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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 :)

Scarlet sharpness workflow question

Softness in RCX at 100%

Softness in RCX at 100%

I posted on this issue as well. I had shot some aerials of an oil rig using an 18mm Red Pro Prime. When I looked at the footage in RCX at 100% I was shocked! I thought I had somehow shot everything 'out of focus' and I was really worried that my client would kill me since the chopper had already left the oil platform. Looking at the footage 'full frame' everything looked fine but at 100% it was definitely SOFT! When I got back to Houston I met up with a friend who owns an Epic and we did a test with his Zeiss compact primes. We loaded them into RCX and popped into 100% and guess what? His was just as soft. I felt vindicated that I hadn't shot my aerials out of focus but also very upset that the image was not sharp. I began to wonder if 100% on RCX was in fact a 'magnification' of the image in which case the softness would be understandable. But IF in fact I were looking at the true 100% image in all it's glory- I would be very underwhelmed.

Are you saying that 100% in RCX the image should be clean and sharp? I have also done some research after posting my experience and several people that seemed knowledgeable stated that it was normal and that was how RED's debayering affects the image. Now I'm not sure what to believe.
 
Jim Coulter said:
I posted on this issue as well. I had shot some aerials of an oil rig using an 18mm Red Pro Prime. When I looked at the footage in RCX at 100% I was shocked! I thought I had somehow shot everything 'out of focus' and I was really worried that my client would kill me since the chopper had already left the oil platform. Looking at the footage 'full frame' everything looked fine but at 100% it was definitely SOFT! When I got back to Houston I met up with a friend who owns an Epic and we did a test with his Zeiss compact primes. We loaded them into RCX and popped into 100% and guess what? His was just as soft. I felt vindicated that I hadn't shot my aerials out of focus but also very upset that the image was not sharp. I began to wonder if 100% on RCX was in fact a 'magnification' of the image in which case the softness would be understandable. But IF in fact I were looking at the true 100% image in all it's glory- I would be very underwhelmed.

Are you saying that 100% in RCX the image should be clean and sharp? I have also done some research after posting my experience and several people that seemed knowledgeable stated that it was normal and that was how RED's debayering affects the image. Now I'm not sure what to believe.
Click to expand...

Soft is one thing but out of focus is another. You can work with a soft image to sharpen it but an out of focus shot is not salvageable regardless of what you do. The original posters question was about his specific images, which lack focus. Of course the image will be a bit soft since it's RAW but your usually able to get more detail when adding contrast back into the image. Look at Phil's image example, this is the sharpness I would expect and what I typically get from the camera.

When it comes to sharpness you have to remember these stills are coming from motion, typically at 24fps with a 180degree shutter which cause motion blur with any movement. These are factors that will cause the single image to appear "soft". Then you have to consider user error with focus. Even a fraction of a turn off and in 4K it's bound to look soft...

This is one of the many reasons Cameron and Jackson are pushing the 48fps and 60fps argument if I remember correctly.
 
Jim Coulter said:
Matt,

Thanks for the input. Is 100% in RCX a magnification or the actual full size image? If so maybe my explanation was off. The image was more pixelated than I would have thought.
Click to expand...

It should not be pixelated at all. Make sure that when changing to 100% (1:1) you also change the de-bayer quality to full - they go hand in hand and affect each other...
 
Also - for all those that missed this - this is official word from Graeme:

Graeme Nattress said:
Sharpening isn't necessary, but can be applied if necessary. Practically all cameras sharpen as a matter of course, but being RAW-centric, we leave sharpening to the user as a choice. One of the sound reasons for that is that sharpening is best applied with the destination format in mind, so if you're wanting to go out to a cinema screen and a web video you could well want, for optimum results, different sharpening parameters for each.

What we all want to avoid is that "bad DVD release look" where you see layers of concatenated sharpening ringing all over the image drawing thick childs' crayon lines in black and white around objects in the scene.

Given many people take the 4k or 5k and downsample, it is often the case that the downsampling filter will be sufficiently sharp to render post-sharpening unnecessary. Personally, I'd only look at introducing sharpening if I'm going for creative effect or displaying the finished movie at 1:1 from it's source resolution.

Graeme
Click to expand...

That should clear this issue...

Peter
 
Peter Majtan said:
It should not be pixelated at all. Make sure that when changing to 100% (1:1) you also change the de-bayer quality to full - they go hand in hand and affect each other...
Click to expand...

+1, you beat me to it
 
no problem! I can get you some more R3D's if you need them, just let me know.

Keep in mind that shot I gave you was shot using tungsten lights which mean theoretically it should be noisier than daylight.
 
There was a post by Jim where he recommends a 300, 0.6, 0.6 unsharp mask setting. Perhaps that may help. Look it up!
 
Matt Johnston said:
It took me a while to get some sharp results. I'd do some more tests.... I feel like the Scarlet exposes my lens quality flaws more than any other camera I've used. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but seems to be the case.
Click to expand...

Thanks Matt, I will keep testing. It is an eye opener but one that I think will be well worth it in the end. Also, I will definitely take the noise level into consideration.

Jim Coulter said:
I posted on this issue as well. I had shot some aerials of an oil rig using an 18mm Red Pro Prime. When I looked at the footage in RCX at 100% I was shocked! I thought I had somehow shot everything 'out of focus' and I was really worried that my client would kill me since the chopper had already left the oil platform. Looking at the footage 'full frame' everything looked fine but at 100% it was definitely SOFT! When I got back to Houston I met up with a friend who owns an Epic and we did a test with his Zeiss compact primes. We loaded them into RCX and popped into 100% and guess what? His was just as soft. I felt vindicated that I hadn't shot my aerials out of focus but also very upset that the image was not sharp. I began to wonder if 100% on RCX was in fact a 'magnification' of the image in which case the softness would be understandable. But IF in fact I were looking at the true 100% image in all it's glory- I would be very underwhelmed.

Are you saying that 100% in RCX the image should be clean and sharp? I have also done some research after posting my experience and several people that seemed knowledgeable stated that it was normal and that was how RED's debayering affects the image. Now I'm not sure what to believe.
Click to expand...

Jim, thanks for sharing. I can relate to your experience. But it is a little comforting to know that everything worked out. Do you mind posting a link to your thread?

Matt Ryan said:
Here you go:
http://matthayslett.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/MattsR3D.zip
Click to expand...

Matt, thanks for the R3D. I'm going to have a look as well.
 
Hey Matt-

I did the comparison but what I found seemed to depend on what my comparisons were. Your shot is definitely sharper than my aerial image at 100%. Because your shot of the man was more of a medium shot and mine was a wide shot with the oil rig in the ocean- add to that yours was probably not subject to as much movement whereas mine was taken from a chopper with a Tyler mini-gyro.

Mine did look soft at 100% which made the rig itself appear larger . The detail of the rig itself was not sharp. It was not pixelated either but definitely not sharp. Therefore I thought that I wasn't comparing apples to apples and found a medium shot of one of the rig hands. This was taken from a tripod with natural light. The major difference was it was shot with the 18mm-85mm Red Pro Zoom. The comparison was now much closer to yours Matt.

I am thinking that it may have been a combination of the movement from the chopper as well as the fact that I shot everything at infinity focus on the chopper. Perhaps I should have pulled that back a bit. I know when I look at things through the lens that one would think was at infinity is in fact not. The image in the lens is not sharp and I end up having to crank the lens back a bit to achieve perfect focus.

At any rate I feel better now that I believe my camera is resolving the images normally. I am looking forward to the day I can afford to take the Reducation classes in Hollywood. I really want to see what the image looks like at 4K on a wide screen. Also I want to learn definitively if the resolution and clarity I'm getting is the best the Scarlet can do.
 
Jim Coulter said:
Hey Matt-

I did the comparison but what I found seemed to depend on what my comparisons were. Your shot is definitely sharper than my aerial image at 100%. Because your shot of the man was more of a medium shot and mine was a wide shot with the oil rig in the ocean- add to that yours was probably not subject to as much movement whereas mine was taken from a chopper with a Tyler mini-gyro.

Mine did look soft at 100% which made the rig itself appear larger . The detail of the rig itself was not sharp. It was not pixelated either but definitely not sharp. Therefore I thought that I wasn't comparing apples to apples and found a medium shot of one of the rig hands. This was taken from a tripod with natural light. The major difference was it was shot with the 18mm-85mm Red Pro Zoom. The comparison was now much closer to yours Matt.

I am thinking that it may have been a combination of the movement from the chopper as well as the fact that I shot everything at infinity focus on the chopper. Perhaps I should have pulled that back a bit. I know when I look at things through the lens that one would think was at infinity is in fact not. The image in the lens is not sharp and I end up having to crank the lens back a bit to achieve perfect focus.

At any rate I feel better now that I believe my camera is resolving the images normally. I am looking forward to the day I can afford to take the Reducation classes in Hollywood. I really want to see what the image looks like at 4K on a wide screen. Also I want to learn definitively if the resolution and clarity I'm getting is the best the Scarlet can do.
Click to expand...

Hey Jim,
What shutter speed were you shooting with in the chopper?
 
Jim Coulter said:
I was shooting 180 degree 1/48 at 23.98 fps
Click to expand...

for aerial shouldn't you be shooting with closer to 1/120th shutter speed? at 1/48th your footage would end up blurry/soft I believe.
 
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