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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 :)

Tested Monstro vs. Helium

nice test.
Someone is also interested in a DR test with Xylia chart on Alexa, Venice, Monstro, BM, Dragon, Helium?
Towards the end of the month I have some free time so I can do a bit of testing, if you have suggestions of what you are interested in seeing I do what I can. ;)

Would be nice to see how much better the $60.000+ camera's are compared to the BM UMP.
When you have time, see how much this can help https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Grundlagen/Versteckte-Dynamik-Reserven-durch-Highlight-Recovery-herauskitzeln.html
Looking forward to the results.
 
Yikes, Björn. The difference in the color channels are staggering!

/Andreas

Yes but remember, Helium has the second best blue channel next to Monstro. So if you put Dragon or MX there or pretty much any other camera available shit would simply be far worse.

So easy to look at this and think Helium is no good... But again with a more suited s35 lens you could eak out anther stop for helium which you can not get with monstro and then the result would be more similar. But yes pixel by pixel Monstro wins. Does not matter if you shoot monstro at 6k it still wins. Also important to remember, in lowlight bandwidth makes huge difference. So monstro at 6k get more bandwidth per pixel then helium at 8k so that makes it even more so.

To me having a monstro makes helium not needed. As shooting 8k with helium is not better than 6k monstro. So simply, the only reason for using helium instead or next to monstro is camera budget. Then possibly at perfect exposure and the right lens you can get a more resolving image out of helium. But I strongly doubt it.


Here is a "helium 8k vs monstro 4k" not 100% correct, as I just scaled up the monstro material with 25% in flame. But still it very much shows that noise structure is still far better on the right / monstro side. And that is with a linear scale algoritm just to show the worst of it. If monstro actually was shooting 6k it could also have lowered the compressinon to half of whats possible at 8k and that really do improve detail.

8k vs 6k000001 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
As discussed in other threads.
Helium with it´s smaller imager could gain about a stop if a lens with smaller image circle is used.

But yes, to me me these tests are in line with my findings. What makes Monstro amazing is it´s low noise especially in it´s blue channel, but also in R and G.

Helium stil also have more issues with out of gamut colors. Burned out coloured highlights goes bonkers on helium, where as monstro curve of towards white / more desaturated before the white point hits.

If shooting underexposed with hard highlights with tungsten and balancing in camera for example, then monstro really shines in comparison. If all channels got equal amount of light / if you are in a daylight setup or balancing using filters then underexposure is not as sensitive and the difference is not as apparent.


Here is an image I made that shows the differences magnified. Basically each color channel showed separately at 5000ISO at 1:1 on a 1920x1080 crop from 8k. I think you dont need to be a image technican to find a winner.. :)

Then we should all remember helium is a really amazing camera, but monstro is simply better. Like a lot better. Better than anything else i tested.

writefile87.000001 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

You had to see this to believe it!
 
nice test.
Someone is also interested in a DR test with Xylia chart on Alexa, Venice, Monstro, BM, Dragon, Helium?
Towards the end of the month I have some free time so I can do a bit of testing, if you have suggestions of what you are interested in seeing I do what I can. ;)

To me Monstro maxed bitrate on 6k vs helium maxed out bitrate on 8k same lens same stop etc. Shooting the same scene that house all kinds of different levels of high and low exposure. Fun to see if monstro 2k less is actually holding up better than 2k more with helium. I think it does.
 
Oops just saw I actually cheated a bit monstro is not that much cleaner but good bit cleaner. I happen to have mixed channels for blue in my test. RC behaves a bit different than flame in that regards.



So here is one that is more true... Less difference but stil a lot.

000001 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
I think the Monstro is undoubtedly better, but the differences can be minimized when both sensors are kept within their workable ranges.







In these examples I'm seeing just as much of a difference in image quality or 'character' due to the vignetting on the VV camera's lens and the increased depth of field on the Helium camera's lens than as a result of the different sensors themselves.
 
I think the Monstro is undoubtedly better, but the differences can be minimized when both sensors are kept within their workable ranges.



In these examples I'm seeing just as much of a difference in image quality or 'character' due to the vignetting on the VV camera's lens and the increased depth of field on the Helium camera's lens than as a result of the different sensors themselves.

Correct there is no difference what so ever if you shoot flat grey surface properly exposed with daylight temperature. It´s when you start warping the colors around things start to show. In this case when the yellow light is turned into white light helium starts to suffer as it needs to show more of it´s starved blue chanel.
 
From the metadata, if correct, this was shot at 10PM, very much at night. Making the sky blue by pushing up the ISO to 2000 might not be very realistic. When you look at both of these at ISO 800, there is not nearly the difference in noise. And when exporting them at 4k ProRes444 the difference is even smaller. In this ultimate stress test, the Monstro shines.
 
I think the Monstro is undoubtedly better, but the differences can be minimized when both sensors are kept within their workable ranges.

yes and no...even @ 800 Monstro shows no green contamination in the shadows, better color channels separation and better skin reproduction... ;-P
 
From the metadata, if correct, this was shot at 10PM, very much at night. Making the sky blue by pushing up the ISO to 2000 might not be very realistic. When you look at both of these at ISO 800, there is not nearly the difference in noise. And when exporting them at 4k ProRes444 the difference is even smaller. In this ultimate stress test, the Monstro shines.

And even if it´s a bit extreme, if you leave the lens cap on they would both show a black image and no one could see the difference...

In proper exposure with hardly any color sticking out to any extremes even Red One would look pretty much the same if there is nothing stressing the image. But this test clearly shows the better blue channel of monstro which comes clear and shows al lot if you balance the images on the gray cards and add digital gain.

If you do the opposite make the image warmer and lower iso to like 50ISO then there is no real visable difference. Now thats usually not how you shoot at nights.
 
Color corrected to try to match each other.

Helium

guy_in_street_Helium.jpg



Monstro


guy_in_the_street_monstro.jpg
 
nice test.
Someone is also interested in a DR test with Xylia chart on Alexa, Venice, Monstro, BM, Dragon, Helium?
Towards the end of the month I have some free time so I can do a bit of testing, if you have suggestions of what you are interested in seeing I do what I can. ;)

I'd love to see Helium tested on the Xyla chart as I've never actually seen such a test on this sensor, excluding Phil's of course but the YouTube compression destroyed the shadow patches so I really wanna see a still frame version where compression artifacts don't have such a huge impact.
 
yes and no...even @ 800 Monstro shows no green contamination in the shadows, better color channels separation and better skin reproduction... ;-P

I think those differences are there to be seen in the pics I posted, and as Björn mentioned, once you start having to push the colours around the advantages of the Monstro become even clearer.
 
Thanks Jon! Now I should also do Monstro with noise reduction.


Monstro with noise reduction


monstro_with_noise_reduction_1.2.2.jpg
 
Yeah Bjorn, I noticed that too. I thought it was a difference in the grading for each but that little purple halo around the light above him just kept coming back in the helium footage.
 
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