RED ONE footage

[Brad Grimmett]

Answer me this: Does this forum really suck this bad? Will it change, or continue to be a joke and nothing but a place to come here and be entertained.

Stop the insults.

I suggest you stop the insults as well. You're insulting a lot of great people when you say that this forum sucks. We discuss a lot more than just Red here, and yet the forum where we continually have the most insults and inappropriate posts is the Red forum. Why is that? I'm glad I'm not a moderator for the Red forum since it's probably quite a hassle.

Yes, there are some people that post here that are rabblerousers, on both sides of the issue. Luckily, it's a very small group of people that cause the most problems.

I'm interested in seeing more footage from this camera, and I'm sure I'll use one in the very near future as well, and I look forward to that experience. But I'm not interested in hearing opinions that aren't based on the experience of someone who has used it. I'm interested in hearing and seeing what people are actually shooting with the camera.

[Häakon]

You're insulting a lot of great people when you say that this forum sucks. We discuss a lot more than just Red here, and yet the forum where we continually have the most insults and inappropriate posts is the Red forum.

He did say forum, not board. And as you have indicated yourself, the Red forum seems to have the most struggle here. On any discussion board you have the board itself which comprises individual forums, and in those forums are topics which are comprised of individual posts. It may just be a matter of symantics, but that's why the construct of language exists; to help us communicate our ideas effectively. I can agree with the poster that there have been many times where I feel this particular forum (and not the cinematography.com discussion board as a whole) has indeed "sucked."

 

I'm not interested in hearing opinions that aren't based on the experience of someone who has used it. I'm interested in hearing and seeing what people are actually shooting with the camera.

The time will come, breath easy for a moment. :-) As of this morning there were only 25 production cameras out in the world, and Jim owns 5 of them. That makes 20 cameras available in the hands of ~12-15 people. When more units are shipped and the workflow becomes more streamlined, you'll hear things. Also remember that cutting/grading/sharing 4K material is difficult to do for the global audience at this point - only a tiny percentage of the viewing auidence has any kind of 4K anything to watch it on. And you can't judge all aspects of sensor performance well by looking at a still image. Everyone seems eager to chomp at the bit now that RED is shipping, but the quantities are still so low and the camera is so fresh that it is still a bit early to be demanding comprehensive tests. I know that several are planned in the coming months, so stay tuned and you will likely get what you are looking for (or at least much closer to it).

[Guest]

Hi Richard,

 

The camera is bigger than I imagined.

 

Stephen

 

Yeah it is bigger than I thought, almost betacam size. Is that you holding it?

 

R,

[AdamBray]

Rental cost of the Red + acc's would be WELL below the 16mm belt.

 

 

Try again. The RED is an $18,000 camera, a zoom lens is $9,0000 and a set of primes of $20,000 = $50,000

[Emanuel A Guedes]

Hi Richard,

 

The camera is bigger than I imagined.

 

Stephen

 

Stephen, that photo...I'd say those ones are reduser.net fanboys, humm? :rolleyes:

[AdamBray]

Invisible viewfinder. Awesome! They should sell that technology to the military.

[Graeme Nattress]

> If the Red camera wasn't 4k

 

It's not 4K. It's two and a bit. And that's not bashing, that's counting.

 

Phil

 

Phil, you told me it was 1k last year at IBC, so you've improved the camera 250% in the last year. Thanks for your help!

 

Graeme

[Stephen Williams]

Yeah it is bigger than I thought, almost betacam size. Is that you holding it?

 

R,

 

Hi Richard,

 

That is me holding a camera, it was not set up for hand holding! but balanced quite well with just a base plate. I was possibly the only person that managed to hold one yesterday, there was only 2 cameras on the Red Stand both fixed on heads. That camera came from the Apple Booth to the 4K presentation.

 

There was only 1 viewfinder at the show, Red is 'sold out' at the moment, I have not seen it working but will return to the booth today.

 

Stephen

[David Sweetman]

Phil, you told me it was 1k last year at IBC, so you've improved the camera 250% in the last year. Thanks for your help!

 

Graeme

I thought it was always measured in vertical resolution...as in 1920x1080p = 1080p? And a vertical resolution of 2000 would be 2k? Not trying to stir anything up...maybe this is already answered somewhere?

[Max Jacoby]

You're measuring the horizontal resolution, which is the one that stays constant. You're always using the full width of the filmstock/chip and crop the height, so the vertical resolution changes depending on the formats.

[John Brawley]

Hi Richard,

 

The camera is bigger than I imagined.

 

Stephen

 

 

Doesn't look...ummm ergonomic...where's the viewfinder ?

 

jb

[Martin Yernazian]

Dude that's a nice camera!!!! I wish I could shoot my feature on that next year but my budget is of only 20k, so Super 16 it is, ( I already have the cam and Lenses and gear in Argentina is Dirt cheap for rentals)

 

But great Work Jim and the REd Team.... great cam, After my other one I wish I could buy one and work some projects with it

 

My Best

[Guest]

Hi Richard,

 

That is me holding a camera, it was not set up for hand holding! but balanced quite well with just a base plate. I was possibly the only person that managed to hold one yesterday, there was only 2 cameras on the Red Stand both fixed on heads. That camera came from the Apple Booth to the 4K presentation.

 

There was only 1 viewfinder at the show, Red is 'sold out' at the moment, I have not seen it working but will return to the booth today.

 

Stephen

 

Ahhh, you're a lot younger looking than I thought you'd be, you must have good genes and eat well :D

 

I on the other hand started work at CTV when I was 26, people thought I was 40 :blink:

 

Maybe it was my mature attitude?

 

R,

[Daniel Gourley]

Maybe it was my mature attitude?

 

R,

 

Yeah...That's it. :blink:

[Stephen Williams]

Ahhh, you're a lot younger looking than I thought you'd be, you must have good genes and eat well :D

 

I on the other hand started work at CTV when I was 26, people thought I was 40 :blink:

 

Maybe it was my mature attitude?

 

R,

 

Hi Richard,

 

20 years ago people thought I looked 40 LOL

 

Stephen

[Brad Grimmett]

It may just be a matter of symantics, but that's why the construct of language exists; to help us communicate our ideas effectively. I can agree with the poster that there have been many times where I feel this particular forum (and not the cinematography.com discussion board as a whole) has indeed "sucked."

Yes, it is just semantics, but the previous poster made it very clear what he meant. Anyone who thinks this forum, board, or whatever you'd like to call it, sucks so bad, can go to plenty of other sites that discuss cinematography. Personally, I think this is the most comprehensive and well run cinematography site on the net, but that's just my opinion. Like I said, anyone who disagrees has other options.

When more units are shipped and the workflow becomes more streamlined, you'll hear things.

Oh, I've been hearing plenty for a long time...too much in fact. The fact that the camera wasn't released to the public until a little over a week ago hasn't stopped people from posting for months to tell us how great and revolutionary it is, even though they'd never even seen one, much less what it could do. My point in my previous post was that I, and many other people, are sick of hearing speculation and want to hear and see real results at some point. I don't need to see results today, this week, or even this month. I'll have a look when they're available. I'm in no rush. It's just another camera after all. The world will keep spinning, and people will keep shooting, no matter how the Red camera performs.

[Häakon]

You're measuring the horizontal resolution, which is the one that stays constant.

This is inaccurate.

 

In video standards, it's the vertical resolution that is commonly referenced and which stays constant, as the poster alluded:

 

1920x1080 is often termed simply "1080"

1280x720 is termed "720"

 

In digital cinema standards, it's the horizontal resolution that is commonly referenced:

 

4096x2304 is termed "4K"

2048x1152 is termed "2K"

 

It's important to note that in the video standards, it's the horizontal resolution that often differs between cameras (many "HD" sensor arrays are not truly 1920x1080, but can be 1440x1080, for example - or less).

 

In the digital cinema standards, it's the vertical resolution that can differ - "4K" implies a horizontal resolution of 4096, while the other value can change depending on the aspect ratio of the chip.

 

This change between how we reference standards is what can be confusing; one just needs to understand that the monikers for "4K" and "2K" are not referencing vertical resolution as the older video standards are.

[Jim Jannard]

Film guys who haven't seen footage think RED is less than 2K, those film guys who have seen it say it looks like 65mm film, and certainly doesn't look like video. Go figure.

 

Jim

[Michel Hafner]

Ok. My two layman cents. I spent Saturday at IBC mostly in the auditorium watching a lot of stuff projected with the new Sony 4K projector (20000 Lumen) onto a large screen. All kinds of sources: 16mm, 35mm, 4K digital origination, 1080p HD, 70mm/IMAX. I was sitting in the third row which means probably 1.5 screen heights away. All source material was obviously projected from the server where it was stored as digital data, some in 2K, some in 1080p (I guess), some in 4K. The projector was upsampling on the fly to 4K when the input was not 4K already. There was no film projection. All film was shown not natively in that regard. All comments are to be taken with a grain of salt since I'm not familiar with the projector, and the choices for grading and compression can greatly influence the look of material. Whether the samples presented were able to bring out the best from the material I can not know. But given the fact the material was selected by the companies themselves to sell product and make a good impression one hopes they chose suitable material. :D

The projector had relatively poor On-Off contrast and an elevated black level which did not flatter some of the darker footage. That it's capable of 4K detail was obvious though and detail and sharpness assessments were definitely possible with the set up. So was assessment of noise/grain levels.

So, does Red look like film? They showed the Peter Jackson short in 4K. It did not look like 35mm film. I have never seen 35mm film look like that. The only film that looks similar to Red to me at this event and in general is pristine 70mm footage scanned for 4K resolution. And even that was not as noise free looking, but had the same amount of detail, maybe a bit more. The look of Red was very detailed, creamy and smooth. Very clean. It did not look like video. It's something else. It was visibly beyond what you can do with 2K data. Red is not a 2K camera. That is a myth. It looks like there is real resolution upto a limit somewhere between 3K and 4K. And I doubt you can have that look with 35mm origination at all, concerning lack of noise/grain and detail when projected at 4K. None of the 35mm material shown did measure up in that regard, whether from 2K or 4K DI. Several of the 35mm examples looked outright nasty in comparison. For example Spider Man 3 from 4K DI was a noisy mess. The elevated black levels did not help at all. Some of the 35mm footage looked very good, but still lacked 4K sharpness. And it never was really clean.

So, what if you don't like it clean? If you insist it's grainy? I don't know, but I think making Red footage grainy in post and behave like 35mm is doable, but does it work the other way around too? I don't think so. Not with today's fast stocks shot the way they usually are.

2 types of footage were far beyond the rest concerning detail and noise level: Red's 4K short, Dalsa's 4K short and some 70mm examples. Then there was the computer generated Ratatouille in 2K which was super clean but had no 4K detail.

Dalsa's short looked amazing. The kind of material that makes you wonder if 1080p is really the end of it all for home cinema or if we are not destined for yet another system change in 5-10 years, with 4K films on 4K projectors from 4K HD discs. It's overkill for home consumption of typical 35mm originated material but definitely not for 4K digitally captured material if you have a decent size screen and sit close. Demonstrations like this make it very clear that 2K is coarse compared to 4K. 2K should not be the cinema gold standard for the next 10 years. Not good enough.

Michel Hafner

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Film guys who haven't seen footage think RED is less than 2K, those film guys who have seen it say it looks like 65mm film, and certainly doesn't look like video. Go figure.

 

Jim

 

I've never seen it projected since I certainly wasn't at IBC or any of that. But I have stayed active watching the RED site for every little grab or clip you put up that originated on the RED. I do not think RED looks like video in the sense of camcorder/ HD/ whatever. Why not? Too little noise (or perhaps no noise at all?) and the lattitude smokes standard video. I used to insult the RED project, Jim, and I apoligize for that because you really have made an outstanding camera that is ahead of it's time in terms of quality/ price/ and apparent stability. The idea of using practically any lense out there is another fun option which can give limitless possibility to the camera.

 

Only thing is, and I cannot really put a finger on it, is that even RED seems to lack a bit of the organic look of film. I really don't understand the technicals of it, but film just looks like the "whole milk", video looks like skim milk, and RED is like 2 percent milk (No, this isnt a pun on your milk maids LOL). I would agree that REDs pictures look prettier but Im not sure that it's always a good thing. The short of Peter Jackson's didnt seem nearly as effective in telling a war story as what Saving Private Ryan was, granted that's not a fair comparison, as the short was shot in two days practically on a whim.

 

Anyhow, congrats to you Jim and your team on a fantastic camera that can maybe help bridge the gap between the poor indies and the veteran giants of film making. Maybe in an alternate universe where I actually had the money to buy one, I would give it a shot.

[Jim Jannard]

I've never seen it projected since I certainly wasn't at IBC or any of that. But I have stayed active watching the RED site for every little grab or clip you put up that originated on the RED. I do not think RED looks like video in the sense of camcorder/ HD/ whatever. Why not? Too little noise (or perhaps no noise at all?) and the lattitude smokes standard video. I used to insult the RED project, Jim, and I apoligize for that because you really have made an outstanding camera that is ahead of it's time in terms of quality/ price/ and apparent stability. The idea of using practically any lense out there is another fun option which can give limitless possibility to the camera.

 

Only thing is, and I cannot really put a finger on it, is that even RED seems to lack a bit of the organic look of film. I really don't understand the technicals of it, but film just looks like the "whole milk", video looks like skim milk, and RED is like 2 percent milk (No, this isnt a pun on your milk maids LOL). I would agree that REDs pictures look prettier but Im not sure that it's always a good thing. The short of Peter Jackson's didnt seem nearly as effective in telling a war story as what Saving Private Ryan was, granted that's not a fair comparison, as the short was shot in two days practically on a whim.

 

Anyhow, congrats to you Jim and your team on a fantastic camera that can maybe help bridge the gap between the poor indies and the veteran giants of film making. Maybe in an alternate universe where I actually had the money to buy one, I would give it a shot.

 

Matthew... I can't disagree with anything you said. RED is not film. And it does not look like any other "video". Much of what makes film look organic is random pattern grain and no sharp edges. Some say that 65mm looks less "film-like" than 35mm. Maybe that's because 65mm has less grain on projection and greater resolution? We have a different animal on our hands. It is an new alternative. It is too easy to say, "just add some grain and it looks like film". I prefer to think of RED as a new look. A new tool. And one that can be put in the hands of many. Thanks for your comments. I apologize for any harsh exchanges in the past. This is a passionate topic.

 

Jim

Edited September 9, 2007 by Jim Jannard

[Phil Rhodes]

> And it does not look like any other "video"

 

Well, I think it does. It looks like high res video. Which is, at the end of the day, and without any prejudice or pejorative implied, exactly what you'd expect it to look like.

 

Phil

[Stephen Williams]

> And it does not look like any other "video"

 

Well, I think it does. It looks like high res video. Which is, at the end of the day, and without any prejudice or pejorative implied, exactly what you'd expect it to look like.

 

Phil

 

Phil,

 

I know you are not very keen on shooting film, so high res video should be quite appealing to you!

 

Stephen

[Phil Rhodes]

Graeme:

 

> Phil, you told me it was 1k last year at IBC

 

I did no such thing. I made a comment on this board to the effect that if you really wanted to be sure of every colour component, avoid aliasing to a reasonable extent and be confident in your results, you'd have to blow it way down towards 1K. And you know that to be true, if you have had the involvement in the thing you claim.

 

The thing is, a lot of this becomes moot given the amount of compression you're applying. There is no direct relationship between the resolution of the image from which you derive a wavelet set, and the resolution to which you decode it; you could claim more or less anything you liked. I'll be much more interested in this camera when it's possible to compare the compressed and uncompressed images (on scenes I specify).

 

> I know you are not very keen on shooting film, so high res video should be quite appealing to you!

 

Well yeah. As I said before, there's a show I (might, as ever) having coming up on which this would be great. I just don't think they're capable of giving me the support I'd need to make it happen, regardless of the worth or otherwise of the camera.

 

 

Phil

[Jim Jannard]

Graeme:

 

> Phil, you told me it was 1k last year at IBC

 

I did no such thing. I made a comment on this board to the effect that if you really wanted to be sure of every colour component, avoid aliasing to a reasonable extent and be confident in your results, you'd have to blow it way down towards 1K. And you know that to be true, if you have had the involvement in the thing you claim.

 

The thing is, a lot of this becomes moot given the amount of compression you're applying. There is no direct relationship between the resolution of the image from which you derive a wavelet set, and the resolution to which you decode it; you could claim more or less anything you liked. I'll be much more interested in this camera when it's possible to compare the compressed and uncompressed images (on scenes I specify).

 

> I know you are not very keen on shooting film, so high res video should be quite appealing to you!

 

Well yeah. As I said before, there's a show I (might, as ever) having coming up on which this would be great. I just don't think they're capable of giving me the support I'd need to make it happen, regardless of the worth or otherwise of the camera.

Phil

 

Phil... you would have more credibility if you stuck to the same story. Either RED is 1K or 2K (in your mind). Graeme has been clear on his position, and is much more knowledgable in this area than anyone you can point to. You certainly can properly use the word pejorative, but that does not necessarily mean you are a CMOS-bayer pattern, compression expert. I'd have to say that Graeme is. He has done what you said couldn't be done. Actually, he has done what a lot of "experts" said couldn't be done. Your "anti-RED" posts are beginning to lose credibility.

 

As for support, why would we be able to properly support Soderbergh and others, but not you? Are you afraid that your attitude has in some way made you a candidate for "non-support"?

 

I had tried to open the door for a civil and respectful dialog with you. I still hope we can get there.

 

Jim