Standard OLPF + Low Contrast 1/8

[David Battistella]

Just a comment on locon or halation filtration.

this might be an option if there is a very controlled shooting situation, but I think I would probably prefer to have the option to use this filtration in front of the lens so it can be removed for certain shot types.

Also, there is the question of whether each OLPF, will need a tuned color science or be added via firmware as a means of tracking which OLPF via metadata. So I think there might be some authorized (read official) and unauthorized OLPFs available.

While the decision to open up the OLPF to some limited third parties is a good one, I do think that it will still be somewhat rigidly controlled by RED.

As as far as the Standard or goldilocks OLPF, I'm not seeing a huge difference in Phil's tests of the two current offerings and I am not sure a "middle way" OLPF will ever satisfy all situations the way each one, in its own right, can do that now. For anyone thinking that there will be a Standard, that does all the skintone and all the lowlight in one magical pixie dust OLPF, I'm just not sure that will happen. Sure, we can want it, and I'd certainly want it too, but I'm not even sure it's possible from an engineering standpoint.



Battistella

 

[Nick Morrison]

Just a comment on locon or halation filtration.

this might be an option if there is a very controlled shooting situation, but I think I would probably prefer to have the option to use this filtration in front of the lens so it can be removed for certain shot types.

Also, there is the question of whether each OLPF, will need a tuned color science or be added via firmware as a means of tracking which OLPF via metadata. So I think there might be some authorized (read official) and unauthorized OLPFs available.

While the decision to open up the OLPF to some limited third parties is a good one, I do think that it will still be somewhat rigidly controlled by RED.

As as far as the Standard or goldilocks OLPF, I'm not seeing a huge difference in Phil's tests of the two current offerings and I am not sure a "middle way" OLPF will ever satisfy all situations the way each one, in its own right, can do that now. For anyone thinking that there will be a Standard, that does all the skintone and all the lowlight in one magical pixie dust OLPF, I'm just not sure that will happen. Sure, we can want it, and I'd certainly want it too, but I'm not even sure it's possible from an engineering standpoint.



Battistella

The new "lowlight" OLPF is looking so good to me already, the "Standard" may just be gravy.

I do a lot of run gun work and slowmo, so for me the lowlight OLPF suites my workflow. But I'm a big fan of options, so loving where these modular OLPFs are going. I think they may open up some very, very interesting creative options over the next couple of years!!

 

[David Battistella]

Yup.

its all about extending creativity and extending options, but it's also about speciality situations, which is why underwater and color IR are at the front of the list.

The two offerings at the moment are both going to potentially be be stay in all the time filters as they are. I just finished a whole film with lots of varying situations on STH and I would not hesitate in leaving it in all the time, and there was some lowlight stuff in this film.

Good times.

Battistella

 

[Brian Merlen]

i think red working on the low light OLPF is awesome actually.. the highlight one is essentially good as is, no complaints i know of at all (other then the light loss which in my opinion is the nature of that OLPF in design and cannot be avoided or they would of done so). so once the standard is perfected, why wouldn't they also want a low light option without red dots? it makes perfect sense, even more so if they are increasing the low light performance, which is an absolute godsend to low light shooters! let them work all they want, my current high light skin tone OLPF is fine and i can wait.

i would love something that matches the alexa look/film look as far as low con haloing... that would be my go to OLPF personally speaking, even if they made a different version for each current OLPF i wouldn't care.. though if they started coming out with many incremental things WPM or BPM or ND or IR .3 .6, 1.0 etc I could see ACs getting a little upset about not just doing it in an easily malleable matte box lol.. maybe thats what we need? a way to stack OLPF inside like a matte box?

 

[George A.]

I would love the Low/Con/Halation option to mimic the look from Alexa/35mm
It would stay in my camera all the time. One less filter in front of the lens is always better.

I think the Standard OLPF for me would be the Low Light OLPF without the red orbs and the red dots.
Even if it loses a bit more light than the current Low Light OLPF. Let's say half a stop (instead of the 1.3 stops we lose with the Skintone OLPF)

This half a stop "loss" would also make it possible to have improved highlight rolloff, compared to the current Lowlight version. Maybe not Skintone OLPF territory, but still noticeably better.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I would love the Low/Con/Halation option to mimic the look from Alexa/35mm
It would stay in my camera all the time. One less filter in front of the lens is always better.

I think the Standard OLPF for me would be the Low Light OLPF without the red orbs and the red dots.
Even if it loses a bit more light than the current Low Light OLPF. Let's say half a stop (instead of the 1.3 stops we lose with the Skintone OLPF)

This half a stop "loss" would also make it possible to have improved highlight rolloff, compared to the current Lowlight version. Maybe not Skintone OLPF territory, but still noticeably better.

George, beauty is the "new/revised" Lowlight OLPF seems to have lost most of the orbs, etc...and from Phil's recent tests...looks even more usable and clean. I'm very intrigued by it actually...

 

[David Battistella]

I think when we talk about loosing stops it might be more accurate to moving stops as essentially the camera doesn't loose any stops with eith OLPF, the stops are just moved around to favor highlights or the low end.

So changing olpf olpf moves the dr around to favour the highlights or the shadows, but you don't loose actual DR or stops.

Phil, can correct me on this of course.

Battistella

 

[Alan Gordon]

Between the two OLPFs you don't lose stops of DR you lose stops of light.

 

[Robert Hart]

Just to make life a little harder for the R & D folk mining at task in the clean room.

Years back, I briefly tried illuminating front, also edge of the groundglass disk of a home made AGUS35 35mm adaptor with a TOSLINK optical cable with a thought of extending the "apparent" dynamic range. It showed some interesting potential but also exhibited unacceptable flicker. My kitchen-table and back verander engineering quality was not good.

It would be interesting to have a low-contrast filter in the space behind the lens, maybe incorporated in an OLPF panel with a facility for edge or face illumination as a hack to emulate pre-fogging of film, which was my original notion on the AGUS35. I had intended to try colours between the source and the pick-up at the lit end of the TOSLINK cable but tired of the process pretty quickly when it didn't work properly.

Edge illumination has been sorted with LCD screens so it might be possible in miniature these days without the banding flicker I was getting. As there would be no moving parts involved anymore, this might be worth re-examining by somebody with the engineering smarts and precision skills.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

I want to see a Goldilocks OLPF that has fixed:

- CMOS smearing
- Pink orbs arounds bright sources
- Has at least as good shadow handling as MX

Right now neither OLPF gives me resolution to all 3 issues, I have to choose one or the other (and both seem to have CMOS smearing problems) Much of what we shoot would trigger all three above issues, so I would need to switch the OLPF within the camera move, or change our shooting style (or both) which obviously is not desirable.

I strongly suggest that Red resolve the above in a new OLPF / firmware / recall / whatever is needed - and make a very, very public announcement about it- because regardless of what anybody tries to say here, it's what many in the industry are waiting for before feeling safe shooting Dragon. And unlike some here who shoot mainly on their own, mainly in outdoor daylight, etc., for some of us the concept of safe/guaranteed is more important than getting something amazing looking, but only some of the time, with potential gotchas that add stress to already extremely stressful shooting situations. Give me 100% reliable / no bad surprises first, then give me spectacular.

Meanwhile everyone here trying to downplay these issues only reduce trust in Red. There's nothing worse than having a problem/mistake and not fully admitting to it. Marketing history shows that to be true, again and again.

My father was involved in advocating that Johnson and Johnson fully admit their Tylenol packaging error some decades back. It cost the company a lot of $$$, but a year later, their stock was back, as was consumer confidence in all Johnson and Johnson products. That action turned a potential PR disaster into a PR triumph.

I'm risking getting banned, or my account deleted again for saying this, for sure, but I want to see Red thrive long term, and I really want a Dragon upgrade that I can use. That's my real motive.

So… Now you can all flame me (call me a troll, etc.) and tell me I don't know what I'm talking about….

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

George, beauty is the "new/revised" Lowlight OLPF seems to have lost most of the orbs, etc...and from Phil's recent tests...looks even more usable and clean. I'm very intrigued by it actually...

Orbs are CMOS things.They occure even on best DSLRs

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Orbs are CMOS things.They occure even on best DSLRs

Indeed Red dot is very easy to avoid and not among Dragon's the real problems. Red dots show up on any CMOS system given the right - and quite rare in practice - circumstances.

Red orbs are another matter, and a serious issue for some styles of shooting. Red orbs I have only seen on Dragon OLPF 01.

Phil's tests seem rather forgiving on the issue, using only a highly dimmed-down light in the frame.

With all due respect to Phil I would need to do my own tests before I draw any conclusions. Unfortunately I could not find any "New OLPF 01" Dragons in Montreal, and when I asked someone to point me to one here or in Toronto so I could do my own tests and publish them on Reduser, I was heavily flamed, even called a troll by a moderator, so I guess we will have only Phil's tests to go on, which, so far, provide insufficient data on how Dragon behaves in the particular situations I personally frequently encounter and would be most relevant to my style of work. (In advertising, they make you do similar things, that you are known for, all the time, so I need to do very specific tests).

So… So far I have no idea about whether the New OLPF 01 has adequately solve the Original OLPF's problems or not.

 

[sergio arguello]

You can see in the side by sides I posted that there is a very slight color difference, but it's rather negligible.

For those working on feature productions who are concerned with texture, they should be aware of the 1 to 1.3 stops of textural difference between the two. Shooting at ISO 400 on the STH OLPF looks a lot like ISO 800-1000 on the LLO OLPF and so on/so forth.

This brings up a different but rather significant problem to the working DP who is renting from proffesional rental houses. Recently shot three camera Epic commercial one package being mine and of course i know which Version Olpf i have but they couldn't be 100%
certain what body had what in it. I assured them it could probably be determined by date but seemed too busy that day to entertain me...that said this is a problem as that essentially two different stocks on the same lighting set-up...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It's a pretty bad rental house if they don't know what OLPF they installed on their own cameras...

 

[Phil Holland]

This brings up a different but rather significant problem to the working DP who is renting from proffesional rental houses. Recently shot three camera Epic commercial one package being mine and of course i know which Version Olpf i have but they couldn't be 100%
certain what body had what in it. I assured them it could probably be determined by date but seemed too busy that day to entertain me...that said this is a problem as that essentially two different stocks on the same lighting set-up...

What David said.

Also, there's a mark on the base of the camera that can inform you. If that's not easy enough, call them up and have them stop down a lens to T16 and point a flashlight in there. If they see the Red Dot Grid or not you know exactly what's in there.

 

[Evin Grant]

I tested pretty much every diffusion, mist, frost and low con filter out there (on Dragon) looking for the most subtle but effective blooming/halation effect and by far the best choice was the Schneider 1/16 HD Classic soft. The Hollywoid Black Magics and HD/regular classic soft filters also display it but much more heavy handed. The 1/16HDCS is nearly invisible unless there is a source in frame and can be used on lenses as wide as 16mm without issue. It also helps with smoothing highlight rolloff and wraparound in backlight shots.

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

I tested pretty much every diffusion, mist, frost and low con filter out there (on Dragon) looking for the most subtle but effective blooming/halation effect and by far the best choice was the Schneider 1/16 HD Classic soft. The Hollywoid Black Magics and HD/regular classic soft filters also display it but much more heavy handed. The 1/16HDCS is nearly invisible unless there is a source in frame and can be used on lenses as wide as 16mm without issue. It also helps with smoothing highlight rolloff and wraparound in backlight shots.

any samples you can share?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

+1 to classic soft

 

[luigivaltulini]

I tested pretty much every diffusion, mist, frost and low con filter out there (on Dragon) looking for the most subtle but effective blooming/halation effect and by far the best choice was the Schneider 1/16 HD Classic soft. The Hollywoid Black Magics and HD/regular classic soft filters also display it but much more heavy handed. The 1/16HDCS is nearly invisible unless there is a source in frame and can be used on lenses as wide as 16mm without issue. It also helps with smoothing highlight rolloff and wraparound in backlight shots.

Evin good information, you have some still R3D? I am undecided on what to buy.

 

[Martin Stevens]

My current favorite is a 1/8 Tiffen Pearlescent filter for halation etc.