Mixing the Red and the D90

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Davidonabus

Member
Hey guys. A bit of an odd post, perhaps. But I thought I'd let you know that myself, and a small crew, are heading up North to begin 2 days of production on a short story/commercial.

This may be interesting to some of you, because part of the shoot will incorporate the D90. The other part will be handled by the Red One system. The idea is to seamlessly mix footage from both cameras. The style we're going for is perfectly suited for the D90. With that said, we haven't tested mixing the two mediums together.. so, it's going to require some luck.

Final output resolution will be 720p. The Red will be shooting 120fps all day long and will use the same Nikon primes that will be on the D90. 24, 50, 85. We have an assortment of other glass, but these will be the workhorses.

Day one will be shot almost entirely on the Red One. Day two will be shot on the D90.. doing what it does best, CU work pickups with shallow DOF.

We have some toys.. full steadicam, dolly, and even a jib if we have the time for setup (which is unlikely).

Oh, and the talent we'll be using are 9 kids ranging from 4 years old to 14. Yikes!?

I'll post again after the weekend with my thoughts! And some footage.

David
 
The D90 WILL OVER HEAT!!!! I did a shoot that was 1.5 hours just last weekend....it overheated after about 1 hour. It started to overheat about every 5-7 min. It did so for the rest of the shoot. Not the end of the world....BUT BE READY FOR IT! You'll have to stop shooting and wait for it to cool down. I've heard of people either having 2 of them...or having a "cooler" on hand. EITHER WAY....beware DAVID!!!! ....and good luck. I REALLY want to see some of the footage.
 
If I understand correctly, up North should be cold or at least cool so I don't think the overheating problem will be that bad.
 
Ruzo said:
If I understand correctly, up North should be cold or at least cool so I don't think the overheating problem will be that bad.
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it has nothing to do with the weather. it's caused by the photosensitive sensor.

apparently the d90 gets full too quickly.
 
how can overheating possibly have nothing to do with the temperature? nobody's suggesting that it overheats *because* of the weather, but the overheating definitely happens faster when it's warmer, for obvious reasons. you're probably not safe in the north either but to be honest when i shot a snow scene last winter it didn't overheat until we shot a long scene inside a car.
 
Hey guys! Just thought I'd follow-up on my initial post.

We completed a whirlwind three days (from concept conception, talent find, crewing, to in-the-can) in September. We didn't touch the footage between then and now.

This week we finally found the time to edit together a rough cut.

We shot a lot of RED footage, and a ton of D90 footage. The downside of the D90 is that it doesn't shoot slow-motion. So, while the footage looked beautiful, it was difficult to match into the piece in the end... due to the different speed at which the footage was shot.

So, unfortunately, you won't see a lot of D90 footage in this piece. In fact, the only shots that were D90 are of the solo boy walking along side the lake (with the steam/fog in the background). You'll know the shost when you see them... due to the lack of slow-mo ;)

Anyway, this is the rough-cut. Let me know what you think. Some of the lighting is a tad on the ugly side, due to the time of day we had to shoot.. but for the most part, I think squeezed a lot out of the day we had.

http://vimeo.com/8746628

The password is "pioneers" (without the quote).

This short film was put together as a promotional piece for a camp called, "Ontario Pioner Camp". The titling, which will be placed at the end, will be "We Are Pioneers".
 
Why did you use the D90 at all?

Is it just experimental or does it do some things (eg DOF) better than the RED?
 
Why did you use the D90 at all?
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Good question.
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I can't say why Davidonabus did it...but I can say what I got out of it. It's interesting to see the "look" of Nikon's imaging compared to Red Camera's. This confirms what I continue to see with my own eyes every time I look at GH1, 5D, 7D footage: Nikon's imaging has an organic element to it that has "similarities" with Red One and Film.

I'm aware that you can do various things to the other footage to give it different looks...however, out of the box, Nikon's imaging has an appealing aesthetic. (Please don't even start on the no manual control, no 1080p, no other frame rates, etc etc...I agree 10,000 percent. But everyone better watch out if they fix that stuff....) That's what I got out of it. But that's just me.

(Let's all hold hands and pray for the D900...I realize that getting my hopes up is probably unwise....) :)
 
HHL,

Same with me. In fact I am liking the native image of the Nikon so much that with my next short film I intend to not color correct at all in post (only WB if absolutely necessary).
 
only a small part of color correction involves changing the look, i think it would be a mistake to not at least match the shots, especially since there's no manual exposure. white balance is easier so you shouldn't have to mess with that.
 
mattsand said:
only a small part of color correction involves changing the look, i think it would be a mistake to not at least match the shots, especially since there's no manual exposure. white balance is easier so you shouldn't have to mess with that.
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Thanks Mattias, didn't think of that one right away: WB and Exposure match.
 
Mattias,

BTW, the film that you did on the D90, did you ever get it to dvd and up for sale? I would love to see it.
 
HHL said:
It's interesting to see the "look" of Nikon's imaging compared to Red Camera's. This confirms what I continue to see with my own eyes every time I look at GH1, 5D, 7D footage: Nikon's imaging has an organic element to it that has "similarities" with Red One and Film.
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Sure, but that's what tests are for. It makes little economic sense to bring it along on a commercial shoot (unless Davidonabus has a reason I hadn't thought of).


HHL said:
(Let's all hold hands and pray for the D900...I realize that getting my hopes up is probably unwise....) :)[/I]
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I think it depends on what you're after. I would bet that it will be 1080 24p manual. Unfortunately that isn't everything I need (I need 30/60p).
 
It makes little economic sense to bring it along on a commercial shoot
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True. I'm glad he did it so that I don't have to. Thanks for sharing David...

I would bet that it will be 1080 24p manual. Unfortunately that isn't everything I need (I need 30/60p).
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I hope you're right. ....sorry that wouldn't fit your needs. I hope you find something that is a step up from where we are now. :) Good luck iHartVideo.

ps...my parents were married near Calgary. :) (Mom's from New Zealand...Dad...US....they're in NZ right now on vacation)
 
Hey guys.

The reason we had the D90 with us was because, well, initially we intended to shoot the entire thing with the D90. But, as our ideas evolved we discovered that we really wanted to shoot a lot of slow-motion, so we rented a Red One and a camera op that had experience using one.

We only had the budget to shoot one full day of Red.. but the storyboards called for more shots than we could fit inside of one day. Since we already owned a D90, we decided to shoot the pickups with that. So, all D90 footage was shot the day after the Red One shoot.. actually, the morning after.

We used the same lenses on both cameras. 24mm prime, 50mm prime, and a 85-300mm.

In my opinion, the D90 footage we shot looks almost as good as the Red footage. This is true for the shallow DOF shots anyhow. There's a pretty considerable difference in the level of detail on the wide shots.

David
 
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