HD For Indies

Looks pretty damn good to me, but is this an uncorrected image from the camera? Like with the previous image, there seems to be a little flatness to the image.
 

If it looks 'flat' it is possible you are not viewing it under the correct colour profile (see above). Uncorrected it does look rather flat.

On the subject of compression ratio, the shipping version will not be 8-10 times more data. If you read Graeme's post (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=751400#post751400) it will be more like twice the data rate. The 100:1 ratio I believe is as compared to a 12-bit uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB file. Could be slightly misleading, but I'm sure that wasn't Jim's intention.

Nick
 

No, not Jim's intention - he just was just looking at what goes in v what comes out, rather than figuring out all the scary math that I do.
 

Mack, are you saying that it looks flat after loading into Photoshop and assigning the appropriate colorspace? (Edit > Assign Profile > Adobe RGB 1998) You can critique it however which way you want to (and rightly so), but I wouldn't really call it flat.

Thanks for the post, Mike. That is some damn shallow DOF. Shot with the new zoom, I suppose.

Matt Jeppsen
FresHDV.com
 

Sorry for the dupe. Nick beat me to it.

Matt Jeppsen
FresHDV.com
 

I have Photoshop set to "ask on profile mismatch" and then when an image such as this which is assigned a colour profile is opened I can choose "Use the embedded profile (instead of the working space)". "Assign Profile" seems like the wrong thing to do, as the file should already have that profile assigned to it.

On the subject of DoF, I read on one of the forums (fora?) that it was shot with the Red 300mm prime. That explains the very shallow depth of field. If you look closely you can see which of her eyelashes are in the plane of focus, and which ones aren't!

Nick
 

I think the image subject matter is preferable to what they were shooting before. A much more realistic real-world test. Graduating from the ranks of something you might find on the third row of the magazine shop stand up to TV movie / After school special.

And it does look good. And it does underscore the actor concerns of the new medium. If you read the dvx list someone comments "actors will have to clean their ears for this." and other things people will say when they discover actors are real people with real skin. Film is very forgiving in that way - perceptual sharpness but with the grain creating a softening effect.
 

The chicks in that shot are waaaay too skinny for 1940's America! Where's the casting director...

Looks awesome, it's a great time to be making movies.
 

I've noticed that there's something up with the color tint/hue in the shadows. Notice her neck, what's up with that?
I noticed something similar with the bubblegum shot too, in the hair, the shadows almost looked greenish.
This one differs because it appears to be more blue, still, not very natural looking shadow profile.
They gotta fix that.
 

digigenic - was that true with the Adobe 1998 RGB loaded up?
 

whats the colour (I'm Australian) compression? Do we at least have 4:2:2 or maybe even 4:4:4? Pretty please!?
 

Sam - RAW is all the pixels, so 4:4:4, or arguably a little less since it is Bayer pattern, but in any case it is ALL THE INFO the sensor is getting, so unlike traditional broadcast gear that throws out color info, this does NOT.

Definitively.
 

Really isn't it time to post a full 4k uncompressed pic in raw format? The pic is pretty but i can't tell anything useful from it in this state. Ideally an outside shot on a sunny day with a macbeth chart.

Also, it would be great to find out how critical focus was judged. Through the eyepiece or a 30 inch monitor. This is still the one sticking point for me.
Don't get me wrong, I have a mate who is getting camera 70 something and I will jump at theh chance of using it but does anyone remember finding out the hard way that the lcd on a PD150 wasn't reliable for focus? Or that the back focus of an HD camera of any flavour was slightly out but it looked fine through the eyepiece and on the standard def split? I really want the RED to be awesome but this issue is going to be a deal breaker for non indie work.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

I am stumped.
This image presents even more clipping, both in the shadows and in the highlights. Find screen grab with histogram dispaly from Photoshop:
http://ikontact.net/pix/redmilkhist2.jpg
 

nick,

you'll *have* to assign profile because somebody at red seems to be convinced that this is the best option to preserve the full color space -- it is, but then they compress it into a crappy small jpeg file and forget to include the profile information (to be fair, it might well be that the profile got lost in the transition from the original post to mike's blog preview).

so manually reassigning it is the only way.

diginegic,
jeah, the neck has some weird green distortion in the shadows (and jup mike, that in Adobe RGB, have a look yourself) bt that's something i'd expect in a prototype image. getting accurate color profiles is difficult and requires a lot of testing.

as for the clipping, i can only assume that this happened in post to make the pic look snappy, since even a crappy HDV camera wouuld be able to handle the contrast range of the close-up.

++ chris
 

hey

i looked at this thread yesterday, somebody had a link to the DALSA web images, good comments, i checked those TIFF's out....

now i come back today for further info and all the links and comments about that are gone!
and gone too --all the comments that were not " RED is sooo groovy"

what gives?
 

no, the dalsa links were actually in this *other* entry (http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/10/new-red-footage-to-be-shown-at-la-nov.html) - and in fact the comments were pro-red rather than pro-dalsa.

ok, so mike is excited about red (and who can blame him).. but stop the conspiracy ;)
++ chris
 

Chris,

Sorry, you're right about assigning the colour profile. I was looking at the original 2k from dvinfo.net which has the profile assigned. I assumed the version Mike posted was the same one, which we now know it isn't! Blogger's re-compression obviously strips the colour profile meta-data.

Nick
 

okay
i looked at DALSA-- and the one of the kid in the greenhouse shows a much higher contrast range without any clipping ( 16bit TIFF) and is true 4K across...
so Red needs to show us some sun and shadows... 14 stops of zones... like Dalsa has...{Wings_shot40}

LENSES-- i noticed that the 4K (chick smokin) was shot with a 65mm cooke lens-- and the quality shows... the bokeh looks good...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh
but the zoom lens shot ( chicks and bus outside) has some funky Bokeh going on, it seems... i would like to see a point source light out of focus to get a better view of it, but it seems uneven...
(of course, all cinematographers/photographers say zoom lenses are only for news crews and amateur hacks... and i agree)
so looks like best to get some cooke or zeiss primes, since the camera can obviously pick up the diffference...
 

Dalsa's a shipping product.

Red doesn't ship until next year.
 

oh yeah - and Dalsa's $3000/day...plus rest of package.
 

Hopefully no-one is expecting the Red lenses to be on a par with arguably the best and some of the most expensive prime lenses in the world (Cookes). Also bill EVERYONE uses zoom lenses. Go hire 'Death in Venice' or Star Wars for that matter.
But it really is time for RED to put out some images from an uncontrolled lighting environment in the full uncompressed format with a lookup table or a set of guidelines for presenting the image so that we can actually see what comes off the chip rather than these pretty looking promo images. That way we can have a better understanding of what is clipping at capture and what is being distorted and clipped in post. I agree that the red shots look more impressive than the Dalsa shots but at least in providing the stills at 16bit tif they stand or fall on true image quality rather than having endless 'oh it's the jpeg compression, oh it's the colour space' excuses. If it's file size that's an issue, compress stills to OpenEXR which is lossless and relatively small.
Actually on that if Graeme is hovering, please make sure you can output full gamut OpenExr's from Red converter, those of us in vfx will love you forever.
 

Jim posted a second image with a different conversion. Please read his post athe bottom of the page:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=78564&page=4
 

okay
i checked on some lens prices, and you can get FIVE zeiss primes PL mount for around $12,000 here... 12 to 85mm
http://www.cinematechnic.com/products/sales_lenses.html

and the red zoom cost $10K

so it would make economic and artistic sense to use the primes, for the same money...
and yes, toby, they have been using zoom lenses since forever... hitchcock did that cheezy trombone shot... where you zoom in and dolly backwards... in "vertigo" in the 50's

but if you want the best looking image, use a good lens... the depth of field ( or lack of depth of field is what most people are after) and the out of focus look ( bokeh) is what gives it FILMIC quality

and if you rent a 35mm arriflex, it shows up with a box of prime lenses-- and they big boys use them for a reason... because they look better
and there is no point in taking the RED camera, which has proved itself to have the resolution to show the difference between a zoom and prime lens...
i saw the difference...

so what i'm saying is... why hamstring a high-res camera with an inferior lens? get a camera with a PL mount on it, and get a good set of lenses!!

the one question i have is what is the diagonal distance across the CCD? so i can tell if a super 16 or 35mm lens is needed... i am guessing super 16, since the red zoom is 18mm to 85mm

bill
 

I don't really want to get into a thing here and I'm certainly not defending the red camp but it is quite possible that the red zoom may be crisper than a second hand set of MkII's (Zeis Primes) given the the age of the lenses and would almost certainly be crisper than a set designed for Super16. Again there's more glass in a zoom but Red is flying the oakley optics pedigree pretty high.
Plus if we get to see some shots like we all want to with harsh sun etc We can see how the lens compares to the high amount of blue fringing in the highlights you get with MkII primes or the red fringing if you are using MkI lenses. None of them compare with the Cookes but you won't get them for that kind of money. Plus 'bokeh' is really a matter of taste as well as optics. I'm quite sick of the triangular flavour you get with Zeiss Super Speeds.

Bill does raise an interesting point about lens markings because for all of the fanfare about being able to window in to do hd rather than interpolate, no one has said what the lenses are marked up for and I can see the tortured looks of my focus puller mates trying to work out the circle of confusion on a lens that isn't marked up properly on a camera that doesn't have an optical viewfinder and if you are shooting at 4k, has no means of 1:1 monitoring.

I'm feeling that RED are playing everything too close to their chests in the hope than when the cameras are released there will be a universal "wow!" but in my gut I'm thinking that while the low budget crowd will be thrilled, these cameras won't be ready for serious film making until version 2 or 3
 

Bill,

So you don't like the bokeh of the RED zoom lens that was used to shoot the two women in front of the bus shot, eh. Hmmmm, if you had your facts straight, you'd know that image was shot using the new RED 300mm prime lens, as stated by Jim Jannard when he first posted the image on DVX User and DV Info RED forums. And yet your eyes somehow can see a big difference between the Cooke 65mm and a supposed RED zoom when a zoom wasn't even used on the shot? The RED 18-85mm zoom won't even ship until late 2007, has not finished construction yet, and thus certainly has not been used for any shots, and you already have it judged as "inferior"?

Then you display further ignorance of RED technology by asking what the diagonal distance across the CCD of RED is? RED doesn't use CCDs - it uses a single CMOS sensor.

And zooms are just for news crews and amateur hacks? That news to the scores of professional cinematographers who regularly use zooms when certain productions and shots call for it, along with their usual primes. Cooke makes several excellent zooms: S4/i 15-40mm T2 CXX zoom, 18-100mm zoom, and the 25-250mm zoom. I guess you'll have to tell Steven Spielberg he's a hack because he used a Cooke 20-100mm zoom (predecessor of the 18-100 zoom) as his primary lens in making the Emmy-winning mini-series "Band of Brothers". And Cooke is sure selling a lot of those $35k zooms to "new crews and amateur hacks"! Bill, I think you ought to tell Cooke to stop making and selling all those zooms - they're giving cinematographers a bad name!

As I've itemized, you don't seem to have your facts straight on a lot of the things you have posted.

And who am I? An Emmy-winning director/DP/cinematographer with 30+ years experience and I'm a national Emmy Awards judge. I'm a cinematographer, videographer, and photographer who uses primes and zooms regularly, like most of my professional associates.
 

I think in fact it is the single of the girl with the milk bottle which was shot on the Red 300mm lens. I believe the 2-shot with the bus was actually shot with the Cooke 65mm S4. So Bill you are barking up the wrong tree if you are using this shot as an example as to how much worse a Red lens is than a Cooke!

I can't be 100% certain of these facts, but Jim certainly said that the Cooke 65mm and the Red 300mm were the only two lenses they used on the exterior shoot. I'm guessing that the 2-shot was not done on the 300mm, as I would think they would need to be ridiculously far away to get this wide a shot with a 300mm lens. But I could be wrong.

Nick
 

okay ,
nick, i believe you are right... it doesn't seem to be a 300 mm shot... and if it was the cooke, then i stand corrected.. but what i was talking about on the bokeh is....
look behind the girl on left.. the big green pump has a silver "knob"
and there is this overly white fringing on the top, but not the bottom.. and the fringe seems uneven... like very little on the left... I blew it up in photoshop, and just looks funky to me... and the red and white sign in back, the blur seems to have "echoes"... like stripes rather than an even blur
don't know which lens it is, but just seems funky-- i hate to be a nit-picky here...but just something about it seems askew... and its seems not to be the camera

and yes, steve, the red uses a cmos (like my kids sony camcorder) rather than a ccd... i was using the term "ccd" like "xerox" to mean any electronic chip... but i am still wondering what the diagonal distance is to compute the focal length of the lenses needed...
and , by the way, CMOS sensors pick up infared radiation ( at least the sony's do) while CCD's don't... will the RED have infrared capabilities??

and my point is
TV is a much lower resolution format ... 480 pixels high... but this camera can obviously pick up way more information and show the defects of the lenses..

and steve i think thats cool that you judge the emmy awards! and my personal grudge against zoom lenses probably goes to the crud done on TV with them... like for example .. every time someone makes a point on "boston legal" they crash zoom in on their face! like every 30 seconds! how about they outlaw the zoom on that show, and make them build a dolly with a monster spring on it, so the camera would actually move in 20 feet towards the guy.. in a quarter of second! just as the zoom effect implies!
hey, audience, don't get the point the lawyer just made? well, we will beat you over the head with a crash zoom to remind you! or maybe keep you awake!

so i admit, i have a personal grudge against zooms... but the optics of primes are better ( less glass is always better)

my point was... and is... the camera can pick up lens aberrations... shouldn't we think more like its an arriflex 35mm rather than a sony HD camera? and mount lenses accordingly??

steve, i wanted to check out your shows... i punched in "steve gibby" to imdb... but no luck...but they are not real good on TV work... is there another name?
 

Bill,

To quote my Aussie friends “No worries”!

Nick is right, the medium shot of the two girls and bus in background was shot using a Cooke 65mm S4/I prime. The CU shot of the girl drinking milk was shot with a prototype of the new RED 300mm prime.

Here are the specs on those two shots:

CU Girl/milk: Shot in 4k REDCODE RAW, frame grab from 24fps stream (1/48th second). Lens was RED 300mm prime @ 4.9k original resolution, cropped to 4k, compressed via REDCODE to a 25:1 ratio (twice normal REDCODE RAW compression), then scaled to 1K, and finally JPEG compressed to 8bit. So we have a prototype lens, twice normal REDCODE compression, scaling, and then compression to JPEG 8bit. That frame has been compressed and tortured to death and yet it looks very good.

2Girls with Bus: Frame grab from 24fps stream @ 1/48th sec REDCODE RAW stream. No dead pixel correction, no noise reduction, no sharpening, no Photoshop tweaking, straight out of REDCINE software. Lens used was a Cooke 65mm S4/I prime.

Considering that both shots were done in 4k REDCODE RAW, not tweaked in any way, but especially in the case of the CU, were compressed to death, they are excellent images that demonstrate what the not-finalized RED One camera is capable of.

Image and Lens Formats: Here’s a link to the page on the RED web site that will answer all your questions about the image format and lens format options on the RED One camera. Link: http://red.com/formatoptions.htm
The camera shoots in 2540p, 4k, 2k Scaled, 2k Windowed, 1080p, 720p, and 1080i. Lens options, depending on the image format used, include S35mm, 35mm, S16mm, and 2/3” B4.

Infrared capabilities: This has not been confirmed. There is a thread on the subject currently on the DV Info RED forum, link: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=78659

Zooms for TV: I agree that zooms are mis-used on some TV programs. That’s not the fault of the zoom, but rather a funky artistic choice by the directors and DPs. Zooming just to zoom, or feeling that you have to zoom just because you’re using one, are simply not good artistic decisions!

Zooms versus Primes: The new generation of cine zooms, typifies by the Cooke 15-40mm T2 S4/I CXX, are almost equal to primes in image at each focal length of their zoom range. I review film and video equipment for several national magazines. I recently included the Cooke 15-40mm S4/I zoom in a brief review. It is expensive ($45k USD), but the images it produces are remarkably similar to Cooke primes at each focal length. Most good shooters don’t use zooms like the Cooke 15-40 or Cooke 18-100 to do a bunch of zooming while the camera is rolling. They (and myself) usually use them as a “variable focal length primes”, getting good images at various focal lengths in a fast-moving production environment. Most will use the new RED 18-85mm zoom in the same manner. Anyone who makes a living shooting knows that primes have usually give us the best image possible. Primes are awesome! That said, the new generation of cine zooms have made remarkable progress in glass, elements, and construction, making them a very viable option for an increasing range of productions. I don’t see primes and zooms as an either/or situation in my toolbox. I simply analyze the requirements of each particular shot and then use the tool that is most appropriate for it.

RED Lenses: I expect RED lenses to be nearly on a par with top-quality Zeiss and Cooke lenses. Why? Jim Jannard is a 30-year veteran cinematographer, photographer, and videographer. His camera work is impeccable. He owns a collection of around 1,000 film, photo, and video cameras and lenses. He’s not just some entrepreneur billionaire that is scamming the motion media marketplace – he’s one of us, a veteran shooter. At Oakley there is a full-featured film, photo, and TV studio, stocked with ARRIs, Varicams, F900s, etc., with an excellent production staff. Optics has been Oakley’s core business for 3 decades now. Add all this up, and I believe that RED lenses will be top-level in quality, at real affordable prices – a combination we’ve never seen in the motion media industry.

I use film and video cameras from virtually every manufacturer, and I’ll continue to as need for projects. That said, I have reserved two RED One cameras, the RED 18-85mm zoom, and the RED 300mm prime. I expect them to be valuable additions to my tool chest of cameras and lenses.

I have never taken the time to create an IMDB profile. You can find in-depth information on me and my past projects by simply doing a Google search for “Steve Gibby”, and/or by visiting my two company web sites at: www.cut4.tv and www.4umat.com

I have no personal axe to grind with you. I merely felt that your criticism of RED lenses was premature and unfounded. I hope this long post has clarified my concepts and intentions. I fully suspect that many “A-list” directors, DPs, and cinematographers stepped up and reserved RED cameras and lenses before the reservation period expired, this past Tuesday night. Since I write article for several national TV and film magazines, I also expect to be writing several on-set and on-location articles next year revealing what productions RED is being used on and by whom. Stay tuned…

Cheers!
 

hi im from mexico and my partners and i wrote a magazine HD LIFe, and i like to tell everybody that put a little to more brain, we analized image of the red one, and believe me this camera is the best invention for the dummiest persons in the world because the compression of this camera are terrible, is like the mp3 for video you dont have any information in your highlights and shadows. There some pictures in the web that you can see the lack of information in other words forget do any kind of green or blue screen if you have movments in your scene. The cliping is not an error in post is an error in the camera how could you imagine put some many information in 500Kb imposible. An HD picture of HDW f900 weights 6Mb and is only HD so make your own conclusion, but im sick of the fabricants lies to use ond confuse the market. So make more investigation because not everything than shine it´s gold.

Gustavo Simental
 

Gustavo - I strongly disagree, I don't think you know what you're looking at, or how to appropriately analyze. Take a look at prolost.blogspot.com and his comments, he works at a high end VFX company.
 

yeah shure with out ofence your are paid for red one because the question is simple? How many broand band you will need for hd with out any compression? the answer is 1.56 GHz of broand band to have HD 4:4:4 wit out any compresion so do the mat to how many broand band will you need for 4K a give you the formula is verticals lines X horizontal lines X 3(this number means RGB)X bits x frecuency of the shuter so you will need 16,532,535 gigas bye the way, imposible ti achive, but if it to much complicated for you brain ill give you and adress to check the problems of excess of compression check it an then will talk. web.mac.com/fini1/iWeb/Site%20135/4k%20Red%20Camera.html
see it frame by frame and you will notice a slit image.
my advise first really study the gadget and all around digital technology and then open the mouth.

check the phantom camera is a good camera and doesnt has a lot of problem like the red one but still is not ready to recomend yet.
 

sorry i mean 16ghz aprox and if you dont believe thos studies buy it and suffer the consecuences
 

you said:

"my advise first really study the gadget and all around digital technology and then open the mouth"

I think that is advice you should take to heart as well.

Read up on RAW single channel Bayer - the formula isn't x3.

As for that link, there is some rolling shutter split screen stuff going on in that shot, read all about it on reduser.net, is being discussed.

I am not paid by Red, I am not on their payroll, I've volunteered in their booth a few times because I'm into it, but other than flight/hotel expenses they've never cut me a check.

I like Red because it rocks.

NO video is never distributed without compression, so your 4K broadband comment lacks merit.

-mike