Red Scarlet Announcement Info

Well, clearly you are sold on the idea. That's great... I'm just offering up another opinion. I've seen my borther on shoots and his energy feeds the models and vice versa.... I personally think that will be lost by clicking a record button and being more like a director, looking through a monitor. I'm 100% sure he and the model could adapt to such a system, but I'm not sure it will be as beneficial as you imagine.

As I said though, sports and wildlife.... It will be amazing.
 
This is another reason why Canon would want to enter the digital cinema market. They know that in that future cameras will be capturing 60 fps all the time and people will be pulling stills from those high frame rates. That's encroaching on their stills terroritory, so they need to get in there with the technology to compete. So while they're at it, they might as well make motion capture cameras as well. They have all the expertise needed to do this: they make their own sensors, processing chips and lenses. They have decades of experience making cameras. Canon can easily go head to head with RED, Arri and Sony. Now they have to, because if they don't, these motion capture cameras will compete against their still cameras.
 
These are good points. I must admit, when I first heard about this I was thinking along the lines of people shooting video projects (with video settings) and also pulling frames out for a still usage. But now that you point it out, using a RED for a still project (with normal still settings) makes sense. It would give a flow to a shoot and help avoid a posed look for certain situations. It will add more post time as one would need to sift through a lot of frames.
 
Bassman2003 said:
It will add more post time as one would need to sift through a lot of frames.
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You can actually hit a button during record that tags the frame at that moment (so essentially it acts like the shutter button) which makes it quicker to go back and find the shots you wanted.
 
As a 22 year still photographer I can tell you no matter how much resolution any video camera has, now or in the future, being able to pull a quality still from a 1/48th or even a 1/120th shutter shot video that freezes the movement of the subject or camera operator enough is far and few between. The basic rule with shutter speeds in hand held still photography(not counting flash photography, locked on a tripod or fast moving action) is, the shutter speed needs to be twice that of the focal length. In other words, if your using a 50mm lens you should be shooting at 1/100 sec shutter, if your using a 200mm tele you should be no slower then 1/400th sec shutter. While this rule is not written in stone and you can definitely get away shooting at 1/60th with a 50mm lens if your careful, it makes wholesale pulling of acceptable stills from video shot at a 180 degree shutter a very rare occurrence.
 
Fotojorno said:
As a 22 year still photographer I can tell you no matter how much resolution any video camera has, now or in the future, being able to pull a quality still from a 1/48th or even a 1/120th shutter shot video that freezes the movement of the subject or camera operator enough is far and few between. The basic rule with shutter speeds in hand held still photography(not counting flash photography, locked on a tripod or fast moving action) is, the shutter speed needs to be twice that of the focal length. In other words, if your using a 50mm lens you should be shooting at 1/100 sec shutter, if your using a 200mm tele you should be no slower then 1/400th sec shutter. While this rule is not written in stone and you can definitely get away shooting at 1/60th with a 50mm lens if your careful, it makes wholesale pulling of acceptable stills from video shot at a 180 degree shutter a very rare occurrence.
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Well, with IS, those shutter speed rules are pretty much out the window. .....but still only a bunch of video guys would possibly think a photographer would work that way with a model. It's not gonna happen. There's just no energy in it. Photography is about capturing the moment when it happens, and I mean MOMENT, not a continous series of moments that you have to sift through for hours afterward. Yes, there are/can be missed moments, but that's what creates the energy in a shoot. The anxiety of a possible missed moment keeps me engaged and focused, and the subject feeds off that energy. That's not going to happen with a video camera. Take a poll. I dare say 99.9% of photographers would laugh at the idea.
 
Not saying I don't agree but... plenty of people thought sound would never catch on..... Chaplin, while others thought the transition to colour made no sense and bucked it at every turn.

New advancements will fundamentally change they way we do things and I think we need to keep open minds for these new changes otherwise risk being left behind. Though I think it's a bit off from totally taking over like DSLR's did, I do believe we will have hybrid camera's that make no sacrifice on either side eventually and it will change the game once again.

I know plenty of old school photographers who hate the digital cameras because you can take so many pictures people are too lazy to take the time to set up one proper shot... for the most part, so I understand the apprehension of moving on to motion image capture for fashion and stills.

It's a brave new world, and closing yourself off to new ideas will only put you further and further out of touch, though that does not mean you should blindly embrace every new fad that comes along!

Peace!
 
Fotojorno said:
As a 22 year still photographer I can tell you no matter how much resolution any video camera has, now or in the future, being able to pull a quality still from a 1/48th or even a 1/120th shutter shot video that freezes the movement of the subject or camera operator enough is far and few between. The basic rule with shutter speeds in hand held still photography(not counting flash photography, locked on a tripod or fast moving action) is, the shutter speed needs to be twice that of the focal length. In other words, if your using a 50mm lens you should be shooting at 1/100 sec shutter, if your using a 200mm tele you should be no slower then 1/400th sec shutter. While this rule is not written in stone and you can definitely get away shooting at 1/60th with a 50mm lens if your careful, it makes wholesale pulling of acceptable stills from video shot at a 180 degree shutter a very rare occurrence.
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Regarding this and f64manray's response...

I'm a decade plus pro still photographer and I recently had an experience that turned me around on exactly this point.

I had filmed some (un-named) politician for a range of web and TV spots in 720/60p on a Canon 7D. You know, slow it down and make the character look momentous.

This particular politician is known for his awful appearance on camera. You say "smile" and this plastic, forced expression appears to torture his face.

His team needed a still image for web use.

I went through the closest thing to not-awful I had, frame by frame, resulting in my discovery of a 1/60th of a second instant when his smile most resembles something found on a human being.

His team went nuts, essentially saying "OMG -- this is the best image we've ever seen of the guy!"

So, this experience really opened up my imagination to the future creative possibilities of a video style shoot from which still images can be extracted. My honest feeling is that when this workflow actually becomes a feasible reality -- the quality of photography will go places we only once saw in our mind's eye.

Personally, I find no charm in "anxiety of a possible missed moment." I see new ways of shooting, new techniques, and vastly better results in almost every field of photography. News, sports, portraiture, fashion, editorial -- it can all grow to new levels.
 
I'm also a still photographer and I can see the advantage of a high frame capture camera in certain situations.

But the problem is still shutter speed. Motion and still have two different shutter speed requirements (stills generally needing a wider range of speeds) resulting in two different types of motion blur. There's really no way around this until one day they are able to record two different streams of footage at once with two different electronic shutters.
 
NormanBates said:
^ I guess you know you have just described RED's HDR-X
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I understand it records two streams with different exposures, but how different can the shutter speeds be? For example, if I'm filming sports and want to extract stills, I would normally be shooting at shutter speeds 1/500 or even much higher which is several stops more than 1/48 or 1/60.
 
Piolet said:
I understand it records two streams with different exposures, but how different can the shutter speeds be? For example, if I'm filming sports and want to extract stills, I would normally be shooting at shutter speeds 1/500 or even much higher which is several stops more than 1/48 or 1/60.
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You can go 1/500 if youre planning to take stills from a motion... This is with photography in mind.
 
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Piolet said:
I understand it records two streams with different exposures, but how different can the shutter speeds be? For example, if I'm filming sports and want to extract stills, I would normally be shooting at shutter speeds 1/500 or even much higher which is several stops more than 1/48 or 1/60.
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It'll be a significantly higher shutter speed, I don't think that's the problem...the problem is that it's exposing for highlights, so you're working off a really dark image.

Edit: I'd actually be most interested in either Adobe's de-motion blurring tech, or perhaps going the other way with the Foundry's motion blur generation tech.
 
Shutter speed and frame rates are creative choices in both motion and stills work within the limits of whatever camera you are using. The advantage of Red is raw stills quality at motion frame rates. How you choose to use that range of capabilities involves practical and aesthetic choices. You are not confined to the 24fps and 180 degree shutter of classic narrative film for motion. Motion blur can be an aesthetic choice for stills too.
Some combat scenes in Saving Private Ryan were shot at high shutter speeds to accentuate a discontinuous staccato feeling to the action.
 
There's definitely room for pulling high-res stills from motion video for journalistic purposes, but anyone who thinks it'll replace still photography any time soon is fooling themselves. The power, consistency and flexibility of flash photography just can't be captured with rolling-shutter video - and there's too many types of shooting that require flash/strobe photography.

For natural light stuff, sure, but hi-quality stills images (in non-studio environments) need greater lighting control than you can get with video.
 
I've seen the magazine photos taken with the Red cameras, and they don't look any different than photos taken with SLR's. Any competent photographer can capture the "right" moment without shooting 30fps for the whole shoot. I think the guys using Red for stills are just trying to cover their asses. After all, they get paid a lot of money to get the pictures, so they better insure that they get the good ones, even if it means getting millions of bad ones, too.

Using a video camera for stills adds a lot more cost and time (in both production and post), and it limits you to continuous lighting situations and less mobility. Yes, there are times when it is an advantage - such as when you need both video and stills. But for most situations, if you only want stills, it's just more efficient to use a DSLR. Why use a $40k Epic when you can get the same pictures with a $1500 7D? And spend less time and effort doing it.
 
This is a good discussion. I would advise one to look at this situation from an exclusive still or video perspective. What is confusing is when first hearing about it, one thinks of shooting video with video settings and pulling frames for the Cosmo cover. Well we all know this would not be done. But, if you consider that the Epic probably probably has a clean image at higher ISOs, one could probably get the shutter into the 1/250th - 1/400/th range with without needing three-phase power for the lighting. This is plenty of shutter to freeze "normal" motion. So from a stills setting point of view it does not sound that crazy.

I for one think giving the model freedom to move would be a benefit. Just tell them they are on and shoot 60 seconds of looks. Stop, then shoot for another period of time. or whatever. This would allow the in between stuff to be captured. Sure it is different, but that does not mean it is without merit.
 
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