Scarlet-W footage and what I learned about the camera

[Jason Han]

https://vimeo.com/169046976
Shot on RED Scarlet-W + Cooke S4i panchros - 5K WS 4:1 / 9:1 for 60p - Edited/Graded on Davinci 12

Hey guys, just wanted to share some of my footage along with my insights/experience with the new camera. I've compiled some clips from a commercial I shot recently. I pushed this camera really hard, I was very curious about it's DR limits and ISO/noise ratios. The image is outstanding! The dynamic range is actually above 16, you can see from the first shot which is barely lit with the windows blown over 7-8 stops but still retaining information. There's still more detail that I could have extracted. ISO went up to 1600 in grand central, and it came out relatively clean.

One thing I learned about HDMI outputs: if you use the side pogo as your LCD, and you try to output HDMI, your LCD will go black. The side pogo and HDMI outputs through the same ports, so if you use HDMI for whatever reasons (extra monitor etc), you'd have to use your LCD through the top pogo output. No issues with SDI output with either ports.

Comparing to Epic Dragon: the biggest thing that sold me was the auto calibration of the sensor. My sensor stayed stable throughout temp/exposure changes with just the auto calib, saving over an hour of shooting time. Cooling system improved drastically, which makes the S-W a lot more quieter as well. Less noise on the S-W footage even at higher ISO. I plan on doing a side by side Epic Dragon VS S-W test when I get some free time, but the image seemed relatively similar. Body is so light and compact, it's really well designed. Loving the new Base I/O V-lock pack.

Grain is nice looking, but sometimes, especially when you work with log, you will see a lot more of the chroma noise. I found that the best way to reduce noise with S-W while retaining the most detail is to add subtle NR to specific chroma channels. I love neat video for heavy noise, but I hate what it does to the footage, even when turned down/sharpened, always gets a little muddy. I found that S-W has the most noise in the blue channel (60-70% all noise), then red channel (20-30% all noise), and then green channel, which is the least noisiest most of the time. You can check this by using the splitter combiner node on Davinci. If I needed a subtle NR, I used spatial NR to the blue and red channels, mostly to the blue and it worked well.
http://i.imgur.com/esX3mQC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/fkbqUE8.jpg

Overall loving the camera very much, I can't wait to shoot some of my next projects!

 

[Gene Sung]

Looks nice man! Congrats.

What frame rates did you shoot in?

The Blue channel is quite noisy on the Red. My friend's production studio who have a massive job for Barbie for the past 3 seasons (lots of green screen) switched from Red to Alexa this year because of the noisy Blue channel. Their lead VFX guy says the Alexa pulls cleaner keys because it's blue channel is quite a bit less noisy.

I hope this can be remedied on the next Red sensor?

Anyways, I still love the S-W. Shot a Disney spot two weeks ago for the same production company and they loved the footage. Looked so nice. A few music videos coming up and I can't wait to shoot more with the S-W. So sweet.

 

[Jason Han]

Thanks Gene! I was shooting 5K 23.976, 59.96, and 1 clip at 4K 120p

Oh wow, I always thought the dragon had more red noise before, not sure since I didn't get to do much post with it. It's not so bad though, especially if you denoise the blue a little bit as I mentioned above.

Me too man loving the camera so much, looking forward to your footage!!

 

[Jacob Ryan]

Very nice work Jason. Is that Film Convert film emulation you use?

 

[Kenneth C Merrill]

Any chance you could post a R3D frame from that shot with with the hotel windows? That's amazing.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

The noisy blue channel can be ameloriated by shooting at 5600K.

 

[jordan levy]

The noisy blue channel can be solved by shooting at 5600K.

really? then why do people say the white balance has no relevance and can just be switched in post?
i remember with the MX i had to light entire green screens with HMIS, but so many people here are adamant that the white balance doesnt do anything to the raw image.

 

[Brody_B]

really? then why do people say the white balance has no relevance and can just be switched in post?
i remember with the MX i had to light entire green screens with HMIS, but so many people here are adamant that the white balance doesnt do anything to the raw image.

Yes, curious about this as well. Anybody else with this knowledge?

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

really? then why do people say the white balance has no relevance and can just be switched in post?
i remember with the MX i had to light entire green screens with HMIS, but so many people here are adamant that the white balance doesnt do anything to the raw image.

It does and it doesn't.

Raw is raw so you can white balance from any color light you want.

However, that doesn't mean that all light is created equal in the eyes of the dragon. Each sensor has a native color temperature that it is tuned for and for the dragon sensor that number is 5000K.

So, if you are shooting any other color temp, the camera has to add a "color gain" to make white. When you are shooting 3200k, for instance, the camera is receiving a lot of red light but relatively less blue light. So, when you white balance, the camera has to boost the blue channel by a lot to compensate, and thus you get noise.

 

[Jason Han]

Very nice work Jason. Is that Film Convert film emulation you use?

Thanks Jacob. No but I did use Film convert only for the grain

Any chance you could post a R3D frame from that shot with with the hotel windows? That's amazing.

Sure Kenneth, here is a frame of Red gamma2 and Redlogfilm: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1TvBUlADazrSUNHcnBrckY1WTA&usp=sharing

So, if you are shooting any other color temp, the camera has to add a "color gain" to make white. When you are shooting 3200k, for instance, the camera is receiving a lot of red light but relatively less blue light. So, when you white balance, the camera has to boost the blue channel by a lot to compensate, and thus you get noise.

Interesting, thanks for the info Marcus. I was aware of this however, and I did shoot 5600k for almost the whole shoot but the blue channel grain is still dominant. I'm not complaining about it by the way, just wanted to share what people can expect / how to deal with it

 

[Brody_B]

It does and it doesn't.

Raw is raw so you can white balance from any color light you want.

However, that doesn't mean that all light is created equal in the eyes of the dragon. Each sensor has a native color temperature that it is tuned for and for the dragon sensor that number is 5000K.

So, if you are shooting any other color temp, the camera has to add a "color gain" to make white. When you are shooting 3200k, for instance, the camera is receiving a lot of red light but relatively less blue light. So, when you white balance, the camera has to boost the blue channel by a lot to compensate, and thus you get noise.

So are you saying, if you shoot with WB at 5600k then in post want to change it to 3200k for finish, you will have less noise than if you shot in 3200k to begin with?

 

[Ugo Del]

So are you saying, if you shoot with WB at 5600k then in post want to change it to 3200k for finish, you will have less noise than if you shot in 3200k to begin with?

I guess it's the lighting which should be set @5000k to get the max from the camera. Jason shot @5600 but the natural light was probably not matching the native color temperature of the camera.

 

[Matthew Quinn]

very nice work jason

 

[David Battistella]

Like that teal and orange look!

David

 

[Nick Morrison]

really? then why do people say the white balance has no relevance and can just be switched in post?
i remember with the MX i had to light entire green screens with HMIS, but so many people here are adamant that the white balance doesnt do anything to the raw image.

Yes this is true. We did some tests at Small Giant, and found that shooting with even 80C filters on Epic Dragon's really helped with Tungsten/3400k.

We did some tests for our colorist, and he noticed an improvement in the blue channels (the waveform was more balanced) and noticeably better skintones - not just richer, but noticeably smoother and less splotchy.

We bring 80Cs to every job now.

The reason for this is simple - yes you can drop the camera to 3400 in post - but that won't change the fact the camera is DESIGNED for Daylight, and performs optimally in the 5000k area. Almost all CMOS cameras behave this way. If you look back at Geoff Boyle's camera tests from a year or two, you'll notice almost ALL cameras have less DR when shooting Tungsten, and the Epic Dragon in particular showed this. Obv you can still shoot great stuff Tungsten on Dragon, but I HIGHLY recommend the 80Cs! They put you at 4900K, and cost you one stop of light - but totally worth it!

Here are some samples, if it helps:


SHOOTING TUNGSTEN - NO FILTER

This spot was shot straight Tungsten, no filtration - part of a campaign we did:

Now this spot at first glance looks totally fine - some of the skintones were even pretty good. But that's because the dailies grade hides how hard some of these kids were to grade. Shooting at 3400k starved the blue channel just enough to limit our DR, make the footage less flexible, and we did at times struggle with some "ashy" skintones here and there. Again, Jake fixed most of it. But this is what started our "how do we make Tungsten look better?" conversation.

That's what led us to the 80C's.


SHOOTING TUNGSTEN - with 80C FILTER

Here are some samples from a shoot 2 months later, where we deployed these filters. The results were noticeably better, and skintones much richer - pretty close to what we'd be getting if we'd shot HMI.

Notice how rich the skintones are. They are fleshy, balanced, with no splotches. Jake our colorist FLEW threw this grade. And this sealed it for us. 80C's on all Tungsten jobs going forward, and we've stuck with that.

We're using HMIs on A LOT of our jobs these days - but Tungsten units are often still necessary (and useful) so the 80C's have become a mainstay in our kit. They live in our AC case!

Hope this helps!

 

[Ugo Del]

Yes this is true. We did some tests at Small Giant, and found that shooting with even 80C filters on Epic Dragon's really helped with Tungsten/3400k.

We did some tests for our colorist, and he noticed an improvement in the blue channels (the waveform was more balanced) and noticeably better skintones - not just richer, but noticeably smoother and less splotchy.

We bring 80Cs to every job now.

The reason for this is simple - yes you can drop the camera to 3400 in post - but that won't change the fact the camera is DESIGNED for Daylight, and performs optimally in the 5000k area. Almost all CMOS cameras behave this way. If you look back at Geoff Boyle's camera tests from a year or two, you'll notice almost ALL cameras have less DR when shooting Tungsten, and the Epic Dragon in particular showed this. Obv you can still shoot great stuff Tungsten on Dragon, but I HIGHLY recommend the 80Cs! They put you at 4900K, and cost you one stop of light - but totally worth it!

We shoot A LOT of our stuff now with daylight sources, the cameras respond SO MUCH better. But we still find ourselves using the 80C's A LOT - sometimes shooting Tungsten is just easier, depending on the location, or what we're doing.

It's 85c or 80c?

 

[Bob Gundu]

What OLPF were you using?

 

[Nick Morrison]

It's 85c or 80c?

80C

 

[Nick Morrison]

What OLPF were you using?

Lowlight.

 

[jordan levy]

Yes this is true. We did some tests at Small Giant, and found that shooting with even 80C filters on Epic Dragon's really helped with Tungsten/3400k.
Hope this helps!

very interesting nick, thank you!