FS7: Some quick, unscientific side by sides of FS7 and Scarlet-W

G

Gene Sung

Veteran
Here's some quick side by sides of the FS7 against my Red Scarlet-W. These are DEFAULT / STOCK camera settings with NO alterations. Straight out of camera essentially. FS7 on BertLUT and LC709a and Scarlet-W. This is by no means a real test. I just wanted to see how the color sciences compare, so draw your own conclusions. I do like both cameras for different reason and both are great cameras.

IMO, BertLUT looks really good even against the Scarlet-W. For some weird reason which I have to test again, in the daytime living room shots, FS7 rated at ISO 800 was considerably brighter than Red at ISO 800. Once again, nothing concrete as I have to test again.

The top shots were just available daylight in my living room. The bottom shots were at night lit by a 1K Tungsten.

I shot the FS7 on Speed Booster (Full Frame) at the equivalent focal length and F-Stop of Super 35mm on Dragon. Zeiss ZF lenses

Once again, quick test just to see if I could match the cameras as I needed to use the FS7 as a B-Cam to the Red.

Here's a FULL RES LINK since DVXUser only allows small images.

http://www.builtbyugene.com/images_misc/Test01.jpg

FYI, tomorrow I'm leaving for Indonesia to surf my ass off for the next month so spotty internet and possible radio silence.

Test01.jpg
 
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When it comes to basic shooting there's not much in it, in fact, yesterday I had a producer ask if I'd shot a recent project on the new Red Weapon - their face when I said FS7 was priceless. That said, I'm still considering adding a Scarlet W to my arsenal, partly for the RAW 16bit colour, but mainly for its small footprint.
 
Agree completely.

You can make an IMAX camera look like a BMPCC under certain conditions.

My FS7 has been plenty good enough for the majority of work I've done. until it wasn't. And that's the point where a Red or Amira or Alexa would have shined.

It's like having two identical sportscars where one is limited to 70mph. Until you need to go to 75mph you're not going to notice a difference.
 
I'm hoping Sony will unlock higher bitrate recording in the FS7 like they've done with the F5/55 as for me the jump to RED would be about lighter compression more than anything. The lighter compression means more flexibility in grading which I believe leads to the 'better colours' comments for RED and Arri level cameras.

I'm not a fan of that BertLUT it gives the sick liver skin tones.
 
I don't really get the BertLUT love thing either. Have seen Gene post some nice screengrabs with it in the past but people have been talking like it's some sort of magic bullet Arri-Nator.
 
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I shot a very stylized B/W high contrast piece yesterday and I have to say my FS7 wouldn't have looked as nice as my Raven did in the highlight rolloff. We had some really hot Windows and this is where the new RED sensor shines.
Under other conditions the difference might not be so big
 
Yoak said:
I shot a very stylized B/W high contrast piece yesterday and I have to say my FS7 wouldn't have looked as nice as my Raven did in the highlight rolloff. We had some really hot Windows and this is where the new RED sensor shines.
Under other conditions the difference might not be so big
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I know I could tweak the highlight and the post is considerably more flexible with R3Ds, but if you look at these tests, with no tweaking / default setting, BertLUT is holding the highlights better than Red.

Dont get me wrong, I love the Scarlet-W. Way better menu, far better customer support, I love the Red body design, the best codec possible; but the FS7 is one hell of a camera for the price.
 
But it seems a really skewed test that doesn't mean anything real world. There isn't anything in those shots that stresses the latitude or highlight rolloff of either camera.

Yes the FS7 is one hell of a camera. Not even 'for the money'. And there's plenty of situations (outside image quality) where it would be preferable to shoot on it rather than on Red.

But that doesn't mean it is capable of as good an image as it when both systems are stressed.
 
No doubt The FS7 is a Great camera (I have 2 at the moment) and in lots of situations I prefer to use that over my RED.
(Did I mention audio?)
 
Thanks so much for posting these comparison shots. I've got a Raven on order and am considering whether to switch my order to Scarlet-W for the extra resolution. My only problem is that the noise level I'm seeing on the Scarlet-W and Raven footage has me reconsidering the Dragon sensor altogether and going instead with a Sony or Canon.

Looking at your images, I would say that the Scarlet-W is resolving more detail and has greater DR. The color accuracy/separation is also much better, as you can see in the subtle hues of the objects on the background shelves.

The real problem with the Scarlet-W/Raven is the poor ISO performance and the noise level above ISO 1000. That is likely the consequence of employing a sensor with relatively small photosites at 5.0 µ.

As a result, it's just not an ideal camera for low-light situations or instances where you need to push the ISO to 1600 or beyond. It's unfortunate as the Dragon image is otherwise truly stunning.
 
Kinok said:
Looking at your images, I would say that the Scarlet-W is resolving more detail and has greater DR. The color accuracy/separation is also much better, as you can see in the subtle hues of the objects on the background shelves.

The real problem with the Scarlet-W/Raven is the poor ISO performance and the noise level above ISO 1000. That is likely the consequence of employing a sensor with relatively small photosites at 5.0 µ.

As a result, it's just not an ideal camera for low-light situations or instances where you need to push the ISO to 1600 or beyond. It's unfortunate as the Dragon image is otherwise truly stunning.
Click to expand...

I should do more accurate side by sides, but the main purpose of this was just to see if the color sciences could be matched as I want to use the FS7 as a B-Cam.

as for detail and dynamic range, I feel they are pretty similar in real world use. In the daylight shots, things were surprisingly similar. I liked the Scarlet-W better on the Tungsten shot as it has a bit better color separation under those circumstances. One issue with the Red is the Blue channel is really noisy and this could affect green screen applications. The Blue channel on the FS7 is noticeably cleaner.

as for lowlight, I always light everything with at least an LED panel. Even with just a single 1K, I'm able to rate the S-W at 320 to 400 and it's quite clean. If you're standing in a dark field, FS7 will probably be better, but I never do that so its not an issue. For the way I work, I have not found noise to be an issue with the Scarlet-W.

I definately like the Red color science better then CineEI and LC709a as you just adjust the levels and add some saturation and it looks nice. De-logging with BertLUT though, puts the FS7 in ballpark range though in terms of speed to get it looking nice.

Like I mentioned, overall I like the Red Scarlet-W more for crew type jobs - better factory color science, better menus, way better company support, amazing codec, way cleaner HFR above 60fps, better form factor for gimbals.

FS7 is better for quick turnaround stuff - Speed Booster (I miss this so much), 2x crop, internal NDs, better lowlight, small compressed codec and de-logging with BertLUT puts the image in ballpark range.

Its ideal to have both if you can as I use both for different jobs, or use the FS-7 as B-Cam is nice to have.
 
The Raven and Scarlet R3D files I have looked at are actually pretty clean. It's the online footage that I downloaded from Vimeo that showed noticeable noise. Most of the time, it's because someone has gone up to ISO 2000 or 3200. The other problem is the compression artifacts that become apparent when going above 8:1, since this can also appear as "noise." I'm not the biggest fan of RED HFR because of this issue with the compression artifacts on the higher Redcode ratios.

One thing to note is that the Dragon sensor holds saturation very well when underexposed. This makes up for the lack of sensitivity, since the underexposed images are still very pleasing when it comes to color information.

My interest in the Scarlet-W is to replace the BMPC-4K that I currently shoot with, since it's a very limited camera and requires a rather cumbersome setup for attaching a battery. Like your experience comparing FS7 and Scarlet-W footage, I'm finding that the Scarlet-W in 5K has similar resolving power to the BMPC-4K in 4K RAW. I believe it has something to do with RED's aggressive OLPFs, since the anti-aliasing filter reduces the apparent resolution on the RED cameras. BMD doesn't employ such filters so you see more detail when comparing other 4K cameras but you also occasionally see moiré and some aliasing.

As for the FS7, I looked at it very carefully as it's probably the best all-round video camera under $10K and would suit some of my needs very well. It can also produce some nice footage in the right hands. Ultimately, however, I don't see XAVC-I as an improvement on Cinema DNG RAW, since it only solves one of my problems, data rate, while introducing others: banding and compression artifacts. R3D solves two problems at once when compared with Cinema DNG: it reduces the data rate to 100 MB/s while maintaining or improving the image quality. It's a magical combination and it's probably why so many people want to shoot on RED cameras, despite the cost of the proprietary mini-mags.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Like I mentioned, overall I like the Red Scarlet-W more for crew type jobs - better factory color science, better menus, way better company support, amazing codec, way cleaner HFR above 60fps, better form factor for gimbals.

FS7 is better for quick turnaround stuff - Speed Booster (I miss this so much), 2x crop, internal NDs, better lowlight, small compressed codec and de-logging with BertLUT puts the image in ballpark range.

Its ideal to have both if you can as I use both for different jobs, or use the FS-7 as B-Cam is nice to have.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this. Looking into having both cameras in the future, and not finding the obvious upgrade so appearent.

Anything more you might want to add, will be highly welcomed.
 
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