shift for you would be learning how to deal with and manipulate movement, both of subjects through the frame & of the camera itself.

I have done over 500 still image weddings however I am limited in lighting by the preferences of the bride and groom during the ceremony. I would like to learn how to do cinema style lighting. I do use several lights (flashes) during the reception and during the formals and can create beautiful soft light in those places with flash. I'm not sure if it is even possible with continuous lighting without spending multiple thousands of dollars. But I would like to explore it.

Not sure I fully understand you here, but I'm assuming you just don't know that Red will offer different sensor sizes than just 2/3". 2/3" will be the smallest sensor size you can buy. Are you asking why Red can't offer an FF35 sensor in a package priced more like the 5DMkII?

I know Red offers different sensors. I'm just ignorant as to why DSLR sensors are generally much larger than s35 and smaller video sensors while also being significantly less money. Is the difference made up in the features of the camera body and processing power alone? It seems that the price difference between a 2/3 Scarlet sensor (or brain) versus an s35 Scarlet sized sensor is excessive. If everything is modular, why is the price of a s35 Scarlet so much more money? I'm sure there is a great reason. I just simply don't know.

 

[Don Harris]

Red is planning to release several different Scarlets; the first is the 2/3 followed by a S35 then FF35
http://www.red.com/epic_scarlet/
amazing what has changed since this announcement...


Doubt it's possible to make them any smaller, just the fact you can hold the brain in the palm of your hand is just astounding. You can also customize the brain to suit your own style and needs; you can make it a huge digital-cinema beast, or a really small & light camera, light enough to still hold with one hand & without diminishing quality.

Yes. The changes are confusing. I am looking forward to seeing what actually gets released. I would like to use them for personal projects as well. I have a special needs little girl who I would love to have lifelike video of. Yet I have never that I know of worked a wedding with a videographer locally (Tulsa) who used anything beyond a 1080P camera. Most all are still HDV. So there is an untapped market here for quality video. Just trying to figure out how I could tap into that and how best to go about it. There are high end videographers here charging 10-20k for HDV capture. The final result looks pretty but formulaic. If I used a SCARLET at a wedding, I would hire someone skilled to do the capture and post. But I would like to learn for myself and for some creative personal projects with my daughter.

 

[Don Harris]

RED stated that there will be S35 and in the future FF35 Scarlets.

So yeah, RED has them, but they cost.

However, if you're asking why doesn't the cheap Scarlets have a larger sensor, well, that has to do with RED's philosophy: no line-skipping, no subsampling, no crappy compression, RAW, and handling RAW @ 120fps for the 2/3" and 72fps for the S35 (old statements) requires a lot of hardware power.

However, the Scarlet 2/3" Fixed will have a 8x zoom lens at a constant f-stop of 2.4, that would be similar to around f5.6 on S35, pretty good indeeed.

That makes sense if they can deliver on it. By RAW, do you mean an unprocessed video file like a "digital negative" with greater latitude as a still image Raw file? And I read an article about RED showing a 5k (4k?) demo reel followed by a greatly downsampled version of the same file using RED CODE. The article made it sound like there were not meaningful differences. Is REDCODE something that is used to capture? Or something the RAW files are processed with? Is this really a technology game changer or marketing hype? I simply don't know. And how good are still images taken with a Scarlet? And will they be able to be processed and used by Photoshop? What file formats do the still images come in? Is there RAW for stills too? I have not been able to find this information anywhere. Or there seems to be conflicting info. Many thanks.

 

[Don Harris]

BTW, I did not mean for my first post to seem arrogant. Often when someone new posts, you have not a clue as to what they know or don't know. I'm not hung up on myself. Many thanks for the replies.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

That makes sense if they can deliver on it. By RAW, do you mean an unprocessed video file like a "digital negative" with greater latitude as a still image Raw file? And I read an article about RED showing a 5k (4k?) demo reel followed by a greatly downsampled version of the same file using RED CODE. The article made it sound like there were not meaningful differences. Is REDCODE something that is used to capture? Or something the RAW files are processed with? Is this really a technology game changer or marketing hype? I simply don't know. And how good are still images taken with a Scarlet? And will they be able to be processed and used by Photoshop? What file formats do the still images come in? Is there RAW for stills too? I have not been able to find this information anywhere. Or there seems to be conflicting info. Many thanks.

I assume you're fairly new to all this RED stuff, right?

There's RED RAY, which is a 10Mb/s version of REDCODE, it's a distribution format.

The acquisition format, as of today, is REDCODE 28, 32 (and a higher, which I forgot the right number) which are 28MB/s, 32MB/s and so forth (notice that MB/s is not the same as Mb/s, in case you don't already know).

Well, RAW is a game changer just as it was in still photography.

How good are the pictures taken with a Scarlet? Well, with the 2/3" the pictures won't be stellar, but miles ahead from using a video grab (not still) from a 5D, let's say.

However, the S35 Scarlet is a 18 Megapixel camera (If I'm not mistaken by numbers here, I'm throwing them losely, don't quote me on that).

It was mentioned that stills would be compressed in a type of REDCODE, perhaps with less compression.

 

[Don Harris]

Yes, very new to RED. I thought the s35 Scarlet was something like 6megapixels. Hmmm. That would be fantastic at 18MP. Still wonder what the file format for the stills would be and if they can be worked with in Photoshop. Seems RED has backed away from some of the very early still image claims and is focusing on video. I wish I could get a "kit" s35 Scarlet.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Here's the difference between a DSLR and a Scarlet S35.

Your D3X can only shoot 5 frames per second for 31 frames. Switching to a DX crop, it can still only do 48 frames at 7 frames per second. Those are very impressive results for a DSLR, but... That is nowhere near the power required to process 30 frames per second continuously for thousands of frames. You do the maths, it means the sensor has to process several times the amount of information, and the camera itself has to process and record that much more information for long periods of time.

That is the difference. There are some other factors that play in, but that should give you an idea.

Please don't try to compare these DSMC cameras to a DSLR. It's a whole different league. 10 KG of silver costs less than 20G of gold. That doesn't make the silver any better. It is only the final result - the final image - that matters.

The way the DSLRs shoot video today is record a very low resolution image with tons of compromises which is offers a small fraction of the quality a RAW still capture does.

It is the Scarlet 2/3" that is a 6 MP camera. And the difference in price between S35 isn't really so much, considering you get 2.5x the resolution. S35 is a 14 MP camera, I think.

 

[G Lap]

Yes, very new to RED. I thought the s35 Scarlet was something like 6megapixels. Hmmm. That would be fantastic at 18MP. Still wonder what the file format for the stills would be and if they can be worked with in Photoshop. Seems RED has backed away from some of the very early still image claims and is focusing on video. I wish I could get a "kit" s35 Scarlet.

See this post for a quick RED to Stills comparison:

http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=591399&postcount=4

S35 ( with a sensor close to APS-H, eg Canon 1D Mk IV) is the closest you will get initially to a full frame DSLR, and then as an Epic first before Scarlet. RED's FF35 sensor (Monstro) is for the moment still some way off, by their own admission. In terms of heft an Epic or Scarlet configured for hand-hold is going to be bigger and heavier than a full size DSLR (D3x/1D Mk IV), closer to MF kit in reality.

S35 - 5120 x 2700 - 5K
30x15mm MX
native 16:9 aspect ratio, approx 33.5mm diagonal,
5.4 micron pixels, approx: 14mpx, 1.25 FOV crop factor (APS-H).


Remember too, that Epic/Scarlet will have selectable (video) recording mode's which will give different aspect ratio's. More information can be found here:

http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=582883&postcount=83

http://web.me.com/ducloslenses/DataRef/ImgCir.html