Why are RED Cameras Industry Standard?

Yeah, Eric is such an Arri fan boy, he’d never switch cameras even if it made sense.... and he never says anything good about other cameras....

Eric Coughlin said:
I thought Oblivion looked great on the F65.
Click to expand...

Eric Coughlin said:
Maybe Venice will be my next camera; I'll probably buy another high end camera in around year or two, which would likely be the Alexa Mini LF, Alexa Mini 4K Super35, or Sony Venice if the Venice gains a lot of popularity. Venice certainly has some tech advantages like higher resolution and higher 16 bit depth, ...we'll have to wait and see, as well as see just how popular the camera will become.
Click to expand...

EDIT: this post is defending Eric with his own quotes. This is a pro Eric post. I was using sarcasm to highlight that Eric is open to other cameras and camera platforms.
 
Last edited:
Eric Coughlin said:
I feel like a lot of the cameras tend to favor a color - with Canon it's orange, Panasonic is green, Red is red, Blackmagic is black, Arri is real, and Sony looks like crap.

Let me find another example of brown Venice footage...

There's some nice brown.
Click to expand...

I guess I just like the brown then.

I didn't watch your film, but chose some similar shots (low-light) and I favor your disliked Venice examples over your own ARRI skintones (shot by you/team)...but I also do understand that the $60K+ camera package you used is not defined by any single piece of work. (Trying to get you to understand color subjectivity and not insult.)

1.jpg

2.jpg

A.jpg

B.jpg
 
:-)

Eric might be right. Every time I see Arri compared with other camera's I can see the quality. But then again, the camera system is a bit pricy for me. And I think the audience doesn't care what camera was used, they only seem to like new versions of old movies or with old cartoon characters ruined by colorists who like teal and orange or brown or greenish.
 
Publimix said:
:-)

Eric might be right. Every time I see Arri compared with other camera's I can see the quality. But then again, the camera system is a bit pricy for me. And I think the audience doesn't care what camera was used, they only seem to like new versions of old movies or with old cartoon characters ruined by colorists who like teal and orange or brown or greenish.
Click to expand...
Haha! Pretty spot on!
 
Last edited:
NorBro said:
I guess I just like the brown then.

I didn't watch your film, but chose some similar shots (low-light) and I favor your disliked Venice examples over your own ARRI skintones (shot by you/team)...but I also do understand that the $60K+ camera package you used is not defined by any single piece of work. (Trying to get you to understand color subjectivity and not insult.)
Click to expand...
Uh, yeah, comparing a $2,000 budget movie which I was busy acting, producing, and co-directing such that I spent very little time on lighting, had inexperienced camera ops and co-DPs on it, did not operate those shots you just posted, as well as our tight schedule, and even said in that topic on that movie that that documentary style movie of mine did not make the Arri's shine is not a good example of Arri footage. Feel free to criticize my narrative demo reel more which was mostly shot on Arri, but even then, I'm no world class cinematographer with a big budget. When the big budget guys doing Top Gun, etc., still can't get the footage to look good as Arri, then you know there's a problem.

Those were also the worst shots of my entire movie in terms of color as I had to adjust the color a lot in post to get it to that point. I'll post frame grabs of the originals in a bit...

 
Last edited:
Since I later edited this sentence in to my earlier post, reposting..."Those were also the worst shots of my entire movie in terms of color as I had to adjust the color a lot in post to get it to that point. I'll post frame grabs of the originals in a bit..."

Original ungraded.
Mocku-edit-10-00-15-35-14-Still003.jpg


Ungraded with standard Arri 709 LUT.
Mocku-edit-10-00-15-35-14-Still002.jpg


My color grade in the final film.
Mocku-edit-10-00-15-35-14-Still004.jpg



I've said before I'm no pro colorist, but as seen, this shot was changed a lot in the final version as I didn't like the colors or lighting of how it was shot, so it proved to be the most difficult shot to grade. Which of course makes sense why you would chose the worst shot in terms of color for your sample.

He's being backlit by some ugly low CRI metal halide practical at the location, which is also hitting his face from bounce, which had a ton of green in it which I dialed back in the white balance settings in the camera, along with a single LED 1x1 adding some additional blue on his face.
 
Last edited:
Eric Coughlin said:
It's because Red offers 8K and resolution is very important to telling a story while most of the Arri cameras can't even shoot 4K which is required for all content on Netflix including content not commissioned by Netflix. Back in 2010 Arri used to be popular but they haven't updated their sensor once since then so most big Hollywood movies have moved on to the ever updating Red cameras. Another reason that Red is popular is because it has market savvy names and good marketing that appeal to the younger generation while Arri approaches marketing in a more straightforward and boring way which appeals to old timers who are behind the times and dying off.

My mom bought me my first Red when I was 22 and had just graduated from film school. Unfortunately my school only had Arri film cameras to shoot on so I didn't make any films until after I graduated and had a Red camera. A lot of my potential clients thought I was really cool because I had a Red camera and that made me feel good about myself and encouraged me to start making movies. I made my first movie 10 years later when I was 32 after having gone through owning 11 different models of the Red cameras, each iteration better than the previous. My first film I took my girlfriend out to a fair and filmed her eating ice cream, smiling at the camera on a Ferris wheel, laughing at a clown show, and I got lots of rack focuses from the lighting of the fair back to her face, all in slow motion with my wide open Rokinon primes. I put melancholic music to it and being that it is in 8K, the movie really has deep meaning, especially since her sister suffers from Alzheimer's.

The low light on the newest Red cameras are incredible; after spending just 15 minutes black balancing before each shot and about 10 hours denoising in post production for my one minute short film, I had a film that I knew would mean a lot to those who have suffered. And I plan to finish the edit eventually but I just bought another update of the latest Red camera and I need to figure out and purchase all the accessories for it since my previous Red's accessories are not backwards compatible, so the edit for that movie has gone on the back burner for now, plus a lot of the festival submissions aren't until later in the year, and I may want to push for a 2020 release to give more time to hype up the film.

As for Canon, Sony, and Panasonic, none of their cameras shoot 8K either, so they're all pretty pointless.
Click to expand...
Love....you....Eric!
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Well yeah, it's pretty typical to compare newcomers to the reigning champion, be it sports, electronics, automobiles, or anything. I mean, it's not like we're going to say things like, "Man, that Sony Venice is looking better than the AJA Cion."
Click to expand...

That's fine...it's more about writing off a look because it doesn't look as good as an ARRI (as you said in your own words).

And I've seen your reels before and I've always had nice comments about your work when you post your updates (mostly in the Canon section), but I will never understand why you (and people) cannot see that some of your footage can easily pass for a Venice, or RED, or mirrorless.

Color is imperfect.

We are not robots.
 
NorBro said:
That's fine...it's more about writing off a look because it doesn't look as good as an ARRI (as you said in your own words).
Click to expand...
I think I'm moreso comparing to real life. I was saying I've seen natural looking footage from Arri, while the Venice I've seen a lot of brown footage. That's not to say brown looks bad; it's a style, a look, that can be good or bad. I'd just like to see more true to life looking footage from the Venice. That's all. So, I'm really comparing to real life, as I feel looking real is a good starting point, and one that Arri gets close to in terms of colors. After you've got your camera starting at real, then you can go on to make whatever look you'd like. Kind of like how you ideally start with a calibrated monitor, even if your content is being distributed out to calibrated monitors or being stylized in a way that accurate skin-tones no longer matters.

I've shot on and edited various iterations of Red and have just never been impressed with the footage. I DPed a three day shoot with the Panasonic Varicam LT, but I didn't get a copy of the footage so aside from viewing samples online can only really comment on ergonomics and usability of that camera and not on personal experience in dealing with the footage. I've shot on the Sony FS7, which the colors that come to mind with that camera are grey and murky. I haven't shot on the Sony F55, F65, or Venice.


Taking from another topic where I compared footage I shot from the Amira to the Red Epic Helium 8K and the C300 Mark II.

Eric Coughlin said:
Amira and Red are ungraded aside from a LUT which was already applied when I brought it into Premiere. For the C300 Mark II (shot in Canon Log 3 Cinema Gamut), the second shot of just the guy, I applied a Cinema Gamut C-Log 3 to Rec 709 LUT, along with 60 sharpness in Premiere, and for the first shot, that same LUT did not work (looked really bad, why does the LUT not work for all shots if it works for one?), so I graded it manually with Colorista color wheels.

If you right click on the images, copy the url, you should be able to view them at full resolution in a new tab in your browser.

Arri Amira 3.2K, Canon 35mm T/1.5 CN-e
v7zx7Ox.jpg


Arri Amira 3.2K @ 200%, Canon 35mm T/1.5 CN-e
7rjzhtu.jpg


Red Epic-W Helium 8K, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
Red_Helium_Guy_1.jpg


Red Epic-W Helium 8K @ 200%, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
JaNjuyW.jpg


Arri Amira 3.2K, Canon 35mm T/1.5 CN-e
XPbcZva.jpg


Arri Amira 3.2K @ 200%, Canon 35mm T/1.5 CN-e
LPdNQHu.jpg


Red Epic-W Helium 8K, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
Red_Helium_Payton_1.jpg


Red Epic-W Helium 8K @ 200%, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
TUlbOH9.jpg


C300 Mark II 4K, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
C300_Memory_1.jpg


C300 Mark II 4K @ 200%, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
C300_Memory_2.jpg


C300 Mark II 4K, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
C300_Memory_3.jpg


C300 Mark II 4K @ 200%, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
C300_Memory_4.jpg


Arri Amira 3.2K, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
Amira_Plourde_1.jpg


Arri Amira 3.2K @ 200%, Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8
Amira_Plourde_2.jpg
Click to expand...

My experience has always been that it's just way easier to get images I'm happy with when shooting on Arri.


In my Steadicam reel, shot on Red is 0:36-1:00 (Red Epic Helium 8K), 1:27-1:36 (Red Scarlet), 1:47-1:55 (Red Scarlet), 1:56-2:09 (Red Epic Helium), and the rest is C300 Mark II (two shots at the end the color grade rendered incorrectly in the export; I've been meaning to fix that but I don't really do dedicated Steadicam work these days so low on my list of things to do). I feel the footage in my narrative demo reel, which was mostly shot on Arri, looks considerably better than the image quality in my Steadicam reel (before I had an Arri) which is C300 Mark II and Red.


 
Last edited:
NorBro said:
That's fine...it's more about writing off a look because it doesn't look as good as an ARRI (as you said in your own words).

And I've seen your reels before and I've always had nice comments about your work when you post your updates (mostly in the Canon section), but I will never understand why you (and people) cannot see that some of your footage can easily pass for a Venice, or RED, or mirrorless.

Color is imperfect.

We are not robots.
Click to expand...

I think everyone agrees with you that most high end cameras can easily pass for another camera. At least at a glance, or for a few shots.

The differneces being that it takes work to make cameras look like eachother, so generally the base look of a camera comes through in the end product. It is very rare for someone to try and make one camera look like another for an entire feature length film.
 
Last edited:
James0b57 said:
The differneces being that it takes work to make cameras look like eachother, so generally the base look of a camera comes through in the end product. It is very rare for someone to try and make one camera look like another for an entire feature length film.
Click to expand...
Which is why people often see short comparison videos where two cameras are made to match up well, and then jump to false conclusions and start spewing out nonsense like, "The camera doesn't matter, content is king, cameras are no longer holding us back, any camera can look great, etc."
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Which is why people often see short comparison videos where two cameras are made to match up well, and then jump to false conclusions and start spewing out nonsense like, "The camera doesn't matter, content is king, cameras are no longer holding us back, any camera can look great, etc."
Click to expand...

Agreed
 
You’ll also start seeing the downvotes slow down, as the users that are downvoting everything will run out of their downvote quota for the day.
 
You know, Eric, as i was scrolling up, i saw those screen grabs, and before realizing they were all different cameras, i immediately liked the Arri footage best.
 
DLD said:
C700 FF is $33,000. Codex Raw is another $7,000. The EFV is $6,000 more. That adds up.
Click to expand...

And, I posted this in the sales section....we are moving out our C700 S35 demo...body, VF, Mic holder, Dumb side controller, VCT plate, 28hrs of being turned on, for $23950.00 ....and you can take it to Canon and upgrade to FF for $5K.....now, back to the discussion, thx

Jim Martin
Filmtools
 
Jim Martin said:
And, I posted this in the sales section....we are moving out our C700 S35 demo...body, VF, Mic holder, Dumb side controller, VCT plate, 28hrs of being turned on, for $23950.00 ....and you can take it to Canon and upgrade to FF for $5K.....now, back to the discussion, thx

Jim Martin
Filmtools
Click to expand...
Still overpriced as I can get four doorstops from Amazon for just $9.95.

Amazon doorstop link.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top