The Big Mistake...

[Lawrence Bansbach]

3k is probably close to the optimum balance between resolution and other aspects of performance for a 2/3" format camera. Should handily exceed the performance of 16mm film and it is certainly far beyond 1080p as an acquisition format. Definitely a lot of bang for the buck.
Thanks for sticking with it.

What about a possible future QuadHD 3840 x2160 true super 16mm format Scarlet? That could be made on the same 3.3 micron fab as the 2/3".

JVC might do it first.

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

ESPN4K

ESPN HD and other networks totally joke at the moment with their shitty PQ.WOWOWHD giving best quailty broadcast in the world.
And you are saying ESPN4K? yeah yeah

 

[David (dudi) Namir]

Then why is Youtube et al moving to HD?

YouTube is not film/motion picture format in a traditional manner, Jim and Red Digital Cinema are looking to create cameras for the big screen, theatrical release, in which hundreds of people are sitting in a dark hall and watching the magic on the once called the silver screen.
On YouTube at my computer screen it all looks good but project it on the big screen and you will see the difference.

 

[Elsie N]

Sorry for the long post.

Well, I wasted tens of thousands of dollars shooting a low budget feature over ten years ago. I'm an aggressive early adopter (snip)....

...Feels good knowing I'll be shooting with it in just a few months. It feels better knowing that whatever I shoot with it won't become extinct in less than a decade. Thanks for not compromising.

Great post, and a cautionary tale to be heeded.

 

[JanneJansson]

BTW... we had such a good day at the Spider-man shoot. John Schwartzman is so good at his craft. The EPICs are beating expectations. The images are absolutely incredible. Today felt like the payoff for everything we have worked for. I can't sleep it was so good. 4:45am here...

Jim

Cool!! You guys ROCK! Don't ever lose that RED-feelin! :hurray:
Can't wait to play with EPIC

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Speaking about yesterday, today, and tomorrow, this morning I started to wonder whether the Monstro sensor is already there in the near future. If so, due to all these delays the long waited stage 2 Epic-X will eventually not be the tool of tomorrow when it arrives, but instead the people in this forum will quite soon start to look forward to Epic with the Monstro sensor.

 

[Elsie N]

YouTube is not film/motion picture format in a traditional manner, Jim and Red Digital Cinema are looking to create cameras for the big screen, theatrical release, in which hundreds of people are sitting in a dark hall and watching the magic on the once called the silver screen.
On YouTube at my computer screen it all looks good but project it on the big screen and you will see the difference.

David, I think Jim intends to bring 4k even into the living room, be it through the internet or tv, as well as theatrical release. The way I see it is that finally we will have a camera that covers the full range for content providers.

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

There seem to be two paths in life.

Obey the rules... Or make the rules...

Hihi. :sifone:

 

[Liam Hall]

Sorry for the long post.

Well, I wasted tens of thousands of dollars shooting a low budget feature over ten years ago. I'm an aggressive early adopter (which is sometimes french for "stupid"). I could see the change coming on the horizon-- in fact I always see the change coming so far in advance it bites me in the ass sometimes. I wasted the money on the front end of the digital wave, when accessible digital acquisition was little more than SD.

So, with me, you are preaching to the choir and always have been, Jim. To anyone who thinks shooting 1080 will give them a future, I always tell them my story. My story is a perfect microcosm of where we all find ourselves now. I've been down this road before, and "professionals" were the first in line to advise me to go for it. So, if you've noticed some less than deferential attitudes coming from me regarding "professionals" -- its because I've been burned by their advice. But I don't lay the blame at their door. Ultimately I'm responsible.

But, I hear that same advice echoing through these threads even today. That 1080 is "good enough". I vowed that if I ever got the chance to shoot anything ever again, it will be with the highest resolution acquisition device possible. And folks, the "HD" piped into our homes hardly qualifies as "high definition".

Trust me, we will be drowning in 4K displays and exhibition before we even realize we are wet. I thought I knew a thing or two about digital imaging-- I'd been working in it for ten years before I shot my "film". And I took the advice of many working pros who said that HD was at least five years away and the then new Sony DVCAM system will be more than adequate for your feature. Of course we all know now how that story ends.

Over the last twelve years I've been to "school". I made damn sure nobody calling themselves a professional could ever piss on my leg and tell me it was rain. I devoured every bit of technical information I could get my hands on. I drained the minds of every engineer I ever worked with. I asked more questions, read more articles, and learned about the tools of my trade and my art. I became an insufferable critic of Sony, Panasonic, Kodak and Polaroid, et. al.

In the case of Kodak and Polaroid, I went to Rochester and met with the staff of the Advanced Imaging Division. I met with Polaroid's senior development engineers. If you made digital acquisition devices in the 1990's, I knew about you and if I felt you had something to offer me, I met with you. My clients then were very serious and well-funded, so I had some great toys to play with.

When I couldn't figure out why they weren't making the camera I wanted, I started delving into their financials, their business models, their development programs. Where is the digital Panavision? When will the digital Arri get here? For years and years and years I waited. The more I learned, the more pissed off I would get. I was pissed off at the Alexa specs. If you want to play in this game, you gotta bring the resolution and raise the bar.

Then I hear a company in Orange County is going to build this new camera. Its everything I've been waiting for. I'd given up hope. I was afraid this company would build their camera and then immediately go under or get bought out by some idiot from a Fortune 500 conglomerate and the tech would die dry rotting in a vault somewhere. That's why I bought. To protect my future. I put cash down on a Red before I knew anything about Jim or Jarred or Ted or Graeme or the rest of the team.

So if you are faced with the task of picking the camera for your production and you opt for a 1080 camera - don't say I didn't warn you. I laughed my ass off a few months ago when some guy said he was going to shoot a feature on a DSLR. Yes, they're great cameras. Yes, they're more than adequate for shooting weddings and bar-mitzvahs, but you want to bet tens of thousands of dollars on that format for a feature when for a little more money you can shoot a Red? Puh-leeze!

People are beginning to cut the cord on the cable TV and the Satellite services and opting to get their in-home entertainment from the web. When this happened in the 1950's it was called television and it nearly killed the movie theaters until vista vision and the wide screen spectacle saved their bacon.

So if Time-Warner cable, Dish, and DirecTV, wants to strip mine my wallet again, they gotta bring me something I can't get from the internet. Sports programming in 4K is a Saudi oil field and Fort Knox all rolled into one. Nascar in 4K? This is coming sooner than you can imagine.

Thanks for providing me with an opportunity to vent, Jim. I'd forgotten how pissed off I've been over the years waiting for the Epic. Feels good knowing I'll be shooting with it in just a few months. It feels better knowing that whatever I shoot with it won't become extinct in less than a decade. Thanks for not compromising.

My, what a lot of words. Here's some more:

This is not aimed at you per se, but lots of people seem to believe shooting on Epic will bring the success they've always dreamed of. No doubt, for some it will, but I can't help but think that when these cameras finally are in the hands of the masses there will be a lot of people blaming other tools and other people for their lack of success and broken dreams.

This is aimed at you, laughing at the guy who said he was planning on making a movie on a DSLR is both rude and stupid. I always tell people to get out and shoot, shoot anything on anything, make something and learn something and above all, don't be a camera snob - it will be your undoing.

 

[Thommes Ulfeng]

Originally Posted by Jesper Sichlau
Then why does your firm release a 3K camera...

Because it is as close as you are going to get to 4K for half of $10K.

Jim

... and I hardly have to tell you how thankful the many many indy low budget filmmakers are going to be for exactly that ...

yours sincerely
Thmmes

 

[Steve Wake]

This place is incredible!

One Revolution in Cinema just starting to take a quantum leap, and he's already talking about the launch of the next Revolution in Broadcast. And on the cutting edge of both, with his products the centerpiece - not through market manipulation or hype, but clear technical superiority.

And we get to watch it all in (almost) real time, and pick the brain of the Leader, and you don't need to be a millionaire to buy in.

Jannard = 21st Century Edison

Maybe Henry Ford too, considering the affordability. And let's hope the assembly line is as efficient.

 

[constantine Tirintzis]

hi. I havent followed the being stupid posts , and I agree with you that one has to get out and shoot, I also have a little Sony NEX-VG10E , but you have to agree that the chance of having a very high resolution camera like the Epic is progress.
You can shoot shit with the Epic yes, but if you have a reason to shoot and a good feature,then that will for sure make your feature high quality.
We cant argue with progress. Its good to have good cameras .
Then get what you can afford.
The Epic will certainly wont make you a better filmaker , but if you are a good filmaker it will certainly boost your picture quality and widen your options.

 

[Liam Hall]

The Epic will certainly wont make you a better filmaker , but if you are a good filmaker it will certainly boost your picture quality and widen your options.

It will make some people a better filmmaker. You've only got to look at the discussions on here to see how people are improving their knowledge. But I agree 100% that for talented filmmakers it will be utterly superb.

 

[Mark Warren]

Jim
The mistake is yours if you think that they care about quality anymore....

Sad but true.

So many "craftsmen" (in all industries) have seen their talents become under-appreciated, then not appreciated, then not needed anymore as technological advancements usher in homogenised, lower cost alternatives that seemingly anyone can use (poorly).

I have seen the general population move away from Freddie Francis photography appreciation towards 10 million views for a cat springing out of a bush and wrapping itself onto a baby's face, shot on a shaky, 2 megapixel phone.

Still, I guess there remains a discerning high quality image market for sports, special effects sequences, and porn.

Whilst there's no doubt resolution will increase, it seems doubtful that there will be a renaissance of human craftsmanship in image capture.

Business models these days are often low-cost homogenisation for the masses for maximum profit... including of course as many "automatic" features as possible. Profits soar as the niche craftsmen (or women) disappear. Apple's share prices go stratospheric as their products become more automatic and increasingly (mass) user-friendly.

Big budget cinema (like Spiderman) deals in image quality and craftsmen, but it's a niche market. "Blockbuster" films have become increasingly more often than not sadly formulaic themselves, (homogenisation again) starting right at the script level.

It's an interesting philosophical arena for Jim Jannard, being such a quality aficionado and champion, creating a product which in fact may diminish the artisanship of human capture. That's contentious, but it's logical. In this instance, the artisanship shifts and actually becomes the invention of the user friendly machine itself. The artists more and more become the people who create the algorithms and the software programming. The product may very well progress the way of Apple where in a way the product is the art.

A little while ago Jim said he's concentrating on pro, (he's a champion of the pro) yet IMO he will in reality shrink the gap between pro and mass user, the paths will inexorably converge.

When convergence occurs, the average guy will film the cat springing onto the baby's face at 28k (on his phone), (in 3D), the people who mastered lighting for low sensitivity film-stock will all be gone, and perhaps my melancholy then will be left to content, rather than capture. Capture will be ubiquitous and high quality and everyone will be doing it, in natural light and near pitch black; the "craft" of capture will be very different to what it was, the images will be so "great", anyone can do it, automatic composition and grading and all. You'll be downloading apps to make your film look just like Spiderman, and it will... and you'll probably instruct software by voice to construct special effects and those human special effects artists will be gone too.

The argument can be that there will always be the "craftsman" who will use the tool better than others, that all tools need a craftsman, but the very nature of the technological advances for the masses, and at times their narcissism and indifference to real craft, seems to suggest otherwise.

I guess what I'm saying is the art and craft of the human shifts, incrementally moves into the art of technology. (Until immersive virtual reality arrives and a new wave of artists appear!) So whilst we all cheer on the Epic, the humans also all cheer on the machine. That's life and change as we know it, it's happened elsewhere and it's now rolling on into photography and film as it's rolled over so many before.

Oh well, having said all that, I have a RED (#2150), and will be doing everything I can to purchase an Epic just to make little films and hope that someone somewhere cares about the human aspect of the story and how I do it. (Me.)

 

[constantine Tirintzis]

Expanding your tech knowledge is good but still technical.
filmmaking is an art, that includes all tech, imagination, talent, and most of all experience.
If you got something to say you can say it with photographs as well, you can say it with HDV, epic, alexa, 16mm, 35mm, you will find a way to express your self and be artistic.
But when it comes to quality if you can use the best resolution camera,it will for sure show in the pictures.
Best

 

[Eric Lange]

It really surprises me how many people think of "today" instead of "tomorrow". Tomorrow is right around the corner...

Jim

Exactly!

Without teaching proverbial grandmothers to suck eggs; I am a great believer in that you have to pass the ball to where someone is GOING TO BE. If you develop for now, then by the time you get it out there its already old and you have missed the boat. In my experience pushing the frontiers of what’s new is extremely hard, you push, push, and push, but then all of sudden (without any explanation) ALL of the pieces suddenly fall into place, almost by magic without any extra effort.

4k may seem very data intensive now, but not that different from high res film scans. Six years from now it will be child’s play given dramatic cost reductions for equivalent compute and processing power. 2k formats and 1080p are not very future proof, but I believe eventually that management of 4k data sets are naturally scalable within the broadcast industry on a as needed basis. Once the audience and “media makers” are presented with 4k there will be no turning back. From a psycho-visual point of view 4k output/presentation has reached an asymptote, i.e. a human being cannot perceive usefully a higher resolution in the cinema or the home. Capture devices can certainly go to higher res to create significantly higher quality 4k output to help overcome de-bayer type effects.

In my experience with working with high res imagery, an amazing amount of quality (signal to noise/MTFs/actual resolution) can be brought to bear by significant degrees of down-sampling. 6k down sampled for 4k output should look absolutely stunning, and similarly 4k to 2k. For broadcast and the viewers at home this will be a completely different experience, the difference between AM and digital FM radio.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Mark...

I see it a bit differently.

Yes, you are right - the tools have become more available, but look at what happened with audio. The tools aren't enough to cut it, even though any computer now records float 32bit audio for more or less free. This has allowed the craftsmen to stand out again, and those are the ones who make a living of it again - after an interrim period where everyone with a Cubase or Logic setup had "a studio".

Yes, it is easy to make pleasing results with these tools.
But still you need talent and factual understanding of your tools to make a career out of it, now more than ever.

The advancement of technology actually brings back a lot of long-lost crafts, ironically....

I think your description better fits the PD-150 era (which I must admit I rather enjoyed...) -

 

[M Most]

It only takes ONE network to change the game. It wil happen. Sooner than you think.

Well, it took HD over 5 years and it was already supported by 3 of the 4 broadcast networks. And it took a lot longer than that for the vast majority of consumers. Not to mention that even today, 14 years after HD's introduction, most of the bars I go to still show stretched SD feeds of ESPN even though they've got HD feeds of the same channels available at the touch of a tuner. Jim calls SD and HD a "mistake." I don't really get how something that's lasted for almost 70 years (in the case of SD television) and was, in fact, a near technical miracle at the time of its introduction, is a "mistake." Even in the Internet age, widespread distribution of a high resolution, home targeted format requires standards for production, duplication, distribution, and broadcast. That's just a fact, and it's not a fact that disappears because one forward thinking company decides that it should unless there's a worldwide groundswell of demand. I didn't see that for HD and I don't see it now.

3D, on the other hand, is a recognized revenue generator in theaters, and might develop into one in the home. But at this point, it's not even close to being there. Personally, I think until the worldwide financial situation is vastly more stable than it currently is, and unless/until the unemployment rate in the US is a LOT lower than it is now, any new technology that's more expensive than, say, an iPad is going to have a very difficult road to acceptance regardless of how "cool" it is. Now that's not to say that shooting television material and archiving it at a higher than HD resolution is a foolish move. Clearly, it isn't, and we've been doing 4K archives of Red shot television programs (in the form of 4K DPX files, at the studio's request) for one major studio for over a year now, including the first two network series ever shot on the format. So there certainly is value there, and at least one studio does see that. But extrapolating that out to "4K sports in every home in the near future" is a bit of a stretch in light of the practical roadblocks, including the public's desire and ability to spend money on it.

 

[Mark Warren]

Yes Gunleik, I think real pros stand out these days, but I think in general the masses don't give much of a damn. The pros will always be passionate about subtlety and differences and artistic expression, I think it's becoming more marginal with the average joe.

Things like painting and writing, that aren't rooted in technology, survive the crush of advance, but film and photography are technological mediums and as is happening with film and its associated artists, they'll disappear eventually.

I'll get into my car one day and I won't drive it, it'll drive me to my destination whilst I read the paper.

I think the next big thing for the visual arts will be a whole change of technology, as I said, fully immersive virtual reality or something similar and the artists will be the programmers of that world... until they also make it that everyone can do that too!

 

[brian hanson]

3k is still a massive step up from HD, especially when you consider that most people are shooting cameras(like myself) that only resolve 700 lines or less.