What did I do wrong here?

[Daniel Stilling]

You are right, I apologize, as my remarks were indeed unnecessarily harsh. Reading it again I realize that it was out of bounds. So again I apologize for my choice of words.
But I do stand by the technical content of what I said. IMHO, when you have little light, stopping down is the absolutely last thing you should do. Even if you are having problems with focus. There are many other ways to fix the issue (focus). You could have changed the shot slightly in a way that it would limit front to back movement. Changed the focal length, putting a wider lens on that has inherently a larger depth of field and brought the camera a little closer.
As you said, I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly what you are up against, but still, the last thing to do on a light starved setup is to close the iris. Just as curiosity. How fast was the lens and how far did you stop it down?

 

[Rakesh Malik]

Thank you. And apology accepted.

I only stopped down by one stop. I was as wide as I was able to be and still get the shot I was asked for; if I'd gone to the next wider lens the proximity required for the shot would have made up for the depth of field increase.

The talent was moving really randomly. The maximum aperture was T/2.1, and I stopped down to T/4. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep the talent in focus most of the time.

I'm not used to having so many options in a camera, so I'm also not used to using them.

I'm also still not clear on when things like black shading are important, either. I wasn't able to black shade the loaner that Red gave me, because the control surface on that as a Switchblade and I wasn't able to access the calibration menu with it.

So much to learn... as usual. Cinematography wouldn't be as fun if it were easy.

 

[Bill Stengel]

Thank you. And apology accepted.

I only stopped down by one stop. I was as wide as I was able to be and still get the shot I was asked for; if I'd gone to the next wider lens the proximity required for the shot would have made up for the depth of field increase.

The talent was moving really randomly. The maximum aperture was T/2.1, and I stopped down to T/4. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep the talent in focus most of the time.

I'm not used to having so many options in a camera, so I'm also not used to using them.

I'm also still not clear on when things like black shading are important, either. I wasn't able to black shade the loaner that Red gave me, because the control surface on that as a Switchblade and I wasn't able to access the calibration menu with it.

So much to learn... as usual. Cinematography wouldn't be as fun if it were easy.

Rakesh,
Fortunately, you've got REDUSER to employ as a knowledgebase. It's an invaluable tool.

Touching the histogram at the bottom of the display is a quick way of accessing focus and exposure tools. The most easily interpreted one is GIO scope, which maps the 16ish stops of sensitivity into individual colors; a digital interpretation of the photographic zone system. The goalposts to either side of the histogram are another easy way to tell what's going on with your signal. Use those two and you're nearly invincible.

As for black shading, it's RED's way of mitigating fixed-pattern noise that is inherent in the sensor design, as well as mapping out the occasional hot pixel. The two determinant factors are sensor temperature (T) and shutter speed/exposure (E), as indicated by the T/E icon at the bottom of the display. They change from red to orange to yellow to green, with a + or a - to indicate in which direction they are errant. There are countless black shading threads. Two that come to mind are here and here

Everything can be accessed through the touchscreen. Any outboard keys (side handle, switchblade etc) are redundant to that.

As I said, use the crap out of REDUSER. Or, if you have a specific issue you can get me at bill at billstengel.com – I went through the same learning curve you are in the midst of right now a few years ago so I know where you are and learned the nitty-gritty of the system by making mistakes and by scouring RU deep into the night or when I should have been doing other things.

 

[Rakesh Malik]

Yes, Reduser has been a pretty impressive community. It's why I posted here instead of going directly to Red support, because I figured I'd get responses more quickly here, and it wasn't a camera problem anyway.

The loaner wasn't an optimal configuration. It didn't come with a touch screen, so I was limited to the Switchblade... but since it was a loaner, I'm not complaining. I just have access to a bazillion more options and settings now than I did on the Scarlet since I have a touch screen now.

Time's not on my side right this minute, I have a lot of editing to get done and day one of production on another feature this weekend... fortunately, it's just one day of production until after the holidays or I'd never be able to get this editing done!

So much to do, so little time... sigh. Thanks for the links to those threads -- Mark Pederson's post was very informative.

And now... back to editing.