Häakon

Your argument was that at $2,500+/day, "HD" is just as expensive to shoot as 35mm. I was pointing out that one of today's best alternatives to shooting film costs much less than the figure you quoted - and on top of that, the post costs in dealing with the "stock" you've shot pale in comparison to the budget you need to deal with film. If you are confident that a single chip DV camera is sufficient for your production needs, then it looks like you've got nothing to worry about!

A completely fleshed out RED package goes for a lot less than that as well. And at the end of the day, you're out... what, the camera rental and $80 x 3 for a couple of hard drives to back up the data? You can argue film vs. video aesthetics till the cows come home, but the cost comparison is almost laughable at this stage of the game.

Or me? ;-) Actually, Seung and I took our conversation off the boards and resolved the issue privately and amicably. He was very gentlemanly about the situation and we see each other's point of view, which is the great thing about discussion forums. I do think it's important to note that RED footage is video footage just like any other electronic camera which has preceded it - it's just evolved and matured technology. And no doubt another camera will eventually replace it (perhaps also made by the RED company) someday in the future. But for now, it is exciting to have a good, solid choice for shooting that arguably gives us many of the visual aesthetics we enjoy with film while affording us a fantastic digital workflow at the same time. This will not be the answer for everyone, but from the reception the camera has clearly gotten over the past year it is an extremely attractive choice for many. Cheers, Häakon

Indeed!

Hi, Yes, I saw what you wrote. You also said that you may possibly feel the need to "correct" your fellow shooter and I was simply pointing out that such a correction would not indeed be a correction at all. Perhaps you should re-read your original post? :-) At any rate, the bigger issue was not centered around your post but the post which preceded it; discussing the "digital cinema" nomenclature which has been applied to steer users away from the negative connotation of "video" (especially as compared to film). "Digital cinema" is a fine and dandy term, but doesn't take away from the fact that at it's core, RED is still a video camera. That was the main point I was getting at. Nothing to argue about - and I certainly don't have a need to stoop to name-calling! Have a good day! Häakon

Hi, A PD-150 is absolutely a video camera; MiniDV is simply the format on which the video data is stored. You would not be accurate to "correct" them in this manner. Best, Häakon

Hi, The definition of video: the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion. RED may be a very high quality video camera, but a video camera it is nonetheless.

You'd be completely right - if they both looked acceptable in 1080... :-)

Hi, This was not my footage, I don't know the shooter, and I have no connection to this shoot. I simply was providing the requested information about what cameras were used to shoot each frame. The shots were made publicly available on the REDUser website with some accompanying information here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4552 According to the poster, their RED went down and the RED company was quick to provide a loaner camera, but they went ahead and tried to use an HVX in the meantime to avoid too much downtime. His posted workflow for the HVX clips was, "just opened HVX clips in FCP and exported PNG. Opened in photoshop to change image size to 1280." He then did a side-by-side of the HVX footage he shot and the RED footage he re-shot later, and the results are what you see above. If you can't tell the difference between those two images on your monitor, we've got a bigger problem than the limits of the displays...

RED footage is on the left, HVX on the right.

Hi Stephen, I never said it was an issue, just that it is much slower than other digital video cameras already on the market and that they hope to improve this "boot time" significantly through firmware updates. :-) Häakon

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.

Except that digital cameras don't take 90 seconds to "reload." The point is that RED is slow to start up for a digital camera, and since there are plenty of pros who shoot digitally, this is a concern for more than just the "amateur market."

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." 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).

Let's please curb the elitist attitude a bit and remember that just because someone is not shooting film it doesn't make them an "amateur." Scads of dramatic television shows (and let's be honest, even enough feature films now to warrant a mention) are being shot digitally. RED is a digital camera, not a film camera. How long does it take to replace the tape in an F-900 and resume shooting? I don't think you will last too long if it takes you 90 seconds.

Interestingly enough, crap lighting is still crap lighting even with 35mm.

Exactly on September 4th, 2007 at 10:51pm PST. http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.ph...78513#post78513

It was an AJA downconverter: http://picasaweb.google.com/aftongrant/RED...970437594795634 The 8GB compact flash card they used holds about 4 mins of 4K REDCODE RAW, and copies to a computer via a standard CF card reader. The time this takes depends on the speed of your reader and the interface it uses. Camera startup time is a whopping 90 seconds at the moment. They hope to "severely reduce this" by firmware updates in the future.

They'll all change their tune eventually. Some of us just saw the light a little sooner. :-)

Right... so you could turn around and declare the LART tests invalid because Jim bankrolled the thing. No one's asking you to like what RED is doing, but if you're going to attack for the sake of attacking, you might want to at least make sure that your propositions make sense. Funny, too, that you love to ridicule those who post on reduser (you've devolved to name calling, now - that's classy!), yet you obviously spend enough time there to keep up on the daily happenings. Time to come out of the closet, me thinks... The main photograph on the front page of red.com is just that - a photograph, not a render.

I think one of the reasons that we haven't heard anything about this lately is that they are really pushing the [redcode] RAW format, and you can't scale the RAW images (to make other RAW images). When internal 4K to 2K scaling was being discussed in previous iterations of the feature chart, it was only applicable to RGB-originated footage. Since there are numerous advantages to shooting RAW, it seems like that this is mostly all the development team has really been talking about (and testing), and there has been no talk of scaling as a result. It has also been posted that the first batch of cameras will not even have RGB mode "turned on" (it will be a firmware upgrade down the line), and as such, no scaling would be possible even if the feature still exists. This is to say that downscaling of the RGB footage in-camera may or may not still be an option at some point, but because of the focus placed on the RAW functionality, it does not seem to be a priority.

Hi Fran, Thanks for your respectful reply - everything you have pointed out makes sense and I think this whole issue just comes down to how your own personal workflow pans out and what your individual needs are. Many of us work in either the "still" or "motion picture" industries, but those umbrellas are huge and what works for one person can be a completely unworkable solution for someone else. The great thing is that there are always new tools coming down the pipeline that help facilitate the process. For me, personally, there is no question that shooting digitally has been enormously beneficial from both a financial and time-savings standpoint in the work that I do. The choice to shoot digitally on some projects has also been a direct result of this. That's not to say that it is always a compromise; I certainly love the digital workflow and the instantaneous nature of digital capture. I think RED puts forth a mighty good case for the first true alternative to shooting film at a price that is not so astronomical it just isn't feasible. This is, again, not to say that RED is a replacement - just an alternative - but it will unquestionably have strengths and advantages over shooting film. Now that the resolution and latitude are vastly approaching the "standards" of celluloid film (again, 35mm), I think that's the reason it's a big deal for many filmmakers. My original reply was to your post where your stance was that in your experience, shooting digitally ends up costing you more than shooting film. My feeling is that you're still going to need that faster computer to edit your images whether they're digitally acquired or scans of traditional film. The other great thing about technology is that as time marches on, the cost of equipment continues to fall. How much do the new Mark III bodies cost? How much can you sell your old bodies for? No doubt there will be a few thousand dollars' worth of overlap there, but in 15 months is that not a pretty understandable cost of doing business? I tell you, you have it much better off in the still world. The fact that RED is not only pushing the quality envelope but shattering the price barrier for digital motion picture capture at the same time is a huge deal. There will always be an exception to the rule, and our good friend Stephen will no doubt be happy to point it out for us. :) But I think that, in general, it's pretty tough to make an argument for digital being the costlier alternative when everything else is equal. FWIW, I think your posts are spot on topic, because of the concept that RED represents and the importance that remains in discussing and fleshing these ideas out. I have never seen a (camera) company be so forthright with their customers about the design process every step of the way, and I think that's another reason they will be handsomely rewarded. Delays or not, they certainly have people talking!

Hi Mark, What you're describing is the difference between an analogue medium and a digital one - much like the way that audio purists to this day will tell you that a vinyl recording is superior to any "lossy" digital representation. Yet here we are today where the CD rules and crappily-compressed mp3s on the web are far more prevalent than 45s and LPs. What makes the difference is not purely quality (to the dismay of many creatives - and justifiably so), but rather convenience, cost, durability, and a slew of other reasons. The film industry is a business, don't forget that. And there are certainly advantages that digital acquisiton unarguably has over its celluloid counterparts - lossless duplication being a major one. I think Evan has pretty much summed it up to a "T." No one will ever force you to shoot digitally, and if it's not your cup of tea, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But to declare that "film will be here long after digital has disapeared," seems quite a bit foolish to me; one only needs look at the history of analogue and digital to see where we are headed.

Hi Fran, I appreciate your contributions but I do feel you are exaggerating things a bit. You're saying that in a few months, your 1DS MKIIs will be completely useless? That a Dual-Core Mac Pro is now incapable of dealing with your still photos simply because a newer model is out? Surely that's not the case. Maybe we'd all like to be using the most current, cutting-edge technology, but it's certainly not necessary to stay on top of the game. In fact, having even a mediocre tool and a good deal of talent will trump an amateur with the "latest gear" any day. I work mostly in the world of motion picture, but I have a great friend who's an established shooter in the still industry and continues to shoot much of his commercial portfolio on a 5-year old Canon EOS-1Ds. The very same camera that paid for itself the first month of its use. Of course there are archival costs (as there are with anything else), but those costs really are minor in the grand scheme of things. You can get a terabyte's worth of data now for under $400 that will hold several millions of photos (even in the native RAW state) - all in a drive smaller than just one of the three-ring binders you store film assets with. And we won't even go into the significant advatanges of the workflow and time savings that digital provides. There certainly continue to be legit reasons to shoot film - mostly aesthetic (and even that is a very subjective arena) - but I would say that on the whole, the "digital has made things cheaper and better" argument does hold up. I think that's exactly the foundation that RED is continuing to build upon, just in a new industry. I can also certainly understand why this change (and the slow, yet steady shift to digital in general) threatens the status quo of traditional filmmaking, and why there are many people uneasy with it. Change always brings about this reaction. As you've said, however, the digital genie is out of the bottle; choosing to deny it merely closes a (rather large) door of opportunity.

Hi Stephen, I think you would be hard pressed to find many professional (still) shooters that would echo that sentiment. The same will hold true for digital (motion) capture not too far down the road. Häakon