The first RED Weapon 8K has Landed!

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Phil, looks amazing. What did "a little processing" on the second crop entail?

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil, looks amazing. What did "a little processing" on the second crop entail?

Just some light sharpening (RED cameras don't apply sharpening in camera), did a few more finishing experiments as well.


Yesterday was a big day of testing many, many lenses over at Duclos Lenses. Some grabs from the chaos.

Somebody asked for a shot of the 8K VV OLPFs. Here's one in the camera:

Zeiss Otus 28mm f/1.4 covers 8K FF, which is perhaps the biggest relief I've had in forever.

Tested coverage with all Leica Summilux-C and Summicron-C primes:

Those are designed for S35, but some in fact cover. This was actually the first time I've seen the 16-135mm full set of Summilux-Cs anywhere. One glory shot of the 135mm on the 8K VV:

The big revelation for me was getting to look closer at anamorphic 2X glass on the 8K VV. Remember that 8K VV is actually taller than Super 35mm by a bit, so there is indeed reason to test coverage. Anamorphic looks so damn nice on the 8K VV. In this grab we have the Kowa 100mm T3.5:

Also, due note that with 8K 6:5 2X ANA you can shoot as minimal as REDCODE RAW 4:1 @ 24fps.

Did some testing that is a bit more VR related @ 8mm:

My ugly mug:

These are rather selfish and not-so-selfish tests. Cataloging all our coverage notes is useful and I'll be adding this all to the lensData thingy at PHFX | tools. I'm also figuring out what glass I'll be using on a few jobs, one of which is immediate. I have about 1 to 2 more days of lens tests to go.

The big ones for me at the moment has been the Zeiss Otus Primes, having that trio cover is super important to me. I've already shot with my Mamiya 645, Milvus, Olympus, Canon, etc..... Testing the Schneider Xenons today and a few other things. Compact Zooms are next after that.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

Did you Cine mod your otuses in anyway? I am afraid to touch them or get anything done to those gems!

 

[Phil Holland]

Did you Cine mod your otuses in anyway? I am afraid to touch them or get anything done to those gems!

Duclos is doing a very cool thing and has been working on it for a while. You'll notice in the picture that the focus ring is different. It now has gears with accurate focus scales. That's a slip ring, so you aren't damaging the lens in any way.

He's doing custom front rings as well, also not damaging the lens.

 

[Maik Müller]

Awesome stuff. Thank you for sharing Phil!

 

[Nick Morrison]

Hey Phil what 8mm is that?

 

[Phil Holland]

Hey Phil what 8mm is that?

'tis the 8 Pod:

https://www.ducloslenses.com/products/8pod

 

[Craig Lees]

Phil, thank you soooo much for doing these tests. I can't begin to think how much of your time you spend doing and then SHARING all these. I don't post that much (mainly because I dont have the time between shooting and holding down a job and a business) ergo I want to say a big thank you again.

Can't believe we are at a place where we have these two great options ahead of us in the future. As an owner of a set of 2x ana Lomo's, I am torn! Although it's early doors and we don't know much about the helium yet, the tests you do provide vital data for us to be able to make massive informed financial & production orientated decisions.

Still early but the main thing for me is iso2000 on SHOLPF & shallow depth of field look / wider FoV / kick ass anamorphic look/ being able to shoot more easily at T4 on the VV
Vs
ISO3200 S35 and possible sensor upgrade from my Epic Dragon (probably need a weapon body though right?)

... and we haven't even seen anything from the s358k yet!


Time will tell and these ace tests and summarising words really help so kudos again Phil.

And yeah, well done RED ; )

Muhalo.

Craig Lees
ED & S MX UK
FD SSC & Lomo anamorphic sets

 

[Phil Holland]

Cheers and thank you Craig.

I have to admit I'm a big fan of what RED's done as of late. Specifically the Dragon sensor tech, the improvement and power of the DSMC2 bodies, and the most recent 8K solutions that hold relevance to film formats. This is all a really, really big deal when it comes down to it. Side note. There's been other good things as well, stuff that people don't really think about really, but there's also been a great deal of improvement in customer service over the years.

It's good to make a lot of these tests and notes public because people are curious and it's not exactly "the olden days" of RED at this point. Specifically from Dragon's release on and especially in the current bodies we have perhaps the most flexible and powerful digital cinema cameras available to us.

I'll have some 8K VV footage popping up next week and the week after. The 8K S35 is also very, very good. And I think it's nice that Jarred dropped the tease for a multitude of reasons. Especially for those heavily invested in S35 lenses.

As far as I'm concerned the mission has been completely on point. The future is indeed 4K and 4K+ capture and delivery.

Personal note regarding the anamorphic image. I'm mostly a 2X purest these days. Specifically if you a 2X shooter you'll want the height of the 8K VV. It's the "the format" for this as far as I'm concerned. The magic behind the DCI 1.9:1 aspect ratio sensor is you still have width to use for WS or HD aspect ratio spherical productions.

 

[Brody_B]

The 8K S35 is also very, very good. And I think it's nice that Jarred dropped the tease for a multitude of reasons. Especially for those heavily invested in S35 lenses.

Have you seen footage from it yet? How good, better than dragon good? Might be hard to swallow after just getting your vv if thats the case.

 

[Jonas Rejman]

Congratulations and thank you very much for sharing your discoveries.
The crop is unreal.
Godspeed!

 

[Jason Rivera]

Congrats and thanks for all the r3ds over the years. Just awesome. So how do I order one?

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

Have you seen footage from it yet? How good, better than dragon good? Might be hard to swallow after just getting your vv if thats the case.

they seem like two different tools to me. users are either going to have to choose between or swallow them both, if the business model supports it. I'm pretty excited for my VV Weapon, and my Epic Dragon shoots similar dimensions to the Helium S35, so pretty happy hanging out with the cameras that I have. Still getting sweet pictures from my Scarlet MX, too, when the budgets don't support the other options. It's all crazy good.

 

[Russ Fill]

I wonder if the Helium tech can be used to creat a VV size sensor. Using this new tech in the FF VV sensor cameras.
Hummmmm?

 

[Milano Questa]

I wonder if the Helium tech can be used to creat a VV size sensor. Using this new tech in the FF VV sensor cameras.
Hummmmm?

Yes, ofcourse they can. The wafer itself is much larger than VV. You can cut out any sensor size you want. Even 645 medium format or 4x5". It just gets alot more expensive when you go up in size due to wafer defects, which pull down yields.

 

[Brian Nguyen]

I've just done a round of fairly extensive image quality tests over the last couple days. Motion finishing in 8K, 4K, and 2K. Did some stress testing via upscaling as well at 5:1 through 12:1 REDCODE RAW (based on minimum compression at max FPS at 8K FF) with all of the OLPFs.

The short story. I'm very happy. Without question this is the best sensor RED has made. I've never seen anything like this actually.



Do note that's the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF and no, no DEB was used.

That's a single 2K 100% crop. There's 16 2K 100% crops available in a full 8K frame. Sixteen.

Scaled down to a 4K finish looks predictably wonderful. I'll attempt to pull a couple favors to get to see some native 8K in 8K action before the end of the month if I have time. Gonna shoot a small thing, do a quick 2 hour workshop in LA, and then vanish for a hot minute.

That looks amazing Phil. What kind of processing did you do?

 

[Raphael Varandas]

Great Phil, thank you for updates.

 

[Phil Holland]

Well it's been an eventful few days dealing with permits, conference calls, and prep.

In the midst of the storm I've been doing a lot of tinkering and experiments with the Weapon 8K VV.

I have so many thoughts and I'll be sharing more shortly, but here are a few quick grabs I want to show.

Leafy:

Link to 4K res version


This was one of the first images I shot the first day with the camera. Backyard, mostly to test if the bloody thing would power up.

However, this was shot with my PL converted Mamiya 645 lenses. First time I got to really spend time with them and the camera and I'm super happy they sing nicely together.

The color struck me in a way. Not something I'd typically share, but these are those little happy early moments.

One more plant thing from the first hours:

Link to 4K res version


Dynamic Range Tests:

Link to 4K res version

The above image is from one of my little diorama setups I have made to compare the 8K and 6K, dynamic range, and OLPF tech between the two systems.

Short answer, OLPFs "work as expected" in terms of what retains more highlight detail and what's cleaner in low light. I'll be measuring the Total Captured DR at some point via Xyla and my patch method eventually to get a hard number. The DR is thick and meaty, which is exactly what we want.

This particular image above is a grade out of REDCINE-X Pro, but I've also dug deep into creating linear transforms to evaluate the images.

However, this crazy setup did make me pause for a bit. It's pretty amazing what's coming out of the camera in terms of image quality, resolving power, dynamic range, and color. This was shot with the STH OLPF, which I'm rather fond of still, and you'd be hard pressed to find any other digital cinema camera at the moment that could shoot something as thick or as detailed as this.


More stuff coming soon. Still have a few lenses and tech to prep for the Shotover this week and next week. Next stuff will be a bit wider and further away

 

[Milano Questa]

Please upload an 8K tiff or R3D.

Pretty please.

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Woaw you can read every letter in that book! Beautiful image!