EX1 and RED playing nice together...

[Jim Arthurs]

Hey, it's a better title that "EX1 vrs. RED" or somesuch, as I think you'll be happy with whatever camp you're coming from after reading this.

Bottom line, had the chance to do some shooting with my EX1 and do some tests against some REDs... one thing I was keenly interested in is how they would compare in a blue screen test.

So, here's the details;

The RED was equipped with the RED 18-50mm lens and our lighting was daylight balanced to help reduce noise, the data rate was the 36MB/sec best quality, firmware build was 15. ASA was 320 and the stop was a 4-5.6 split. 1/48th shutter, 24fps. In other words, everything possible was done to put the RED in a good light.

The EX1 was set to standard gamma 3, very light knee starting at 90 IRE, no color matrix, no detail, black at -5, and -3db gain. 1/48 shutter, 24fps and the same f-stop as the RED. The firmare on the EX1 was whatever Sony sold me when I bought the camera. I recorded out HD-SDI to my ancient VelocityHD NLE, 8bit uncompressed.

REDCINE processed the RED footage, no sharpening, high quality extract from the full 4K data to 4K EXR files. These were then loaded into Digital Fusion, along with the Velocities native uncompressed 8bit file format of the EX1 footage for compositing.

Primatte was the keyer, and after some color balancing to get both images in the ballpark, the same basic key setting were applied to both, and the images keyed over a medium grey background, which is a killer for showing defects.

The RED footage was treated at 4K right until it was scaled down to 1080 and merged over the background, in other words, the key was done at 4K, not a scale down with the key then pulled.

I'll hold off more discussion and more samples until after you all have had a chance to check out the the results;

http://ftp.datausa.com/imageshoppe/o...reen_5200k.mov

Regards,

[Isaac_Brody]

They compare pretty well. And they mix pretty nicely as well. I had trouble distinguishing the two, I think Red's on the right but I'm not certain.

[Kholi]

RED's on the right. Close to each other indeed, does it depend on how you downrez the RED material as well?

[mjeppsen]

Great test, fantastic keys Jim. After looking frame by frame, I'd say the EX1 is on the left. Regardless, they are damn close. Is there a forum pool where we can place our bets? :-)

[Stevet]

Jim,
This is REAL close... I'm not sure which is RED?
Even blown up they are hard to tell.
It may be due to I'm currently on my laptop. I imagine viewing on my 24" I may be able to see differences.

Either way, given this resolution, you could easily cut with these two cameras.

Once again, thanks Jim for your work.

[Sumfun]

Jim,

Thanks for doing the test and sharing with us.

They are close, but I would guess the Red is on the right, too. The edges look a little smoother, and so does the color gradation. But I'm looking at it frame by frame. At full speed, it's hard to tell the difference.

[Jim Arthurs]

Okay, here's the deal;

RED is on the left. EX1 on the right.

And yes, before someone asks, focus was very carefully set at the start of the shot on both cameras.

The RED has more raw resolution than the EX1, and less noise with their firmware build 15, at least when shot under daylight balanced light sources.

However, if you're working in a 1080p world, the EX1 sure holds its own!

And remember, good high quality downsizing, as I've done to the fairly soft 4K the RED makes, will only improve the apparent sharpness of the RED footage and increase the signal to noise ratio, giving an even cleaner image. And that makes the EX1 performance even more impressive, IMO.

There's no question you can inter-cut RED and EX1 footage in the same scene, if the final is "only" 1080p. Heck, you can intermix them in the same frame as this test has demonstrated.

In my opinion, the visual difference between the RED and the EX1 is less than the difference between the EX1 and the HVX200, at least in terms of resolution.

The RED wins in flexibility of the image, as it's a more robust picture that will withstand processing better than the EX1. I love the RED, it's the winner in this race, but second place going to the EX1 ain't all that shabby...

Here's a crop of the RED 4K footage side by side with the EX1 upscaled to the same resolution...



And here is the RED downsampled to 1080p side by side with EX1 native sized...

[craigbowman]

I too have noticed that for the small screen certain cameras can hold their own with Red. When moving to the big screen however, the differences in image quality is a lot more noticeable.

I am working on a "for television" production right now where there is a mix of Red and EX1 footage and we have found no problem in getting them to mix fairly well. We just throw out mountains of data from the Red and it starts to look very much like the EX1.

[Kholi]

Ah! I should'a looked at the latitude instead of the resolution. The one on the right is blowing out a lot quicker.

NIce.

[Sumfun]

Wow, you fooled all of us! Looking back at the clip, I still think the right side keyed a little better. So I guess the moral is that if you're "only" delivering 1080p, then you can do a darn good job with the EX1 at less than a quarter the cost of a Red (with comparable accessories).

Originally Posted by Kholi

Ah! I should'a looked at the latitude instead of the resolution. The one on the right is blowing out a lot quicker.

NIce.

I did notice that the highlights were more blown out on the right side, but I really didn't think much about the latitude.