To the photographers - a few questions

[Clayton Taylor]

My background started in wedding/portrait photography. I began with a Canon 5D m2 when they first came out, moved to the m3, then in September upgraded to the world of RED Scarlet. I know you guys basically rip stills from the footage to get your images, but the whole workflow of everything is a foreign concept with what I'm used to.

So how do you do it? Do you light your set for photography, have your model/customer pose/roll a few seconds of video/ cut? Do you just have them go through poses/motions while the camera rolls? Do you come back and review the footage then rip your best stills? Do you ever have customers look at you strangely when they come to you for photographs, but you're shooting video? How do you explain it to them?

Sorry for all of the question - just trying to wrap my head around it in case I want to pick up photography work ever again.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I think your questions are very valid and relevant.

As to the workflow, you can export stills (TIFFS) from RedCine and set up a preset that only export markers.
If you export with redlogFilm, that will give you a lot of flexibility, or you can ballpark the images in RedCine and just finish it in Photoshop/lightroom

But you are touching one of the main challenges in a dual approach: Lighting and exposure.

Most of those gigs I have seen, have been high speed (when shooting for dual purpose) and that is pretty logical as you often want a shorter shutter for stills than motion

 

[Clayton Taylor]

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

 

[Ash Worth]

Gunleik mentions the most important thing you should know when shooting to pull stills. Higher shutter speed. It's crucial, it's not a case of shooting normally and thinking you can go back in post and pull stills. 1/50 is slow, almost impossible to get a sharp still from regular footage.

 

[Clayton Taylor]

Yeah i was expecting as much from the photography world - never went below 1/125 if I could help it. Eyes started losing sharpness.. things blurred.

 

[Christian Celada]

Well it seems like a very interesting idea, but I think also being a photographer, there is always the right tool for the job, as rich as the image red delivers on video, I truly think I’d use stills camera for stills and motion camera for motion, I’m conservative in that way because most of the time motion creates unwanted blur, and also most photographers rely on Selective AF, I’m not sure a Red camera suits the wedding service business entirely, id stick to the norm, but inventive creative ideas are revolutionizing the world today, perhaps one day this idea will be the norm. Kudos!

 

[Gunleik Groven]

To elaborate a bit. U can of course shoot with a shorter shutter for the video, just then the video doesn't look too good, unless it's slomo. OR you could shoot HDRX (dual shutter) but that gives exposure and compression compromises.

So it is a great idea and I use the Dragon a lot for stills, but you have to have the mindset that you focus on what is your main goal: stills or film.
It's not so much a technological issues as a photo-technical one.

 

[Frank Weeks]

I tend to agree with Christian about overall quality. I have never been able to pull stills from our Epic and Red One that compare with our 5d mk!!.
However as he stated, things are changing. Follow Gunlilk's advice and experiment. Red cameras have provided many mainstream magazines with stunning cover shots. I won't argue with the photographers that do that for a living.

 

[James Falco]

There is a lot of advantages and disadvantages of shooting RED for stills.

In general there is no such thing as one camera fits it all.

I find it really helpful shooting subjects that are not acustumed posing or modeling for living.
They naturally stiff up or trying to hard to pose once you put them on a seamless backdrop and start hitting them with strobes.
Putting up some continues lights and rolling RED at 12, 8 or even 4 fps, at high shutter and low compression makes it really easy to involve
them into a conversation, have them forget the camera and capture there personality. Specially if you don't hide your face behind the camera.

Also showing up to a shoot with one camera rather than two, simplifies things a lot.
I personally consciously frame and shoot in mind for motion or for still. In still one images has to tell the whole story, where in motion a pan or zoom can do a better job.
Directing the subject is very much on a base to base subject, sometimes its a doc style observation, others are staged scenarios where direction is important.

Shooting RED for stills has its limitations, such as resolution, compressed raw, and no ability to trigger strobes.
In the still world it does no stand a chance next to a digital medium format back with strobes. That can shoot up to 80MP and synch strobes at 1/1600 of a second.


Just my 5 cents on the issue.

Cheers.

 

[James Falco]

Here some stills shot or RED scarlet to illustrate my point:

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Suprised no one has mentioned ADD, you MUST use ADD when processing stills, gives you super high quality

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Suprised no one has mentioned ADD, you MUST use ADD when processing stills, gives you super high quality

While I love ADD, I don't agree that it is a must for all stills.

But yeah: Check it out and find out how it works and add it in your toolset.

 

[James Falco]

ADD only works on Dragon footage, and it has a impact on noisy images.
If you expose well its almost not worth the long processing time.