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I have a secret. And this is a very, very important post.
Last week Jarred invited me to test out the new Epic Dragon OLPF plus the new camera/sensor calibration. For the last couple days I've been digging into it real hard.
I'll keep it brief because the images do the talking.
First up, FLARE.
As Jarred mentioned the "OG" Dragon OLPF exhibited reflected IR flare or magenta glow around bright sources. Much of what I've been doing is hard stress testing and comparisons to the New Dragon OLPF.
The Sun.
40 Watt Incandescent Bulb.
Single Source Flashlight.
A Match.
The magenta glow around intense sources is gone. This is great news.
You may notice that there are color and "tonal density" improvements. Dragon received a new calibration and update to the color science to play nice with this New OLPF.
So you might ask, is the IR Cut still as effective and what's the net results on the color utilizing hard Neutral Density Filtration?
Daylight - ND 2.7
IR Cut performance is still wonderful. You will not need additional IR Filtration with the New OLPF on Dragon. You just want regular NDs. I have tested 0.3-2.7 ND.
If you look extremely closely you will notice color has slightly improved overall. Additionally in shadows and highlights IR contamination has been eliminated with the New OLPF. Those blue shadows are extremely pure (check out the sky in the Sun Flare image too). White highlights are white. Dark shadow areas are clean. You may noticed that chroma is richer in the 2800K WB/ISO 2000 Match test image as well. Good stuff.
One more chart.
Artificial Daylight Source - No ND.
Color looks great.
The new calibration has also improved other areas.
Highlight Retention and Highlight Roll-Off.
That's approximately 1.3+ stops improvements in the highlights. Also to note, the New OLPF wrangles light fall-off and bloom a bit nicer. So you get richer shadow detail, where the previous OLPF with it's IR contamination flattened out those areas a bit. Subtle, but visibly noticeable in captured material.
I'm still conducting a few tests, but this is info you're looking for. I hear that the new OLPFs are coming soon and will be dropped into Dragons with this new calibration as well.
Hats off to the Red Team for developing and implementing this New OLPF tech. They listened and worked very quickly.
Now Dragon is even better.
Thanks go to Jarred for letting me break this thing in.
Last week Jarred invited me to test out the new Epic Dragon OLPF plus the new camera/sensor calibration. For the last couple days I've been digging into it real hard.
I'll keep it brief because the images do the talking.
First up, FLARE.
As Jarred mentioned the "OG" Dragon OLPF exhibited reflected IR flare or magenta glow around bright sources. Much of what I've been doing is hard stress testing and comparisons to the New Dragon OLPF.
The Sun.
40 Watt Incandescent Bulb.
Single Source Flashlight.
A Match.
The magenta glow around intense sources is gone. This is great news.
You may notice that there are color and "tonal density" improvements. Dragon received a new calibration and update to the color science to play nice with this New OLPF.
So you might ask, is the IR Cut still as effective and what's the net results on the color utilizing hard Neutral Density Filtration?
Daylight - ND 2.7
IR Cut performance is still wonderful. You will not need additional IR Filtration with the New OLPF on Dragon. You just want regular NDs. I have tested 0.3-2.7 ND.
If you look extremely closely you will notice color has slightly improved overall. Additionally in shadows and highlights IR contamination has been eliminated with the New OLPF. Those blue shadows are extremely pure (check out the sky in the Sun Flare image too). White highlights are white. Dark shadow areas are clean. You may noticed that chroma is richer in the 2800K WB/ISO 2000 Match test image as well. Good stuff.
One more chart.
Artificial Daylight Source - No ND.
Color looks great.
The new calibration has also improved other areas.
Highlight Retention and Highlight Roll-Off.
That's approximately 1.3+ stops improvements in the highlights. Also to note, the New OLPF wrangles light fall-off and bloom a bit nicer. So you get richer shadow detail, where the previous OLPF with it's IR contamination flattened out those areas a bit. Subtle, but visibly noticeable in captured material.
I'm still conducting a few tests, but this is info you're looking for. I hear that the new OLPFs are coming soon and will be dropped into Dragons with this new calibration as well.
Hats off to the Red Team for developing and implementing this New OLPF tech. They listened and worked very quickly.
Now Dragon is even better.
Thanks go to Jarred for letting me break this thing in.
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