Whats Next After Dragon From Red????

[Elsie N]

I know maybe it is too early to discuss right now, but still, i was wondering,and i am sure many more like me too are, about what the next sensor or camera from red will be like and when will we be seeing it 2017/2018. will it finally kill film in terms of overall image quality??? I thought since alexa's dr is so close to film(the closest to film), the next sensor will beat the film dr but it seems the new 65mm sensor is just the oversized version of the Alev iii sensor, increasing only the resolution without shrinking the pixels,so just maintaining the previous dynamic range but not enhancing or increasing it like the dragon has over mx. So maybe the next sensor from red finally kills film truly in terms of overall image quality and technical superiority. Film will die anyway in a few years even if the improvements in digital technology comes to a halt, simply because of many other factors, apart from image quality, which have already been discussed many times before. But i would surely want to see a digital cinema camera or sensor that can truly be called better than film before film completely becomes obsolete. And i would want film to be completely retired by a successor that is worthy enough or worthier to take its place, and not just because the "old one" is getting old and needs to be replaced. I would want acclaimed film loving Dops and directors like Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister among many others to embrace digital happily and for it's exceeding Film's image quality and overall technical superiority and not just unhappily using digital cameras because of films unavailability and shutting down of all labs and still boasting about film's image quality and indulging in the old memories about how good and unbeatable and irreplaceable it was in terms of image quality........... because that would be truly unfortunate.

By the way i love my dragon and Alexa and the f65 too, and i am not saying that i am not happy with theese greeeaaaat digital cinema cameras and their sensors, all i am saying is that there still isn't a digital sensor that i can truly call superior than film, they are all verry close, verry verry verry close, but still a little behind,and i would soon love to see that "little" be eliminated.............................:thumbsup:

I don't know how far this tech is down the road, but I would be perfectly happy with current resolution if the tech discussed in the link were in the next camera sensor somehow.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Personally I think we've reached a point where digital sensors will diverge farther from a film look -- you could say better in some ways depending on your tastes -- but I think sensors like the Alexa or Dragon sort of got close to that film target and the next generation will drift away on their own path, I don't see a perfect match ever being in the works. Once we hit 4K resolution and 14-stops of DR, the very rough target of matching 35mm was reached and now we are mainly talking about sensor filtering, color science and processing tricks to get closer in color response. So once we starting getting into things like 16-stops and higher DR ranges, digital is getting into new territory.

I don't think this is an issue of which technology is better or worse, it's just that we are talking about two very different imaging systems, digital/electronic and photochemical, and the discussion after awhile starts to be a bit like "when is a photograph ever going to match the look of an oil painting?" or "how can we get sculptures in marble to look like they were sculpted in wood?" -- I mean, all of those things are technically possible... but are also a bit pointless except for some very limited application. I just had commercial-grade hybrid wood floors put into my house -- they look like wood but it's not the same thing, but on the other hand, it's more practical when you have dogs in the house and aren't good at taking care of real wood floors, etc. So it's a compromise maybe, I needed something that was more maintenance free and more durable. Shooting digital is a little like that, we just have to accept that it's not exactly the same thing but it may be close enough in look for all practical purposes and gives us other advantages.

 

[Ivan Aspidov]

"when is a photograph ever going to match the look of an oil painting?"

By the way is a great idea.
Made a couple of shots of 8K and printed on a 3D printer. With "oil presets" such as "Rembrandt", "Bruegel", "Aivazovsky" or even "Bosch", etc.
Make available 3D hologram projector, it will be a new form of development of the art of kino.

 

[Zeb B]

Personally I think we've reached a point where digital sensors will diverge farther from a film look -- you could say better in some ways depending on your tastes -- but I think sensors like the Alexa or Dragon sort of got close to that film target and the next generation will drift away on their own path, I don't see a perfect match ever being in the works. Once we hit 4K resolution and 14-stops of DR, the very rough target of matching 35mm was reached and now we are mainly talking about sensor filtering, color science and processing tricks to get closer in color response. So once we starting getting into things like 16-stops and higher DR ranges, digital is getting into new territory.

I don't think this is an issue of which technology is better or worse, it's just that we are talking about two very different imaging systems, digital/electronic and photochemical, and the discussion after awhile starts to be a bit like "when is a photograph ever going to match the look of an oil painting?" or "how can we get sculptures in marble to look like they were sculpted in wood?" -- I mean, all of those things are technically possible... but are also a bit pointless except for some very limited application. I just had commercial-grade hybrid wood floors put into my house -- they look like wood but it's not the same thing, but on the other hand, it's more practical when you have dogs in the house and aren't good at taking care of real wood floors, etc. So it's a compromise maybe, I needed something that was more maintenance free and more durable. Shooting digital is a little like that, we just have to accept that it's not exactly the same thing but it may be close enough in look for all practical purposes and gives us other advantages.

Interesting point. The digital camera developers and users have been obsessed with the end goal of being as good as film - rather than boldly different. Folks hate change

 

[scott devitte]

Personally I think we've reached a point where digital sensors will diverge farther from a film look -- you could say better in some ways depending on your tastes -- but I think sensors like the Alexa or Dragon sort of got close to that film target and the next generation will drift away on their own path, I don't see a perfect match ever being in the works. Once we hit 4K resolution and 14-stops of DR, the very rough target of matching 35mm was reached and now we are mainly talking about sensor filtering, color science and processing tricks to get closer in color response. So once we starting getting into things like 16-stops and higher DR ranges, digital is getting into new territory.
I don't think this is an issue of which technology is better or worse, it's just that we are talking about two very different imaging systems, digital/electronic and photochemical, and the discussion after awhile starts to be a bit like "when is a photograph ever going to match the look of an oil painting?" or "how can we get sculptures in marble to look like they were sculpted in wood?" -- I mean, all of those things are technically possible... but are also a bit pointless except for some very limited application. I just had commercial-grade hybrid wood floors put into my house -- they look like wood but it's not the same thing, but on the other hand, it's more practical when you have dogs in the house and aren't good at taking care of real wood floors, etc. So it's a compromise maybe, I needed something that was more maintenance free and more durable. Shooting digital is a little like that, we just have to accept that it's not exactly the same thing but it may be close enough in look for all practical purposes and gives us other advantages.

Hi David, how do you feel about rec2020?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Rec2020 would be an improvement but I'm not sure it would be dramatic, most of the colors we see fall within Rec709/P3.

 

[Steve Das]

... I just had commercial-grade hybrid wood floors put into my house -- they look like wood but it's not the same thing, but on the other hand, it's more practical when you have dogs in the house and aren't good at taking care of real wood floors, etc. So it's a compromise maybe, I needed something that was more maintenance free and more durable. Shooting digital is a little like that, we just have to accept that it's not exactly the same thing but it may be close enough in look for all practical purposes and gives us other advantages.

Great post David I read it 4 times...and will read it 4 more later.
But isn't it true that the "other advantages" to digital you mention all have to do with economics..speed..and convenience issues.

And those are real issues....no doubt some projects go now that wouldn't have gone before.
But then it makes you wonder about the other side of the coin..are there yet any disadvantages to digital..?

Can't think of any myself..but yet whenever I watch WWII in Color footage on cable I see this incredibly
vivid/lifelike image that none of the other channels I flip to convey...no doubt the subject content is playing a role in that.

 

[Med D]

Can't think of any myself..but yet whenever I watch WWII in Color footage on cable I see this incredibly
vivid/lifelike image that none of the other channels I flip to convey...no doubt the subject content is playing a role in that.

I'm pretty sure a lot of that footage was colorized. Probably digitized and colorized.

 

[Elsie N]

I'm pretty sure a lot of that footage was colorized. Probably digitized and colorized.

Actually there was quite a bit of color footage shot during WWII... both by the Germans and Americans and British, I believe. And like Steve pointed out, some if it really popped.

In the case of the footage shot at Berchtesgaden, it had to pop or the photog would find himself on the Eastern Front. '-)

 

[Med D]

Actually there was quite a bit of color footage shot during WWII... both by the Germans and Americans and British, I believe. And like Steve pointed out, some if it really popped.

Assuming Steve meant the show called "WWII in Color" as opposed to just the war in general, it was colorized. I find the problem with colorized stuff is that it does "pop".

 

[Nick Timmons]

Why would you want to simulate an ARM core on an FPGA chip, in this case? That doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm not an electrical engineer...

I would be very interested to understand what are the real bottlenecks are producing a high speed 4k image to record.

With a few Altera 14nm FGPA 'simulated' ARM cores - and the rest of your 'code' also flashed on the FGPA, no encryption, no immediate conversion to .R3D. ... leave all processing only when reading the data ... I guess RED would be read out rate limited?

But if this is the only limitation ... why stop at 1000fps (which I guess is about 2 x current sensor limit).
At what point people would people not feel the need to get a Phantom .... 5000 fps?

And another random thought ... has anyone experimented with using hexagonal pixels with 3 x parallelograms (R+G+B) rather than squares (Bayer with 2 G + R + B). Wouldn't this give more saturated colours & less pixels to process & a larger proportion of sensor vs gap?

AJ