Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

What is the native ISO for Scarlet X -Mysterium MX Sensor?

S

Sulekh Suman

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
535
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Los Angeles
Website
www.sulekhsuman.com
Is there any difference between the sensitivity of the Epic X and Scarlet X sensor? I will be mostly using 4K 24fps. Does windowing have an impact on overall light response of the sensor? Will it require us to set the ISO differently at 4K?
Is that why we have often seen noise issues on high speed in 2K? How is the rolling shutter artifact on EPIC M/X? Will it be a concern with Scarlet X? Does the OLPF now come standard with Epic X/ Scarlet X?
 
Sulekh Suman said:
Is there any difference between the sensitivity of the Epic X and Scarlet X sensor? I will be mostly using 4K 24fps. Does windowing have an impact on overall light response of the sensor? Will it require us to set the ISO differently at 4K?
Is that why we have often seen noise issues on high speed in 2K? How is the rolling shutter artifact on EPIC M/X? Will it be a concern with Scarlet X? Does the OLPF now come standard with Epic X/ Scarlet X?
Click to expand...

You can find good info on this in another thread (forgot the name) but croping have no impact on the light response. It would be the same as you did a crop in post.
 
Hi Sulekh,

When I was at film school in Sydney we did some testing on the Red One (Original Sensor) and it's true (RAW) sensitiviy proved to be something in the 125-160 ISO range. When shooting with the Epic recently I didn't have time for extensive testing but from what I could tell it was around the 500-640ISO range :-)
 
Red MX and EPIC / Scarlet use the same sensor.

"Native" ISO for the sensor is said to be 320.

MX still does very well at higher ISO's. ALEXA and new Canon is said to be 800 ISO.
 
Where does RED publish the specs on their cameras? This type of information should be readily available and yet it almost seems hidden.



Sulekh Suman said:
Is there any difference between the sensitivity of the Epic X and Scarlet X sensor? I will be mostly using 4K 24fps. Does windowing have an impact on overall light response of the sensor? Will it require us to set the ISO differently at 4K?
Is that why we have often seen noise issues on high speed in 2K? How is the rolling shutter artifact on EPIC M/X? Will it be a concern with Scarlet X? Does the OLPF now come standard with Epic X/ Scarlet X?
Click to expand...
 
Arnold F. said:
Where does RED publish the specs on their cameras? This type of information should be readily available and yet it almost seems hidden.
Click to expand...

Specs are in the Operations Guides. Scarlet-X ops guide has not been released, but you can read through the EPIC one in the mean time, they're the same camera other than internal bandwidth and frame rates. The exterior side panels are slightly different and come the camera is battleship grey instead of black.

Native ISO of the MX sensor is 800, old Mysterium-X RED One is ISO 320. Or at least that seems to be the sweet spot. The cameras default to ISO 800. ISO is just a meta-data setting and not baked in. It is primarily used for setting the mid-grey point to compensate for monitoring purposes, but can influence exposure. Proper exposure is done best when measured against the linear RAW data that the sensor records, regardless of which ISO value is chosen.

Arnold, complaining about peoples' responses in various threads and reporting posts is equally unhelpful. Unfortunately this is the nature of the internet and you will find that a variety of responses will always show up, helpful or not. In Gavin's defense, his response is accurate. And most people that are familiar with RED cameras or have been around these forums a bit, or have looked at the camera specs for EPIC or the Mysterium-X RED One, know the ISO is 800. But one thing you should keep in mind is the non-baked or metadata aspect I mentioned above. ISO is nothing more than a reference on these cameras. You are free to change ISO to your liking in post. The sensor has an affinity for a certain exposure and ISO range, not a specific value. The cameras default to 800 as it provides a good balance between highlight protection and lower noise floor. Many of us, myself included, rarely change the camera setting from ISO 800.
 
Arnold F. said:
He wants to know that native ISO and you knew that when you sent a smart-alec reply. Your "post" reported.
Click to expand...

Arnold - Gavin's response was completely accurate - and good information to have as well. I am sure he is very sorry for not phrasing it exactly the way you would have liked. :smiley:
 
The way we tested the response of the Red One sensor was to put the camera into RAW mode and send that signal to a waveform. We then illuminated and grey card and set the exposure so that the waveform sat on about 40-45% which I believe is considered the approximate standard that a colorist would set is exposure to when dialing in a first look from a Neg. This turned out the results I mentioned about where the Red One's native sensitivity appeared to be around the 125-160 ISO range. Setting it at 320 will then give you increased highlight protection :-)

With the MX I've not done this test.
 
Arnold F. said:
He wants to know that native ISO and you knew that when you sent a smart-alec reply. Your "post" reported.
Click to expand...

Uh oh! Jeff please don't ban me!

Arnold seems to be in quite the foul mood today. :D Has anyone avoided getting 'reported' by him yet?
 
Out of curiousity, since it's maybe the one place where the Epic/Scarlet don't have the competition totally smashed - and since I just ordered a Scarlet (!) - what is the typical max ISO one can shoot with without getting too much noise to easily remove with plug ins? for instance, that's about ISO 800-1600 on a Canon 5D. Can the Scarlet do better?
 
That Question is hard to answer because how much noise someone likes or dislikes is a personal decision. But to correct some of the earlier posts: The MX Sensor's native setting is 320 ISO at 5000K but it is sugested to rate it at 800 ISO because that's the sweet Spot where the Noise Floor starts to kick in. And the Sensor also handles lower Kelvin's than 5000 much better than the previos Sensor used in the Red One. When talking about Sensor sensitivity it's importent to decide what Signal to noise Ratio is okay for your own taste. But the facts show, that the Scarlet with a sweet Spot of 800ISO is far superior than the 5D also because when you use this camera you often have to use Noise reduction to get rid of the compression artefacts where Redcode Raw doesn't produce any if choosen a high setting like 6.1. Also Scarlet will shoot 4K and if you are shooting for 1080p (highest res on the 5D) the downscaling to HD will also make a lot of noise disapear. You get my Point. And always its all about testing for yourself.
 
Thanks for the informative response Kim!
I understand that how much noise one likes is personal - I'd say I probably fall into the middle (I'm not a noise nazi, but obvious noise is unacceptable).
Sounds like the Scarlet / Epic produces a lot less noise (do to 4K and much better compression than the 5D does), and so if its perfectly clean at 800, can probably shoot 1600 with pretty clear image and maybe 3200 as well? Just curious, I don't usually shoot that high, but I do some live concert type stuff that I often shoot at 1600 with the 5D and its usually fine for web (no obvious noise), especially with a bit of noise reduction in post. Just curious if the Scarlet will play even better in the dark, and it sounds like it certainly will.
 
Thank you all for your thoughts. I am aware that ISO is not baked in but noise certainly is:) Now that I have bought Scarlet, I am occupied with lensing concerns. If the sensitivity is the same as Epic then I could rely on a lot of lensing discussions/ tests on Red User for Epic (Zeiss Compact Primes/ Cooke Panchro/ Illumina/ Duclos ZF.2 etc/ Leica M/Rs). I will get my feet wet with my existing Canon lenses(50-1.4, 16-35-2.8, 24-70-2.8, 70-200-2.8). I am looking to buy the new set of lenses (primes/zoom) before the end of the year and I am not sure if I will have Scarlet delivered before Xmas to determine it's sensitivity and factor it into my lensing choice(Primes 2.8/ 1.3) or Zoom(2.8).
 
Sulekh Suman said:
Thank you all for your thoughts. I am aware that ISO is not baked in but noise certainly is:) Now that I have bought Scarlet, I am occupied with lensing concerns. If the sensitivity is the same as Epic then I could rely on a lot of lensing discussions/ tests on Red User for Epic (Zeiss Compact Primes/ Cooke Panchro/ Illumina/ Duclos ZF.2 etc/ Leica M/Rs). I will get my feet wet with my existing Canon lenses(50-1.4, 16-35-2.8, 24-70-2.8, 70-200-2.8). I am looking to buy the new set of lenses (primes/zoom) before the end of the year and I am not sure if I will have Scarlet delivered before Xmas to determine it's sensitivity and factor it into my lensing choice(Primes 2.8/ 1.3) or Zoom(2.8).
Click to expand...

Sulekh, low light performance should be equal to Epic. However, the Epic can record to less compressed Redcode- this could influence low light when donwrezing to 1080p. (should be negligible, though)
 
Sergio Perez said:
Low light should be good, but don't expect 5d see in the dark performance. Philip Bloom says its more noisy than F3 and AF100... (Epic)
Click to expand...

There are Tests on the web that state the opposite of what you or P. Bloom are saying. I'll search and post them tomorrow. And by the way... What does sensor sensitivity serve me if the picture is full of compression artifacts and so soft that it's only useable downscaled to 720p or smaller, and this I say owning a 5D and having shot a lot of low budget videos with it. As always it's a choice of how good good enough is and of corse there is always the right tools for the job
 
Kim Frank said:
There are Tests on the web that state the opposite of what you or P. Bloom are saying. I'll search and post them tomorrow. And by the way... What does sensor sensitivity serve me if the picture is full of compression artifacts and so soft that it's only useable downscaled to 720p or smaller, and this I say owning a 5D and having shot a lot of low budget videos with it. As always it's a choice of how good good enough is and of corse there is always the right tools for the job
Click to expand...

The comparison Philip bloom did was with the F3 and AF100 through hd-sdi...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top