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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 :)

Smaller sensor, more noise?

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michael butir

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Hello All,

I am new to the forum, and am in the process of becoming a Red owner very shortly. However, before doing so, i would like to address a slight concern.

I want to express that by no means am i the one to be on a shoot without proper lighting. However, with the smaller image sensor built into the Raven, i am quite curious how it holds up to the rest of the family when it comes to low light. I am already aware that no Red camera holds up to an A7S in lowlight, and nor do i expect them too. But generally speaking, will there be a bit more noise in the footage produced from the Raven when compared to the remainder of the Red lineup?

Thank you in advance! I have skimmed the Raven section of this forum and found no related topics, so i apologize if i have overlooked a previously discussed topic.

Thanks,
Mike
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not as familiar with the cameras as most people by any means, but I believe because it's in essence a crop of the Dragon sensor--pixel for pixel, the noise will be the same. Because the size of the pixels is the same; they are all available to just as much light regardless of sensor size, just more pixels to fill the larger sensors of Scarlet-W or Weapon.

So with the given a7s sensor, 12MP spread over an entire full frame sensor as compared to the 22MP full frame sensor of the 5D Mark III means each pixel on the a7s is larger. More science to it than I can explain, but when each pixel is able to absorb more light due to larger size, it should be capable of better lowlight.

However, 6k downscaled to 4.5k would likely look less noisy than direct 4.5k.

Hope this helps!
 
Raven 4.5K (Standard OLPF) would have exact same noise as 6K Standard OLPF, except that...as its CROPPED IN....the Raven noise pixels would look LARGER proportionally when scaled down to 1080.

Ie 6K noise would look finer...Raven 4.5k a bit coarser.
 
Raven 4.5K (Standard OLPF) would have exact same noise as 6K Standard OLPF, except that...as its CROPPED IN....the Raven noise pixels would look LARGER proportionally when scaled down to 1080.

Ie 6K noise would look finer...Raven 4.5k perhaps a bit coarser.
 
I'd suggest shooting dragon at 4K now to see how you like it. You can save yourself a lot of headaches with a one day rental or going to a rental house for a prep half day or whatever? It will be very similar results but Raven has no smear or orbs
 
... Unlike other company's sensor, red sensor is counted based on pixels.

in this case, weapon dragon 4.5k and Raven should be identical.

However, theoretically, if you shot entire film with 6k or 8k and finish in 4.5k, you may see a bit different texture I guess.
 
Both Daredevil and Jessica Jones were shot at 4K on Dragon sensor so have a look at those and decide if it is acceptable for your needs, and then remember the DSMC2 boards improve quality and noise.
 
Ben Scott said:
Both Daredevil and Jessica Jones were shot at 4K on Dragon sensor so have a look at those and decide if it is acceptable for your needs, and then remember the DSMC2 boards improve quality and noise.
Click to expand...

Was Jessica Jones also shot 4K Dragon? Is that confrmed? I know Daredevil was (it was mentkoned in American Cinematographer)...but I never saw any writeups about Jessica Jones...which I loved...and love to know more about!
 
Ben Scott said:
Great article on it.

http://www.studiodaily.com/2015/12/...xfs&st_refDomain=t.co&st_refQuery=/78sylN7IlB

4k Dragon except for some 5k VFX shots.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

Billeter shot with the Red Epic Dragon, recording 4K .r3d files and occasionally 5K for visual effects shots or for image stabilization in post. Billeter was a little disappointed that, due to budget constraints, he wasn’t able to shoot the entire series in 5K. “Because of the chip size of the Dragon, 4K has a smaller image area than Super 35, so your 40mm lens is now more like a 50mm,” he explains.
Click to expand...

I wonder what part of the budget he was talking about. Was is the time budget (5K offloads/transcodes take 60% longer than 4K offloads/transcodes)? The media/data budget (60% more media/data)? The lens budget (why pay good money for a 50mm when you can do with a 40mm--JOKING!)?

Anybody else felt a similar budgetary constraint?
 
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