EX1 and RED playing nice together...

Jim Arthurs

Jim Arthurs

Well-known member
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/outgoing/EX1/EX1_VRS_RED_bluescreen_5200k.mov

Regards,
 
Last edited:
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.
 
RED's on the right. Close to each other indeed, does it depend on how you downrez the RED material as well?
 
Perfectly played

Perfectly played

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? :)
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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.
 
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...

RED_4Kcrop_EX1_resized_to_4K.png


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

EX1_crop_RED_4K_resized_to_1080p.png
 
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.
 
Ah! I should'a looked at the latitude instead of the resolution. The one on the right is blowing out a lot quicker.

NIce.
 
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).

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

NIce.
Click to expand...

I did notice that the highlights were more blown out on the right side, but I really didn't think much about the latitude.
 
I don't get on to any of the forums as much as I used to, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone directly compare the two cameras in such a way. I took about the most difficult task you could assign the cameras (blue screen work), didn't "cripple" either of them, and let them have at it. The results were surprising, at least to me.

I can't attach meaning to this for anyone other than myself, but it was very useful for me, and I though I'd share the results. I like to "dial in" just what I can and can't do with any piece of gear, and this was part of the process of determining where and when I can get away with the EX1 instead of a RED rental, and being able to share this information with my clients.

After our tests, the RED owners had a new appreciation for the EX1 and I had definate regrets at letting my RED reservation go. I really appreciate the RED, and obviously consider it the better imaging device. Still, at the end of the day, I can do more with the EX1 than I thought I could, and that alone was worth the effort.

Regards,
 
Sorry but i dont see how an Mpeg 2 , 35 mbps camera even begins to compare to RED One. I am not saying you dont get great images from it but the test was shotie at best .
The lighting is bad for one and you also didnt mention the steps used for the key.
How you conformed the shot from the RED r3d files and a full breakdown.
Picking a better test material and set up would have been better for it but if you want a real test of chroma material just wait till WANTED comes out being it was shot on RED and compd for the big screen.
 
I would have said the red one is the left simply because if you look at the frame where he is hitting in the direction of the camera, his fist in the left is more out of focus than the fist on the left side ---> shallower DOF = red one
Just by looking at the quality of the key, I would also have guessed that the red footage is on the right side...
 
Hi, just a quick question, and don't hate me for asking, I think the EX1 is great, and seeing as I cant afford the RED, I love anything that shouts its praises. On the RED footage on the Left, are you sure your back focus wasn't out? The guys eyes and hair would seem to suggest it was.
 
Taking a closer look the difference is pretty much visible if you pay attention to the motion with his hand around frame 51.
Where the Red on the right side is totally sharp on the hand, the EX1 is still suffering under interframe coding, the hand is totally without details. Also the Motion Blur around frame 46 and following doesn't quite look right.
 
Also, could you upload stills of the unkeyed raw .tga or .tif files (RED 4K and XDCAM 1080 50i) for comparison?
 
Here is a zip with a couple layered Photoshop files, made from the exported EXR and uncompressed EX1 frames. One file is the original 4K RED frame matched with an uprezzed EX1 image, the other file is RED downrezzed to 1080 and paired with the original sized EX1 image. Between these two you have access to the original sources and can do any tests you want, with any keyer you want.

Working with them you will find that the RED is cleaner in all three channels. You will find that there is more subtle detail as well, especially in the red channel, regarding hair.

http://ftp.datausa.com/imageshoppe/outgoing/EX1/RED_vrs_EX1_5200K_bluescreen.zip

The Digital Fusion flow I can provide if any want to walk through the exact key settings. You will need DF 5.0 to work with it.

In the original post I detailed the workflow, and was very clear that the EX1 footage had been captured via HD-SDI out, as 8bit uncompressed. So all the conversation in multiple posts about seeing EX1 codec issues... there simply aren't any.

Good catch to all that noticed the difference based off of Depth of Field. Also the RED that shot this test was a high serial number camera with accurate back focus, working with the RED short zoom.

As to the more limited dynamic range and more clipped nature of the EX1... two points here... one, my ancient capture card hard clips incoming signals at 100 IRE, so I didn't get to take advantange of the "feather" of that final 100-109 IRE in conversion to RGB from the EX1. That would have been helpful, as I always used detail in the "super-white" area for this sort of work. Second, the card says it can capture 10bit, but the output from it is bit per bit identical to 8bit mode... so I didn't have that little extra help with the fine shading...

Thanks to all who understand the spirit of this test, I appreciate your comments.

Regards,
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top