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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 :)

Shut up and shoot that RED (NSFW)

Gunleik Groven said:
705270_10151312022285126_1471640718_o.jpg
Click to expand...

Gotta love how you are exploring the organic feel of this camera. The "grain" can be quite beautiful :)

EDIT: I just browsed the thread back to front and really enjoyed your hi-ISO B&W work Gunleik!
 
Tehben Dean said:
Gotta love how you are exploring the organic feel of this camera. The "grain" can be quite beautiful :)

EDIT: I just browsed the thread back to front and really enjoyed your hi-ISO B&W work Gunleik!
Click to expand...

Thanks!

To me, getting my hands ont the Epic was pretty much "comming home"

It was the first digital camera (stills or video) that kinda behaved the way I was used to back in time when I was shooting slr's.

I really immediately fell in love withthe R1 M for many of the same reasons I dig the Epic.

But the Epic is lighter, has more beautyful highlights and lowlights and the image is so much fatter in post. With or without noise.

Is it the most noise free camera out there?
Nope

Is it the one with the best lowlight sensibility?
No way

Does it have the most DR?
Nope. Not whithout HDRx, and that can be a drag.

But...
After working on 20 hours (finnished) from the R1MX, I cannot say how much I disagree with the Para test.

The R1MX can even look easier to shoot with, because of the harsher gamma that forces you to expose whithin its range, but where the para test stops and the Epic begins, is in post.

The image is just soooooooo much more robust and fatter.
The lower compression means a lot.
The relation between stops, bits and linear light, is kinda not unimportant on a theoretical level.

But to me, with the Epic, it is a matter of me being able to controll the image carracteristics, rather than being controlled by the cameras image carracteristics.

That could be said about Alexa RAW, too though.

I just cannot have that, or carry it around like my own little baby wherever I go or really use it as a tool to test ideas in stills that I later can apply in motion, the same way as I can with the Epic.

i really love the freedom offered by the Epic in that respect.

And these days I am into working on different image charrecteristics, in addition to framing and different visual ideas.
Because the noise (if treated right) can be so organic from the Epic, that I will probably be using that even for motion down the road...

Visuals are about impact, not what makes the impact.

Noise can be a part of that impact, in a good way, too...
 
Really enjoy all your threads. Very informative. I haven't yet used my Scarlet as a still camera, but I am going to give it a try. I'll post when I have something. Again, thanks for sharing and taking so much time to educate. For me that's what it is all about.
 
Thanks for the compliments!

My "fimschool" was very generous people on the net and my chance to be on set with some outstanding photographers.
If I can somehow return some of those favours, I am all glad!
 
Post #227: I liked the shot of the woman's foot (nicely composed, good choice of angle, nice bokeh) and the one with the bare legs (interesting pose and abstract).
Gunleik Groven said:
@ Karim

That question of yours made me do a couple of tests...

As to how to get less noise from an underexposed image.

This is what I tried

5600/800/RLF

5600/4000/RLF

5600/800/linear

There is NO question the linear gives the smoothest image
Click to expand...
Is 'linear' a Redcine setting?

I'm thinking... Les Dittert showed that by replacing the EPIC's OLPF with a different unit, you could get sharper images. If I use a Scarlet/EPIC for stills only, I'm thinking that this conversion could be a good idea.
 
Sensors see light as linear. The response is (matrixed out to be) linear.

Essentially, a sensor is a photon weight. And the data is mapped "linearily" basically meaning that everytime you add a stop of light, that stop is mapped to the "next" bit, which again has twice the theoretical precission as the previos. Kinda different to our eyes who have "a lot" of precission in the shadows, and "not so high" precission in the highlights.

The RAW data, is basically just that, an untreated "sample" of what levels the sensor weighed, and then wavelet compressed in the RED case

Next step is the Matrix, which is a standardised transorm of the data to adjust for nonlinear response in the sensor in the three channels at different intensitylevels in the exposurerange. AFIK this happens on a per channel level. We cannot turn off the Matrix, so we don't really ever have access to the "raw-linear" data. Early on that was an option, but why would we have access to that, other than if we would like to create our own matrix or would like to reverse engineer Graemes magic soup? But you could say that sensor, filtering, compression AD bit-depth and matrix are the differensating and defining elements in a cameras imagecarracteristics. Because it is from there the rgb image-treatment starts.

As far as I can see, the matrix is not "baked" in the raw data from RED, and is worked on behind the scene all the time. But we haven't had any info from RED on that part of the signalchain since the early days. It is visible, though when there are updates in the color sciences. The updates depend heavily on the mateix linearising the images to a "standard" linearlight container.

So. Here we essential have a linear-light-response untreated image that basically looks very "dark" to our eyes, when a LUT is not applied and it is displayed on let's say a rec709 monitor.

Middle grey, which is slightly important to us, actually falls into an area that looks allmost black, which is quite informative as to how and when noise is generated in images. While the highlights (where our eyes precission is not as good) have tons of precissionlevels available, and thus contain less noise.

After this, some kind of LUT is applied, which basically is a RGB transform into a color/luma space compatible with a screening device and our eyes. And different parts of that process is done with different tools.

Which means that tint is adjusted mostly through adjusting saturation values and thus does not affect the noise in the image unless you go to extremes, while white-balance is done through lifting and clamping the red and blue channel, ballancing them around the green. And ISO/exposure changes where the mid-point hits the scale. These transforms can be done in different ways and that is indeed what differensiate different color tools and cameras even more (when the second transform is done in cam) how they implement the different transforms of the linear rgb image and downsample it into something "viewable" (to be a bit simplistic.)

Point is that all the transforms from the original linearlight rgb image, is actually lossy/noise introducing/and destructive, in a "we want it all" kind of mindset. And the only "true" rgb "standard" we have is actually the post-matrix pre-transformed linear light image that any digital camera creates. That is why exr's in and by themselves are containers for linearlight images (yup, i know you can throw "anything" in that container, just trying to be practical here) and the ACES standardisation move, is based on linearlight signals and standard transforms for "any" camera.

Linear is basically the "rawest" signal we will ever touch from a digital camera.
Most manufacturers bake in some of their own soup besides the matrix in that linearlight image too, where iso and whiteballance are the two most common "baked" elements, which I find kinda understandable, because there is little that differensiate a signal as much as those two elements. That is what gives signature, so you can see it "is a Nikon" or a "Canon" or a "Leica" or a "RED" image.

So having some kind of understanding of how these processes affect the images in different systems, is kinda essential for anyone who have to deal with signalchains and workflows.

Anyhow, back to your question.
Yes. It is a setting in RCX, a "gamma option" which basically can give you the unaltered (but matrixed) RGB RAW data directly from the cam, stored in a 16 bit container, so you don't have to worry about downsampling issues.

As far as I have understood on Michael Cionis and others here and in real life, this is the preferef way to start an image chain, if you have the infrastructure and knowledge to treat it well.

But when we say we want to work "RAW", and want "all the data", practically what we are talking about, is this linearlight untransformed 12-bit in a 16-bit container linearlight rgb image.


Now...
I often don't bother... Hahahahaha
I use this knowledge a lot when working on large scale film/tv projects or have ro analyze and solve image-issues for others. Or when prepping with DP's or setting up solutions for grading or VFX for others.
but for me, privately, it is mostly totally overkill to work that way and also not neccesary. I don't have to go "deep" in imagechains to work on my framing and exposure. But your dng question, made me do some tests as to how much noise I could get rid of in heavily underexposed images by starting off with the linearlight signal and not with the gamma-corrected one.

And I was surprised to find the noise so much smoother when corrected from linearlight, than with the RED gammas. Didn't expect that, really, but goes to prove that the signalchains in RCX is constantly worked on, because I have seen different results when doing similar tests earlier on older builds of RCX.

And that is all good.
Lack of noise is not the only charracteristic in a good image. Textures are important, too. And textures are essentially noise. That makes the image come alive.

But that was the long answer to what I was refering to with the last reply...

Cheers

G
 
Moved the rest of the pure geekery here

http://bit.ly/WroKN6

Kind of easy to fall through and become a geek again...

Once an addict/old habbits and all that.

I don't mind questions here, though, but I guess those kind of discussions are well kept in threads that don't potentially embarass employers and people in general. This, I can see that may do that...

Hahahahaha
 
Hahahahaha


Thanks.

Ouch.

But the order of events are allways.
But I have to not get too excitd about purely geekery shit these days. It is a bit of either or. Making images is the part thatbreally interests me, so I have to conciously try to stay away from the as tima and focus consuming part of... Welll... Geekery.


But the orderbof which transforms when is of some significance....
 
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