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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 :)

Sensors...

Nikon D800E (sans OLPF) scores 96 DXO and sits at the top of the charts. Which is why many major IMAX 3D projects worth their salt are now shooting time-lapse on them. We can't wait to shoot with Dragon in stereo 3D!

NikonD800E_camBLOCK_3D_02.jpg
 
I know it's nitpicking (berate me if you must), but I look forward to the day when you can point a CMOS sensor at a typical red LED and you actually see a red LED (without greatly underexposing) and not a white LED with a pink halo. The same goes for night shots of traffic lights, brake lights, neon signs and Christmas lights...any color light source, really.
 
Sensors baby! That is why we love RED. Well, and a 100 other things too, but SENSORS baby!

So ISO2000, 6k, 100fps and 16 stops of DR? Someone please correct me if I missed a post. Can't wait for samples!
 
Curt Pair said:
I remember the days of 4GB hard drives costing me about $6-8K for AVID systems! (Circa 94-96?) This is a BARGAIN in any age!
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Oh heck.

'96.

I was Dell's senior engineer in the UK. Spent a lot of time troubleshooting their RAIDs. I remember the awe with which I beheld my first 9GB drive... thinking would I ever own one, and if I did, what would be the point, it would take me *decades* to fill it...

Mike
 
Is all that additional DR coming straight from the sensor, or is some of the gain from cleaning up the signal paths etc still further? You guys must be close to photon noise being the limiting factor? Amazing stuff.

Wish I could see deeper in to the fab. processes etc, but to say its commercially sensitive is kinda understatement of the week.
 
Jannard said:
It all starts with the sensor…

How is it that RED could enter the cinema camera market 7 years ago and now about 50% of the released features are "Shot on RED"?

How is it that Canon owned the professional stills market 3 years ago and now Nikon is handing them their @ss?

How did Arri convert all the old-school film guys to the Alexa?

Sensors, baby. Sensors.

Apparently Canon is married to old sensor fab technology. The Nikon D800 scores 95 on the DXO sensor scale. The brand new Canon 5D MKIII… 82. Really? That can't be good.

Arri has a great sensor program… although a bit down on resolution from our point of view. :-)

Enter the RED Dragon. This is sensor technology that makes all the big guys want to put on their helmets.

So how did Canon get so lost? Who are the camera companies that recognize that sensors are 90+% of a digital camera? Who is investing in sensor technology?

In order...

RED
Arri
Sony
the rest…

Of course there are other factors that matter in this highly competitive and fast changing market. Who will upgrade the sensor in your existing camera instead of making you buy a new camera?

No matter what your answers are to these questions… it is all coming down to who has the best sensor program. Sensors matter. Side note... film is officially dead.

Jim
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Canon has umpteenth dollars for R&D as compared to Nikon but while Canon chases megapixels Nikon quietly developed better sensors as priority. Their philosophy was to concentrate on lower noise and not race others for headline specs.

I've shot amongst my most spectacular images in 2012 with a D4 and D800, only surpassed by my Fuji GSW690III 6x9cm film camera; but heck that camera needs development then scanned to disc.

Lots of Black (Nikkor) lenses showing up at major sporting events..herd of Canon still ever-present but totally agree with Jim's prose about Nikon kicking serious butt.
 
Brian Boyer said:
I know it's nitpicking (berate me if you must), but I look forward to the day when you can point a CMOS sensor at a typical red LED and you actually see a red LED (without greatly underexposing) and not a white LED with a pink halo. The same goes for night shots of traffic lights, brake lights, neon signs and Christmas lights...any color light source, really.
Click to expand...
I have fixed these clipping problems in color correction before. And there are things you can do to add an ND gell or dimmer to the light source to minimize these problems.
 
Obviously a Global Shutter has other uses, but the one of the main issues related to rolling shutter is the read speed, and skew. Let me tell you, I've just shot a Grand Prix with the MX sensor. Fast- and I mean FAST- moving subjects . And its fantastic. I don't miss a Global shutter one bit https://vimeo.com/54079531. Shooting flashes or strobes? A small, small issue, but one can get around those, no problem. If the Dragon is this fast and is as innovative as Jim mentions, I'll be in heaven. I just have to say that, since day one of purchasing my Epic, I feel like I've really taken the right train. Glad to be a costumer of this passionate, boundaries pushing company. Cannot wait to see where you take us next!
 
Can Canon propose and make Mark IV or Canon new camera with MX or Dragon or RED sensor?
 
Jannard said:
4TB hard drives are now $200. That means there will be 8TB hard drives for under $200 in a year or so. Compare making 3 hard drive backups and then doing it again in 5 years to a climate controlled environment for film.

These are the days when technology is your friend.

Jim
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Think of all of the silver, developing and fixing chemicals that are no longer flowing into rivers, as well as the byproducts of producing those chemicals... I do hope that circuit and energy production resources used in the new model are more efficient and kind to our earth than film
 
Sergio Perez said:
Obviously a Global Shutter has other uses, but the one of the main issues related to rolling shutter is the read speed, and skew. Let me tell you, I've just shot a Grand Prix with the MX sensor. Fast- and I mean FAST- moving subjects . And its fantastic. I don't miss a Global shutter one bit https://vimeo.com/54079531. Shooting flashes or strobes? A small, small issue, but one can get around those, no problem. If the Dragon is this fast and is as innovative as Jim mentions, I'll be in heaven. I just have to say that, since day one of purchasing my Epic, I feel like I've really taken the right train. Glad to be a costumer of this passionate, boundaries pushing company. Cannot wait to see where you take us next!
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Good performance is always good, but until we get a global shutter - it'll be yet another thing we keep asking for.

I'd trade 16-stops of DR and a rolling shutter, for 14-stops and a global shutter - there are fewer trade-offs.
 
Brian Boyer said:
I know it's nitpicking (berate me if you must), but I look forward to the day when you can point a CMOS sensor at a typical red LED and you actually see a red LED (without greatly underexposing) and not a white LED with a pink halo. The same goes for night shots of traffic lights, brake lights, neon signs and Christmas lights...any color light source, really.
Click to expand...

That's odd, I've shot night shots of those red lights on the big wind farm windmills from a distance and they show up a beautiful red, as they do to the naked eye.
 
Mike 'Fireman' Ross said:
Oh heck.

'96.

I was Dell's senior engineer in the UK. Spent a lot of time troubleshooting their RAIDs. I remember the awe with which I beheld my first 9GB drive... thinking would I ever own one, and if I did, what would be the point, it would take me *decades* to fill it...

Mike
Click to expand...


The tipping point for me was about the same time when a 2 9gig drive raid box for our Media 100 dropped to $2500 - we thought we had arrived at practical, low cost non-linear.

2012: A couple weeks ago Compusa had 8 gig thumbdrives for $3.99 - as many as you want!
 
The old eggs in one basket and sacks of grain during rodent plague analagies spring to mind.


For the time being, provided it remains viable for Kodak to deal in the film product, there exists now, the luxury of having two distinctly diverse forms of security in storage media. Electronic media is replicated at relatively low cost and can be scattered far and wide. It's security can be in terms of sheer numbers of copies scattered about to defy major catastrophic happenings.

Its ability to perform as an enduring archive remains on trial. Endurance of the physical media and its retrieval hardware have already been demonstrated historally as vulnerable. It is also only as secure as the complex intellectual property running around in the heads of fallible humans that supports it.

It is all good, so long as they themselves remain upright and cogent and whether or not they are able to pass this property down to new generations who may or may not be motivated to learn. This fragile chain will determine just how enduring a given generation of tech will remain. Reverse engineering of old electronic tech is not a low cost adventure.

A disciplined process of data migration is needed to leapfrog increasingly shorter obsolescence cycles. We all know just how disciplined human nature is.


Film, admittedly requiring some care in storage to be ideal, has proven to be a remarkable if sometimes unintended archive resource. Some material, significantly neglected has remained recoverable in spite of human fallibility. I must conceed of course that much material has also been lost. By virtue of costs, multiple copy of archives to film will always be limited and it will remain more vulnerable to major catastrophic events unless securely dispersed. Retrieval technology for film is significantly easier and cheaper to reverse engineer. At the ridiculously low-budget end, all that is needed is a set of hands, preferably a clean working environment, an optical magnifier and a set of functional eyeballs with a competent human attached and functioning.


What may transpire may be an irony. Kodak was an active progenitor of modern motion electronic imaging as we know it. Electronic audiovisual endeavour may end up cross-subsidising the endurance of film tech by choice. Film thus may not be dead at all, just sleeping.


Two technical endeavours in the US might easily have become dead and gone however the fates and good product have seen them endure. Look up the histories of Kenyon Laboratories ( gyro-stabilisers ) and Huber Industries ( camera mounting systems ) some time when you are not too busy. Hopefully chemical imaging and Kodak will be such also. We might also hope similarly for the entity RED. It has a lot of years to traverse.


We all mostly know all this stuff already but I have succumbed to a need to express an opinion. Please forgive me this indulgence.
 
Philip Orlandic said:
If RED Dragon delivers +7 stops above 18% grey and +8 stops below 18% grey card everybody will be blown away.
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Yes, but at what ISO?

If it could do this at ISO 400 etc. people will be VERY happy.
 
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