FS7: Red Raven and FS7

[morgan_moore]

M43 - I think it is great as Bcam/Gimbal cam. with your epic doing A cam

M43 and EF mount.. stoopid - it needs M4/3 mount

Im also interested in M43 as an ENG aquisition size.. with the right lens and camera .. which a red is unlikely to be.

S

 

[morgan_moore]

When I was considering buying the F5 is quickly became apparent that it was not a good purchase.. stepping up to a 55 might have worked only $200 a month more and it is 'the proper thing'

Again with Scarlet is became clear that it would be a poor choice - the epic being only a $300 a month more.

Im not sure that buying 'nearly' cameras work. You just dont want your camera at home while your employer rents the 'proper' version - financial suicide.

As it happened I didnt buy either set up of course but stuck with a cheaper cam I had the cash for.

S

 

[paulcurtis]

Great shots Ben. And I agree with you on this on. You could not pull grabs like that from a FS7 IMHO

I think that's a difficult call, you'd have to have them side by side to say.

I think Bens shots are wonderful examples of lighting, composition and mood and they speak on an emotional level. If you look at the flickr stream for that i think the other images display banding (especially on the overly red ones) and i find the highlights on that example pulled down a bit too much, but you know what that's me. I don't really care about the minor points in this case because the images are telling a story. Of course these are web jpegs which in themselves add enormous viewing issues (not just compression but gamma on different viewing devices). As Ben said himself the final grade was much better and i believe him.

But to call out on a web jpeg and say X,Y,Z can't do that is a bit much IMHO. Do the same in a grading suite then sure. Or take the R3D to the opposite extremes and do the same with a Sony RAW and compare would be more telling.

It's quite difficult to separate technical challenges from aesthetics because we should be focused on testing these cameras in aesthetic situations (that is afterall where we're mostly using them) but then quantifying performance becomes more emotive, compared to a macbeth charge and overexposed back light.

Isn't anybody going to mention the m43s sensor size?!

You mean in the context of the Raven sensor being smaller that S35? It's between m43 and S35, just a few mm shy of S35 in fact.

cheers
Paul

 

[Ben Scott]

Isn't anybody going to mention the m43s sensor size?!


This is a huge deal, especially when coupled with a fixed EF mount.


It's 1.9x crop sensor size (18.7), that's GH2/AF100 aesthetic vs 1.5x FS7/C300 image format. There's a huge other issue of having to calculate DOF and FOV for 35mm/cinema shooters.


It's something to be talked about. I won't be surprised if the camera forces you to crop even more in various key modes.

According to your (odd) insistence on judging crop factor by stills DSLR full frame as opposed to motion standards, 3-perf Super 35mm - the most used motion picture gate size in history - is already a 1.6 crop.


All of my above shots were in 4k mode on a Scarlet MX, at a 1.73x compared to 35mm stills, or 1.14x Super 35mm 3-perf. Dragon at 4k is 1.87x or 1.23x S35mm. Not a dealbreaker for me in any way. Again, you're talking about a sub $10,000 ready to shoot Red. If you don't know what that is capable of firsthand then fair enough, but it is a million miles away from a GH2, or a C100, or an FS7 and probably from a C300mk2. There will be theatrically released movies shot exclusively on this camera. It will be Netflix and Amazon approved for production. It will be a b-cam for many Red shoots.

I've no idea why you need some new specialist tool or mindset to calculate FOV unless you don't have a clue to begin with. Don't invent problems where there aren't any. Certainly the Raven will have crop modes, just like many other cameras do and the FS7 crowd have been clamouring for since release. But 120fps Redcode raw at 4k is all you need to know on the horsepower front.

 

[Ben Scott]

But to call out on a web jpeg and say X,Y,Z can't do that is a bit much IMHO.

Well, I meant I haven't been able to. Certainly not on the other short I've made on the FS7 compared to the Scarlet

Thanks for nice words. Zero banding in the Red stuff at source. Would be boring if we liked the same things.

 

[Yoak]

I think Paul addressed my post, not yours Ben

 

[Ben Scott]

Well I'd sort of said the same thing as well

 

[Dafilman21]

Im with Ben here I have been working with the FS7 the last two weeks really putting it through its paces and it makes a great image. BUT having worked with the Dragon sensor and Redcode its just different, you get a meatier picture and I know some hate this but you also get a different motion cadence. Again for me one camera doesn't suite my needs so if Raven is what I think it is it will sit nicely in my arsenal. Also having the RED badge will allow you to get in the backdoor on some productions.

For something like Raven you could should C-Cam to the Weapon or be the gimbal guy. I know quite a few Scarlet shooters who parlayed that into getting on some serious sets. That being said I think the Raven sits in the same job category as the FS7 with the ability to punch and aim a little higher. This is just my take and in this game people can play a million different ways and still be successful.

 

[Ben Scott]

The one thing i'd urge caution on is buying a new camera, especially one you might have to stretch yourself for, unless you already have a solid existing client base/market for it. I learned this the hard way with the Scarlet. I thought everyone would clamour for it and I just had to say I owned one and I would suddenly be swamped with work. It's only now a couple of years down the line of getting off my arse and pushing myself into people's consciousness where I think I could have gotten a ton more Scarlet work.

Clients who can pay and are of the tier that would make use of better cameras hire people first and equipment is a consideration far down the list. Buy it if you know it will work for you and your existing clients, or if you don't need to see a return on investment. Otherwise you run the risk of having a very expensive paperweight whilst everyone else is happily getting all the FS7 work!

The only way to get better clients and get better jobs is to get better at your job and better at getting your name out there.

 

[Nirv]

The one thing i'd urge caution on is buying a new camera, especially one you might have to stretch yourself for, unless you already have a solid existing client base/market for it. I learned this the hard way with the Scarlet. I thought everyone would clamour for it and I just had to say I owned one and I would suddenly be swamped with work. It's only now a couple of years down the line of getting off my arse and pushing myself into people's consciousness where I think

I was going to write a very similar post, I doubt there's many here who haven't made this miscalculation. I ploughed shed loads of cash into VFX software expecting clients to flood in through the doors. I learnt the hard way that clients aren't anywhere near as interested in the tech and the hardware as me!

 

[combatentropy]

Isn't anybody going to mention the m43s sensor size?! This is a huge deal, especially when coupled with a fixed EF mount. It's 1.9x crop sensor size (18.7), that's GH2/AF100 aesthetic vs 1.5x FS7/C300 image format. There's a huge other issue of having to calculate DOF and FOV for 35mm/cinema shooters.

Is it really a huge deal?

As for depth of field, the difference between Four Thirds and Super 35 is one f-stop. Click! Done.

As for field of view, on the Raven an almost-perfect 45° diagonal angle of view* will be got at 28mm. It's really close to Flat 35 (crop factor 1.73) which is what everything was shot on between about 1950 and 2000 if it wasn't anamorphic (i.e., all non-epic movies).


---

* Note: For finding a sensor's normal lens, I prefer whichever gives a 45° diagonal angle of view, instead of exactly matching the sensor's diagonal dimension. For example, the diagonal dimension of 135 is 43.27mm. So everyone says that this is its true normal focal length, and 50mm is kind of long. But 43.27mm would actually give a slightly wide feel, with a diagonal angle of view of 53.13°. To get exactly 45°, it would be 52.2mm (to know this takes some hard math).

Coincidentally, when shooting in movie mode on a 135 camera, an almost-perfect 45° is got by a 50mm lens after all. In movie mode, to get that 16:9 aspect ratio, I'm guessing it crops it from its native size of 36 x 24 to 36 x 20.2mm. Therefore the diagonal dimension corresponding shrinks, and a 50mm lens gives a diagonal angle of view of almost exactly 45°.

The nice thing about 45° is that it feels very, very neutral. It literally looks like "is that a wide angle lens" in some shots and "is that a telephoto lens" in others. Examples of videos shot entirely with a single 45° lens: https://vimeo.com/7118904 (5D, 50mm), https://vimeo.com/82190827 (Pocket, 17.5mm), https://vimeo.com/74573072 (550D with further cropping, 30mm).

 

[Harry Lime]

you get 16bit raw from a 7q and FS7? Strange, you must have a different cam than everyone else, who is getting 10-bit linear raw in a 12-bit container out of theirs....

Typo. F5 is 16bit, FS7 12bit RAW, same/similar sensor. Not sure how you are getting to 10bit RAW out of the FS7.

Redcode's compressed raw is fantastic. Best thing about the camera. As for quality, I cannot comment on the IQ of Scarlet footage that has come your way but if I look at my showreel the Scarlet stuff is far better looking. You DO have to really understand the camera and codec to get the best out of it though. Far more than most cameras I have used. Obviously it does no NR or sharpening internally, leaving that to post, which is something I prefer.

I agree that Redcode / Cineform is one of the best compressed formats around. At least it's still in a RAW type wrapper, unlike Prores444. But at the end of the day it's still compressed at least 3:1, usually 5:1 and I see banding, random black speckles and compression noise when I work with RED footage. It's also a PIA to pull greenscreen keys from in Nuke or Flame. 12bit uncompressed RAW out of the FS7 gives you a much fatter negative to work with with no edge artifacts, so I'm a little mystified by this.

Some Scarlet screen grabs - Stuff I doubt I could recreate with my FS7

Once work, but I really don't see any reason why you could not produce the same work with your FS7, especially given its superior low light performance and a 1-2 stop advantage in exposure range. Out of the box Sony's color science has some of the dreaded broadcast curse, but the LC709 Type A LUT and a good colorist goes a long way in dealing with that.

Must be a matter of taste.

 

[Paul schefz]

red raw IS great...no question....but compression is still compression and the higher you go the worse things get....and there is nothing magical about red raw....3:1, 5:1 is clean, looks great.....6:1 things are getting a little softer, artifacts are starting to creep in.... 12:1, you might as well be shooting DSLR....this is all for MX...i am aware that dragon compression is better, but the files are also bigger, so maybe 6:1 is now what 5:1 used to be?
regardless: each RED body has a data transfer rate and the lower/cheaper the body the lower the transfer rate, the higher one has to crank the compression to get more pixels and more frames per sec.....
i found this list with data rates....look at RED 4K 6:1......151mbps.....FS7 4K XAVC-I has 600mbps

here is the link: http://vashivisuals.com/4k-beyond-video-data-rates/

 

[Surf it Mike]

I just luv the way posters keep comparing F7 with Scarlet MX , a camera from yesteryear.

The title of this thread is " Red Raven vs F7" it is not "vs Scarlet Mx" which isn't even in the Raven so WTF!

What's more the bit rate quoted above @ 4k is obviously Mx because on Dragon with mini mags this compression rate falls to somewhere below 3:1 @ 4k . See it here
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/red-mini-mags-smaller-faster-cheaper-media-scarlet-epic-dragon

Have no problem tearing Raven apart for its inferiority but please refer to the title of this thread for accurate and current comparison data....

 

[Paul schefz]

I just luv the way posters keep comparing F7 with Scarlet MX , a camera from yesteryear.

The title of this thread is " Red Raven vs F7" it is not "vs Scarlet Mx" which isn't even in the Raven so WTF!

What's more the bit rate quoted above @ 4k is obviously Mx because on Dragon with mini mags this compression rate falls to somewhere below 3:1 @ 4k . See it here
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/red-mini-mags-smaller-faster-cheaper-media-scarlet-epic-dragon

Have no problem tearing Raven apart for its inferiority but please refer to the title of this thread for accurate and current comparison data....

The link you posted just compares the old mags with the new mini mags which have faster R/W.....this has nothing to do with the data transfer rates the actual bodies are capable of.....the faster the body, the more options you get with the mini mags.....slightly higher fps, slightly better compression.....
the article I linked to was the only one I found and it seems they are taking those numbers from dragon, not MX since they mention 6K.....
either way scarlet dragon has lower data transfer rates then epic MX....

 

[Martin.G]

Looking forward to seeing the rental prices on this new camera. RED workflow is not suited for my work, but for low budget shorts i reckon this would be great.

 

[paulcurtis]

Typo. F5 is 16bit, FS7 12bit RAW, same/similar sensor. Not sure how you are getting to 10bit RAW out of the FS7.

Difference between specs and reality, if you have any RAW files (and you can see them before debayer/matrixing) check the least significant bits and see if they're always 0.... PM me if you want to know more as thats way off topic here.

I agree that Redcode / Cineform is one of the best compressed formats around. At least it's still in a RAW type wrapper, unlike Prores444. But at the end of the day it's still compressed at least 3:1, usually 5:1 and I see banding, random black speckles and compression noise when I work with RED footage. It's also a PIA to pull greenscreen keys from in Nuke or Flame. 12bit uncompressed RAW out of the FS7 gives you a much fatter negative to work with with no edge artifacts, so I'm a little mystified by this.

Having worked with a lot of RAW FS700 footage in Nuke that's not always the case. The RAW is compressed at source, then decompressed by the O7Q and stored uncompressed to avoid recompression artefacts. I've seen my fair share of compression artefacts in RAW because of this. However the workflow to debayer is where the edges live or die. I'm working with TF on getting better DNG debayering in there (along with a few issues). Again it's all workflow.

But compared to ProRes then yes. I think that a comment earlier about the Reds giving a meatier source is true of RAW from Sony as well. That meatier impression IMHO is the difference between ProRes and RAW.

I worked with Cineform for years and it always surprised me that it never made a bigger splash. But yeah, that has artefacts too and i don't work with Red footage but i'm sure that has it's fair share (when you have to work on pixel levels, perhaps not in general viewing). Alexa is the same and it can be damn noisy too.

VFX folk see footage totally differently than most!

Once work, but I really don't see any reason why you could not produce the same work with your FS7, especially given its superior low light performance and a 1-2 stop advantage in exposure range. Out of the box Sony's color science has some of the dreaded broadcast curse, but the LC709 Type A LUT and a good colorist goes a long way in dealing with that.

Must be a matter of taste.

Taste and Kool-aid

cheers
Paul

 

[Surf it Mike]

"a good colorist goes a long way in dealing with that" LOL & how much does that cost per hour ?

What's the difference between a colourist & God.......God knows he can make mistakes.

 

[paulcurtis]

Well all the specs are up now. Looks nice, 3:1 RedCode at 24. Light body. Red fan base going mad (tough to pull the signal from the noise over there)

My take home

- Accessories are expensive compared to the body, hope 3rd party support will happen
- Shipping March it seems and then by the time pre-orders are dealt with that would be pushed back, so realistic in hands? Not sure.

By the time it becomes available the Ursa Mini should be shipping, so next year will be an interesting year for battle of the RAW cameras.

I'd hope to see some R3D frames from it soon...

cheers
Paul

 

[Ben Scott]

Once work, but I really don't see any reason why you could not produce the same work with your FS7, especially given its superior low light performance and a 1-2 stop advantage in exposure range. Out of the box Sony's color science has some of the dreaded broadcast curse, but the LC709 Type A LUT and a good colorist goes a long way in dealing with that.

Must be a matter of taste.

Because specs on paper are meaningless at a certain level. The image from the Red looks nicer when you go out and shoot with it and bring it home. Remember, those images I posted haven't been graded, just tweaked in Redcine-X.

As for the rest of it, I find that stuff about Sony's colour science to be utterly meaningless when shooting Cine-EI, which is the only thing I ever do.