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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 :)

Sensitivity on Epic Monochrome

John Marchant

John Marchant

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I'm loving the broad range of usable ISO settings on the Monochrome. The grain is so much more aesthetically acceptable at single-pixel sizes. Right now I'm rating the camera at maximum for low light as follows:

2k - ISO 1280
3k - ISO 2500
4k - ISO 3200
5k - ISO 4000

At which settings the grain is extremely comparable across all crops when delivered as HD. Very practical :)

Where are you drawing the line on ISO for low light on your regular epics? Its only the mono (and a specific project) that's brought me to analysing this carefully.


I've found that I can get useable images at ISO 12800 with some post work. Absolutely unheard of for me!


Click for original size.

At the other end of the spectrum, post-ing back to ISO800 and crushing the black is like looking through glass, its so clean.
With no apologies for the domestic subject matter... no client to seek permission from this way.

 
the 12800 looks great, really wanna try one of these monochrome epics out. can you post a r3d still for us to play with?
 
Here's an R3D still for you. I was deliberately looking at the low-light, so of course this is pretty underexposed. Shot at ISO2000 1/50th f4 on Nikon 50mm Ai-s.

www.kippertie.com/red/guildford.R3D

Bear in mind there was some post-processing in after effects to get my 12800 still a little cleaner- just a sub-pixel shift which doesn't soften the image too much.
 
John,
Thanks for posting your full resolution jpg's ! That's the spirit ;)
Great detail for that ISO, I must say.

Question: do you think the vertical striping on the high ISO city picture would go away if you did a black shade ?
You can see it in the sky, seems more evident on the right side of the image.
 
There's a little fixed pattern that seems to arise even with recent blackshade - but what's noticeable at 12800 is that you're amplifying the signal so much that you can actually watch the noise-floor change as you roll camera and the fan quiets down. Short answer is yes, a better blackshade might fix it, but at such a huge ISO the 'right' blackshade is hard to arrive at.
 
John,
Nothing a little post processing can't fix. If you want, PM me a link to 20 frames of motion or so, I'll see how pretty I can make it for you ! I've fixed stripes on restoration projects before, so no worries there.
-Les

John Marchant said:
There's a little fixed pattern that seems to arise even with recent blackshade - but what's noticeable at 12800 is that you're amplifying the signal so much that you can actually watch the noise-floor change as you roll camera and the fan quiets down. Short answer is yes, a better blackshade might fix it, but at such a huge ISO the 'right' blackshade is hard to arrive at.
Click to expand...
 
Yep, its not beyond the wit of man to fix - amazing really given how few photons were arriving at the sensor. I'll post a trimmed r3d when I get a chance, out of the office tomorrow...

Speaking of things arriving at the sensor; now I'm regularly shooting much higher ISOs I'm increasingly seeing little spurious 'sparks' in the black of my images - happens on all my RED gear, but not my stills cameras at similar settings. Could be background radiation pinging the sensor, or maybe some kind of electrical discharge wandering the surface of the sensor itself. Not really a problem, but fascinating in its own right. Takes pixel peeping to new places :P
 
I'm glad you guys are pushing forward with this version of the Epic. Your work and REDS willingness to release a BnW camera body will have trickle down effects that I believe will greatly advance the science and hopefully achieve a more pleasant noise / low light performance in color.

Thanks.
 
Went in search of detail and grade - busting images this afternoon between jobs. Came away wanting sharper glass and higher bit depth monitoring LOL. The camera has such depth to grade with and such detail, I'm just spoilt. You can take extreme liberties with the luma curve and it just doesn't care.

Click 'em for Les D friendly full res jpgs.







 
What amazes me is the options really. The hillside view was greying and misty, but stomping on the curve hard let me dig up a half dozen variations I liked... and never any noise, never any banding, never any 'bleeding edge of the data' nasties.
 
Cheers Ketch. I'm preparing for a local landscape personal project among other things. Lucky to live where I do, its easy to take for granted.
 
Talking about insane sensitivy with the monochrome, I recently started using ND filters on shooting with candles. This shot is 3 candles with a ND .9 and RPP 18mm at T1.8 (24 fps at 180 shutter) and a hot mirror:

candlesn9h.jpg
 
PatrickFaith said:
Talking about insane sensitivy with the monochrome, I recently started using ND filters on shooting with candles. This shot is 3 candles with a ND .9 and RPP 18mm at T1.8 (24 fps at 180 shutter) and a hot mirror:

candlesn9h.jpg
Click to expand...

Kind of mind boggeling.
 
Nick,Gunleik,Brain ... i totally concur. When Ted showed me his Monochrome, we were in a unlit office, and of course the first thing I did was shoot his feet which were in a "dark" spot under a desk ... and i was like "holy crap".

I have heard some ASC's explain how to shoot digital darks from a black/white film perspective, but I really prefer the ILM/Weta/Disney type approach to digital lighting. For example, the old way would be someone saying, "put a fill light on the room then crush the blacks in post". I think the more digital way of thinking of it is: light the space so there is an ambient lighting on all objects, so the sensor has a photonic pressure in the entire space(basically have a even bump of light on all objects at the base of your histogram - this assure's there is always data on every pixel). Then in compositing place exponentials on that space to create story tension in the shadows/blacks(put pressure on that bump to compress the ambient space, as it mixes with you ray based lighting as a compositing step). The ND filters with monochrome allow highly accurate ambient lighting distribution that is similar to the base vfx ambient lighting (pre-raytracing) to create an ambient space which allows seamless/fast digital compositing.

I do think shooting with black and white is making me a much better color cinematographer too - I am finding I have accumulated over the years a lot of "bad habits" that I didn't realize, which create series problems as I look at my black and white footage in post.
 
Wow. Patrick... Thanks for this. And you too John. Patrick--feel free to chat a little more about the things you're learning.
 
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