Canon T2i with L Glass vs RED Camera

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I'm not here to lecture anyone, especially Barry. Barry I feel your pain and hear your frustration.

I jokingly mentioned the iPod generation, that wasn't aimed at you Ian, but there's actually something to that. You guys have to remember I'm OLDER and I'm convinced this is a generational thing.

The iPod generation seems to think that knowledge is power, it isn't, experience is power because that is the application of knowledge. But remember when we were starting out, I'm not so sure we were that different although I never felt a sense of entitlement the way this generation seems to.

It seems like we get caught up to much in the one's and zero's. Anyone who doesn't know a Red is better for producing video than a DSLR is an idiot. But never forget that not that long ago some of us idiots where producing some pretty compelling stuff with our DVX's and we were being told again and again how that doesn't compare with a Cinealta.

Well I should buy a Red, use it twice and sit it on the shelf next to my Cinealta. Sorry I digress, I can't keep my tongue out of my cheek - WTF?

The reason for my diatribe is because sometimes we all need someone to rattle the fence and give us just a little perspective. The people these kinds of debates take a toll on are not the ones asking if I can shoot a feature film with a Panasonic TM700 (which are really cool little camcorders by the way), but the people who should know better than to even explain this yet again.

The best answer, which Kholi gave a while back was that if you don't know how to use a Red then don't use it (something like that) I left DVXUser.com a couple of years ago because of the arguing over the Red and came back after reading a couple of Barry's posts over at 5D.

Again not trying to lecture but we don't really need to have this debate do we? This is a ruthless cycle, its like Ground Hog Day all over again...
 
Kholi said:
Honestly, no offense Stephen, this is not true at all. The original RED is no less light sensitive @ 320 ISO than the 7D is @ 320 ISO. And certainly, undoubtedly, RED is cleaner @ 320 ISO than the 7D is.

Tungsten stopped being an issue back several builds ago.
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I have not shot myself with the Tungsten fixed builds but my Red footage RAW is nosier than the 7D when light and ISO are level the last time I looked at this. My friend with a RED One wants to retest this with the latest build - and he really knows his camera well, so I could be proven wrong with the latest build on this.


Kholi said:
I do not believe any of the Canon sensors deliver any more latitude than an original Mysterium RED. The claims, like most, were from people that had never shot with RED and/or had no clue how to properly process R3D files or shoot raw.
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Perhaps but are you saying Zacuto's recent test is flat-out wrong? My 7D can seems to get better shots with less noise and better DR in low light situations. And the Mark 1 is well ahead of that.

Kholi said:
There's still a very clear advantage. Aliasing and Moire first and foremost. Factual 1080 lines of resolved detail versus the faux 1080 of a DSLR. On a large screen, which is swiftly becoming a staple of home entertainment viewing thanks to technological advancements in television technology, the difference is startlingly clear.
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To you, sure, but my wife sees zero difference close to a large monitor. Neither do 99.9% of my clients. I know you have excellent "golden eyes". But that is of little matter on the 35 - 42" sets found in the vast majority of homes.

I would have a hard time telling House was shot on DSLR and not 35mm film or Red if not for the extreme short DOF sitting 10 to 15' on the crappy 42" sets in most homes.

Kholi said:
RED........DSLR

x............ x - Requires Focus Puller for optimal efficiency.
x ............x - Requires DIT
x............ x - Requires Different lenses or can take a Zoom
x............ x - Requires Post conversion process to editable format.
x............ x - Requires proper support for optimal camera operation.
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Respectfully, that chart is flat out misleading. I can buy a 7D or T2i with a Zoom at best buy and shoot, load files into any number of NLEs at full rez and go. Not ideal, but fully functional. All of that is impossible with a RED. And the startup cost is at least 20 times more, renting or buying.

Going T2i and lower end zoom, I can do that for just a few bucks more than reserving a Red or renting a bare kit for a day. People who dismiss this are not in touch with the reality of most of the HD production realities around the world. Cost of gear, renting or buying, is a huge factor in the non-Hollywood, non NYC world.

The use of the word "requires" is the big problem with your chart. Focus pulling is not required in either situation - just desired for best results.

However, a DIT is for a near requirement for RED. But what the hell would a DIT do on a 7D shoot? Set camera to "neutral color profile". I've got 3 $79 32 GB cards, a 16 and couple of 8gb. A third-grader can copy cards on a drive and click "convert files" in Neoscene but I can shoot all day and upload at end of day.

A steadicam rig for a RED One is a major deal. My 7D runs fine on my Blackbird.

There is a place for RED in the market but it's rapidly shrinking (the House episode is a major puncture because of all the agencies, general public etc. that know it was shot with a "DSLR".

My friends who are RED owner/ops report after doing very well in the past, they are now losing work to 5D/7D etc. That's the reality.

Scarlet's odds of taking back the momentum increase by the second. RED MX/Epic are a going to fall into a narrow niche of people who really want greater than 1080p resolution.

Not to mention what else happens in the camera world. The 5D sort of came out of nowhere.

But the motion imaging world is rapidly approaching the worlds of writing, publishing, photography etc. The days of need tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear just to make a "professional image" are vanishing.

It will finally be about the gear in your head, not the gear in your hand, which is the way it should be.
 
stephenvv said:
I have not shot myself with the Tungsten fixed builds but my Red footage RAW is nosier than the 7D when light and ISO are level the last time I looked at this.

A steadicam rig for a RED One is a major deal. My 7D runs fine on my Blackbird.
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While I have never shot the RED ONE, I have looked at TONS of comparisons all over the place with DSLR vs RED. Most of the time it is zone charts, but some have been about sensitivity, and some of those tests are MX vs non MX on the RED.

Like this one:

http://shootwithred.com/

I think the term 'sensitivity' is a bit misleading in digital discussion. ISO 320 should work like ISO 320 no matter what the camera. It's simulating a speed of film. However, that said, it has been shown that ISO 320 on the old sensor has more noise than even ISO 800 on the MX sensor. This is why you have more usable range on the MX sensor, because the noise is lower and you get to push down into those lower levels and USE the values there. EVERY test I have seen shows this with the MX (and it is DAMN impressive).

So I disagree with your statements as I am only pointed to one of MANY examples of showing how much better the MX sensor is than the old RED ONE sensor, in EVERY way.

I was trying to find the sources that show 7D vs old RED ONE on sensitivity but I am not finding them. EVERY example I saw was the RED ONE being more noisy at the same settings (when really pushing up the noise). That said, I will absolutely agree that the RED ONE noise at least looked more like film grain than the 7D!



On another note, I just bought a blackbird 2 weeks ago to use with my 7D. It's awesome. It's made here in the town I live in and I am going to go over to their business to get some free training! :) I am also going to tell them the carrying case sucks. I upgraded to a Pelican case.
 
ChuckS said:
The best answer, which Kholi gave a while back was that if you don't know how to use a Red then don't use it (something like that) I left DVXUser.com a couple of years ago because of the arguing over the Red and came back after reading a couple of Barry's posts over at 5D.

Again not trying to lecture but we don't really need to have this debate do we? This is a ruthless cycle, its like Ground Hog Day all over again...
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Yeah, it is a very ruthless cycle and taxing. Most filmmakers are hard-headed, anyway. You just need to let them break their legs before they get the point.

I had to go the same route, so be it.
 
I truly wonder why this thread is going on and more importantly why Kholi keeps posting?

I was in the 5D section reading and found out they used it to shoot the season finale of House. I think that is truly amazing, just because I never thought it would be possible to use a camera like that for true professional work.

While reading every post I ran across the famous "Kholi" from Rainfall films arguing once again how a HDSLR is not a professional tool. It seems like this guy just doesn't stop. It truly baffles me how a so called "professional" would get in an argument online over a piece of tool when he is advertising his name and company.

If I were a director doing a google search on his company and name and seen all of this arguing and fighting I would never hire someone like that to work on a project. I ask the mods to please close this thread to prevent any further arguing as this will never stop.



If a Red camera is better than an HDSLR that is fine and I will accept it. If an HDSLR though with the proper lens, lighting , and understanding how to fully use it can give me excellent results and quality to premier on television then I am more than happy.

Everyone thank you for your comments, I now know that my T2i while maybe not as good as a RED or 5D it can still give me amazing footage that can be showed nationally and that is all I cared about.



Peace
 
I've worked as a Motion Graphics designer/animator for 10 years at some of the top commercials studios in Hollywood.

Now I DON'T have as much shooting/production experience as many people on the DVX board do, but I can safely say that I probably have much more Post experience than most people on this board and I have worked with a TON of footage from many cameras over the years.

The people I work with are some of the most talented people in Hollywood, and pretty much everyone has been FLOORED with the DSLR footage. People just cannot believe how good it looks.

I know RED has the better codec, better sensor, more resolution, less aliasing, less skew, etc.... but IMO the 5D and the 7D has the X-Factor -- nicer color rendition, better low light and asides from all the resolution charts and what not, the Canon DSLRs produce an image that is very pleasing to the eye. More so than the RED, and that is probably why people love the 7D so much.

When you take the image just straight from the camera, generally, the Canon DSLRs have a much nicer image. The RED comes out very flat which is good for color correction, but I find RED footage requires a lot more color correcting than then the 7D to get it looking good. The 7D and 5D come out of the camera looking very nice from the get go, and with a little tweaking, it looks great. RED footage takes a lot more work to get it looking nice, and working with RED footage is a major pain in the butt. The RED workflow is very cumbersome to say the least.

At the end of the day, it's not a fluke that so many people like the Canon DSLRs; and it's NOT just because they're inexpensive. They just have the X-Factor and from an artistic standpoint, the colors and the images produced are fantastic and really pleasing to the eye. Sure the RED wins on the charts, but to the human eye and the senses, the Canons more than hold their own and often exceed the RED.

Take the RED ONE show reel here:

http://www.vimeo.com/5652215

That reel is a culmination of RED footage. Supposedly the best the RED ONE is capable of. IMO, much of the footage looks flat, the colors are too muted, and it just lacks the spark that the Canon DSLRs have, which so many people have responded to positively.

I actually think that the City of Lakes footage cited so much on this thread, and stuff I've seen from Phillip Bloom and some others is nicer than anything on the RED ONE show reel.

In the end, the RED wins on all technical specs and mechanical function; but IMO the Canon DSLRs win on aesthetics. And from my humble perspective as a artist, aesthetics trumps over technical specs in most cases.
 
Cieloent,

I think you don't get where Kholi is coming from. He's not saying SLRs are useless, just that the RED is in a different league. There is a reason it costs 10x more and why dSLRs are not used in Hollywood except perhaps as a crash cam. You cannot look at youtube videos for a proper comparison. If you want to do a proper comparison then go into a decent colourist's suite and compare the footage side by side on a colour critical monitor and ask the colourist to play around and push values. I guarantee you the differences will emerge. I come from a post production background having worked on Lexus and BMW commercials to name a few and I can guarantee you that the RED is a professional camera and a dSLR is not.

That doesn't mean you can't produce awesome footage on a dSLR, it's just in a different league from the RED. Yes and there might even be a few things that the dSLR does better but all round it's just not made for real film production - it's a stills camera that produces exceptionally great video and in the right hands and with lots of experience you can use it to produce a great music video or a great TV commercial or a great indie film or perhaps even a great TV series. But the people who are doing that have experts who know how to get the best footage out of these cameras from dedicated lighting crews to colourists to compositors that can rotoscope moire out of shots.

I'm really not taking sides here, in fact I'm going to be shooting a short film soon on my 7D and some footage for a documentary on the history of Cinema but I'm working to understand the limitations of the camera and how to get the best out of it. Using my 7D is the only option I have in terms of budget. There are far less of these kinds of limitations with a RED, rather it's limitations are budget, manpower and skill.

Instead of worrying about whether you have the best equipment, take the advice of the experienced people on this thread - some of them have written books about cameras, produced award winning films, shot footage for Hollywood films and composited for BMW commercials. Take their advice and go and shoot something. Shoot every day until your fingers bleed and compare what you have done to Hollywood feature films. Then upgrade your lenses, your stabilization and your monitoring when you find out what "lens breathing" means and that a $300 tripod doesn't cut it and that your old TV attached to your PC via s-video out isn't "colour critical". Yes, you don't need all of those things to produce fantastic video but don't have any illusions that you can produce the next House TV series without those things. Go out and get some experience. Learn to graciously accept criticism because it will make you a better artist. Getting defensive about whether your camera is good enough is only going to make you blind to certain facts that people are trying to tell you.

Go and shoot your music video on the T2i. Yes, it's good enough for what you want to do.
 
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Kholi said:
At a time like this, delivering the BEST you can deliver on ALL fronts is what's going to help you stand out from the rest of the kids swimming in the pool.
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I disagree. Filmmaking is STORYTELLING, and if you have the talent for doing this, you will be noticed. I know you're a big PRIMER fan (super 16), and let's face it, a DSLR will give you just as good if not better footage than what Shane Caruth shot. But he knew how to tell an original story better than most.

I think the problem most DPs have is they lose objectivity on what the audience is happy with. Sure, if you compare a t2i image against a red image the red will win, but who ever does that in the real world?
 
for me , i find it interesting that people spend more time on this cam vs that cam - rather than this technique or that technique, or this lighting vs that lighting, or this idea vs that idea. The camera is just but one element in a production and its a commodity - get the one you can afford and support properly and then put all you effort in the things that really make the difference. if you can only afford a flip cam, then put all your effort in creating a story and a look that uses that tool well to create art. If you can afford (a properly supported) RED then spend all your effort creating the best project that utilizes what it can make. If you are shooting reality on a RED or trying to show very high quality glossy work on a flip, then you are not using your brain and all the skills you have and should be building.

thats my 2 cents
 
Cieloent: My advice, bookmark this thread, and read it in a year or two again when you hopefully have worked with both cameras and have more experience with them.... I think you really don't get what is being said here.
In short: Yes, HDSLRs can produce awesome footage, no question about it, so does the Red Camera and many others. It's all about the talent of the DP.
The reason why the HDSLR's are by many not considered a professional tool unlike for example the Red, are the many shortcomings they come with, and for which you have to find workarounds.

To name a few:
- No proper (HD) monitoring solution (can be very annoying if color, focus etc. is crucial).
- A lot of rolling shutter artifacts which prevents you from shooting borne identity style etc.
- Shooting with long lenses handheld (especially if they don't have IS).
- Shooting subjects with fine patterns (like you find in shirts, or the tiles of a roof etc.) causes moire.
- Exposing properly can be hard to because the camera just doesn't come with the necessary tools.
- Can't use cine lenses without modifying your camera (PL mount), this means you shoot often with lenses that have a very short focus throw, which slows you down because it makes the job of your 1st AD very hard in low light (you end up with a higher percent of soft footage, and you might not even find out during the shoot that the shot was soft because you can't connect a HD monitor).
- Less options in post. You can't push the image very far before it falls apart. Using a greenscreen will never give you as good results as for example red footage because the camera CMOS artifacts.

The list goes on and on...
Is it a bad camera because of that...? No it isn't. It's just limiting in many ways and you have to find workarounds or compromises. Bottom line is that under the right conditions the footage of a Red and a 7D can look almost identical (at least on the small screen). Where the Red shines, is when you don't have ideal conditions unlike in the Zacuto test. The Zacuto test didn't have any moving frames, or only very slow moving. It didn't have any fine patterns (which you find all the time in the real world). It didn't compare for example how a handhold image on a long lens looks shot on the different cameras. It didn't look at the ease of use in terms of focus pulling, monitoring, getting proper exposure etc. (the list goes on).

When shooting a movie, especially if working in the professional world, all theses things become very important... In the end, it all comes down to choosing the right tool for the job.... Red will overall be the better choice in most situations (unless you need the small form factor etc.) because you need to compromise less, but a 7D can work just as well if you are willing to (and can) adjust for the shortcomings of the camera.
Most important is the talent of the DP, the camera is only a small part in the equation....
 
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Kholi said:
=[ -- And this wasn't shot on a DSLR.

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I AGREE



I think Reem was right: Troll.
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Hot damn that was amazing!
 
Life's short. If your working everyday with gear, use what makes your life easier. Sometimes that's not having a monthly payment for high end gear. Sometimes its not being frustrated because less expensive gear involves more steps in the process.
I've learned much from Barry, Kholi and many many others over the last few years and hope they will continue to contribute to this site.
 
Usually progear price increase never matches its quality increase. But for a pro its sometimes worth spending 1000% more for something that just give you 50% in return.

Why?

1. Because they can afford it
2. Because they want the best
3. Because the cost of the total production is so much higher then the cost for the footage it would be stupid not to spend money on the very thing that captures the production.
 
Barry_Green said:
You want to know where the disconnect is? I've been thinking about this for years and years, and I think it goes like this...

Remember when we used to have a lot of posts clamoring for film to die? People were acting so excited that digital was finally going to triumph over film, and film would be "gone" in a year or two, etc... (never mind that something like 95% of hollywood features are still shot on film). My question was: why was this a good thing? Why would people WANT film to go away? And I think... I think the reason is that some people have this mental block about the idea that "if film is what people want, and I don't have it, then if film goes away, they'll want what I have." Right? Instead of just learning to shoot on film, and picking up a used CP16 for less than the cost of a t2i, they'd rather cling to their video cameras and chant for the death of film. Because, if film goes away, it somehow legitimizes their choice.

Which doesn't make sense. Because if you look at the guys who are successful in this business, who are doing what most of us would want (guys like David Mullen, ASC -- I've been watching him for years, since he first started contributing on forums)... that guy doesn't own ANYTHING. He owns a light meter. He doesn't need equipment to validate him. He shoots, and he shoots on whatever the client wants. He makes suggestions for the project, but if they want to shoot 35mm film, he shoots 35mm film. If they want to shoot F23, or Red, or F900, or 7D, he does. Every bigtime cinematographer I know, none of them own their own camera package, nor do they care to.

So film dying, hurts them. Because it removes one major brush from the artist's palette.

So I don't think that it's the notion that people don't believe that there's one overall "better" product; I think it's that they somehow believe that if there IS a better product out there, that means that people won't want to hire them with their lesser product. And if that's the case, all I can say is: put more effort into your skills, than you do into your equipment. Because equipment will ALWAYS be supplanted, replaced, or updated. It will always go out of style. Which is why rental houses exist.
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I've been saying this for years! This is what people are missing, each medium is a different tool to express different means! Barry is the man!

It's the carpenter not the tools!

It's the story not the camera!

Shoot with you own style and it won't matter what your shooting on, a clear vision trumps all!
 
Can we not have a technical discussion about gear without story always being dropped in. It's legitimate for people to center completely on hardware and leave the scriptwriting to others. This always happens. A DP has no control over whether the story is strong or not.
 
Kholi said:
However, if it keeps ending up like this I guarantee you that a lot of excellent information that's helped me grow to where I am--specifically FROM DVXUSER, because this place pretty much birthed me and my career--is about to vanish.

Not saying from me, either, but people who aren't willing to deal with the attacks from the newcomers around here.
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This is absolutely true.
 
jimpatro said:
Can we not have a technical discussion about gear without story always being dropped in. It's legitimate for people to center completely on hardware and leave the scriptwriting to others. This always happens. A DP has no control over whether the story is strong or not.
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That is 50% true, the DP has the choice to choose a strong script to shoot. I would never choose a poor script knowing it would reflect poorly on me. If a shoot goes bad because of things such as a director making poor choices then yes it is out of your control.

To focus on the tech side of things:

A red camera or an f35 are overall more suited to higher end releases (theatrical, Blu-Ray, future formats)

To focus on the op side of things:

A good op will be able to use any format to produce the best optical presentation that format can deliver for the project it is intended for.

Sorry if I made anyone angry by bringing my voice into this conversation, just loved seeing Barry's post-Adam
 
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