Reservations to close...

[Jannard]

We will begin accepting reservations for the 18-85 zoom lens next week. Price is $9500. Current reservation holders take priority. Then, all reservations for the RED ONE, 300mm and 18-85mm zoom will close on Oct. 31.

Jim

[Jarred Land]

wow! Thanks for the news Jim. Glad i got my reservation in. Halloween it is :)

[vidled]

Cool. So you'll accept reservations for the RED ONE regardless of quantity, until Oct. 31st?

[Jannard]

limit 5.

[vidled]

Yeah, sorry, I meant regardless of quantity of RDCCC reservations. I thought you might have a cap of 500 or 1000 or whatever. Great if not though.

[Jarred Land]

I think they have already blown past 500.

[vidled]

HAHAHA, okay, cool! :thumbsup:

[Jason Ramsey]

wow! Thanks for the news Jim. Glad i got my reservation in. Halloween it is :)

You had to reserve a RED????? :)

Jason

[Clint Johnson]

As soon as the email hits my inbox I'll be throwing a deposit onto the zoom lens. I'd like to be getting the 300mm as well but that will have to go onto the wishlist for now since there are so many other things that HAVE to be purchased... starting with a computer that can actually do anything with +4k footage! I was looking at buying a new system in January or March but I am now going to hold out until the Red One is released so that I can purchase every last bit of processing power per dollar. I'm thinking that two chip Core 2 Quad systems should shipping by then.

[AuditoryVisuals]

Okay. I don't know if I could have $1,000 ready in time for Halloween. I pretty sure We'll have $35,000 in time for "early 2007" though.

[lordnumberzero]

Jim/Ted/Whoever,

Will you guys send a notice to the redcore email group about zoom lens reservations?

Will the zoom deliver with the red one or sometime thereafter?

BTW, did you send an IBC announcement? I didn't see one.

[Jannard]

We will send a REDCORE announcement and hold zoom reservations for the REDCORE group 1st.

Jim

[D_and_G]

The reservation is $1000K for the zoom too right ?



RED # wish I was higher

[Kjetil Haugen]

31. oct!!! I'll have to do some campaigning fast then... What's the number up to now?

[Kjetil Haugen]

I'm curious, Jim... What happens after reservations? This magic April (ish) month.. Is this the estimated time for all reservation holders and after that anybody can purchase Red?

[Mr. Blonde]

Ahh just the news I've been waiting for.

Any idea on an eta for the zoom Jim?

[Jarred Land]

You had to reserve a RED????? :)

Jason

Everyone had to reserve a Red.. even Jim :) ha ha ha.

I did mine on day 1.. which is how i got #10.

[OldCorpse]

Sorry, if this is a stupid question, but why close the reservations? I mean, unless one has the ability to pretty much satisfy demand of any size, reservations are the way to go. I guess I just didn't think the production could ramp up so fast as to totally meet demand. But then again, I'm not a businessman, so what do I know :)

[Jason Ramsey]

Well, by the time I can even think about getting one (if ever) they will probably be readily available, so I probably won't even need a reservation #, so nanny nanny boo boo :)

Jason

[Mr. Blonde]

Well.....500 reservations x $17,500 = $8,750,000.00

That's quite a pretty penny.

[Jannard]

We have all the info we need to make good production decisions. It is likely the program may change a bit and we want to lock down the reservation holder's program. We think that a bit of notice is only fair.

Jim

[zakforrest]

*aprox length / diameter / weight of zoom

anyone know? or if not, maybe an aproximate date of when red will tell the specs on the lens then? also any specs for the 300mm?

[Jannard]

Reservations have largely been made on a leap of faith. Same goes for the lenses. Our goal is to beat anything you have ever seen before. That's our promise. If you are not happy, a full refund awaits you.

We will posts specs when we have them nailed down. If you are nervous, please don't place a reservation.

jim

[craigbowman]

Great news about the zoom reservations. That's the one I've been waiting for.

[Homersapien]

Will there be any footage or even stills available of Red One using the Zoom before Oct 31? I'm sure it'll look great but I still wouldn't mind knowing! And is it $1000 or $500 for the zoom same as the 300mm?

[Jannard]

Zoom reservations will be $750.

[OldCorpse]

Thanks, Jim. I guess that explains it. I'm amazed at the confidence you guys have with regard to nailing down production. But then again, this whole project took a ton of self-confidence, so why should this part be any different. Wish you guys the greatest success!

[Mr. Blonde]

Just out of curiosity, who are reservation holder #'s 1 , 2 and 3?

[Doc Holliday]

stupid question. I have not shot 35mm in quite some time. How does 18-85mm compare anglewise to say the dvx 100 zoom?

thx

[Jarred Land]

Just out of curiosity, who are reservation holder #'s 1 , 2 and 3?

probally jim,jim,and jim..

[acrochordon]

Just a guess.

#0 Jannard
#1 Nattress
#2 Lumierre
#3 English

Any chance The zoom lens could be tested by Popular Photography Magazine? I trust their ratings. Then we consumers could compare the zoom to all the 35mm Leicas and Nikons Pop Photo has tested thru the decades.

http://www.popphoto.com/cameralenses/

[Mr. Blonde]

We need a new RED contest that allows for the coveted title of RED reservation holder #1!

[ZaneIsNumber1]

Reservations have largely been made on a leap of faith. Same goes for the lenses. Our goal is to beat anything you have ever seen before.
jim

Do you mean beat 'value for money' wise, or are you actually aiming to make the best s35mm lenses ever?

Both options are good :smile:

[Jannard]

yes.

[johlan]

Since money is an object for me I will not order one until the product i a physical fact. I´m afraid my bank contact won´t accept the footage on youtube as an incom guarantee.

Will you stick to the prize announced or will it rise?

Johan

[ZaneIsNumber1]

yes.
Oh, so cryptic!

[Mr. Blonde]

Oh, so cryptic!
yes.

[EL_STUPIDO]

I know there are people like me out there reading this thread going... gee what actually does that mean? By the Red team being active on websites like this you are reaching people who have been using DV all their short film life. DVX, HVX, PD150 all have fixed lenses.

I've never used a film camera and vowed never to use one. I knew digital would catch up and surpass.

People like me know that film cameras usually have a set of lens from 85mm to 35mm or something... But without never having to bother with that yet (I've mostly used PD150) does the zoom lens you're selling for 9k cover all those sets or are zoom lenes different to primes?

Can someone point me to a good website to get more educated on that front?

not a priority for the red team obviously but it'd be great to elaborate on the lens page of ur site for the non-pros like me who are saving their pennies to eventually buy a red and accessories and wonder if by spending that extra 9k on the 85-35 zoom I am getting something that'll sort me out for most shoots...

knowotimean?

El Stupes

[Emery Wells]

A prime lens has a fixed focal length such as the announced 300mm RED prime.

The zoom lens is just that, a varying focal length zoom. Your PD150 has a fixed (meaning attached to the camera) zoom lens.

so the short answer is yes, the RED 18-55mm Zoom will cover your basic range of focal lengths and will suit most situations.

Some caveats:

Zooms are never as sharp as primes (fixed focal length,) they are often much more expensive to produce (but of course if you compare to buying a set of primes it is far cheaper,) and they are big and heavy.

Also note that an 18mm s35 lens will not be the same as 18mm on a pd150.

[Kjetil Haugen]

I'm glad you brought that up "El stupido". Been wondering about that myself. I've also worked mostly with the PD150 and XL1. I know cooke and zeiss are the best at this and I've checked the rental prices... and fast forward... it's ALOT!!! So primes are the way to go, as I have understood. They are better because they are optimized for a specific focal length. But is the range from 35 - 85mm what cinematographers usually bring onto the set? How many are they actually carrying around?

I'm wondering because Red's first lens is a 300mm... Did they start with the 300mm to prove a point. It's the hardest one to make so we'll get that one out of they way... The others should then be a piece of cake.. Something like that?

[Greg Lowry]

An 18-85 zoom is the perfect range for an S35 zoom. It covers 90% of of the focal lengths generally used.

Wide angle lenses are generally the toughest to design. As has been said repeatedly, the 300 is the just the first lens that'll be available. There's no other significance to it being first.

[donatello]

in general : 18-100mm, 20-60, 20-100,17-102 zooms are the hollyood standard for 35mm camera on tripod/dolly - that ranges works very good shooting interiors ... same lens works good outside too .... many times depending on shots for the day etc one may switch to a 25-250mm ... for exteriors many times you'll find "A" camera with the shorter zoom and "B" camera with the longer ...

for hand held or steadicam you would switch out to prime or a very short zoom ( 3X zoom range)

[Gibby]

Can someone point me to a good website to get more educated on that front?

No need to leave DVX User for that. Just check out this excellent thread on lenses right here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=63803

At 390 posts it is a long read, but if you're serious about learning, read it, and basically all your questions will be answered there. There have been 15,536 views of that thread to date...make yours number 15,537 and you won't be disappointed.

Gibby
RED #8
www.cut4.tv
www.4umat.com

[Jarred Land]

stupid question. I have not shot 35mm in quite some time. How does 18-85mm compare anglewise to say the dvx 100 zoom?

thx

The DVX lens is about a 32mm-325mm for comparison.

[Tim Le]

Just a reminder, RED ONE uses a Super35 sized sensor, which is smaller than a full 35mm still camera frame. So the 18-85mm zoom is actually roughly equal to a 27-125mm on a 35mm still camera. The 35mm equivalent focal lengths often specified for video cameras (like 32-325mm for the DVX) is for the 35mm still camera format.

Proteus made a very nice summary of these conversion factors here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=64685

[Jarred Land]

Good Point tim.. that is assuming the Red lenses are marked for Super 35mm instead of 35mm... and of course that all goes out the window when your shooting windowed mode 2k.. I wonder if the Red lenses will have both markings , windowed and standard.

[Nick_Shaw]

Maybe this has been up for a while, and I didn't notice, but if you look at the reservations page on the RED site (http://red.com/reservations.htm) it quotes an estimated ship date for both the camera and 300mm lens of "end of 2006" (it was originally "early 2007" wasn't it?) and "end of 2007" for the zoom lens.

Things are obviously moving fast!

[tonacidigital]

this would be the greatest christmas if they could ship by end 2006. wow

[Jannard]

Error. Fixed now. Early 2007 for RED ONE and 300mm.

Sorry. Everyone is moving too fast.

Jim

[Brook Willard]

I know the specs aren't nailed down, but I have to ask anyway: will the 18-85 be light enough/short enough to make it a reasonable lens for handheld operation? Or is this a lens built for sticks/dolly?

Also, to ask a question that's already been asked, should we be hoping for 4K imagery shot with the lens to be made available before reservations close?

Sorry for re-asking questions, I'm just hoping for a different response. :)

[Jannard]

The 18-85mm zoom will be considered a "compact".

[Brook Willard]

Thanks, Jim.

[Barry_Green]

On a 35mm movie camera, the DVX lens would be considered about a 19-190. So 18-85 is a pretty good wide angle and a modest telephoto. With the shallow DOF, you don't need so much telephoto for cinema work, so 18-85 will probably be a real workhorse as far as appropriate focal lengths go.

[Greg Lowry]

It would be harder to go any wider than 18mm without making the lens more complex, larger and heavier. I think it's an excellent range.

[briferg]

Good Point tim.. that is assuming the Red lenses are marked for Super 35mm instead of 35mm... and of course that all goes out the window when your shooting windowed mode 2k.. I wonder if the Red lenses will have both markings , windowed and standard.

Jared,
I think it would be the equivalent as shooting s16 as it would be in windowed... or slightly larger than a 2/3 inch video camera.
Most s16 camera have 11-110 mm lenses as a standard, the previous generation of Regular 16 mm lenses were 10-100 Zeiss for example. They had to go longer for s16 to cover the image area. The reason you would want the millimeters to stay the same is so you can figure out DOF on a Samcine or similar DOF calculator. Depth of field is a matter of the length of the lens and apeture no matter what your image area is. Lenses made for 16mm will work on 35mm once you get into the longer end say over 40mm. Most 35mm lenses work on 16 it is just more telephoto. If you calculate for compensation of image area you get into a fuzzy physics problem.

If you shoot a Hasselblad with a 60mm x 60mm image you get a "normal" lens of about 80mm. So a really wide lens in this format is say 30 or 40mm. This is why the 65 mm Arri has so shallow a DOF, the movie "Far and Away" was shot in 65mm and American Cinematographer had a great article about the problems they had in keeping the DOF acceptable for projection. Making focus pulling very critical.

Less DOF as the image gets bigger and more as it gets smaller. This is why we see dust specks on the front element of our little 1/3 inch chip cameras when we stop down, like the DVX etc. Usually the suggestion is to use as much ND or fast shutter speed to keep the DOF a shallow as possible to avoid this.

Depth of field calculation is important in 35mm so you know the range of what is generally percieved as sharp. The proper millimeter markings are crucial for the focus puller in 16 and especially in 35mm the only diference between the 2 is what they call the circle of confusion. Which I won't talk about because it might confuse everyone... :)

So much for a tinfoil hat moment!

briferg

[Gibby]

It would be harder to go any wider than 18mm without making the lens more complex, larger and heavier. I think it's an excellent range.

I agree 100%

Gibby
RED #8
www.cut4.tv
www.4umat.com

[Brook Willard]

With technology forcing the average user's mindset towards a skewed concept of focal length [consider 1.6x crop DSLRs, 2/3" HD sensors, little camcorders, little point-and-shoot cameras, 16mm film cameras], many forget just how wide an 18mm lens in super 35mm really is.

[Barry_Green]

Definitely. But if using it in "windowed sensor" mode, it isn't going to be that wide anymore, it will experience the same "crop factor" that we get when using 35mm lenses on a 16mm camera. 18mm is nice & wide on S35, but it's not wide at all on 16mm.

[Brook Willard]

Of course. That could almost add value to the lens in my opinion. Lets say that the user is shooting 2K for this mystery shoot.

They have an 18-85mm at S35 outputting to scaled 2K. They can also set it to crop 2K from a S16 frame area, effectively increasing the focal length to 36-170mm [I forget if the 16-35 conversion is 2x... if not, I made those numbers up]. Obviously there are DOF differences between utilizing the different sensor sizes, but that could be taken care of with a little creative aperture work. So now this 2K shoot has 18-170mm all in one magic lens.

If my logic is flawed, I'm not surprised. Stranger things have happened. Either way, don't forget that both scaled 2K and windowed 2K will be possible.

[Tim Le]

Actually this does sound plausible. It would be cool too. Imagine shooting a wide shot of the Serengeti on the 18-85mm at S35 scaled to 2K, then when you spot a cheetah going on the hunt, switch to 2k windowed and presto you have a multiplier on your lens and 120 fps to boot!

This is why I wish there were more controls on the operator side of the camera instead of the back. I hope there are switches that let you control the crop/scaling directly instead of going through a menu.

[Barry_Green]

Actually this does sound plausible. It would be cool too. Imagine shooting a wide shot of the Serengeti on the 18-85mm at S35 scaled to 2K, then when you spot a cheetah going on the hunt, switch to 2k windowed and presto you have a multiplier on your lens and 120 fps to boot!
Crafty thinking, gents. And yes this would work this way (presuming my understanding of RED's modes is correct). Scaled 2K/1080p would give you S35 DOF and S35 FOV; windowed 2K would give you 16mm DOF and 16mm FOV so yes it would act like a telephoto magnification.

I've been doing this on the HVX, using it in 1080 mode and scaling to SD, and then for ultratelephoto using a "windowed" 1080 mode (that's what I did with the caterpillar video I just posted) and it does work quite well. It'd be more advanced with RED because you'd actually see the effect of the extracted window during shooting.

And 18-85 (or, "virtual 18-170") is all the lens you'd need in many (most?) shooting circumstances if you're okay with swapping between windowed and scaled mode.

[Chris Kenny]

The question here is going to be how well 2K scaled cuts together with 2K windowed. The scaled footage will probably look a fair bit sharper.

[Greg Lowry]

Yes, scaled should look better, but depending on the display format, intercutting scaled and native 2K may not be perceptible to viewers. If it's going to TV you can get away with murder.

[Jarred Land]

it will be a good test Chris.. if you use cheap lenses that are soft as they roll away from the center of the glass, then you actually gain some sharpness shooting windowed... but most people may never notice the difference, remember 2k delivery is pretty much limited to computer monitors and theaters.

[Jarred Land]

ha ha beat me to it Greg.

[Greg Lowry]

Great minds, Jarred, great minds ...

[boothba]

Damn!!! I just had the exact same discussion with Greg over here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=75585

Only I was a full hour behind you guys. Just when you think your being original! Besides I was never able to say it as concisely as this:

"Scaled 2K/1080p would give you S35 DOF and S35 FOV; windowed 2K would give you 16mm DOF and 16mm FOV"

Serves me right for cruising by dvinfo first. Ha!

[Chris Kenny]

Right, Tim, the DOF stays the same, while the FOV decreases. You could get the same result by cropping a 2K rectangle out of 4K footage in post.

[boothba]

[QUOTE=Tim Le]I'm not sure if this is true if you are using the same S35 lens and are switching on-the-fly scaled full frame 2K to windowed 2K. You would get 16mm FOV but wouldn't the DOF stay the same regardless of whether you are shooting S35 or S16 windowed

____


Yes the DOF would stay the same, the exact same - that's the problem. Traditionally when you switch to a tighter angle, the background becomes softer - but not in this case. If I were shooting on the Red 300mm and switched from 2K scaled to 2K windowed, I would say "wow looks like a 650mm" - except for the DOF.

This is almost an issue of semantics. I think the DOF of the lens would 'numerically' remain the same for hyper-focal distance calculations - but the 'optical' DOF of 2K scaled would not mimic that of truly longer lens. Just because you are jumping into to the center of that lens / sensor to shoot 2k windowed does not mean the background will become softer. This is how Greg put it on that other forum:

"The DOF characteristics of any lens stay the same no matter the format. The DOF of a 300mm lens is the same on a 4K sensor, a 2K sensor, 2/3" or 1/3"... And the blowup analogy works."

BTW here's another tres-valuable Lowry-ism from that thread:

"In case anybody is interested, the RED 18-85mm would be the equivalent of a 38.8-183.5 on an S16 2K windowed sensor. Definitely not a replacement for a purpose-built S16 format lens."

[Homersapien]

Would the Cooke 18 to 100mm be a good comparison to the Red 18 to 85mm lense? On the Cooke website it says it's precursor (20 to 100mm) was used along with 25-250mm zoom lenses to film Band of Brothers, which gives an idea of the quality available for TV work, I dare say a whole bunch of the films shot using cooke lenses have used it but it specifically notes this miniseries.

Link to lense on Cooke site (http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/secondary/s4t3zoom)

[Homersapien]

If it was then the DOF Charts might give an indication to the Red Zoom's DOF perhaps:

Link to DOF Chart download (http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/attachments/depthtable_zip/$FILE/Cooke%20Depth%20of%20Field%20Tables%20Update%2022% 20March%2006.zip)

[Stephen W]

Fantastic lens!

And a snip at only £20k...

[Barry_Green]

For clarification: if you set up a shot and swapped between windowed and scaled, then yes the DOF would stay the same, only the FOV would change.

What I meant by "with windowed you get 16mm DOF and 16mm FOV" is this: if you establish a certain composition in windowed mode, it would exhibit the same DOF properties as a 16mm camera. If you established the same composition in scaled mode, it would exhibit the same DOF properties as a 35mm camera. But you'd have to move the camera closer (or zoom in more) in scaled mode in order to get the same composition.

So -- changing from windowed to scaled will not magically make shallower or deeper DOF -- at the same distance to subject and same focal length, DOF will be identical. But if you're using the camera in windowed mode, as a practical matter you'll be getting 16mm FOV, which means 16mm DOF. If you swap to scaled mode, as a practical matter you'll be getting 35mm FOV, which means you'll have to use correspondingly more telephoto to get an equivalent composition and by doing so you'll get shallower DOF.

[boothba]

Exactly - 2K windowed will LOOK LIKE super 16. Semantics.

[Brook Willard]

Hmm, you may be right. I'm having a hard time visualizing it for some reason, but if one is using a lens built for S35 and cropping it... it should maintain all of the same characteristics of S35.

It'd be like taking a shot using a full-frame SLR and then cropping the image in post. The DOF doesn't magically change in the cropping process.

So, yes, I imagine that the DOF would be retained using this lens. If one switched over to a S16 lens, then the S16 DOF would be achieved.

[boothba]

I think we're all saying the same thing, just a different way. The "cropping in post" analogy helps a lot. The scene now appears to have been shot on a tighter lens, but without the shallower DOF that a tighter lens would offer. I think (think???? a bit unsure) that a 20mm S35 lens and a 20mm S16 lens would produce very similar 2K digital images (FOV & DOF) when shooting in 2K windowed mode. At least that's what my director's viewfinder tells me. Not sure.

[Brook Willard]

Err, sorry, I missed the whole last page of the thread when I made my most recent reply.

[mike the beginner]

So -- changing from windowed to scaled will not magically make shallower or deeper DOF -- at the same distance to subject and same focal length, DOF will be identical. But if you're using the camera in windowed mode, as a practical matter you'll be getting 16mm FOV, which means 16mm DOF. If you swap to scaled mode, as a practical matter you'll be getting 35mm FOV, which means you'll have to use correspondingly more telephoto to get an equivalent composition and by doing so you'll get shallower DOF.

Thanks Barry i thought all this studying of DOF had went astray for a minute. Maybe we get all this confusion because a simple comment like all things being equal is NOT taken into acount. The real world (which i know nothing about) scenario means that all things are not equal (FOV) so to get the exact scene means adjusting to take into account the reduced FOV going from scaled to windowed mode. I think the red website mentions that in windowed mode using s35mm lens you get s16mm DOF but they did not qualify that statement by saying by adjusting the FOV, to back that statement up? Without any statement are those comments not missleading or actually wrong?

Have i got that right......Greg....Steve.....Barry?

Michael

[briferg]

Thanks Barry i thought all this studying of DOF had went astray for a minute. Maybe we get all this confusion because a simple comment like all things being equal is NOT taken into acount. The real world (which i know nothing about) scenario means that all things are not equal (FOV) so to get the exact scene means adjusting to take into account the reduced FOV going from scaled to windowed mode. I think the red website mentions that in windowed mode using s35mm lens you get s16mm DOF but they did not qualify that statement by saying by adjusting the FOV, to back that statement up? Without any statement are those comments not missleading or actually wrong?

Have i got that right......Greg....Steve.....Barry?

Michael

Ok I might have started this thread astray from "reservations to close" to FOV and DOF, but there was some talk about windowed and full s35 so I chimed in.

Say you have a shot framed up in s35 in an interior of a house, and you are at 50mm and you decide you want to shoot an alternate scene at 120 fps because effects are happening and it would be cool to have some really slow motion stuff for the edit. So you switch over to windowed mode to do that. But you want to keep the framing similar. To achieve the same FOV, or framing you would roughly say have to zoom wider to maybe 25mm or so to keep the same height and width of the shot or , FOV (field of view). But you have just deepened the the DOF (depth of field). DOF is always an equation between lens legnth and apeture. Smaller lens length greater depth of field, wider aperture less DOF. But also as in any HD camera as you increase the FPS you take away light. In other words when you go from 60 to 120 FPS you lose a stop of light, which lessens your DOF. If you went from 24 to 120 FPS it would drop your exposure by about 2 1/3 stops, which may compensate for your focal length shift. This is pure physics...
This is why the s35 is so very attractive to film makers especially in drama. Shallow focus.

Field of View is determined by your format size.

DOF does not care about your format, strictly lens length and iris size, and your iris is influenced by your frame rate when taking about high speed. DOF is format agnositic, period. You change your framing when you change formats and then you zoom wider to compensate, and your DOF increases.

Lenses all throw a circle onto a focal plane and how much of that area we use in a rectangle is the format size. The attributes of that circle does not change as we change formats but we tend to change lens lengths to compensate for the new format and thus change the physics of the image.

This is why I find it difficult to compare still 35mm to anything. Leica cameras were the first 35mm still cameras, and they came about to shoot tests for cine cameras. But they used the film horizontally instead of vertical and we have that same comparison going on now. Is it 18mm or 85mm in still full frame, or motion s35, and what and what does that mean in s16? Actually all 35mm film went through the camera vertically and we got used to ultra wide images horizontally as a by-product of motion picture quality control!

You just have to use the millimeters and then figure out the aperture and the shutter speed and that gives you your DOF. Your lens length times the expousure.

So if you want the same DOF you slap on some Nuetral Density filters and open up from f5.6 to 2.8 to keep the same DOF or allow for the fps or some such scenario. Or you are changing your film speed, i.e. gain. This is why assitant cameramen have DOF and FOV calculators, they also take into account film speed, f-stop, aperture, ISO, shutter, all of these things affect expousre and DOF.

BUT... We have never before been given an option to change our formats on the same camera mid-scene or mid-roll to achieve creative alternatives. So we are thinking about things that have never come up before, really never before on the same camera on the same shoot you just can't change formats on any other camera I can think of!

Pretty cool isn't it? I have never heard of a situation where a camera crew on a show switched from 35 to 16 with the flick of a switch! It is sort of a new mental puzzle to solve.

Mostly people that want to shoot windowed will shoot windowed most of the time. Sports shooters already are shooting in 16mm and love high FPS. They love slow motion, like the people doing snow sports, and motocross and drag racing etc. I have seen a lot of top notch guys on the slopes shooting with A-Minimas. The smaller 16mm lenses are great for handheld work and the high speed is way cool. Also if you are using 35mm zooms you have that much greater telephoto in s16! Also shallow DOF is not very important in high speed work as your exposure needs increase as you go faster so usually you need all the DOF you can get, especially when pulling your own focus.

We are just not used to having so many choices! So as a former film Assistant Cameraman and as a DP on film and video for the last 20+ years I thought I would throw my 2 cents in on this discussion and see if it helped at all.

Brian Ferguson
briferg
Red reservation #12

[mike the beginner]

Pretty cool isn't it? I have never heard of a situation where a camera crew on a show switched from 35 to 16 with the flick of a switch! It is sort of a new mental puzzle to solve.

Mostly people that want to shoot windowed will shoot windowed most of the time. Sports shooters already are shooting in 16mm and love high FPS. They love slow motion, like the people doing snow sports, and motocross and drag racing etc. I have seen a lot of top notch guys on the slopes shooting with A-Minimas. The smaller 16mm lenses are great for handheld work and the high speed is way cool. Also if you are using 35mm zooms you have that much greater telephoto in s16! Also shallow DOF is not very important in high speed work as your exposure needs increase as you go faster so usually you need all the DOF you can get, especially when pulling your own focus.



That was nice Brian theres more than a few out here that appreciate your post. It is pretty cool aint it, so too in being able to use different mounts.
The latitude that appears to be available, the workflow issues, a waveform monitor with proper HD resolution. its no wonder we all want the camera and hope it fits in with our type of work. I can look at the camera now view its strengths and weaknesses and try to work round the weaknesses. For some people some parts of the cameras strength might well be others weaknesses.

When you look around at this price point of red there is really not much choice like for like is there? I am beginning to realise that it all comes down to whether the format can work for you and be justified in price to do what you want the camera to do. I have reached the point now that there is sufficient advice (thanks guys) out here on this forum to enable everyone to establish if red is a suitable camera for your needs. If others are still windering it will be because they have not spent the time reading enough threads on this red forum.

Chris Kenny just posted a good explanation of DOF when using the s35mm format. Both posts explain real world use without trying to just be smart and knowledgable. No inference meant or intended just real world examples.

I think people understand better when things get explained that way. I am at book number 14 now, 11 of them i could have probably done without. This forum provides better advice and guidance:dankk2:

[Gibby]

Nice post Brian... and some accurate observations. It looks like you have some sports background. When you get a chance, contact me via email for some offline networking.

steve@cut4.tv

Gibby
RED #8
www.cut4.tv
www.4umat.com

[D_and_G]

One of the things I'm interested in is the effectiveness of speed ramping software in post, partially for some of the reasons mentioned above.
If you have a very limited selection of lenses, and you're working with a small light package, and space constraints, want to keep a certain aesthetic and resolution etc... How good is the speed ramping software compared to in camera change in fps ? I know it won't be as good, but is it comparable ? And wouldn't 4K REDCODE RAW give you more information for those extrapolations ?

Out of curiousity, what is the best speed ramping software on the market today ?

I've done in camera S16 before, but I had a wider selection of lenses and had a DP do the calculations.
But, since Malick operates his own camera and knows the DP side in and out, then can I do any less ? :beer: :laugh::beer:


RED# wish I was higher

[boothba]

How good is the speed ramping software compared to in camera change in fps ? I know it won't be as good, but is it comparable ? And wouldn't 4K REDCODE RAW give you more information for those extrapolations ?

RED# wish I was higher

Standard speed ramping in post is inferior to an in-camera intervelometer for two main reasons:

The first reason is steppiness. Because an intervelometer will mechanically ramp the camera motor (along with the aperture), the curve from slow motion to fast motion will be smooth and the viewer will not notice any steppiness. A standard post solution would be to shoot slow motion in camera, and then apply a speed ramp curve (or vari-speed) which basically removes or drops frames from the native footage to arrive at the desired speed. This can result in distinct pops or stutters or steps which are very noticeable in things like camera pans and walk cycles, That said, certain speeds produce better results - 200% works great, 150% is not bad and 125% is perfect for television because you just remove the 3/2 pulldown and your left with progressive frames again (if shot at 24fps)

The second problem with post ramping is shutter speed - or in post we'd call it motion blur. A post vari-speed of 200% will result in half the motion blur of the native footage - or rather the same amount of mo-blur per frame, but not enough for its new speed. This is similar to the look of a narrow shutter angle on a 535. If you shot film of a city night scene at 6-fps you would get some pretty cool in-camera streaks / long exposure traffic. Compare this with shooting @ 24fps and vari-speeding in post by 400% - the traffic would be too sharp. Post vari-speeds are often very easy to spot for this reason. Watch a movie like "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and you will find shots filmed at 300 fps with Photo-sonics. They speed-ramp the hell out of it in post and the resulting images are unnaturally sharp with almost no motion blur. We did this on the movie "The Cell" which shot stuff at 1200 fps - crazy. Photo-sonics makes a hell of a noise!!!

Now then, on to the good (or slightly better) news. There is a sexier post solution which was first used in the famous 'bullet time' sequence in the Matrix. It turned out that the shot of Neo dodging bullets was not long enough (not enough Nikons!) so they had to slow it down in post. Previously a step frame (repeat frame) or dissolve frame approach was used but in this case they created new digital frames (inter-frames) by morphing from one frame to the next. A morph from frame 1 to frame 2 would create a brand new frame in between (frame 1 1/2) - new pixels, new composition, new body position. This is now pretty common software. In discreet Inferno it is called "motion estimation", and in AVID it is called "fluid motion" and several other platforms and several other plug-in companies have their own versions.

While all of this sounds great it is not a perfect solution by any means. Often "motion estimation" has a very hard time rebuilding the pixels for the new inter-frames, and the result is unwanted image 'tearing', bending and dissolving. It is especially problematic when the scene changes rapidly from one frame to the next. It will work great on something organic and soft like clouds but go ahead and try it on a medium shot of a guy walking in Times Square - all of the background buildings and signs will have a weird morphing effect (around the guy's body as he walks) because the software can't interpolate between an obscured sign and a unobscured sign. Plus it's expensive (i.e.. very slow renders). At the end of the day you run it through the software (or plug in) and then spend hours per shot fixing the problems.

I just finished the vxf on an Acura spot which required comping a 360 degree rotating shot of a car (shot green screen) into 4 separate environments. The production lacked the budget to shoot each environmet on film with a proper circular dolly (night shoots, big sets, couldn't get the stop) so they instead decided to shoot digi-stills - approx. 24 (pseudo-dolly) stills per environment. The plan was to motion-estimate these stills in post and slow them down to 10 second shots (300 frames @ 30 fps). Long story short, it didn't work. The software couldn't handle the architectural detail from the 4K stills, as well as the fact that the panning / dollying revealed lots of new info in each new frame. We ended up using photogrammetry (kinda) to completely rebuild each environment in 3D and did it all CGI.

Also I don't think Red's sharpness and resolution will help with motion-estimation software - I think it will hurt. Just more pixels to tear and rip and ultimately fix.

So..... in summery I think the quality of post-ramping still does not match that of in-camera ramping. The post-route just offers you more options as you are not "locking in" on set. If I was really nervous about a particular shot (explosions, big stunts, one-takers) I would shoot in 2k windowed @ 120 fps - that's a no brainer. Still it would be great for the Red to incorporate some form of intervelometer, one which works mechanically (ramps shutter speed, capture rate & aperture compensation) rather than digitally (dropping frames). Dare to dream, eh!

[D_and_G]

:)
Thanks for the post Boothba ! Very informative.

I remember we did a shot using a 180 degree shutter, 8 fps, then reprinting 3 times to get the 24 in the optical printer, for that motion blur you were talking about . And the first time you speed ramp your film camera it can be a little scary (especially when your watching your counter). Multiple takes can get expensive. But, this digital acquisition is a whole different story.

Thanks for laying it out. I guess I'll do it in camera on the RED, or at least get as much of the way there as possible. I guess it will also depend on how well 2K scaled or 4K REDCODE cut with 2K windowed @120fps cut together...

Dare to dream. That's a good RED slogan. :beer:


RED# wish I was higher

[boothba]

:)

And the first time you speed ramp your film camera it can be a little scary (especially when your watching your counter).

RED# wish I was higher


Yah, if - big if - the Red One offers us proper speed-ramping it should at least be much safer than film to ramp in-camera because you will able to scrutinize high-res playback before moving onto the next setup. Post ramping software will always get better and post solutions are certainly an option - provided you have the some time (and $$$) in post. You might try to do a few takes of ramping in-camera and then shoot a 'safety' at 120 fps 2K windowed as a backup.

With regards to matching 2K windowed to 2K scaled, keep in mind that there is a pretty good post solution too. If you roto the subject (actor) and throw a defocus filter on the background, you can sorta 'fake' the shallow DOF of S35mm 2K scaled. It's not perfect, but with some effort you can get it looking pretty good.

You also might want to send the editor a bottle of scotch along with the rushes with a big note: "please don't butcher my footage". I find commercial editors in particular are always speed-ramping because they have to fit the content into exactly 30 or 60 seconds. I work with an offline editor who regularly cuts 31 or 32 second spots, and asks us to speed-ramp the finished piece back to 30 seconds in the online. He even speed-ramps the audio in dialogue sequences. And it works.

Hey D_and_G, I just noticed you're a Toronto guy. I work at Technicolor on Ontario street. I just got Red #478. Perhaps we could swap notes when our cameras arrive!

[SamG]

We have all the info we need to make good production decisions. It is likely the program may change a bit and we want to lock down the reservation holder's program. We think that a bit of notice is only fair.

Jim

Is program a euphemism for price point?

I'll re-read the thread and see if I missed something.

[D_and_G]

Hey D_and_G, I just noticed you're a Toronto guy. I work at Technicolor on Ontario street. I just got Red #478. Perhaps we could swap notes when our cameras arrive!
Sure :) Sounds good. And if mine arrives before yours (since I'm in the 200's) then you'd be welcome to check it out...Your notes would be more valuable than mine.:beer:


RED# wish I was higher

[planetearth]

Yes, Toronto as well. Somewhere in the middle of both you guys (in the 300's). Would be good to source each other out should we need second cameras on shoots etc.

[Emanuel]

Jim,

Is it possible to guarantee the 300mm lens reservation now and to schedule its delivery to late 2007 when the 18-85mm lens will also deliver ?

That is, can we have the delivery of both lenses at same time? When your two RED lenses will be available, without compromise both uses.

Grateful for your help.

Best,
Emanuel

[CVB]

FYI... theres a countdown for the reservations on the main page at Red.com.