How hard is RED for a DSLR user?

F

fuen

Active member
Hi guys,

I have a question. Title already says it. How hard is RED (One) to use for someone who always used DSLR's? Now, i understand you can't know the whole thing in a day, but how quickly can you be filming and knowing your way through the basic settings? I guess it's easier to go from DSLR to red than going from *any other camera* or film to RED.

Can someone give you the thing and you'll end up with OK footage - like most camera's - or are there lots and lots of essential hidden settings? It's hard to find information about the actual workings on the interwebz.

Thanks in advance!

Daniël
 
If this is a paid gig, your best bet would be to hire an owner/operator to ac for you and let him handle the menus and camera setup.

They have nothing in common.
 
You can learn a lot by browsing reduser.net. It's not a pickup and shoot right away thing, but really learning it isn't that hard. At the end of the day it's a camera. But I agree if it is a paid gig and you have 0 experience or hands on time with the camera it would be wise to hire someone who has worked with one before.
 
William_Robinette said:
... It's not a pickup and shoot right away thing, ...
Click to expand...


It was for me. In fact the Red One has been the single most dirt simple camera I've ever used. Go to red.com and snag yourself a copy of the user manual. Just go through the manual before you get hands on and you'll know how everything works long before you get hands on.
 
Thanks for the replies! It would be for my own short film for shots the DSLR resolution really isn't enough. I was planning to rent one one day in advance so i had some time to test and figure stuff out - which would be enough for most camera's, but i didn't know about RED.
Getting the RED user manual is a great idea, thanks for the tip! Didn't know it was available for download.
 
I am a video engineer, so my experience is probably not typical. It only took a 1/2 hour guided tour of a Red by the camera owner to understand it well enough to shoot it. If you shoot raw stills much you probably will pick it up faster than someone with only video camera experience. Redcode Raw to me is much easier to shoot than video as you only have to be concerned with correct exposure: aperture, shutter speed, frame rate. Much like film. The histograms and false color exposure assists in a Red make it easy to do this. Shoot it as you would any raw stills camera. If it is an R1-M shoot as close to 320-400 ISO as practical, if R1-MX shoot around 640-800 ISO for best results. The more light you can feed the sensor without hard clipping highlights the better. Other than actual exposure, everything else is meta-data that can be modified at will in post with Redcine-X or NLE's that support native R3D files ( Vegas and PPro).
Camera RGB/Linear gamma mode is probably best for monitoring the actual exposure values of the sensor for max dynamic range, but this will typically not look very good on a video monitor. Shooting set for Redcolor2/Redgamma2 is better for monitoring, but shooting for what looks best on a monitor in the field may not get you the best raw "negative" for working with in post.
 
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