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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 :)

Shooting RED at night

Tom S

Tom S

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RED released an HDR Reel on YouTube a week ago with some gorgeous footage, however I am puzzled by a night shot (9 seconds in).

I can't get anything at night, especially trying to shoot 23.98 at 1/48. Even if I push the ISO to 3200, I get nothing. The cars are not blurry so I don't think the shutter was slowed down.

Any idea of how this shot was done?

red%20city2.jpg



I can't even get in the ballpark with a RED Dragon.
red%20city1.jpg
 
Not with a Dragon I suspect. Them boyz like lots o light
 
That was indeed my shot. Dragon 8K VV, Tokina 35mm if I recall correctly, similar to my night Monstro stuff really. Likely wide open T1.5. Some cities are darker than others, but I'll say this, there's no substitute for a fast lens that can hold at or near maximum aperture, that might even be T2. I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure it was over cranked as well, sped up for the reel.

Can't recall the ISO off hand as that was a year+ ago, but I've done a lot of night stuff in the ISO 1280-2000 range lately on Monstro. Sometimes pushed a stop from there. Happy to have a few shots in that reel all from the VV sensors in this case.

I do know it was the Standard OLPF, pretty much on my camera all of the time unless I find a reason to go to the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF.

My previous night stuff on Dragon 6K was in that realm as well before I went all VV. Mostly using Tokina, Sigma, and Zeiss Otus Primes for night stuff if you're real curious.

phfx_qatarBTS_0017.jpg


phfx_qatarBTS_0016.jpg
 
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Patrick Tresch said:
?

Dragon is great at night and you get a lot of details if you open the lens a bit. Gemini and Monstro are better though. They are other beasts....

Pat
Click to expand...

I always understood Dragon to be a native ISO 320 sensor at best
 
Interesting. I'll have to try speeding up in post and see how it looks.
 
Tom S said:
Interesting. I'll have to try speeding up in post and see how it looks.
Click to expand...
They didn't do anything to the exposure for the speedup, the original shot is slower is what I'm saying. The key thing you need to look into is faster glass.
 
Phil Holland said:
They didn't do anything to the exposure for the speedup, the original shot is slower is what I'm saying. The key thing you need to look into is faster glass.
Click to expand...

OK. I was at 2.8 with my Angenieux 16-42. I'll have to try my friends Sigma 1.5.
 
There's an argument for shooting Dragon at 320ISO, especially since it rolls the highlights so nicely. Personally, I lived at 500 or 640 depending on the scene/lighting. Monstro really is a different beast with a different noise character when pushed than Dragon. I typically just leave Monstro parked at 800, but pump it up to 1,600 without fear when needed. YMMV.

Cheers - #19
 
Zeb B said:
I always understood Dragon to be a native ISO 320 sensor at best
Click to expand...

Many people used the lower ISO Range to get the cleanest possible images, but there's a reason the camera defaults at ISO 800. Some of the last 5K through 6K productions I was working on with Dragon were being filmed at a rated ISO 1280-1600 even. I'm talking features there.

I was hoping all my published data here on REDuser would make it to the eyes and ears of many regarding ISO as well as that whole Field Ops Guide book. It explains a whole lot for general workflow.

Native ISO is not what anybody looks for because the actual Native ISO is tied to Linear Light IMO and is a number way lower than anybody would ever care to deal with, the Base ISO has always been something else and is generally the recommended starting spot for rating your ISO. Typically it's landing in the range where you have equal stops above and below 18% Gray. Dragon lands somewhere in the 800-1280 range upon measuring.

Only thing to keep in mind is if you rated at ISO 800 with the Low Light Optimized OLPF or Standard OLPF, when you use the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF cut that by 1 stop, so ISO 400, due to the filter's more aggressive light cutting features.

I've had work as high as ISO 5000 hit the air without NR btw. All about how you expose for this stuff and where things fall on the spectrum.
 
Phil Holland said:
(snip) I've had work as high as ISO 5000 hit the air without NR btw. All about how you expose for this stuff and where things fall on the spectrum.
Click to expand...

In situations where you can crush the blacks without losing detail anybody cares about, higher ISO can be just dandy. I also tip my hat to Phil for understanding what values he needs in portions of the image in order to shoot high ISO and still get a solid image. YMMV.

Cheers - #19
 
My Dragon Weapon MG lives with LLO and 1600 iso.
I even find it to clean. But It's a good compromise to have even texture between shots that are a bit under or over exposed.
The 4k DCP JPEG2000 compression (250Mb/s) does harm the fine textures and do clean up the footage even further more.
I would love to see lower compression rates now as a DCP standard as it shoulnd't destroy the desired noise/grain fine texture.

Working with higher iso levels makes you use less R3D compression as the fine noise details eats up a lot of data.


Pat
 
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