Ralph Oshiro

I got a 9:00AM call and I can't sleep . . . AGAIN. My friend has both an F900/3 and a brand new F900/R, but he popped for the $10,000 Sony color HD EVF for each. Man, those things are NICE! I wouldn't say focusing an F900 is any harder than with say, a BVW600, just more noticable if you're off, as David mentioned. Just crank the EVF peaking to max, and it's pretty apparent when you're "in."

I've seen those operators on sitcoms with their unassisted, pedastal-operated Panaflexes--those guys have their hands full! For those of us planning on using primes on our RED bodies, we won't have the luxury of pushing in to grab a focus--another challenge! I know no one really uses that Panatape thingy, but I always wondered why someone couldn't develop some kind of optical spotting scope kinda thing, with a crosshair reticle, that had some kind of accurate-enough distance sensor (IR, etc.), that the AC could keep pointed at a particular point in space (e.g., an actor's eyeball). It could also have some kind of trigger to hold focus points and whatnot, for when something moved, but you still wanted to hold that mark. I realize that focus-pulling is also an art, and that rack-focus pulls should definitely be human-pulled to attain the right aesthetic timing, but for tricky stuff, this sort of thing sure would be handy.

That's a good one, Ken! Don't remember you asking, but I may have thought it was a rhetorical question. Yes, I admit, I have a huge connection with RED. I'm a customer. I haven't asked anything of any of you guys, other than to stop the incessant name-calling, and to stop the insulting, condescending remarks. I only stated how RED's progress had convinced ME. No problem, Ken.

Why are you guys still harping on the focus issue? I already said this will be a challenge. Who ever said it wasn't?

For those of you playing along at home, official RED system pricing for NAB2007 will be announced Monday, 12 March 2007.

I think Francesco may have hit the nail on the head. It may not be about Jim or RED, or any of that. It may just be the old "film is better" argument. I hate the way HDW-F900s look, compared with film. HATE IT! CAN'T F*CKING STAND IT! No matter what we do with our pull-down cadence, our frame rate, our gamma curves, our colorimetry settings, video always somehow looks "different." But with RED, it's "different" looks pretty good. No digital imaging system I've ever seen emulates the look of film perfectly. Only film looks like film. I don't have to tell you guys that modern color negative has incredible visual properties, compared with film stocks of just two decades ago. Contrast-handling, color gamut, culturally-ingrained "film" aesthetic--that's all film's domain. But the "film is better" argument is not my argument here. The "I can shoot whatever I want, whenever I want, with no stock/processing cost, with 35mm-class, cine-style depth-of-field, and have it look pretty good" is my argument. Right now, the best game in town toward that goal for the money is RED. Hey Carl! It wasn't "work" that I had to do with my GF! Well, that's exactly my point, Carl! I've heard this poop from a sh*tload of manufacturers before, too! I know the drill. This one seems different. I already said why. Tell me what you think after NAB. Loser buys at the overpriced Starbucks concession.

Make no mistake about it--S35-sized image-area follow-focus with large apertures is gonna be a bitch. Right! But I'm only going to archive the 4K masters, and immediately transcode to 1080p for finishing. I already own most of the accesories I need. Yes, I will. They looked pretty good to me. I think my scripts are coming along quite nicely. I never said it wasn't!

Not stoke the fires, but I got bored and thought, well, let's look at what's being said here . . . [And I'm TOTALLY paraphrasing here . . .] 1. Okay, even if RED does come out, you'll be so surprised by how hard it is to follow-focus, you'll just throw up your hands and stop shooting. 2. Okay, even if RED does come out, you'll never be able to afford the finishing system. 3. Okay, even if RED does come out, you'll never be able to afford to accessorize it. 4. Okay, even if RED does come out, you won't be able to pony up the $16,500 remaining balance. 5. Okay, even if RED does come out, DeBayered images suck ass. 6. Okay, even if RED does come out, it won't matter, because it's all about story anyway. 7. Okay, even if RED does come out, and you start shooting stuff with it, and you start showing it to people in Hollywood, "You'll never work in this town again!"

Well, I dunno, but it does surprise me. I think RED has published ample data to show that they're for real, IMO. I've read all the publicly announced benchmarks that RED promised, and the RED team delivered on every one of them, as scheduled. I've seen the test footage and frame grabs online (but missed the 4K projection demo in L.A.), and found them to be very compelling "evidence" of their progress. If this were company 'X' with unknown financial assets, I too would be very suspect. But this is a company run by a person with few financial constraints. And it's obvious that Jim has a genuine passion for filmmaking, and according to what I've read, he's a highly accomplished image-maker in his own right. Look, I've been to more NABs and SMPTEs than I care to remember. And I can smell vaporware as well as the next guy. This time it's different. If I'm wrong, I make $100. If I'm right, I make a movie.

Well, Ken, it would be my pleasure to answer your post, sincerely, without a sneer on my face, without any snide sarcasm, and without tongue-in-cheek. See? Why can't our posts here just be a bit more civil? You asked me a simple question, without any name-calling. My motivation behind my personal crusade? I just thought some here were excessively rude, and no one seemed to be calling anyone out on it. Your above reply may be the first, from among those who aren't fans of RED here, that I've received, that didn't also come with an insulting or grossly condescending comment attached. Let me respond in full a bit later . . . gotta take care of some GF stuff right now . . .

Well, you sound like a reasonable guy, Michael. In fact, I'm sure if all of us were in the same room, we'd all get along fine. But you've got to admit, the tone of these forums tends to be extremely condescending. I'm just continually surprised how many here, who claim not to have any serious interest in RED, seem compelled to continue to post here to "teach us a lesson" about one thing or another. Even your need to "enlighten" me in your last post is a bit presumptuous, don't you think? I mean, even if we are all a bunch of idiots for buying into RED, why do you all even care?

IMHO, the JVC HD110 gives you the best bang for the buck in 1/3" HD. The HVX200 is nice, but the P2 workflow may not be well suited to your application.

Thanks for the info, Mitch!

Hey Jeff! Long time no talk! Sorry, but I completely forgot to reply to your PM a few days ago (I guess more than a few days ago). Those clips look NICE! Yeah, that DSR450 is a great image-making machine! I'm VERY pleased with it. I've shot one short with it (the one the airplane stills are from), and am working on prepping a much more ambitious short for shooting with my DSR450 in the next few weeks. I made some color correction blunders on that short--but, PM me and I'll send you a DVD of it someday. My next short will really put the DSR450 through its paces. I've only rented the DSR450 out a couple times ($450/day), since my "captive" client (that big TV network I work for) later bought a pile of JVC HD110s, and I basically lost that client to the JVCs. At least that paid for my new bricks! But I really only bought it to shoot my short films with anyway. I've also recently gotten on the RED reservation list, so as soon as my RED ONE camera ships, I'm going to dump the DSR450, probably at a huge loss. Well, at least I only paid $12K for it (after Sony's $3,000 rebate), including the glass, so, I hope I can still get some of it back in six months. But I'm not THAT sorry I bought it . . . I mean, I just couldn't take putting all that effort into shooting my personal short films using noisy 1/3" cameras anymore. And you know me, I CAN'T STAND NOISE! Talk to you soon, Jeff! Regards, Ralph Oshiro

I'm certainly no expert in RED's I/O, but this is what I think I know: RED's I/O to its removable, on-board storage device (HDD or flash drive) is e-SATA. RED's removable, on-board storage device has its own I/O, and that includes: - Firewire 800/400 - USB2 - e-SATA This is all in addition to dual HD-SDI ports, some sort of RAW data port, and, I think an HDMI port. So the general idea is, you capture to the on-board storage device, remove it, then plug it in to your computer to ingest (similar to a P2 card or Focus drive workflow), using any of the three I/O ports on the removable drive. * Note: You should post RED-related stuff in the RED forum here.

Yeah, I know they both do now. But originally, 24p capability was absent from the NAB2006 press release for I think, HPX2000.

Rob: I would just rent a couple of those Anton Bauer Dionic 160s. Those things have 160-Watt hours of power! So 160Wh/17W would theoretically give you 9.4 hours of recording time if I did the math right. You could also use one of those dual-battery, Anton Bauer Snap-On mounts, or the dual battery, Snap-On mount Anton Bauer belt that has a 4-pin DC out on it. They're hot-swappable, so you could just rent a pile of ProPak14s or whatever, and keep swapping them out.

Right, Christopher, which leads to the "on top of" analogy of video noise. The "in-layer" analogy applied to film makes sense too. I like that film's silver halide particles are crystaline in structure. Kodak's T-grain granules, are an even more refined, more structured version, but still a crystal. Because of the nature of a continuous length of film passing through a gate, the grain moves, creating more organic, more randomized patterns. Also, film grain is less uniform. Extreme video noise is very uniform in structure, and IMO, horribly "wrong" looking. The opening shot in Michael Mann's Collateral really bothered me. I know that a mixture of 35mm, Viper, and F900 cameras were used to lens this film. I'm only guessing that the opening shot (daylight interior of the airport) was shot with an F900 at like +12dB. That "noise effect" so didn't do it for me. I thought, what the hell was he thinking? Overall though, I loved Collateral's mostly Viper-lensed aesthetic. I especially loved all the taxicab interiors. He was exploiting video for its "video look," including all of its warts. And I bought that. It was only the opening shot that screamed, "HEY LOOK, I'M SHOOTING VIDEO, AND I HAVE THE GAIN UP FOR EFFECT!" To me, that sequence looked really, "WRONG."

Mitch: As I recall from visiting Panasonic's booth at NAB2006, either the HPX2000 or the SPX800 (can't remember which one) was NOT going to have 24p capability, and was designed specifically for the ENG market. Did Panasonic change the design of one of those models to ADD 24p capability?

Thanks for posting that, Chris! That's encouraging news! Can't wait to get my new hat at NAB again this year, too!

What an insightful, elegantly crafted post! You're so right! Makes me want to dig out and re-read my "Art and Visual Perception" textbook from film school! I remember seeing Bertolucci films for the first time, in particular, Storaro's "Conformist," and thinking, "Wow, what a beautiful FILM!" Seeing films like that, with their fluttery, beautiful grain patterns, molded my early film aesthetic into what I defined as the pinnacle of what a beautiful filmed image was. I do want to point out one small semantic issue I have when the discussion of "grain" is mentioned in reference to a discussion about video SNR: FILM has "GRAIN" VIDEO [electronic imaging] has "NOISE" I'm neither an electronic engineer, nor an expert in photographic sensitometry, but the two imaging artifacts, electronic noise and film grain, do have very distinctive differences. Perhaps others here can elaborate on the technical reasons why. IMO, the best electronic imaging camera master should be as noise-free as possible. Dealing with today's technology, your camera masters are eventually going to be encoded, transcoded, compressed, re-compressed, and re- re-compressed, by the time its made its final delivery venue. And that unwanted noise not only makes the CODECs work harder, but it just starts to really degrade the image in a highly compounded way. Add chroma and luma aliasing to the mix, and noisy video starts to look just awful, once your intended audience finally sees your work at the end of the "digital bitstream." Agreed--if not all of it. You could make that same observation regarding the highly polarized attitudes toward RED on this board. Two cultures. Two perceptions. No "universal" standard of "beauty." If not a paradigm shift, another paradigm, added to the mix.

Good one! Not that there's anything wrong with a "25-year-old film school drop-out with no experience and no money" who does have a reservation! Yes, they do seem to be a challange to communicate with--a handicap of being a small shop, I guess. They did give me a cool hat at NAB last year, though. How "bad" was it? I mean, if there are no current alternatives, was it "workable?" Or was it just plain, "this is never gonna work, we're better off hand-focusing" kinda bad?

Thanks, David!

Not picking on your post in particular, Brian, but I've noticed many here posting are wondering where all of us "DV wannabes" are getting the money to finance our cameras. Funny that so many here just automatically assume that all 1400 RED reservation-holders are all 25-year-old film school drop-outs with no experience and no money! Two of my friends are also RED reservation-holders, both of whom have six-figure incomes, have been working in the industry for over twenty-five years each, and are older than dirt.

Oh, I forgot about the HPX2000: Panasonic HPX2000