Iso...

Milan Nikolic said:
It is great news! RED is low light camera!
At 160 ISO? Er... no, not necessarily... 160 ISO is like putting a three-stop ND filter on a PD170...

Consider how many people whine about the HVX's low light performance. The HVX is 320 ISO. Heck, people gripe about the DVX's low light performance. The DVX is 1280 ISO in interlaced mode! A Sony FX1 with no gain on is 160 ISO.

160 is not fast, by any means. But 160 is also, apparently, the base level at zero noise, which is quite promising. What matters is what the effective ISO is at an acceptable level of noise -- a DVX is 1280, but it isn't noise-free by any stretch of the definition. An FX1 is 160, but it's pretty clean; not noise-free, but definitely acceptably clean; you can push it to 6dB and it becomes about as noisy as an HVX at 0dB, so sensitivity and SNR are tied together. 160 ISO with no noise would be great; 12dB of gain on a 160 ISO base level would give you the equivalent of pushing it to 640, and that's very nice. Will the image be still quite clean at 640? Hopefully. Especially if you're using 2k scaled mode so some of the noise gets averaged out in the downrezzing.
 
As long as it's organic I think alot of people will like the idea of gaining up and adding a bit of texure to the image. "Superman" clean is an awesome starting point but it's not the right look for everything. we'll have to see how it all pans out. Jim, will there be a Gain/ISO control on the camera? Or just in Red Code? Or is that a "Don't know yet" thing?
 
Will it be possible to get accurate readings with a light meter with this camera? I know that with a DVX you can't really judge exposure with a light meter, but I am curious if RED will be any different?
 
I'd remember though that:

a) everyone measures ISO differently
b) it's tricky to measure
c) we've not put any gain or noise reduction in,

I'd wait till you get a camera in your hands, shoot Jim in a dark garage with two candles for illumination, crank up the gain in REDCINE, and laugh as you get a great, noise free image :-) Because that's just what Jim did.

Graeme
 
if RED is going to be more like a DSLR then maybe we shouldnt have gain switches (its so video); but an ISO selector up to 1600 or beyond would be good :-)

it may be grainy as hell, but it'd be nice to have the option. Cranking up the gain in REDCINE alone doesnt sound too user-friendly for on set.
 
See, now, Graeme, that's what I'm talkin' about. That's exactly what we want!

And yes, selectable ISO would be ideal. It's a film replacement camera right? Gain is a video term, let's have a dial with ISO (or EV for our European friends!)
 
I think... an let me say that i'm no expert at all !!!

...that ISO 160 AND noise free image is simply spectacular !
I mean SPECTACULAR !

Just imagine the potential power...

why ?

First, because a less "natively sensitive" sensor is less prone to clip hilights.

Second, because i'm looking for a good signal to noise ratio.
So...if the noise level is very low, you can amplify the signal without fearing too much "amplified" noise because this noise IS low to start with.

...so 160 ISO compared to what ?

If you compare RED 160 ISO sensitivity to another camera that reads 320 ISO but shows 5 times more noise, then my interpretation is that RED is effectively 2.5 times more sensitive.

For a given amount of noise, you will be able to amplify the signal more without degrading the image too much.


I think it is a gift !!!!

Congrats guys !
 
Graeme_Nattress said:
I'd
I'd wait till you get a camera in your hands, shoot Jim in a dark garage with two candles for illumination, crank up the gain in REDCINE, and laugh as you get a great, noise free image :-) Because that's just what Jim did.
Graeme

Alright... I'm ready to shoot the sequel to Barry Lyndon now.
BarryLyndon2.jpg


BTW the way I always dtermined ISO was to set an 18% grey card up, light it copystand style, frame as close as possible and set the exposure using a waveform monitor to exactly 50 IRE. Then using the T stop setting you can calculate the ISO from a calibrated spot or incident meter.

That's probably obvious to the Red intelligencia but it's a good "real world" ISO test and I would be very curious what the result would be.
 
Brook Willard said:
If it makes it to 320, I'll be happy. I live and die by 5218 as it stands, I'd prefer to live and die by RED.

Hey Brook do you rate 5218 at 320? I usually rate it at 500... What are the big differences? Blacker blacks?

Cheers!
 
exchangeable sensor

exchangeable sensor

sensors evolve, is it possible as previously suggested, to make the sensor in its own compartment medium format still camera style, that way specialty sensors could be used in an even more flexible system,
 
evinsky said:
As long as it's organic I think alot of people will like the idea of gaining up and adding a bit of texure to the image. "Superman" clean is an awesome starting point but it's not the right look for everything. we'll have to see how it all pans out. Jim, will there be a Gain/ISO control on the camera? Or just in Red Code? Or is that a "Don't know yet" thing?
yeah.. good questions.. but i like clean clean :thumbup: it's another world.. long life to digital!

grainy :thumbdown noisy :thumbdown :thumbdown
 
Graeme_Nattress said:
I'd wait till you get a camera in your hands, shoot Jim in a dark garage with two candles for illumination, crank up the gain in REDCINE, and laugh as you get a great, noise free image :-) Because that's just what Jim did.
Graeme

Now that would be a cool 4K image to post.
 
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