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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...

Film is dead!!! Thank god. Capturing minidv and other "hd tape" made me want to jump into a wood chipper. I have been ecstatic about the RED revolution since the beginning. My first camera that could record as files on a drive was a sony handy-cam. I spoke with a rep from panasonic 5 months later asking when the hell a pro camera could record file based media to a drive and catch up with my 800 dollar handy cam tech. He rolled his eyes and said "why do you need that? Film will never go away." I hope he is crying in dark room full of 35mm and betamax tapes!
 
Brian Self said:
Film is dead!!! Thank god. Capturing minidv and other "hd tape" made me want to jump into a wood chipper. I have been ecstatic about the RED revolution since the beginning. My first camera that could record as files on a drive was a sony handy-cam. I spoke with a rep from panasonic 5 months later asking when the hell a pro camera could record file based media to a drive and catch up with my 800 dollar handy cam tech. He rolled his eyes and said "why do you need that? Film will never go away." I hope he is crying in dark room full of 35mm and betamax tapes!
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It's amazing, but that guy really gets around. He works for a lot of different companies and I've talked to him several times over the years! :)

Let's not forget his older brother either, you know that guy that told us all that we'd never fill up those 30MB hard drives, and then later told us that a 1GB was massive, and a 4GB was impossible to fill up! And I think it's his kids that are running around claiming 2K is good enough and it's going to take YEARS before 4K is a viable format. Hmmmm...
 
Brian Boyer said:
I'm still convinced film simply does a better job at intense color reproduction when it comes to light sources.
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That has been my observation as well, but experience is limited to still cameras. Maybe HDRx can fix it, at least for static or slow-moving objects such as traffic lights.

Let's not forget other problems that digital sensors have, such as CA. That's not pessimism, that's just reality. I like both film and digital, FWIW. Though if film has to retire (not the same as dying, right?), the RED cameras are the only worthy successors. It's not like film is surrendering to DSLRs or compromised 2K cameras.

Brian Boyer said:
Besides, if gelling was the fix for those situations in the film-only days, there'd be no reason to stop the practice now that digital acquisition has taken over.
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Good point, that. Have a look at this shot by Gunleik Groven (post #216, first picture down). That's a good example of the issue that you're talking about:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?88603-Shut-up-and-shoot-that-RED-(NSFW)/page22

Or view it directly here:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/679853_10151302340865126_685790486_o.jpg
 
Film is not dead, but I'm sure it could be getting close. Every digital camera is trying to emulate film. There are also many advantages such as archiving, not having hundreds of codecs, and the ability to play the format in any country. But as a digital cinematographer, RED and Arri are the way for me. With the Dragon to come, it's awesome to hear that you won't have to buy another camera for the upgrade, as I guarantee an Alexa 4k would be a whole new camera rather then a $6k cost. Amazing stuff.
 
Hey, guess what... Film is "dead" the day people stop shooting it, not because a new sensor sees the light of day. Instead of dancing on film's grave, everyone should be celebrating it's long life.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
It's amazing, but that guy really gets around. He works for a lot of different companies and I've talked to him several times over the years! :)

Let's not forget his older brother either, you know that guy that told us all that we'd never fill up those 30MB hard drives, and then later told us that a 1GB was massive, and a 4GB was impossible to fill up! And I think it's his kids that are running around claiming 2K is good enough and it's going to take YEARS before 4K is a viable format. Hmmmm...
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Went to Bletchly earlier in the year. In addition to the pure code breaking stuff, theres also a computer museum. Hard disks with diameters that lool more like widescreen TV diagonals than disk drives, yet still holding less data than a CD. Taking photos of room sized computers that are less powerful than the smartphone photographing them......

Collosus is a sight to behold. Amazingly the valves used are decades old, taken from the post office exchanges as they upgraded (as the original collosus was built from valves taken from the post office). Turns out that the best way to preserve a valve based machine is to run it continously, Valves far more likely to fail on powerup, so just never turn it off.

Would be amazing to take a RED round there. Has loads of great potential, story, some beatufui shots about. Doesnt hurt that the collosus rooms one of those places where to hear camera fan noise the sound mans going to be so close sexual assult charges are on the cards........
 
Karim D. Ghantous said:
That has been my observation as well, but experience is limited to still cameras. Maybe HDRx can fix it, at least for static or slow-moving objects such as traffic lights.

[EDIT]

Have a look at this shot by Gunleik Groven (post #216, first picture down). That's a good example of the issue that you're talking about:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?88603-Shut-up-and-shoot-that-RED-(NSFW)/page22

Or view it directly here:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/679853_10151302340865126_685790486_o.jpg
Click to expand...


Yeah, it's something most people don't seem to care about too much. It bugs me a little bit every time I see it. I admit, compared to some of the other strides digital sensors have made, it's of less importance and accounts for a relatively small percentage of shooting situations.

However, when you start talking about exceeding film's capabilities, then you have to start looking at what esoteric things film excels at that digital still struggles with.

Don't get me wrong. Film can blow out to white as well when the colored light is too intense. Most film stocks just seem to have a higher threshold and it would be nice if digital sensors had an equal (or better) response.

For instance, with the holidays upon us, lighting decorations abound and it will be nice when we can point our cameras at them and capture those colors with the accuracy and intensity that make us want to shoot them in the first place instead of recording hundreds of little hard-edged white shapes with colored halos.

HDRx is not as helpful in situations containing color fidelity as it is when the highlights to be recovered are white because the A track is still clipping to white. Combining the X track containing the underexposed color information with the clipped-to-white A track yields rather poor results given the current methods (simple and magic motion). The tricks that Marc mentioned earlier are a better fix.

I'm thinking 15 or 16 stops of dynamic range in Dragon (depending on how they're implemented) will put us significantly further from clipping the sensor (over the MX) and that much closer to retaining a light's original color.
 
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Vadim Bobkovsky said:
But... dancing is the form of celebration! :)
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hahahahaha, exactly! ding dong the witch is dead! Celebrating the long life of film is like celebrating the long life of lead based paint. There are better ways of doing things IMO. I know many will disagree
 
Brian Self said:
...Celebrating the long life of film is like celebrating the long life of lead based paint...
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Great metaphor! And aren't you the same poster who said (something) made you want to jump into a wood chipper? Fun reading. '-)
 
Mark K. said:
Without a global shutter exposure (mechanical or electronic), Dragon won't yet beat film on ALL fronts.

...you can do it Jim, you know you want to. ;)
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Filmcameras have NOT global shutter. They have a rotating mirror so there is also motion artifacts top-to-bottom. It's just non CMOS (CCD) camers that have global shutter.
 
JanneJansson said:
Filmcameras have NOT global shutter. They have a rotating mirror so there is also motion artifacts top-to-bottom. It's just non CMOS (CCD) camers that have global shutter.
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Yes - and the effective "read-reset" time of film is, from what JJ has said, about 4 ms.
 
As an Epic and Scarlet owner, I have to admit the C500 to a Codex box looks amazing. If Dragon can match that, or hopefully beat it, I'll be super happy.
 
Brian Boyer said:
I'm thinking 15 or 16 stops of dynamic range in Dragon (depending on how they're implemented) will put us significantly further from clipping the sensor (over the MX) and that much closer to retaining a light's original color.
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This will be Dragon's acid test. If its DR is that good, you can underexpose the crap out of it (relatively speaking!) and get very good shadow detail. If that's the case, problem solved. We already do this with still cameras (costing mere hundreds of dollars) with CMOS sensors - the only penalty is noise, but not too much.

It seems that film easily wins at lower ISOs, digital at higher ISOs. From what I know about Kodak 5203 (50D), you can overexpose it by more than you can 5219 (500T). Please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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