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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 :)

Shutter smear...

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Brook Willard

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Any plans to integrate shutter smear? With a digitally controlled shutter and such a broad range of control available, it seems reasonable that digital shutter smear could be integrated. Pixels on the sensor could be mapped to expose at slightly different times but for the same interval, resulting in the same visual phenomenon that a rotating shutter creates.

This is not to say that I noticed strobing. For all I know, smear could already be integrated into the digital shutter mapping. It could also be impossible... I just don't know.

Any plans?
 
Post effect?
 
shutter smear isnt a good thing... so i dont know why you would want to make the camera do it by default. Alot of work is actually done to reduce smear, specially amongst highlights.
 
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I've just found that sometimes the smear resulting from a 180 degree shutter helps combat strobing, most notably at the beginning of or end of a camera movement. Perhaps I've mislabeled what I'm thinking of...
 
Or look at it the other way: it's edge sharpness that makes for stutter. That's why HD stutters even when shot like film as they always seem to crank the edge sharpness way up. Bring it down and shoot with 35mm DOF and you don't get the stutter you'd normally get.

Graeme
 
Would strobing be the jittering effect on the white lettering on the tail of the plane during a couple of the dogfight shots in the footage?

I never got a chance to ask what this was due to, but it was fairly pronounced.

Now, before any fanboys go overboard on me, just know that I still think the foogtage was phenominal. :)
 
I had the feeling that some of the stuff I saw in the aerial shots was more to do with the camera being shaken around, but I'm not 100% sure. That said, as we refine things in the lab, we'll learn more about the the cameras in this regard.

Graeme
 
If the electronic shutter seems to be a little "crisper" than its mechanical counterpart in a film camera, one solution might be to just slightly increase the exposure time, like using a 200 or 220 degree shutter instead of the standard 180 degree shutter. This would add a little more smear to the motion, but not be too objectionable.

In 24P HD, I sometimes use a 1/32 shutter speed instead of 1/48 -- partly to gain another half-stop of light, but also to reduce strobing at the expense of more smearing. In a low-light emergency, I might use 1/24 but then you definitely get a non-film-like smeariness with faster motion.

As Graeme is saying, the other culprit is edge-enhancement in video, which exagerrates the sharpness of the moving edge.

I'd also think that, to some degree, the excessive depth of field that some video cameras have also would contribute to the feeling of strobiness, because more of the image is in sharp focus, thus your eye is paying attention to more areas of the frame that are strobing. Just a theory.
 
That sounds right David. Because we don't have the moving blade we can compensate for opening the shutter very slightly longer. Be interesting to try that on RED as soon as that's all enabled. Might be good to work out special visually equivalent shutter speeds to match a rotating shutter if that ends up being the case.

One of the nice things about doing 4k is the lack of need for the excessive edge sharpening you need on lower resolutions. That said, if you look at the NHK 8k stuff, it's very edge enhanced, and suffers because of it....

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
I had the feeling that some of the stuff I saw in the aerial shots was more to do with the camera being shaken around, but I'm not 100% sure. That said, as we refine things in the lab, we'll learn more about the the cameras in this regard.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Thanks Graeme. From what I could tell it only looked to be in one spot on the frame, but then again it could be the focus of my eye. I was going to go back in to watch the footage again to analyze it better, but didn't have the time.

I'm certainly not alarmed at this point, because it could be caused by many things and motion in the other parts of the film were perfect. I don't know if the letters being white and in motion in relation to darker scenes might matter (way over my head), but I'm sure something will surface and a fix (if needed) will make it's way to the camera.

It might have even been the projector, because very few people noticed it and it was VERY obvious.

Now, come to think of it, it might have been the 8 shots of espresso. :)

Can't wait to test my own camera's limits.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
I had the feeling that some of the stuff I saw in the aerial shots was more to do with the camera being shaken around, but I'm not 100% sure. That said, as we refine things in the lab, we'll learn more about the the cameras in this regard.

Graeme
Click to expand...

speaking of 'shake' (forgive me, Im a camera newbie), will it have Image stabilization like in the canon xl1?

I remember one day I had IS off and the camera was on the tripod...I looked throught the viewfinder through my office window, and it was horrible how much shake was going on. The floor level I was on vibrated, I guess...would never have known.

Also with all the talk of handheld noise, etc in still photography in low light, etc. how does this play in with Red being hand held and 'shake'. In still world you use lower ISO and f stop, what about 'film'/video...again, I know with the canon xl1 it had IS in the lens.

This is something I am real curious about red.

Peace

Dalen
 
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No, the RED ONE will not have image stabilization. Such features are more suited for consumer camcorders, not professional digital cinema cameras. :)
 
Brook Willard said:
No, the RED ONE will not have image stabilization. Such features are more suited for consumer camcorders, not professional digital cinema cameras. :)
Click to expand...

why more suited? Canon has it...it was used in production shots as well as our high end panasonic and sonys?

Im not convinced that professionals dont need IS.
As mentioned, I looked through the lens, quite suprised that it had a steady vibration...on a tripod.

And with the shake here, may not be related, I truly am curious.
But now that you say it doesnt happen, I have 2 further questions...

- will there be some IS in the future? (in body/lens)
again, I dont see this as consumer only...if it works and benefits, why not incorporate?
- Until that time (which may not be from the sound of the reply) what do you do to reduce shake.

Yes most film is always on a tripod, or whatever...you never see the dude handholding the camera, nor can you with the size of those really. So, in some sense, 'professionals' dont need it.

But red is to a whole new market now - anyway, thanks for the responce.

Peace

Dalen
 
From a post stand point I know that sharpening can indeed increase strobe. I used sharpening just last week on a project because I needed the frame to 'sparkle and pop' more for effect (I was trying to emulate the look of sun flares on distant water). This is especially true on transparencies and fine detail. I would imagine motion blur on film would be very similar to a transparency. The edge enhancement doesn't know what to make of a big evenly toned blob so it enhances its outline. The brain assumes that the density of a boundary infers the density of shape. So solid outline = solid shape. Just as if you had shot it with a fast shutter.

Dalen the reason RED does not include IS is because that is a feature of the lens, not the camera. The RED camera does not support automatic lens features and by extension image stabilization.

Now the answer you really want to hear: the reason why you don't want to use IS: IS does just that, it stabilizes the image. The problem with it is, it doesn't know what movement is intentional and what movement is random so if you try to do any camera moves the image will 'bound' from angle to angle instead of moving in a nice smooth motion. Try it with your camera on a tripod. You'll find starting and stopping a nice smooth pan will be far more challenging with the IS on.
 
So the electronic shutter never was changed after milk girls?

So the electronic shutter never was changed after milk girls?

Wait, does this mean that the Peter Jackson footage has the same shutter characteristics that the milk girl footage had? I had always assumed that the original footage didn't have the final version of the electronic shutter enabled. I remember thinking the color, the resolution and the latitude in the milk girl footage looked stellar to say the least but the one thing that left me feeling cold and distant was the stiff, slightly strobing shutter (and yes I know that a film camera strobes to some extent but this was not the same thing).

Now I'm beginning to worry a bit. I remember an old thread a while back (I think it was on DVXuser and before there was a REDuser) and Jim was graciously asking for people's input on what kind of shutter we all wanted to be emulated in the Red and I remember people all listing off various Arri and Panavision looks (that thread was the first time I realized that the shutter from an Arri 435 would look slightly different than the shutter from a Panavision Millennium for instance) and I thought everyone was in agreement that they wanted at least the ability to try and mimic a film style 180 degree shutter smear. After all isn't the goal of the digital cinema visual to have the option to keep things we like about the 35-mm cinema look (thus the across the board agreement on 24 frame acquisition, cropping to 2.40, variable frame rates, etc.) while getting rid of things like grain?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a red fan-boy through and through. I'm a total believer in this camera and all of the software, hardware, and people that figured into creating it. It's just disturbing to hear that the very un-film like shuttering exhibited in the milk girl footage might be the ONLY option after everything else has been created 210% better than any of us could have wanted (or maybe even deserved). Even if that is the only option I'll buy this camera the day I can afford to but it would be nice to have some clarification.
 
I love all the camera-speak, I really do, but from a director's point of view I'd say the best way to eliminate stutter is to follow a subject rather than pan through space. You can shoot Arri 35mm, and if you pan too fast through nothing, you can't help but see stutter. So, follow something other than space. Spielberg, as I'm sure everybody knows, always hands off motion like this, to guide the camera, rather than having it hose through space with the entire image stuttering. Did anybody see Heaven a few years ago? There were lots of long, fast pans and moves through empty space, and the audience was drawn right out of the movie, because you couldn't see anything other than stutter. As Jim said in another thread, there are lots of ways to shoot bad Red footage, and for me, that includes set-ups that encourage stutter.
 
I saw the short twice, once very close to the front, the next time at the mid-way point in the theatre for a better overall viewing perspective.

As far as strobing goes, I saw nothing that was more (or less) than I would have expected from the same subject matter shot on film with the same shutter.
 
ChristopherKenworthy- Agreed! I'm not talking about unmotivated panning, I'm not really talking about panning at all. I'm talking about motion blur of the subjects themselves and any slight camera moves that might accompany the actor as they move around a bit. This is why the milk girls clip scene was a perfect example of this, there was very little camera movement as it was all minor action and yet there was that stuttering shutter none-the-less. Let me reiterate, I love the red camera and I'll take it either way, just looking for clarification from the people in the know if there was an effort to provide the option of a popular 35mm film camera-esque motion blur (as that would be my own personal preference).
 
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