Red Scarlet Vs. 5D3 Raw Sharpness Comparison

Ryan you have lost me here..

You seem to be saying that they are equally sharp on a 1080 timeline yet you would 'never' sharpen red footy on a 1080 timeline

So you might be saying - 5d3raw is sharp enough for a 1080 timeline, or you might be saying unsharpened downscaled red footy is as sharp as 5d3 footy - while failing to acknowledge that you could sharpen the red footage a whole bunch more?

My (minimal but focussed) experience with Red is that due to the OPLF sharpening is a legit part of the post process (AKA its soft out of the camera but sharpens well)

S
 
Surf it Mike said:
5D iii now with hack is back in the game, apart from the ridiculous workflow & that criticism is often levelled at Red (another myth).
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With GingerHDR ($150) the workflow is easy as pie (if you use CS6).

morgan_moore said:
Ryan you have lost me here..


You seem to be saying that they are equally sharp on a 1080 timeline yet you would 'never' sharpen red footy on a 1080 timeline


So you might be saying - 5d3raw is sharp enough for a 1080 timeline, or you might be saying unsharpened downscaled red footy is as sharp as 5d3 footy - while failing to acknowledge that you could sharpen the red footage a whole bunch more?


My (minimal but focussed) experience with Red is that due to the OPLF sharpening is a legit part of the post process (AKA its soft out of the camera but sharpens well)


S
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I'm saying the 5D footage is slightly sharper. And yes you can sharpen Red beautifully, but IMO it doesn't need it when down scaled to 1080p...it looks amazing downsscaled...tack sharpness would kill it's organic feel. The 5D3 is borderline TOO sharp @ 1080p, which can be softened slightly if desired for a dreamier look.
 
.. so if you need a nice 1080 deliverable 5d raw is 'good enough' and you dont need to pay out for Red?

I dont want to drift OT (Im sure I could find this lot out) but do you get on with ML? - can you playback in camera for example or get histos, or monitor sound and generally feel like you are using a camera not a science experiment?
 
Eventually you will.... Don't understand why you fail to accept that ML is a very well working open source project and things like RED are a done deal, that is now challenged.

As it is now, you can have a lot of useful things going in ML.

I just did a for fun test in the woods, and I was having peaking, cinescope crop marks and wave form at the same time as getting the raw footage. Ginger HDR plugin allows you to import the raw files straight into Premiere and AE but like any raw footage, it demands a computer which can handle it.

Otherwise just do a base grade on the raw files and chuck them out in ProRes of some sort (or something else).

In regards to sound, they are working on that. Last month they were able to put out the sound on the SD card while recording the footage on the CF card. That is not too different from having a dedicated sound guy where you need to sync up sound anyways.
My guess is that sound recording will be implemented again.
Playback in camera was enabled I think, but I haven't looked for it....

Workflow wise... don't compare a complete product with project based system.

However, there's absolutely nothing wrong with comparing image quality, and the raw footage is miles ahead of .h264.
 
Did you use the default ACR sharpening on the 5d? It already does quite a lot of sharpening on the RAW-stuff from the 5d and people don't realize it.
 
morgan_moore said:
.. so if you need a nice 1080 deliverable 5d raw is 'good enough' and you dont need to pay out for Red?

I dont want to drift OT (Im sure I could find this lot out) but do you get on with ML? - can you playback in camera for example or get histos, or monitor sound and generally feel like you are using a camera not a science experiment?
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It's absolutely good enough IMO. Very slight difference in IQ (speaking of Scarlet/One...haven't compared to Epic yet). If the budget doesn't include a steadicam operator, I'll be using the 5D3 since it weighs nothing & flies great on a glidecam...see this example - https://vimeo.com/68970165

For bigger budget gigs, I'll still use Red.

You just feel like you're using a regular DSLR that has more options/settings. ML adds histogram/waveforms/false color/etc. Playback is black & white & sluggish speed...so yes a downside there but I'm sure that will be fixed (Atomos Ninja & Scarlet/Epic initially had playback problems too...I dealt with choppy Ninja playback once upon a time until they updated).

Sound can be recorded to SD card, but I always record external audio anyway with mixer/engineer...so prefer to leave this option alone.
 
maarek said:
Did you use the default ACR sharpening on the 5d? It already does quite a lot of sharpening on the RAW-stuff from the 5d and people don't realize it.
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You are correct...re-uploading the video.

Red Scarlet has a slight edge in sharpness @1080p, and aliasing in the power lines is now 100% gone on the 5D3.
 
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Ryan Lightbourn said:
You are correct...re-uploading the video.

Red Scarlet has a slight edge in sharpness @1080p, and aliasing in the power lines is now 100% gone on the 5D3.
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Sharpening would not create aliasing, it would make it stronger, though. The aliasing isn't gone, it's there, it's just a soft image. The 5D3 image (hacked or not) also doesn't sharpen well at all, the first video you posted looked to be on the verge of over processing.

It would be strange to me if Scarlet, at 4K with no sharpening, coming out of Redcine or Resolve (especially) would be softer @ 1080 than the 5D3. Seems it was user error.

I'm not a fan of Scarlet, only used it once and hope to never have to use it again, yet here it clearly looks to be the better image. And, of course, is the better camera. Both look cool hovering above the water, though.
 
legrevedotcom said:
Eventually you will.... Don't understand why you fail to accept that ML is a very well working open source project and things like RED are a done deal, that is now challenged...I just did a for fun test in the woods,
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I dont fail to accept it - I was just asking for feedback from someone who has done more than 'fun tests in the woods'..

S
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
The power lines on that island (Spanish Wells) are all painted in black & white stripes. Since the 5D3 shots were a little closer to some of them...it looks like aliasing. Aliasing is EXTREMELY low in raw mode.

See blown up example here:
http://ryanlightbourn.com/uploads/5d3raw/power_lines.jpg
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Oh, I've gone and had it out with the 5D3 Hack, I do understand that it's far better than it was before! xD

What I'm responding to's the post saying "the moire is gone." It really isn't, it's just the image is still soft so it's not as apparent. It's very apparent if you leave the default ACR sharpening on. Less than Blackmagic and a few other options, but still there.
 
Kholi said:
What I'm responding to's the post saying "the moire is gone." It really isn't, it's just the image is still soft so it's not as apparent. It's very apparent if you leave the default ACR sharpening on. Less than Blackmagic and a few other options, but still there.
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Gotcha, indeed.
 
100% crop from raw originals (click my link...ignore DVXuser's compressed image below):

5D left, Scarlet right:
http://ryanlightbourn.com/uploads/5d3raw/raw.png

Scarlet wins, but the fact that the 5D3 has us Red users pixel peeping for differences is pretty exciting.

With the Scarlet, BMCC, Sony's F & Canon's C series, DSLRs were fizzling away in the indie/low-budget world, but I think they're about to make a strong comeback. Time will tell.
 

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Seriously... if you ran those two clips past an audience who weren't pixel peeping but just wanted to see a couple of movies, they wouldn't tell the difference.

Again isn't like we always say in here... if you have the audience noticing the technicalities of the shot or lack there of, you've got bigger problems than how you set up the shot.

For instance I liked Hunger Games... I really did. The second time I noticed how blocky the shadows were in the night scenes. Did that make it a bad movie? Did that mess up the blockbuster ticket office; answer is given isn't it.
 
legrevedotcom said:
Seriously... if you ran those two clips past an audience who weren't pixel peeping but just wanted to see a couple of movies, they wouldn't tell the difference.
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Yeah the pixel peepers noticed things that I didn't initially see, and I've been sifting through hours upon hours of Bahamas footage since I shot it. And I don't care what they say...I do have an eye for subtleties, but when you're scrubbing through beautiful looking images, they become irrelevant.

I went from DSLR > FS-100 (for more sharpness) > Sony F3 (for more sharpness & more DR) > Red Scarlet/One (for more sharpness, DR, raw, and 4k), and never dreamed I'd buy another DSLR.

Once ML made this announcement, I was excited as hell...didn't give a s*%t that I didn't own that brand of camera. I think about the fact that as DSLRs improve, they WILL match a Red Epic's video quality in the near future. ML is hitting higher than 1080p resolutions in raw on the 5D3 already. The D800 has better DR (in stills) than the Epic. This hack is probably causing chaos and panic with these companies. Prices will drop. We all win.
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
Yeah the pixel peepers noticed things that I didn't initially see, and I've been sifting through hours upon hours of Bahamas footage since I shot it. And I don't care what they say...I do have an eye for subtleties, but when you're scrubbing through beautiful looking images, they become irrelevant.

I went from DSLR > FS-100 (for more sharpness) > Sony F3 (for more sharpness & more DR) > Red Scarlet/One (for more sharpness, DR, raw, and 4k), and never dreamed I'd buy another DSLR.

Once ML made this announcement, I was excited as hell...didn't give a s*%t that I didn't own that brand of camera. I think about the fact that as DSLRs improve, they WILL match a Red Epic's video quality in the near future. ML is hitting higher than 1080p resolutions in raw on the 5D3 already. The D800 has better DR (in stills) than the Epic. This hack is probably causing chaos and panic with these companies. Prices will drop. We all win.
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When you do a comparison shoot of course people will pixel peep. Also going to your vimeo link most if not all of your projects in the settings say you shot them on a 5d Mark II, so why the hate for dslr.......
If you shoot 1 man projects as you say I really don;t see how you can afford a Red Epic camera, so Dslr's make a lot more sense.
 
J.F.R. said:
When you do a comparison shoot of course people will pixel peep. Also going to your vimeo link most if not all of your projects in the settings say you shot them on a 5d Mark II, so why the hate for dslr.......
If you shoot 1 man projects as you say I really don;t see how you can afford a Red Epic camera, so Dslr's make a lot more sense.
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You're 100% right about the comparison video pixel peeping...I was wrong to criticize that.

And btw many of those videos only contain 1 or 2 shots w/ 5D2. When I'd send clients videos with F3 s-log as A-cam, and 5D2 as B-cam, 9 times out of 10 they'd ask me to pull the 5D2 shots because they stood out and didn't look very nice.

The 5D2 was revolutionary when it first came out. But I remember selling my EX1 & Letus adapter, receiving the 5D2, seeing the footage straight out of the camera for the first time, and thinking "oh s*%t...what have I done!?". It was soft. There was moire and aliasing. The dynamic range was not super great and the compression sucked. But I got used to it. Most of my projects were straight to web, so the lightweight setups were great for my back.

But years passed and DSLRs simply didn't improve. I eventually figured out that THEY were the limiting factor in the D.P. side of my career. My visuals weren't getting any better. Once I moved on, I got bigger & better paying gigs.

I got an FS-100 and it added a little sharpness, still not good enough so I eventually upgraded to the F3 and got more sharpness and dynamic range...something was still not right. It wasn't until the too-good-to-be true Red Nov. '12 deal, that I bit the bullet and ordered a BT One. Once I shot on the MX sensor, everything changed. The camera was no longer the limiting factor. It was me. Sharpness, high dynamic range, raw, and filmic motion rendering were the three things I needed for the image I had been craving (4k was a nice addition, but my clients are still requesting 1080p deliveries). I also bought a used Scarlet to have this image in a smaller form factor. I always hated Red fanboys...but they're right...their cameras are incredible.

I strongly considered the $9,500 Scarlet-Dragon upgrade, but the Magic Lantern hack changed my decision. I love full frame. I love raw. I love sharp 1080p. I love 4k, but don't really need it yet. By the time I need 4k, some f**ker will have it hacked raw into a full frame DSLR with 14+ stops of dynamic range and my life will be complete.

So to make a long story short...I don't hate DSLRs. They're revolutionary and have no doubt changed the independent film world for the better. I just hate the 2008 DSLR look that plagued the industry until now. Many people say it's your story that sells. But some hipster with a T3i is gonna make a hell of a lot less money on their artsy Vimeo Staff Pick than the guy shooting Nike commercials on a Red Epic.
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
You're 100% right about the comparison video pixel peeping...I was wrong to criticize that.

And btw many of those videos only contain 1 or 2 shots w/ 5D2. When I'd send clients videos with F3 s-log as A-cam, and 5D2 as B-cam, 9 times out of 10 they'd ask me to pull the 5D2 shots because they stood out and didn't look very nice.

The 5D2 was revolutionary when it first came out. But I remember selling my EX1 & Letus adapter, receiving the 5D2, seeing the footage straight out of the camera for the first time, and thinking "oh s*%t...what have I done!?". It was soft. There was moire and aliasing. The dynamic range was not super great and the compression sucked. But I got used to it. Most of my projects were straight to web, so the lightweight setups were great for my back.

But years passed and DSLRs simply didn't improve. I eventually figured out that THEY were the limiting factor in the D.P. side of my career. My visuals weren't getting any better. Once I moved on, I got bigger & better paying gigs.

I got an FS-100 and it added a little sharpness, still not good enough so I eventually upgraded to the F3 and got more sharpness and dynamic range...something was still not right. It wasn't until the too-good-to-be true Red Nov. '12 deal, that I bit the bullet and ordered a BT One. Once I shot on the MX sensor, everything changed. The camera was no longer the limiting factor. It was me. Sharpness, high dynamic range, raw, and filmic motion rendering were the three things I needed for the image I had been craving (4k was a nice addition, but my clients are still requesting 1080p deliveries). I also bought a used Scarlet to have this image in a smaller form factor. I always hated Red fanboys...but they're right...their cameras are incredible.

I strongly considered the $9,500 Scarlet-Dragon upgrade, but the Magic Lantern hack changed my decision. I love full frame. I love raw. I love sharp 1080p. I love 4k, but don't really need it yet. By the time I need 4k, some f**ker will have it hacked raw into a full frame DSLR with 14+ stops of dynamic range and my life will be complete.

So to make a long story short...I don't hate DSLRs. They're revolutionary and have no doubt changed the independent film world for the better. I just hate the 2008 DSLR look that plagued the industry until now. Many people say it's your story that sells. But some hipster with a T3i is gonna make a hell of a lot less money on their artsy Vimeo Staff Pick than the guy shooting Nike commercials on a Red Epic.
Click to expand...


Great post, Salute......
 
Ryan Lightbourn said:
You're 100% right about the comparison video pixel peeping...I was wrong to criticize that.

And btw many of those videos only contain 1 or 2 shots w/ 5D2. When I'd send clients videos with F3 s-log as A-cam, and 5D2 as B-cam, 9 times out of 10 they'd ask me to pull the 5D2 shots because they stood out and didn't look very nice.

The 5D2 was revolutionary when it first came out. But I remember selling my EX1 & Letus adapter, receiving the 5D2, seeing the footage straight out of the camera for the first time, and thinking "oh s*%t...what have I done!?". It was soft. There was moire and aliasing. The dynamic range was not super great and the compression sucked. But I got used to it. Most of my projects were straight to web, so the lightweight setups were great for my back.

But years passed and DSLRs simply didn't improve. I eventually figured out that THEY were the limiting factor in the D.P. side of my career. My visuals weren't getting any better. Once I moved on, I got bigger & better paying gigs.

I got an FS-100 and it added a little sharpness, still not good enough so I eventually upgraded to the F3 and got more sharpness and dynamic range...something was still not right. It wasn't until the too-good-to-be true Red Nov. '12 deal, that I bit the bullet and ordered a BT One. Once I shot on the MX sensor, everything changed. The camera was no longer the limiting factor. It was me. Sharpness, high dynamic range, raw, and filmic motion rendering were the three things I needed for the image I had been craving (4k was a nice addition, but my clients are still requesting 1080p deliveries). I also bought a used Scarlet to have this image in a smaller form factor. I always hated Red fanboys...but they're right...their cameras are incredible.

I strongly considered the $9,500 Scarlet-Dragon upgrade, but the Magic Lantern hack changed my decision. I love full frame. I love raw. I love sharp 1080p. I love 4k, but don't really need it yet. By the time I need 4k, some f**ker will have it hacked raw into a full frame DSLR with 14+ stops of dynamic range and my life will be complete.

So to make a long story short...I don't hate DSLRs. They're revolutionary and have no doubt changed the independent film world for the better. I just hate the 2008 DSLR look that plagued the industry until now. Many people say it's your story that sells. But some hipster with a T3i is gonna make a hell of a lot less money on their artsy Vimeo Staff Pick than the guy shooting Nike commercials on a Red Epic.
Click to expand...

Ha, good stuff! Cheers!
 
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