Test footage, Landscapes/Sunsets/SloMo/Build 15, Come and get it...

[Andy Lesniak]

Here's some of my first test shots from red #1418.

Camera: RED #1418
Lens: RED 18-50 Zoom
Media: CF Card
Tripod: Manfroto 528 / 526 Fluid Head
Filters: .6 .9 1.2 Tiffen Screw-on filter set
Firmware: 15 2.2.5

Workflow: Download -> Backup -> CC Redcine -> 1080HD ProRes QT -> FinalCut -> Quicktime H.264

Field Test #1, The first test consists of 113 fps material shot over about 20min during a sunset about 2 weeks ago.
Everything was shot handheld, onto CF Card, camera was set to 113 fps.

(I recommend Right Clicking and doing a "Save as" to download these movies, or use a download manager)
FieldTest1-720p_h264.mov (79M)
FieldTest1-1080p_h264.mov (99M)
FieldTest1-iPhone.m4v (8M)

2nd Field Test was over the course of 2 days, just random driving around the LA area. mostly mountains, and landscapes, seascapes.
I really wanted to see how the camera performed at extreme contrast situations. and It sure didn't disappoint!

(I recommend Right Clicking and doing a "Save as" to download these movies, or use a download manager)
FieldTest2-720p_h264.mov (161M)
FieldTest2-1080p_h264.mov (210M)
FieldTest2-iPhone.m4v (19M)

I have also posted a bunch of full res stills from the above tests... you can
find them HERE

I am starting a small footage blog, so you can find my latest tests before they hit here.. www.andylesniak.com/red

Thanks again to Jim and the entire RED TEAM! for this powerfull tool.

I will gladly post ungraded 16bit tiffs/ or dpx's if anyone wants, also .r3d's if
the take is short enough.

Here's some teaser stills.. Enjoy... -Andy "Red 1418"

 

[michael zaletel]

alesniak

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing. How do you like the 526 fluid head. Can it handle a fully outfitted Red One? How smooth are pans and tilts? Any problems? I have the 528 tripod already. Some of the pans seem a little shaky while others are smoother. Is that the fluid heads fault?

-shooter

 

[Andrew Walker]

Some very nice shots in those clips.

 

[Jason Ing]

Nice. Interesting that there is such a dramatic color shift between some of the stills and footage. Did you grade the footage? Increase saturation on the grassy hills?

 

[Jason Ing]

By the way, I didn't know Ketch was a life guard too.

 

[Cal Brunker]

Awesome stuff! I love the way the setting sun washes out the mountains in that uniform glow. Definitely one of the coolest test shoots yet. Thanks!

Interesting that at even at 720P you can notice the resolution loss when it goes to slow motion (windowed). It makes a good case for the EPIC if money is no object (ie: for major productions etc.)

Keep posting!

 

[Steve White]

Wow. I just downloaded the 720p material, since I've only got a 1280x1024 monitor here, but this is easily the sharpest non-CG video I've ever seen. I felt envy in the pit of my stomach looking at that.

As a point of interest, I noticed some aliasing in test 1 around some of the sharp edges of the hut, which I believe was a downsampling error. It would almost be a shame to sacrifice the sharpness to get rid of it.

 

[Andy Lesniak]

Thanks for the comments guys! I really enjoy how I can push-pull these images around. the latitude really is there if you know where to place it and manipulate it.
I still have much to figure out, but I sure like where this is going. the shots of the green hills, and the orange sunset hills were shot about 20min apart.

shooter:
The 526 is an intersting beast, not so sure Im sold on it yet. It's great for the price point, but it's not easy to do a smooth pan if the tension is set at 1 (has 3 settings), you really need to crank the tension up even for a light setup I find, (RED, battery, 18-50 Lens, top handle).
Yes some of the shaky pans I think are the result of the inertia of the camera as I try to ease into and out of the pan. it gets nice and smooth when set to 3, but your stuck to really slow panning.

Jason:
All grading was done in RedCine. I did crank the saturation slider most of time to anywhere between 1.5 - 1.8. an interesting thing any higher and the color goes crazy, highlights turn pink, on the shot with the green hills you can see the far distant gradient do some wierd stuff, one gradient layer from the back is brighter then the furthest layer. strange.
I also add heavy color tweeks, using the color sliders. I really wanted to tweek as much in raw as I could before going out to another format. I don't really recomend the workflow I used on these tests, it was pretty quick and dirty.. R3D -> RedCine -> ProRes -> FCP Quicktime Out. I think from now on I will basically. FCP Proxy Edit -> Crimson -> RedCine/RedAlert CutList -> DPX as a base... then depending on the project either roundtrip back to finalcut with crimson/gluetools grade in Color or depending on budget, Scratch or something like a Davinci 2k ect... (typically for comercial work I conform on flame/inferno)


I have to note a thing about sharpness. I think this is definately one of the most difficult things that can either make the image sing, or easily make it suck. And that's dealing with OLPF compensation sharpening. I have shot digital raw stills since the canon d30 days, I'm pretty used to dealing with a raw sharpening workflow.
I find it super necessary even on the 4k material (even if it's being scaled down to HD) needs a fair ammount of input sharpening. it's on par with something you would normally do for a DSLR , (photoshop, UnSharpMask %300, .3-.4 radius) now the problem is if you do any sharpening in redcine. I'm finding out it's best not to sharpen there. since any further "output" sharpening starts to create artifacts. you can see this in my 2k 113fps footage, It starts to look "video-eee" overshaprened in the highlites while other places remain too soft I feel. another Issue is if you don't sharpen in redcine and go directly to ProRes... I find it's even harder to try to sharpen... (just try the unsharp mask in FCP2 on any prores...) so DPX seems like the only logical choice at this point. then sharpen/grade and move on from there...

Then again this all might completely change with build 16 and the next redcine/redalert versions. (I haven't tried sharpening out of redalert/redline yet. on my to-do list.)

I'm curious what everyone has found to be the optimum sharpening workflow so far. Someone from red could perhaps chime in with their findings? and will the sharpening be changed/improved with build 16?

 

[Robert Niessner]

You might try to sharpen the luminance channel only - if that's possible with Final Cut Pro - that will avoid chrominance artifacts.

Another trick is to duplicate the clip two times and put some strong unsharp masking (300%, 1 to 1.5 radius) on the copies. Than overlay the duplicates to the original clip by using 'lighten' for the first and 'darken' overlay mode for the second. By adjusting the clip transparency you can set the amount of sharpness perceived in the highlights and shadows individually.

You could also try to use unsharp masking with very high radius settings like 16 or even 32 pixels and a low strength setting like 50% or less.

 

[sidbarnhoorn]

Beautiful footage!

 

[C.H.Haskell]

Well done! This makes me want to move to LA area, so beautiful...pretty epic landscapes you captured there.

 

[Anthony]

Where is the music from?

 

[Jannard]

All of this 2K?

Jim

 

[Tom Lowe]

Awesome, baby. Great job.

I loved the warm light at the beaches and in those green hills. Where are those radio telescopes?

Finally, someone who knows what time of day to shoot with Red. :wink:

 

[Andy Lesniak]

All of this 2K?

Jim

The FieldTest1 is all 2k, altho I think I might of accidently got a 4k mixed in there, the shot at the very end, the wide of the sunset overlooking the beach. the FieldTest2 was all 4k 2:1.

Where is the music from?

a mix of gladiator soundtrack, and lord of the rings.

Where are those radio telescopes?

That's my Evil Secret Lab! muahahah.
um, the location was a lucky find, it's roughly in this area... google map

 

[Mark B.]

A mix of gladiator soundtrack, and lord of the rings.

You got permission to use that music in your clip? It's probably unimportant if you didn't, but it's a good habit to get into only using sound that you have approvals for. If you DO have permission, then I'd be interested in understanding the process you went through to get the permission, and what costs were incurred if any.