More RED DRAGON footage - skin tones

i could do a sing and dance of who cares

im all for advances, but it's practically irrelevant being that there are dozens of cameras shooting great images. i just wish for once someone would have the stones to make a few sample videos like this and then after everyone's been blown away, they reveal that it was actually a completely different camera. that would be great, instead of a dragon, it's some EX1 footage.

it's just boy who cried wolf to me, everyone's always amazed so much and so often that i'm all amazed out.

someone can wake me up when they make an academy award for "best resolution", then i'll offer up a cookie
 
Robert Ruffo said:
A lot of the differences you can't see - i.e. what shots could you not get because of camera limitations? How many hoops did you have to jump through? Dragon removes hoops and limitations. As for "film-like" too many Scarlet owners (not all, some are great) don't know what they are doing, so they get sub-par results. This is only because the camera doesn't cost much, so it's easily accessible to beginners and no-budget productions. Any camera can look like crap. This horrible video was shot on Alexa by a horrific hack I have only contempt for - no problem saying it publicly (he told me he chose Alexa because it is "more film like"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEOTxw1WHOI
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Actually I think this video is ok. It does in fact look film-like. So this guy was right about that. It's really not that bad of a video. It's not great but it doesn't look like video to me.

Lee Saxon said:
Come on now. Constant refrains of "Alexa is better 'cause skin tones" and when Red addresses that the very first comment is a brand new, never-before-heard reason that Alexa is better. I mean, come on. How much are they paying you?
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I'm the last person to take a bias toward a given camera. I will use whatever looks good to me and whatever I can afford.

eheath said:
Well yeah, when someone uploads 720p to vimeo of course its all going to look the same. I'm hoping this video is 1080 but they just didn't select that option in the settings? needless to say, downloading uncompressed files is the only way to judge any sort of footage.
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It's not the resolution or the picture quality. Even a Canon rebel shoots amazing looking video IMO, even with its issues. The problem is the motion. The way objects are rendered on screen. Even at 24p with all the same camera moves and editing tricks, not all cameras look like film-motion. It's the difference between the suspension of disbelief and just disbelief. You can show me the worst super 8 reversal stock with the least dynamic range, shot at 24fps, all hand held by the worst filmmaker in the world and it will suspend my disbelief based just on the motion of objects rendered on screen.

In fact its incredibly frustrating to me because I keep saying the motion is wrong, yet everyone keeps playing with the picture, adding film grain, color curves etc. That's not it! Thats not the problem. Those things are certainly useful and it's great to advance the picture quality, but the motion is still wrong.
 
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Darren Levine said:
i could do a sing and dance of who cares

im all for advances, but it's practically irrelevant being that there are dozens of cameras shooting great images. i just wish for once someone would have the stones to make a few sample videos like this and then after everyone's been blown away, they reveal that it was actually a completely different camera. that would be great, instead of a dragon, it's some EX1 footage.

it's just boy who cried wolf to me, everyone's always amazed so much and so often that i'm all amazed out.

someone can wake me up when they make an academy award for "best resolution", then i'll offer up a cookie
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That would be hilarious! Recently looked at some prosumer camcorder footage (not some cinema cam, not raw this or that, or DSLR) but a camcorder...and I swear that if someone were to say it was CAM brand X, people would be like "Wow look at the detail" I was personally really surprised at how good it looked, after not having viewed deep focus in 5 years, lol.
 
Gillvane said:
I get looking at the download if you're doing a technical dissection of the footage. You want to see it without compression. But is that really important if that's not how people are watching the final product?

I would say 99% of music videos, for example, are going to be seen on youtube or Vivo, even big budget productions for major stars. Robin Thicke has one of the hottest music videos out right now and everyone is watching it on Vevo.

Maybe we'll get less compression as fiber all the way to the home rolls out. I thought the Dragon footage looked good, even compressed.
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sooooo if you're final product is internet, why the hell would you be shooting 4k? Hell any camera over $5k? You should be shooting a red dragon to show in a 4k theatre, otherwise whats the point? If you want raw, buy a bmcc? it costs $1999 now and gives you all the raw functions at 1080p, which is the highest resolution supported on the internet. You guys are ridiculous.
 
eheath said:
sooooo if you're final product is internet, why the hell would you be shooting 4k? Hell any camera over $5k? You should be shooting a red dragon to show in a 4k theatre, otherwise whats the point? If you want raw, buy a bmcc? it costs $1999 now and gives you all the raw functions at 1080p, which is the highest resolution supported on the internet. You guys are ridiculous.
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It's funny you say this. About 2 weeks ago I worked as an AC for a nationwide company that I shouldn't mention.
They had 3 video crews(along with countless still shooters for their stills needs). Two video crews had C300's
for A cams, 5D Mark III for B cams and GoPro III Black for extra cams. The third video crew had a Red Epic.
We shot for 8 or 9 days in countless locations.....and it was all for the web. Yup, the Epic crew was shooting
5k Raw for 720P web video. I'm not even sure if the DIT was saving the RAW files because of the space constraints....
I think he was converting to DNxHD. Kind of crazy. But, late one night, we got back from shooting about
1am and sat in the video room with the director and watched some footage on the big flatscreen.....and
it looked freakin nice. Maybe it's not a horrible idea to start off with the best image you can....even though
it seemed a bit wasteful to me. But then again, they are the big company and they obviously know how
to make money, so maybe they know things I don't! This being said, I still tend to agree with
you. When it's for the web, pretty much any decent camera will do a good job....the Sony NEX 5n (which is about $500)
even looks pretty freakin good on the web. But far be it from me to deny a Red owner/op his day rate plus rental.
I got my day rate on the shoot myself so it's all good.
 
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Darren Levine said:
i could do a sing and dance of who cares

im all for advances, but it's practically irrelevant being that there are dozens of cameras shooting great images. i just wish for once someone would have the stones to make a few sample videos like this and then after everyone's been blown away, they reveal that it was actually a completely different camera. that would be great, instead of a dragon, it's some EX1 footage.

it's just boy who cried wolf to me, everyone's always amazed so much and so often that i'm all amazed out.

someone can wake me up when they make an academy award for "best resolution", then i'll offer up a cookie
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If I remember it correctly this did happen on reduser. A guy posted a video claiming that it was Scarlet footage and it looked pretty darn good. As usual the users praised the footage as being epic and so great, then after a little while he revealed that it was all shot on a GH2. I think he got banned, can't remember but it was very entertaining.
 
roxics said:
It's not the resolution or the picture quality. Even a Canon rebel shoots amazing looking video IMO, even with its issues. The problem is the motion.
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The only difference is rolling shutter. If you use two cams that use a global shutter, there will be no difference in motion.

not all cameras look like film-motion.
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There's no such thing as "film-motion". Motion pictures are usually shot quite deliberately with nice dolly shots and planned handheld footage. A lot of the "film-motion" comes from great dolly shots and the way camera is moved. You give that same film-camera to some guy just shooting in his backyard a bunch of flowers and it will look just as bad as any other homemade video.

Except nowadays CMOS-cams have the rolling shutter issue that does make handheld shots look quite insane if your not used to them.
 
The only thing making me patient, is my pocket book. If I had the money (or an Epic, as you do) at this time, I would be stir crazy right now.
 
maarek said:
There's no such thing as "film-motion"
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There most definitely is. He's talking about the way sensors render/perceive subject motion. Even with the raw hack my 5D3 is incapable of the film-like motion rendering. Red and Alexa have an organic motion rendering that DSLRs and sub $10k cameras lack (at least all of the ones I've used/owned/seen in action, including my S-logged F3).
 
OK, so, as we wait for the Dragon to arrive... does anybody have a good link that will explain me how the shutter in a film camera works? (I really have no idea, I've never shot film)
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
There most definitely is. He's talking about the way sensors render/perceive subject motion. Even with the raw hack my 5D3 is incapable of the film-like motion rendering. Red and Alexa have an organic motion rendering that DSLRs and sub $10k cameras lack (at least all of the ones I've used/owned/seen in action, including my S-logged F3).
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Rubbish. If you can't point it out in controlled testing, it doesn't exist. I've never seen this "difference" in any controlled test. You know why? Because it doesn't exist. And it's easy to fabricate , you just say "they look better!". What EXACTLY is the thing why it would look better? When we do CGI work for motion pictures, we don't render motion blur any differently between very expensive cameras and very cheap ones. And we pixel peep A LOT. Not once have I heard anything about "different motion blurs/motion artifacts"- in cgi circles, not when matching cameras, not when rendering with different renderers, not once have I seen the difference with my own eyes (if the shutter speeds / grading matches).

Now rolling shutter does make motion look quite odd with the F3 and DSLR's. A lot of these huge "motion differences" are attributed to that one factor. Alexa and RED Epic are quite speedy but still have it slightly.

If your 5d is "incapable" of filmmotion, you are clearly moving it wrong.
 
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S.Blanchardon said:
As usual, wiki is your friend :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_disc_shutter

I'm not a specialist but I assume that different camera manufacturers (Aaton, ARRI, Panavision,etc...) have different shuter "discs" profiles and probably variable ones.
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That can't be. If it is a rolling shutter, it has rolling shutter issues. Don't modern cameras use anything more advanced than that? Or maybe they just use a bigger disc so that the transition is faster in relation to exposure time...

Also, regarding motion blur in film and digital, I would tend to aggree with what maarek just said: if you can't point to a controlled test where I can see the difference, I doubt it exists.
 
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