Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

The Cold in Canada

Status
Not open for further replies.
RED in the cold

RED in the cold

Yesterday I went out to do a half day shoot with two REDs. The temp was -15C, with the wind it made it feel like -20C. I and the camera were outside for a total of 4hrs.

Initially neither camera would boot up at all, and both needed to come into the truck for about 20min to warm up. Once they were warmed up both cameras booted up fine. Subsequent battery changes in the field happened without a problem, and both camera's booted fine.

Everything looked fine, and both camera's showed no signs that anything was going wrong. No error messages, no lockups. When I got back to my edit suite, and loaded the footage I noticed that over half the footage that I shot was corrupt. The RAW files have the same problem, and is not isolated to the quicktime wrappers.


I was using both the "approved" 1.3.6 firmware build, and the "beta" 1.7.0 build, both builds, and both cameras recorded clips that had this problem.

Anybody have any answers?

Is this another firmware problem?

Is this another camera problem?

Is this something anybody has seen before?

RED Team, what's up?
 
Wow! Given that the example problem is actually showing different parts of the image in each frame, assuming the camera was locked down, that can't be blamed on a flash card issue or something else downstream. Clearly there are different parts of the "look-around" area moving into the active video window. But it's amazing that it can be recorded this way when the viewfinder is still working normally (?)

Were you using the viewfinder or the LCD monitor? Everything looked normal at the time?
 
As I posted

As I posted

As I said, there was no indication that anything was going wrong on either camera.
 
I understand there was no error indication but just to clarify: were you using (1) a viewfinder, (2) a LCD monitor or (3) no monitor at all. (3) is a serious possibility, I know at least Jim has shot without no monitoring and actually got a decent shot, somehow.

If you did shoot without a monitor, then other scenarios might exist, eg. if you happened to also be using a stabilized lens and it was malfunctioning and the optical compensator was oscillating, maybe it could look like that.
 
monitoring

monitoring

RED LCD attached to one cam, the other being monitored via HD-SDI to SD downconvert with SD Sony field monitor.

One had the RED 18-50mm lens, the other had a super 16mm lens (20-120mm)
 
I do not see that footage winning you an award Colin.

This is definately a concern for many. Did you keep any kind of warming cover on the camera? (not that you should have to though as I have shot many times with all other makes of cameras in those temperatures with no problems.)
 
:waaa: Well that's getting a bit scary here...

Red guys, is this being fixed in the new cameras ?
If not, maybe you should consider taking the time to fix it before shipping more cameras (not that we'd like that, but if you need the extra time you should take it).
I guess that's something that can't be fixed by firmware upgrades, and this might be a huge problem for a lot of people...

But maybe you already solved this issue ?
 
hubickc said:
As I said, there was no indication that anything was going wrong on either camera.
Click to expand...

As someone whose butt is on the line with each frame recorded, that's the part that scares me!

It's one thing to shut down production because you recognize a camera problem (I did it this week). People respect that. It's quite another to think all is well when it's not.
 
yikes.

obvious question: after bringing the camera back inside, are you now shooting without this issue?

you say about half of the footage shot over 4 hour period has this issue - is it first half of the footage? second half? mixed over the whole four hours period of shooting?
 
These claims concern me.

I live in LA and most of the stuff I will shoot with the Red will be in LA, but to think that I will be limited if I ever need to dive into the arctic tundras or jet off to the dense jungles of Singapore and be faced with these issues, scares the bejesus out of me. Red, comments?
 
rgdfilmsRED said:
...scares the bejesus out of me. [...]
Click to expand...
Steady there... I wouldn't get too worried just yet. Even if Red says the camera will never work unprotected at -15 C, there are ways to work in cold if you need to. With enough insulation the camera can keep itself warm: remember it uses about 70 watts. I'd be surprised if there was no fix for this eventually. If all looked well in the viewfinder, then clearly the sensor was still working, plus quite a bit of the electronics. Maybe there's just one component that was temperature sensitive. At a minimum I'm sure they can have an internal-temp readout to warn you if you're close to the danger zone.
 
Like a few of us has mentioned before a temperature gauge that shows cold, good and hot on it so a person can see exactly where the camera is running at is a must.
 
What is being shown is certainly a cause for concern. I cannot risk my meagre $2 Million feature on something that cannot perform, especially when the monitor shows no issue. Hope there are some solutions for this. Hopefully a rare exception.

We have a Porta Brace "Polar Bear" cover we use on F900, Sony Betacam SX, and Varicam to keep the body and lens toasty with Hot Shots. We've shot in -53 Celsius (no windchill -as that would be a health risk) with Beta SX this way...so cold that the ocean is literally frozen beneath our feet in the sub-Arctic (and no we don't mean Winnipeg).

Looking forward to more info.
 
hubickc said:
Everything looked fine, and both camera's showed no signs that anything was going wrong. No error messages, no lockups. When I got back to my edit suite, and loaded the footage I noticed that over half the footage that I shot was corrupt.
Click to expand...

This is definitely cause for concern. But I think more testing needs to be done to determine what the weakest link is in a cold weather situation. Was it the camera internals? Could it be the CF cards not recording properly below certain temps? Something else or a combination of things?

I'm really hoping to hear something from RED on this issue, but there's a good chance that they just don't have anything to offer at this point. Those of us who will be shooting with the first few hundred cameras in these cold situations are going to be the pioneers.

We'll have #519 here shortly -- probably some time in January. Erik and I will be putting it through all sorts of tests and the first real project we have planned for it is a short film that will be shot primarily at night, in the mountains, in the snow.
 
This is very strange. It's a three frame loop (which suggests a codec issue) and then each frame is out of alignment (which suggests a codec error) but it's the exposure that gets me. Each frame looks as though it was recorded at a different interval (suggesting time lapse). Also, each frame in the three frame loop is exposed at a different T-Stop.

I'd like to see the meta data of this file.
I'd like to see at least one other shot from the day, from the other camera.
I'd like to know the project settings, the exposure, and whether this was shot at 2K or 4K.

I think these details could help.

David
 
Torrie said:
Hopefully a rare exception.
Click to expand...

Colin says it happened to two cameras.

If it happened to 1 camera I would say it may be a rare exception. Happening to two on the other hand...

We all need to hear more about exactly how it happened but I see user error being very slim to none as Colin and his team have been shooting with those cameras for a while now.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top