The RED 18-55mm Can't do Sunset Reds

[Steve Gibby]

Very nice sunset over Malibu shot Dino...looks like there are a few decent waves grinding the point. A lifelong surfer like me can pick out that location easily!

Will,
As Matt pointed out, this is not a lens issue. I've shot copious amounts of sunset shots with my three REDs in the 2+ years I've owned them. I've shot them with a wide range of cine lenses (including the RED 18-50), Nikon lenses, and Canon lenses. When I shoot a shot like that the lens is almost always stopped down. I don't use IR mirrors - ND9 is the strongest ND filter I use.

As Nate mentioned, in shooting RAW you can push and pull the look of the shot just about wherever you want in pre-post and post. You just want to avoid clipping the highlights and crushing the blacks. Chroma saturation is a moving target with RAW - correct to your liking or needs.

You can see several examples of saturated chroma sunset shots in my Artbeats RED footage collection via the link in my signature below - and those are just low-res files which for demo purposes were purposely not over-saturated.

 

[James T Mather]

adjusting brightness and contrast in camera makes an actual difference? It's not a meta data thing you can change later?

Yes it is meta data but will impact saturation and feel including your impression of the cameras ability to record a particular shade of red which seems to be your bone of contention.

It can assist people (usually non-technically minded directors) in visualising a scenes eventual impact colourwise with the application of colour grading. To elaborate, a director recently who felt we hadn't achived a particularly dramatic sunset shot (due to cloud) was relieved somewhat when I showed him the footage playing back with these settings in place (in short, colour grading whilst playing back on location) - as I said dilute to taste.

Also watch that ugly blow out - the red sunset shots look off the charts to me by a couple of stops (as do the canon shots) and seem to have IR contamination (although not sure what you did in grading to achieve the "red-coloured" look in post so its anyone's guess)

Also the colour "wash" in the canon shots look like veiling glare to me due to a 200 dollar lens and the canon also exhibits those red-coloured oplf dots (which are achievable on Red - put in a heavy ND and hot mirror and shoot into an off-centre sun).

If you like this hazy veiling glare look buy an old cheap lens of low contrast and high dispersion (maybe an old zoom) - problem solved

Alternatively try a low-con or double-fog filter to assist light bleed (which paradoxically has less of an effect than a "standard" fog lens - go figure) -the 18-50 is technically doing a better job of maintaining contast which seems to be not what you like.

Best of luck with it

 

[Will Keir]

downscaled 16 bit tiff

shot with the red 18-50..a copy appears in Noah's book and on the adobe website for red workflow examples.

this has not been altered in any way, straight out of the camera in redspace from a snapshot.

Very nice. That's the kind of color I was seeing that the Canon was able to pick up. What'd settings did you use for this one?

 

[dino g]

i am sure you all remember the fleggaard commercial with the naked girls we did last year...if you need a refresher...

http://www.vix.dk/v/496169

anyway, the day we did the stuff out at malibu, naked girl coming out of the pool, golf dudes looking up in the sky and tennis teenager looking up in the sky, this was the sunset that appeared at wrap.

i quickly grabbed my camera back from the ac and threw my 18-50 on it. the camera was still setup for 25 fps and whatever else we were doing, (it was a year ago, i cant remember what i did on yesterday's shoot).

i put the camera on a table and rolled this for a few minutes and then took it off the table ( art dept wanted to wrap the table), and put the camera on the ground until there was no more light.

that's it...just got lucky i guess.

dino

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Lens has nothing to do with it except that the Canon exhibits massive flare and veiling glare.

There is also IR contamination in your Red footage. The Canon "point and shoot" does not have mushy colour (IR contamination) because it adjusts exposure time (shutter speed) and therefore does not suffer from IR contamination. You can do it on Red one by shortening the shutter speed too.

Also, like others pointed out, the Canon applies some kind of an S curve, where as with Red you need to do the desired S curve in post as desired.

If you want true colours and shoot with a 180 degree shutter, you need to use lots of IRND (hot mirror). From my experience of a similar shot, I used IRND of 2.0 (Pancro) plus either regular ND 0.9 or true PL (about 2.5 stops) at about f/5.6 to f/8 would be a good starting point depending on the angle of view (more ND on a longer lens than on a wide angle).

Also, use appropriate hard matte to get rid of some of the flare and glare.

 

[Paul Leeming]

Will, as others have suggested, the camera and lens are easily capable of stunning sunsets, but you must not overexpose your shot. Make sure you have a nice bell curve on your histogram and most importantly, that nothing clips to red on the RAW meter next to the histogram. If you keep it at orange or yellow you're maximising dynamic range without clipping the highlights.

Here's a few examples shot with my Red and a Canon EF 70-200L f2.8 IS USM lens mounted on the Birger EF mount:

Graded entirely in RedCine. As you can see, plenty of colour and saturation without blowing anything out (exception being the sun in the first shot is slightly blown as evidenced by the protection purple, but I've left that alone to show you how it will work).

HTH

Paul

 

[Duncan Hill]

Looks like you lost too much in the crucial red area from clipping. Stop down more and use an ND. Then you should be able to get the saturation you're looking for. That's a great lens you're using. Hope you find the sweet spot you're looking for.

 

[Peter Mosiman]

I had to do a lot of grading with my sunrise that I shot the other day. What bums me out is that the sun was a brilliant red but it was so blown out and I didn't have anymore ND's, I couldn't stop down enough.

This was straight from the camera. (sad looking I know.)

This was after I played around in REDAlert! for awhile.