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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 :)

Soft, Noisy and lots of Artifacts

Thanks for all the suggestions here.

To answer some of your questions:
1. Yes, I did a blackshade at 23.94 3K HD AFTER letting the camera warm up for 15-20mins. I blackshaded per current frame-rate/project size.
2. I agree the lenses arent the best. I have a 17-55 Canon f.28 coming (which is closer to an L series). HOWEVER, like someone said earlier, these lenses take great sharp photos on DLSRs at 18mp. So the glass cant be the whole issue.
3. I havent tried backfocusing yet. I will try that but there seems to be no standard way of doing that with the AL mount. Especially with the glass I have. I should get the new lens tomorrow or tuesday so I figured I might wait for it to do the backfocus.
4. I have tried lower compression ratios too, even going down to 3:1. Some at 5:1 but 8:1 seemed like it was still the standard compression for "good quality" results.
5. I have contacted RED. I sent them a trouble ticket Friday evening so I havent heard from them yet.

Matt, those stills are amazingly sharp.. and that is with no sharpness added??? That is absolutely nothing close to what Im getting! :(
 
Michael McCaffrey said:
Thanks for all the suggestions here.

To answer some of your questions:
1. Yes, I did a blackshade at 23.94 3K HD AFTER letting the camera warm up for 15-20mins. I blackshaded per current frame-rate/project size.
2. I agree the lenses arent the best. I have a 17-55 Canon f.28 coming (which is closer to an L series). HOWEVER, like someone said earlier, these lenses take great sharp photos on DLSRs at 18mp. So the glass cant be the whole issue.
3. I havent tried backfocusing yet. I will try that but there seems to be no standard way of doing that with the AL mount. Especially with the glass I have. I should get the new lens tomorrow or tuesday so I figured I might wait for it to do the backfocus.
4. I have tried lower compression ratios too, even going down to 3:1. Some at 5:1 but 8:1 seemed like it was still the standard compression for "good quality" results.
5. I have contacted RED. I sent them a trouble ticket Friday evening so I havent heard from them yet.

Matt, those stills are amazingly sharp.. and that is with no sharpness added??? That is absolutely nothing close to what Im getting! :(
Click to expand...

Hi Michael,
That is with no sharpening but I did do a skin softening in PS to even out her skin. That is all that was done so it would actually look sharper without the skin softening I added as it took away a good deal of detail not only in the skin but a bit of the hair as well. I just exported a tiff from the R3D in RCX Pro, opened it in PS and dropped on the default skin soften filter, and exported as a jpeg and uploaded here. No fine adjustments, no color, no sharpening.

Keep in mind this is shot with Zeiss CP.2's which are known for being quite sharp. It helps to have sharp, good glass.
 
after playing with your R3D file in REDCINEXPRO-14, I can only say: it seems you are using a poor lens, maybe improperly collimated or /and at its worst iris setting and you are over exposing two stops,
(details on the roof will never come back, they are lost, this is not a proper exposition)
remedy: try a fixed focal lens like a 50mm at f4 to f8, with ND filters or shutter set to reduce excess of light, do not overexpose and see what happens
 
I wish I had some primes and some L series or other nice lenses lol. Thanks for playing around with it. I know the roof is lost. I wasnt too worried about it right now. These are just tests I shot outside the studio here. I have an ND.6 so Ill try again with that.
 
I have an ND.6 so Ill try again with that.
Click to expand...

So are we to assume that the lens was stopped down to a 22 or so for these shots? How did you set focus when you took these?


Nick
 
Just took a look at your R3D file Michael.

Couple of things which are going to be taking away from maximum sharpness.

1) This shot was at 3K because you were using HDR
2) Your F-Stop was set at 12.8 which on a cheap lens could start to affect your sharpness negatively (though really, shouldn't affect it THAT much)
3) Shutter was set at 180degree's. This isn't really a problem per say, but if you are specifically testing for sharpness, it might be worth reducing that shutter time just to ensure any motion problems aren't added unknowingly.

My recommendation to test would be to shoot at 4K, 6:1, Non-HDR, f5.6-f8.0, with a fast shutter speed and then see how your sharpness is looking. Also, make sure to use the expand focus to ensure that you are getting focus as close to the mark as possible :)
 
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Serge Polevitzky said:
Hello -- just to check on the some details: (disclaimer, I'm quite new to this myself, so I may have some of this off-kilter)

What firmware are you running ?

Have you done blackshading & if so, did you do it with your Scarlet 'warmed up' for 10 - 15 minutes & with the RED body cap installed & in a fairly dark room ?
When blackshading, I take it 'Project' is set to the same as your frame rate. That is, Settings --> Project --> Time Base .. should point to a frame rate, and this frame rate should match the frame rate you will be shooting [ (thanks to Phil Holland for setting me straight on this)]
Depending on the firmware, you'll need to watch out for which option you 'black shade' against <default> or the <frame rate you're going to use> looks like you're doing the default frame rate.

Your image looks to be a bit dark. I've found that Scarlet seems to LOVE a lot of light -- expose to the right (ETTR). You might try ISO 320 if indoors or in shadows. Otherwise 800.

Good luck -- hope this helps .. if you find any of this has misdirected you, please advise, as I'm still building up my Scarlet 'best practices' notebook --
Serge
Click to expand...

Using 3.2.8.

Did blackshade in a dark room with lens cap on. Is it necessary to take the lens off and put the body cap on? Saw a few places (and in the instructions) it said to make sure the lens cap was on so I assumed it was ok to leave the lens on?
 
Brad Allen said:
Just took a look at your R3D file Michael.

Couple of things which are going to be taking away from maximum sharpness.

1) This shot was at 3K because you were using HDR
2) Your F-Stop was set at 12.8 which on a cheap lens could start to affect your sharpness negatively (though really, shouldn't affect it THAT much)
3) Shutter was set at 180degree's. This isn't really a problem per say, but if you are specifically testing for sharpness, it might be worth reducing that shutter time just to ensure any motion problems aren't added unknowingly.

My recommendation to test would be to shoot at 4K, 6:1, Non-HDR, f5.6-f8.0, with a fast shutter speed and then see how your sharpness is looking. Also, make sure to use the expand focus to ensure that you are getting focus as close to the mark as possible :)
Click to expand...

Ok here is a 4K, 6:1, non-HDR, f8 shot at 800iso and 5600k. It does look more promising. I also didnt realize the last test shot was HDR. I turned that off, however I did have shots before I know were not in HDR that also appeared soft. I also think the reason it was a 180 degree shutter was because of the HDR. I know I didn't set it that way.

This shot does look sharper but I'm still not sure its as sharp as it should be prior to sharpening? What do you think?

Full composition (not focused for subject):
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_f8_800iso_5600k.jpg

Unedited .R3D snapshot:
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_f8_5600k_800iso.R3D

100% crop before and after sharpening:
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_comparison.jpg </a> already! :/

Here is another problem shot (3k, f5.6, 10:1, 55mm zoomed in so shallower DoF, focused on the white chair). Assuming the softness is because of DoF, the noise in the background in the shadows looks awful. Its 1280 ISO, but should it look this noisy? There is still a lot of light outside so I shouldnt be having to deal with such bad noise already. I've seen people get some great night shots with the scarlet and I cant get an evening shot :/
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/problem_shot.R3D

 
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Hi Michael - after taking a look at these R3D's - I think it's totally the lens on its wide end being unacceptably soft. The problem_shot.r3d's sharpness looks much better to me and I think it's because the focal length was at 55mm. I'm also not seeing the unacceptable amount of noise you are either. (Especially for ISO 1250 which can have some noise)

Here is the problem_shot.r3d with an unsharp mask and a very very slight curve applied. Is this what you are seeing on your end? http://unravel.com.au/files/problem_shot.png

Also remember that when you are dealing with the R3D debayer and OLPF, you're going to need to downscale roughly 80% before you see full measured resolution.
 
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Bravo to a helpful thread.
 
I feel shutter speed makes a huge difference when I am shooting in the studio, I'd never go lower then 1/60 shooting 30fps.
 
Brad Allen said:
Hi Michael - after taking a look at these R3D's - I think it's totally the lens on its wide end being unacceptably soft. The problem_shot.r3d's sharpness looks much better to me and I think it's because the focal length was at 55mm. I'm also not seeing the unacceptable amount of noise you are either. (Especially for ISO 1250 which can have some noise)

Here is the problem_shot.r3d with an unsharp mask and a very very slight curve applied. Is this what you are seeing on your end? http://unravel.com.au/files/problem_shot.png

Also remember that when you are dealing with the R3D debayer and OLPF, you're going to need to downscale roughly 80% before you see full measured resolution.
Click to expand...

Brad that looks pretty good. If I crank my unsharp mask in premiere up to 250 I can get that (provided my sharpness is on max in the R3D settings).

Is it normal to have to turn the R3D files settings to max sharpness and add a significant unsharp mask to the image before getting something acceptable? Doesnt seem like that is standard procedure is it? Those images Matt Ryan posted earlier of the blonde girl and the knight had no sharpness applied at all and they still looked amazingly sharp. I need to shoot something besides trees to get a better feel for the issue but right now Im attached to an outlet because the CinemOxide battery plates are about 12 days late. Should be here today or tomorrow though.
 
I'm focusing with a SmallHD monitor. Its higher res but even on the 6" DP6, with the Red's menu's Im left with an actual image of about 3" to focus the picture. Is there a way to make the screen size full screen and still be able to access the menus? I know I can set the monitor view to "clean" but then I lose the menu's and have to load a force hdmi preset to be able to get the menu's back and operate the camera again.

I have been focusing manually by eye using the 100% magnify feature. I really wish the Scarlet had a colored outline around the subjects in focus like the EX1 has. It's by far the best focusing tool I've ever used since I can easily focus while shooting since it doesnt make the image black & white or dark like edge-view or brighter and somewhat distorted looking like "peaking." SmallHD hasnt implemented this feature either and I've suggested it to them a year ago.
 
Those lenses are some of the worst glass Canon makes. I wouldn't put them on a $600 still body, let alone a 12k+ camera...
The EF-S 17-55 F2.8 IS, which is a fantastic lens for the price, will cover 5K on the Epic, AFAIK. I'm going to mount it on my Epic in a few minutes... The EF-S 17-55 F2.8 and the kit lens EF-S 17-55 are lightyears apart in terms of quality.
Try stopping down to F5.6, at least. If it's not sharp, try another lens. Any Canon prime is going to look better than that.
 
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Michael McCaffrey said:
I'm focusing with a SmallHD monitor. Its higher res but even on the 6" DP6, with the Red's menu's Im left with an actual image of about 3" to focus the picture. Is there a way to make the screen size full screen and still be able to access the menus? I know I can set the monitor view to "clean" but then I lose the menu's and have to load a force hdmi preset to be able to get the menu's back and operate the camera again.

I have been focusing manually by eye using the 100% magnify feature. I really wish the Scarlet had a colored outline around the subjects in focus like the EX1 has. It's by far the best focusing tool I've ever used since I can easily focus while shooting since it doesnt make the image black & white or dark like edge-view or brighter and somewhat distorted looking like "peaking." SmallHD hasnt implemented this feature either and I've suggested it to them a year ago.
Click to expand...

There are focus assist features in the menu, try those for outlines, etc.

You don't have to sharpen to get a sharp image. Go to the homepage of my site, they are all shot on RED, some stills in 4k, 2k, 1080, but none have had any sharpening added. Matthayslett.com

Also, shutter speed is important. If shooting 24fps for non movement or non actions shots use 1/48 but if doing a lot of movement or shooting action I'd recommend shooting with a 1/96th shutter. For any stuff you do for a moving shot from a vehicle, etc, use 1/96th or greater to reduce blur. For 30fps shooting use 1/120th for any movement. Motion blur causes loss of resolution and sharpness as well as destroys the perceived sharpness by our eyes.

But again, it depends on your lenses and the one you mentioned is not sharp at all.
 
I tried the focus assist features on the RED menu but they all distort the image in one way or another. Not useful for focusing while shooting moving subjects etc.

Im glad the 17-55 kit lens and the 2.8 IS lens are light years apart because I already ordered the 2.8 IS lens for the Scarlet camera. Primarily I've been shooting with the kit lens and an 18-135mm because I already own them (use them on my DSLR). I was hoping to be able to use the 18-135mm on the Scarlet, but if this glass is really the cause of this problem then I won't even think of using another lens on the Scarlet and would buy something sharper to cover the telephoto end. I'll know either way and be able to put this baby to bed when I get the new lens tomorrow. At least then I'll be able to know if its the glass or not, and that will be progress.
 
Just mounted the EF-S 17-55 F2.8 IS on my Epic, and at 5K FF, it has a slight-moderate vignette until you get past 35mm. This lens is designed to cover APS-C (1.6x crop) sensors, and the Epic is somewhere near APS-H (1.3x), so it's not suprising. I'd say it's still usable, if you're not shooting a uniform subject, or you simply like that look. As far as sharpness, wide open, it's extremely sharp in the center. Didn't check edge sharpness, but it appears to be adequate. For 4K shooting, I would assume it's perfect, save the still-lens ergonomics. Tried autofocus using a half-press of the 'shutter' button on the side handle at F2.8, and it works incredibly well. Frankly, fuck Canon for omitting this feature in the C300. I'm running the 3.2.8 beta firmware.
Matt, I usually add some sharpening to RAW images of any sort, be it from an SLR or cinema camera.
I've shot with the cheap Canon zooms, and they do not look good, even for stills, unless you stop WAY down, and even then...
 
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