RED at ISO8000.

[Michael Morlan]

Phil, I do have a moment, so let me try:

 

Jim,

 

I'm a big believer in what you and RED are doing and am happy to have RED One #414 with my name on it. I am happily a member of both cinematography.com and reduser.net. As you know, I have even been awarded a sticky thread for my work in charting the data workflows of your first camera. That "RED One Workflow Diagram" has been republished in a variety of forums and print media. I even have given the RED One major positioning on my rental web site. But, you will also note that I have attempted to avoid any rhetoric and fanboy response to your many threads on reduser.net. Mine, I hope, is a sober contribution amongst all the yahoos - call it "qualified hopefulness."

 

Now, I have to say, posting an ISO8000 test image is a bit of rhetoric in itself. I cannot imagine when I would want to dig that much detail out of an underexposed, gained-up image. As I perceive, your posting it was merely a bit of fun to show off how much the camera may be pushed should anyone ever have to. So, having the guys on cinematography.com ask for more detail might have seemed like a bit much.

 

But, I ask you, please stop with the childish tantrums when asked for more detailed data from professionals who have every right and responsibility to be skeptical. You are great at getting the fanboys all excited but your healthy dialogue seems to collapse when confronted with the healthy skepticism of pros. If you want the support of professionals (as you have received with the excellent quotes from such luminaries as Soderberg, Jackson, and Charters) then treat everyone of us with the respect we have earned time and again through real-world application of art, craft, and technology. We actually make our livings with these tools.

 

Recognize that the pros want to respect you and RED. You just have to extend that same respect - even in the face of overwhelming criticism.

 

With deepest respect for what you have accomplished thus far,

 

Michael

[Kieran Scannell]

Jim.

 

As a humble Cameraman, and generally an admirer of this forum, i beg you from the tiny-est pixel in my being! Please sweet Jesus!

Get this camera out there! so we can have our lives back!

 

Thanks!

 

Kieran.

[Michael Peploe]

Michael... how's this. I won't be badgered into doing anything. I could care less whether Werner or you believes what we are doing is real. Steven Soderbergh and Rodney Charters do. I feel sorry, not for me, but for those that are so cynical. You don't trust me? Sorry for you, not me.

 

I'll check back on this board in a month or so after we start shipping. In the meantime, I'll be posting on other boards regarding RED info if you are so inclined.

 

Jim

Jim please I have gotten no indication of badgering. I just don't see it. You're using the board like some extended brochure for your camera minus relevant details anyone brings up. Maybe you're getting too comfortable over at REduser where you can do no wrong.

 

If I'm siiting in the office of someone trying to sell me on something and they throw out some jpeg pics of how great their camera is 7 stops under the next question I'm sure even you would ask is what Werner did. You've got to appreciate it for the smart business sense Werner would have right?

 

I have a feeling you might be worried about what thousands of tech savvy people (some I'm sure who want you to fail) who would run your footage through the digital meatgrinder bringing up every questionable detail real or imagined before the cam hits the street. And then you'd have to take the time to find out how they did their testing and then you'd have to tell them how they messed up and on and on.

 

I saw the Jackson film projected at a FCP event and it looked great. Some issues but very minor. I know you have advanced from that prototype I personally want you to succeed.I am excited on the light performance of the chip. I really am, but every time someone asks for a little more detail you get defensive and declare you're leaving this board. I do not want to see that happen because I believe that this board will be more professionally honest both critical and laudatory regarding your camera as opposed to the board you most frequent . Its not cynicism. I would like a real dialogue to go on here and hope you do to.

[jan von krogh]

arri, panavision and sony didn´t release testshots of the D20, Genesis and 750/900R/950/23. I am not sure of Thomson/GV and Dalsa for the Viper and the Origin.

 

S.I. and RED did. I think that a good trend. RED posted fullscale 4K images months ago. They posted 100% resolution crops of the new high-asa shots as well.

[Max Jacoby]

arri, panavision and sony didn´t release testshots of the D20, Genesis and 750/900R/950/23. I am not sure of Thomson/GV and Dalsa for the Viper and the Origin.

Which does have certain advantages, doesn't it? It certainly eliminates the fact that everyone and their grandmother publicly voices their opinion, which in the case of this 8000Asa shot can only be unconclusive since you really need several seconds of full res images to fully evaluate what it looks like. But then again any publicity is good publicity as they say.

[Werner Klipsch]

Would you mind posting the chart here so one could have a look at it? I'd be curious to see what it looks like, I'd suppose the lines arew not just horizontal and vertical, but also diagonal? Or is it even more elaborate?

Erk, you open a bigtime tin of worms with that question!

 

There is no way by which I can post a 10K * 10K image here. Because of what it is, the zone plate cannot be successfully compressed. The file could only ever a 100 megabyte bitmap file and anyway I am not clever enough to compose such a huge file directly!

 

The only way I could do it was write software that loads into a PC and drives a huge printer direct to print a 800mm circle . This was hard enough because most PCs think they are cleverer than me and "know" that there are no 1189mm x 841mm sheets of printer paper!

 

All that I can do online is give a much lower resolution example I made for testing DVD players. For that you will have to wait until I get back to the office!

 

For the meantime, this is what a Zone Plate looks like. The idea is no two rows or columns of adjacent pixels are ever the same, so compression (and phony picture sharpening!) is in theory impossible. :lol:

Edited July 15, 2007 by Werner Klipsch

[Phil Rhodes]

> I have a feeling you might be worried about what thousands of tech savvy people (some I'm sure who

> want you to fail) who would run your footage through the digital meatgrinder bringing up every

> questionable detail real or imagined before the cam hits the street.

 

The more evasive they are, the more true this will be, and the more dedication and relish with which people like me will look for ways to shred the thing when it becomes widely available.

 

Phil

[Werner Klipsch]

Would you mind posting the chart here so one could have a look at it? I'd be curious to see what it looks like, I'd suppose the lines arew not just horizontal and vertical, but also diagonal? Or is it even more elaborate?

OK so here is a 720 pixel x 576 pixel zone plate, specifically engineered to test DVD players and TV set chroma decoders. This is just a "scale model" that can be transmitted over the Internet!!

 

What this one does:

 

It is simply a series of concentric rings increasing in video frequency (and so getting smaller in spacing). The maximum resolution of this one is equivalent of just 480 lines (across a TV screen width)

 

All analog colour TV systems dependent on adjacent lines carrying similar picture information to stop coloured artifacts like cross colour. A true zone plate has no two lines alike and so if you play this image through the yellow composite video jack of your DVD player, you get a psychedelic flickering mess on your TV. It is designed to show composite video at the absolute worst! If you want to show the ignorant the difference between composite and component (or S-video), there is no better way!

 

My PC DVD burner came with program called Power Producer, that lets you turn your digital photos into a TV slideshow on DVD. I simply made a one-picture slide-show of the image you see below, which is simply an off-screen grab of a graphic drawn by Visual Basic program and cropped to size in Photoshop. If you have Power Producer or something like NeroVision, you could make up one yourself by copying the graphic.

(The image looks rough because of the low resolution and because it doesn't like being compressed, but it still does its job!)

 

 

The big one I made at the outer edges goes up to equivalent 5,000 lines across a screen width. There is no printer available to me that will print anything like that fine on a standard sheet of paper so the only way is to print it big on a huge sheet of A0 paper! Most inkjet printers are like video cameras, their makers make all sorts of claims about resolution, but when you put to the scientific test, they don't deliver. :lol:

 

BTW If anybody could tell me how I might divert a USB signal meant to go to an inkjet into a bitmap file instead, I could supply the graphic on a CD-ROM. There is then a good chance that a graphics bureau with an A0 printer might be able to run off copies. (But not all those big printers have much resolution, a lot of them print out as though you took an A4 copy and enlarged it!)

 

[Werner Klipsch]

Ahh and here we go again. A good request evaded like a politician. Answer but with no real answer.

Well Jannard is 57. Ronald Ray-Gun was 56 when he became governor of California, and the rest is history!

Arnold can't be president as he's not a yankee, so the way is clear to the White House :lol:

Well, he has the money, for the moment at least....

[jan von krogh]

OK so here is a 720 pixel x 576 pixel zone plate, specifically engineered to test DVD players and TV set chroma decoders. This is just a "scale model" that can be transmitted over the Internet!!

Hello Werner,

 

if you use a vector-based sourceimage, as "svg", "ai", "pdf" or "eps", your testchart will become resolution-independent and pretty small: some kilobytes for a 10.000*10.000 image, so you could share also hiresolution versions on the internet. Just make sure that the displaying renderer isn´t using antialiasing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svg

 

BTW If anybody could tell me how I might divert a USB signal meant to go to an inkjet into a bitmap file instead, I could supply the graphic on a CD-ROM. There is then a good chance that a graphics bureau with an A0 printer might be able to run off copies. (But not all those big printers have much resolution, a lot of them print out as though you took an A4 copy and enlarged it!)

A good solution for this problem is using open-source or freeware postscript/acrobat printer drivers as pdf95 or ghostscript.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostscript

 

The printer - and its rasterizing method - are indeed critical. Best thing would probably also be feeding the printer with a vectorbased version of your testchart.

We usually don´t use printers for testcharts, but do record them with a linotronic.

[jan von krogh]

Which does have certain advantages, doesn't it? It certainly eliminates the fact that everyone and their grandmother publicly voices their opinion, which in the case of this 8000Asa shot can only be unconclusive since you really need several seconds of full res images to fully evaluate what it looks like. But then again any publicity is good publicity as they say.

 

To -fully- evaluate the quality one would need a sequence of uncompressed 4k or higher 2540p RAW images.

 

However, the 8000 shots @1k can already be used for a comparision to a Kodak Vision or Sony 750/900, as grain/noise at 8000 would be pretty problematic with film/sony hd already at 1K in a still.

[jan von krogh]

I cannot imagine when I would want to dig that much detail out of an underexposed, gained-up image.

Nightly sky over city skyscape with actors in foreground.

Wildlife.

Historical scenes lit with candles / torches (Barry Lyndon)

Any kind of -really deep- unterwater.

Psychothriller/Horror set in Forest/campfire.

Any kind of -huge- architecture shot, especially dawn/night where the time isn´t given to have a full light setup/checkup due to location restrictions. That could be a building which will only grant you 4 hours shooting, that can be the cave whre access & transport is restricted because you have to dive in the equipment through narrow flooded areas etc.

ENG/EFP: Hidden camera, uncontrolled shooting situation.

[jan von krogh]

The more evasive they are, the more true this will be, and the more dedication and relish with which people like me will look for ways to shred the thing when it becomes widely available.

Posting underexposed images before releasing the camera is the contrary of evasive.

 

That you will look for ways to "shred" the camera, ok, however my understanding of the DPs position is that he should try to achieve the opposite - to get the best/fitting images possible out of any gear.

[Michael Peploe]

I think I understand religious fantatics more clearly now. Truth is meaningless. Conversion is all.

[jan von krogh]

I think I understand religious fantatics more clearly now. Truth is meaningless. Conversion is all.

 

It seems some people here have highly emotional or even religious reactions when it comes to cameras.

For others, as me, they are simply a toolkit, an investment and finally technology.

[Michael Peploe]

It seems some people here have highly emotional or even religious reactions when it comes to cameras.

For others, as me, they are simply a toolkit, an investment and finally technology.

 

 

Then how would you explain your devotion to a piece of metal with a brain totally based on faith?

[Nate Downes]

It seems some people here have highly emotional or even religious reactions when it comes to cameras.

For others, as me, they are simply a toolkit, an investment and finally technology.

 

Visit an Amiga Computer forum sometimes. The computers haven't even been manufactured since 1997, but they are still in huge fanatical wars over "the next step forward" with no less than 5 groups claiming the "one true way".

[jan von krogh]

Then how would you explain your devotion to a piece of metal with a brain totally based on faith?

 

Mr. Peoploe,

 

it am wondering what you are referring to with "a piece of metal with a brain" - last time a checked a "brain" wasn´t in the reds feature list.

 

However, i do take care of using & renting out sought-after state-of-the art technology.

I still see several limitations in all 35mm and 1080p cameras on the market.

Several of these issues now become quite a bit more manageable.

 

To understand the technologies and their economical and artistic impact isn´t a devotion. its a job.

 

And "faith" wasn´t why we looked precisely at the reds images, projected in full 4k, with a team of 4 employees, before decided to expand our order with them.

[jan von krogh]

Visit an Amiga Computer forum sometimes. The computers haven't even been manufactured since 1997, but they are still in huge fanatical wars over "the next step forward" with no less than 5 groups claiming the "one true way".

 

Oh yes, i remember that - the 3D guys here where having these wars to the extreme in the early 90ties.

Lightwave/amiga, Electric image/mac, 3d studio/pc, Animator/sgi...

 

For whats its worth, people usually ease up once they get used to work with many different products.

[Mitch Gross]

I don't care about proving anyone right or wrong, boasting technology or tearing it down. All I want is to learn about a piece of kit and determine its performance. Personally I think that all the posts -- post pro and con -- that reach outside this are counterproductive in the purest sense of the term.

 

Phil, I don't think Jim should ever be banned from this forum, much as I don't think you should be. I think we can make quite a list of the counterproductive comments made by yourself that would far outnumber anything written by Mr. Jannard.

[Phil Rhodes]

I'm not misusing the place for personal gain. I think he is.

 

Phil

[Adam Thompson]

Well Jannard is 57. Ronald Ray-Gun was 56 when he became governor of California, and the rest is history!

Arnold can't be president as he's not a yankee, so the way is clear to the White House :lol:

Well, he has the money, for the moment at least....

 

Well clearly you have not seen Demolition Man. There's a great scene in which John Spartan is told about the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library and how a constitutional amendment had been made that allowed non-US borns to be president. Learn your history man!

 

 

And yes, I did look up "Schwarzenegger" on IMDB and copy and paste it.

Edited July 17, 2007 by Adam Thompson

[Werner Klipsch]

Phil, I don't think Jim should ever be banned from this forum,

No need; he puts himself into self-imposed exile on a regular schedule. He keeps coming back because he feels sorry for us I think. Like Jehovah's Witnesses :rolleyes: .

Anyway, you can always visit him on REDUSER.NET, not like he is in solitary confinement.

His camera will be out in the real world soon enough, and if it's successful as he says, well, WE can all go into exile. Maybe he'll pay for the tickets :lol:

[Werner Klipsch]

Hello Werner,

 

if you use a vector-based sourceimage, as "svg", "ai", "pdf" or "eps", your testchart will become resolution-independent and pretty small: some kilobytes for a 10.000*10.000 image, so you could share also hiresolution versions on the internet. Just make sure that the displaying renderer isn´t using antialiasing.

Actually I never thought of PDF files. But the advantage of the old-fashioned bitmap is that just about any printer will print it, and the question of compressing artifacts does not arise. My chart would fit onto a cheap 128M flash drive which would plug into just about any PC.

 

The current approach with visual basic is pretty hard to beat. The executable file is only 25K, and the entire ZIP folder including the VB link library is about 400K! However not everyone lets you run exe files on their PC!

 

I think the world badly needs a source of cheap hi-resolution charts to sort out the wheat from the BS in the cattle shed :lol:

[Ruairi Robinson]

Upload the 4K.

 

Otherwise, you give the appearance of being evasive.

 

I have still not seen real uncompressed 4K off the camera.

 

Phil

 

 

http://www.cinematography.net/Red/comp-matrix.html

 

Regards,

R.