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ISO value in RED


Jarkko Virtanen

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Even though there are some really beautiful digital images out there, digital hasn't found terra firme. Every day numerous posts surface, in various forums, that consistently highlight new issues which 'has-just-been-found' with latest digital cameras.

 

If by "digital" you have Red One in mind, then, Red is not a good model to take a sampling of the advancement of digital imaging, which is a happening in fields other than digital cinematography. Red could have been a disruptive technology, however, it chose to narrowly define its boundaries, working with a philosophy of a "better mouse trap" than film can provide. Monetarily Red is a good bargain. However, technologically, IMHO, it is more of an "integration company" than a massive R&D company to throw its weight behind the state of the art advancement in digital imaging.

Edited by DJ Joofa
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No doubt there is some romanticization going on -- filmmakers and artists in general are a romantic lot.

 

On the other hand, I also feel that not every technical aspect of a moving image falls into neat measurable quantities from a scientific standpoint, not yet at least.

 

Look at painting, the difference between oils and acrylics. I'm sure that gross measurements in saturation, reflectivity, surface texture, luminosity, etc. don't paint a complete picture, pun intended. Or maybe they do but there are so many variables that merely looking at the data as a totality doesn't really tell you what you are looking at, what your eye/brain responds to immediately and viscerally.

 

None of this touchy-feeley stuff though tells engineers how have to build these products and what clearly definable goals, targets, etc.

 

The closer we get to making a digital cine camera produce images that are nearly indistinguishable from film, the more we learn about the remaining differences and whether they are bridgeable or whether it even matters, not when newer generations are emerging who don't have any hang-ups about digital images nor any nostalgia about film images.

 

At some point we are going to have to accept that the future involves images that will reflect technologies of their times, not of the past. Just as today 35mm color photography has drifted quite far from the look of original 3-strip Technicolor and Kodachrome, the two dominant 3-color processes of the 1940's, twenty years from now we will be seeing new & improved digital images that don't look much like what we watch today, for better or worse.

 

In regards to the technical problems getting in the way of the artistic ones, I'm hoping that with increased dynamic range and increased ability to color-correct the image, exposing will be less critical and we can go back to what we are used to with shooting film when we can't control everything. I experienced that just the other day when shooting my Red M-X tests, I hit the road with a handheld camera in a moving car and had to deal with radical light level changes as I drove under the EL tracks as the sun was setting between buildings. On the one hand, an electronic viewfinder image means I can see exposure as I am shooting and can adjust on the fly, but on the other hand, if I were shooting film, I'd probably just meter the brightest and the darkest areas and just wing it, figuring that the negative could hold up as long as I biased it towards more exposure.

 

It certainly seems we are getting there, being able to shoot with smaller digital cameras, fewer cables, less worry about exposure, etc. Practically speaking, I feel that decent digital is only about two-stops short of being the same as film negative's workable dynamic range; that's much better than a few years ago when it was more like a four-stop difference.

 

Rather than perfectly match film, really the goal now for digital camera designers is becoming to find out what aspects of digital images that most people can agree that they DON'T like, what to avoid. People seem to want more detail but less harsh edginess, more dynamic range but better blacks, richer colors but not exaggerated or inaccurate color responses, and they want it all to be more mobile, simplified, robust, affordable, and user-friendly.

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Ironically, as digital acquisition technology gets better so does film origination. What gets often overlooked in disputes about film and digital is how the two are marrying so well. Sensors get better for originating (as is evident from David and John's recent reports). So do sensors for scanning. But, we haven't seen a jump in storage technology since card storage. Hints of amazing, new storage advances show up on the internet from time to time. But, they haven't shown up in user's hands yet. Because of this, digital acquisition bottlenecks at storage leading to constricting compression of data. Whereas, compression need not be a worry with scanning. Scanner sensors can get bigger and/or higher resolution without bottlenecking. All of the analogue data in film (which is, compared to digital acquisition, massive) can be transferred into the powerful domain of DI post. So much power and quality in scanning makes me wonder why producers and DP's opt for low 2K DI's thrown compressed onto tape when there is so much more already available. Why not get the best of both worlds?

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Quite a big difference between 2 hours of uncompressed 4K data for an edited feature and some 60 hours of uncompressed 4K data that a feature could shoot. It's not just storage, it's processing & playback speed.

 

And 4K is four-times the data of 2K. 4K D.I.'s will become more common, but they will generally be more expensive than 2K even if overall costs eventually drop, simply because post houses charge more to handle more data... and as long as that happens, producers often will opt for the cheaper price.

 

Compression is more popular than ever, so I don't see that going away.

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I've never understood this idea of changing the rating of the camera to somehow trick better exposure out of it.

 

You do realise that all you're doing is recording a different set of metadata ??? All you're doing is changing the way the image displays on a monitor and how the various metering systems will work.

 

RED has an amazing toolset for exposure. ISO is for film and it's never ever accurate for electronic imaging because different exposure areas will respond differently anyways.

 

So use the camera's RAW setting, that is nominally 320 ISO. Then learn how to work with array of exposure assistance that's built into the camera. I like a setup where I plug false colour into button 2, 709/ RAW on button 1 then zebras (set at 100%) on 3 and black zebras (5%) on button 5.

 

Then i can check all my exposure ranges, and even toggle between RAW and 709 with any of the exposure monitorings.

 

jb

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Quite a big difference between 2 hours of uncompressed 4K data for an edited feature and some 60 hours of uncompressed 4K data that a feature could shoot. It's not just storage, it's processing & playback speed.

 

And 4K is four-times the data of 2K. 4K D.I.'s will become more common, but they will generally be more expensive than 2K even if overall costs eventually drop, simply because post houses charge more to handle more data... and as long as that happens, producers often will opt for the cheaper price.

 

Compression is more popular than ever, so I don't see that going away.

 

The RED Rocket has leveled the playing field between 2K and 4K. It doesn't know the difference. RED Rocket is now integrated with Scratch, Pablo, Clipster and others...

 

A reputable DI company in LA told me that they now charge (only) 15% more for a 4K finish as compared to 2K. That includes film record, IP, IN, DCDM, DCP and all video deliverables.

 

Seems like an easy choice to me.

 

Jim

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I've never understood this idea of changing the rating of the camera to somehow trick better exposure out of it.

 

You do it when you have no other choice, just like when you are forced to boost gain in a video camera or push film negative.

 

I've come to the current conclusion that the new M-X sensor is best shot at 800 ASA, even if in RAW VIEW, you'd have to rate it at 400 ASA to place a SMPTE 11-step chart dead center, with the crossover point on the waveform at 50%. Due to the low noise floor, it really helps to rate it at 800 ASA to gain another stop of highlight information because there is plenty of usable shadow detail and not much noise.

 

It's similar to how some people rated the original sensor at 160 ASA even though 320 ASA is optimal, because if you just expose so that the RAW image was not lower on the waveform but in the middle, it comes up around 160 ASA but then you are not getting as much hot highlight protection.

 

But LOG cameras do the same thing, midtones are placed lower and white is at 70 IRE instead of 100 IRE, so the "correctly" exposed Log image looks a bit dim and dull like a Red RAW image at 320 ASA -- but you could expose a Log image more in the middle, at the expense of the brightest highlights.

 

But film is like that, it handles overexposure better than underexposure, so I think of film as being more generous with highlight information. So the new M-X sensor exposed at 800 ASA seems to behave more like you'd want it to in how it allots information between the highlights and the shadows. But does that mean it has a native 800 ASA sensitivity? I don't know, I'm not even sure it is relevant, what matters is what is the optimal rating for the information you are trying to capture, with a reasonable compromise between noise and clipping.

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The RED Rocket has leveled the playing field between 2K and 4K. It doesn't know the difference. RED Rocket is now integrated with Scratch, Pablo, Clipster and others...

 

A reputable DI company in LA told me that they now charge (only) 15% more for a 4K finish as compared to 2K. That includes film record, IP, IN, DCDM, DCP and all video deliverables.

 

Seems like an easy choice to me.

 

Jim

 

 

That is great to hear Jim, as I always scratch my head to the notion that we, mere mortals, DI at 2k rather than 4k.

Does this not also mean that charges in handling and storage also go up ?

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That is great to hear Jim, as I always scratch my head to the notion that we, mere mortals, DI at 2k rather than 4k.

Does this not also mean that charges in handling and storage also go up ?

 

I have to assume (always dangerous) that the extra 15% is for something because the original file size of the R3D (Compressed RAW "digital negative") is the same file for both outputs. Both 4K or 2K are graded directly from the R3D (not DPX files) realtime so there is no extra time/cost in grading. The only difference is the actual file size of the deliverable.

 

Jim

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Jim, I am clearly not romanticizing film's underexposure latitude; it's attrocious frankly. But it's overexposure latitude is phenomenal.

 

 

Digital has the opposite problem and still has problems with compressed dynamic range and artifacts.

 

 

I think that 4K DIs, for all parties concerned are a step up. That still doesn't solve the problem of color space though. I was watching some of my favorite 35mm scope trailers from the '90s and early 2000s yesteraday, and they destroy everything on film I've seen recently.

 

There's something about the saturation, colorspace, and grain pattern of a contacl print that is not met by current 2K or even 4K media.

 

And let's face it, 35mm film prints are going to be with us for at least another 10 years, for better or for worse. I've been to some theatres in the past month that still have slide projectors and ads on film.

Edited by Karl Borowski
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Jim, I am clearly not romanticizing film's underexposure latitude; it's attrocious frankly. But it's overexposure latitude is phenomenal.

 

 

Digital has the opposite problem and still has problems with compressed dynamic range and artifacts.

 

 

I think that 4K DIs, for all parties concerned are a step up. That still doesn't solve the problem of color space though. I was watching some of my favorite 35mm scope trailers from the '90s and early 2000s yesteraday, and they destroy everything on film I've seen recently.

 

There's something about the saturation, colorspace, and grain pattern of a contacl print that is not met by current 2K or even 4K media.

 

And let's face it, 35mm film prints are going to be with us for at least another 10 years, for better or for worse. I've been to some theatres in the past month that still have slide projectors and ads on film.

 

Tony Pratt from Park Road Post presented at RED Day a few weeks ago and showed RED footage intercut with film for "The Lovely Bones". He said they had "no problem whatsoever matching color of RED to film". In fact, they had to "dumb-down" the RED footage to match the resolution of film... his words, not mine.

 

A film print is a different issue. I rarely see a good print in a theater anymore, mainly due to budget. Good news is a digital output always (mostly?) looks the same... even after being shown 100's of times. I do think that you may be surprised at how many directors don't agree with your point of view. I also disagree about your future view of the industry, however. Here's why.

 

A film print costs about $1,000 (and won't ever get cheaper). A studio releases 2 prints to 3,000 theaters for one feature film. That costs someone $6M. Two 4K RED Ray worm flash cards delivered to 3,000 theaters costs $200K. A new Sony T420 4K projector costs $150K. Studios and theaters are motivated by cost. I'd argue that if you saw what many have seen the past few weeks... you might actually welcome the change. Let's agree to disagree until you see it for yourself?

 

Jim

Edited by Jim Jannard
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I've never understood this idea of changing the rating of the camera to somehow trick better exposure out of it.

 

You do realise that all you're doing is recording a different set of metadata ??? All you're doing is changing the way the image displays on a monitor and how the various metering systems will work.

 

And then setting exposure in the viewing environment of that image display - so if you rate lower, your view will be lower and you open up to compensate thereby distributing the data across different values which will affect the algorithms (or should I say, be affected by the algorithms) further down the chain ...

Edited by Chris Millar
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A film print costs about $1,000 (and won't ever get cheaper). A studio releases 2 prints to 3,000 theaters for one feature film. That costs someone $6M. Two 4K RED Ray worm flash cards delivered to 3,000 theaters costs $200K. A new Sony T420 4K projector costs $150K. Studios and theaters are motivated by cost. I'd argue that if you saw what many have seen the past few weeks... you might actually welcome the change. Let's agree to disagree until you see it for yourself?

 

Jim

 

Trouble is that distributors bear the brunt of the print costs whereas exhibitors bear the brunt of conversion to digital projection while distributors reap most of the financial benefits. And in the U.S., distribution and exhibition have been legally separate entities since the Supreme Court decision in the late 1940's (I believe) that ended vertical integration and forced the studios to divest themselves of theater chains.

 

So your typical struggling theater owner who makes most of his money off of soda and popcorn is not particularly interested in spending $100,000 or so for each screening room he has, just to see the studios save money on printing & shipping. This is why over the past several years you keep reading in the trades about some joint venture deal where the studios finance part of the conversion to digital.

 

So it's going to happen, but not because all theater owners are dying to convert all of the screens to digital, not when some of them paid off their 35mm projection equipment decades ago and are worried about obsolescence of digital projection technology.

 

New multiplexes, that's another matter, many of them are starting out with digital projection. Here in Chicago, I've been going to see movies at the new Showplace Icon Cinema, which installed digital projection for all of their rooms. But these theaters are the exception more than the rule. I've been going to the Cinema DeLux Theater near me in Los Angeles... and for the past few years, they've had about a third of their screens converted to digital and haven't added more since then.

 

I'm not sure, but I've heard a figure of some 65,000 screens in the U.S.? And maybe a quarter of them are digital now? That's a LOT of capital needed to convert all of them to digital, in a slumping economy where credit is tight.

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A film print costs about $1,000 (and won't ever get cheaper). A studio releases 2 prints to 3,000 theaters for one feature film. That costs someone $6M. Two 4K RED Ray worm flash cards delivered to 3,000 theaters costs $200K. A new Sony T420 4K projector costs $150K. Studios and theaters are motivated by cost. I'd argue that if you saw what many have seen the past few weeks... you might actually welcome the change. Let's agree to disagree until you see it for yourself?

 

Jim

 

Not that I'm defending film, but prints cost more like $2,500 U.S ($3,200AUSD) per average 8-reel print.

 

Film CAN look better, if it's printed properly projected properly (Union IATSE or the equivalent in Austral-Asia), and not scratched up. We've run films 8 mos.. (thinking of Titanic) that weren't scratched or significantly dustry. Mostl theatres don't do as well, because they relegate film projectionists to a minimum wage position.

 

 

Listen, most movies, ~95% are projected on film, even if they are originated and about all are finished. . . digitally. That's the fact of the matter, not that I like it.

 

 

Keep in mind that the projectors for 3D DLP 2K cost ~80,000 USD per projector, though. That'd cost 40s or 80s of millions of dollars for a U.S. chain to convert.

 

 

The problem is that Union Projectionists, IATSE, are not being given the run of the place they make mistakes maybe 1% of the time, or less. The problem isn't film, it's the minimum wageslaves that are paid to run film, wanting to do something else, like flipping burgers :rolleyes:

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Here's a real world example (by no means intended to represent all of the theater business) A regional theater chain, which will go unnamed to keep me out of trouble, put the latest model digital projectors in all of one multiplex's screens. It was advertised as a big improvement worthy of attendance, agreeably. What consumers didn't know was that this theater acquired the projectors from one of their other multi-plexes that financially collapsed under the weight of it's considerable digital projection investment. It was a telling tidbit of the current challenges facing theaters.

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The problem is that Union Projectionists, IATSE, are not being given the run of the place they make mistakes maybe 1% of the time, or less. The problem isn't film, it's the minimum wageslaves that are paid to run film, wanting to do something else, like flipping burgers :rolleyes:

 

Again, there is a difference between who pays for what -- the distributors pay the cost of film prints, the exhibitors pay the cost of projectionists.

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Again, there is a difference between who pays for what -- the distributors pay the cost of film prints, the exhibitors pay the cost of projectionists.

 

 

I'll agree with that, but at the same time, you are IATSE, I am, there is an IATSE logo after every Goddamn movie short of "Paranormal Activity" & "Blair Witch" that I can remember in the theatrical U.S. release market in the last 15 years.

 

Why should the front end be almost all union but the back end almost always the converse?

 

 

 

 

The best focus-puller's work is sabotaged by the worst projectionists'.

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And in the U.S., distribution and exhibition have been legally separate entities since the Supreme Court decision in the late 1940's (I believe) that ended vertical integration and forced the studios to divest themselves of theater chains.

 

Yes, that's the Warner Bros. consent decree of 1951.

 

Do they actually send out backup prints to theaters now? When I was at TriStar, we didn't. In a platter house, I don't see how you'd be able to build the replacement print fast enough to be worth doing.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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Yes, that's the Warner Bros. consent decree of 1951.

 

Do they actually send out backup prints to theaters now? When I was at TriStar, we didn't. In a platter house, I don't see how you'd be able to build the replacement print fast enough to be worth doing.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

 

No, but I here the big multiplexes (24 screens is the biggest I've seen?) get FOUR prints of the same movie, so they don't have to be bothered with interlocking one film print to run through multiple projectors.

 

 

So that is about as good as a backup. I actually think this is bad practice (though it's great for Kodak and Fuji) because making at least twice as many prints as necessary forces the lab to literally churn the prints out now. Difficult to do quality control on a 3,000 print run.

 

Then again, interlocking movies through multiple projectors is a bad practice too. Even if you do it right, you pick up a TONNE of dust.

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