jan von krogh

That's pretty arrogant.

"The future can hold no interest for me, for I am Soderbergh!"

I suppose, that it is a good idea to have a documentation of process and intention of the creator for later reuse/remaster inside of the distribution copies.

Many restaurations, south pacific or ben hur just to name two, have led to discussions if the remastered versions weren´t quite different from original.

I fail to see the arrogance, when a director/dp/producer gives advice how his particular movie is to be projected or duplicated.

for ergonomics and handling, a good wildlife camera should have the following attributes

- silent. many critters can become shy/aggressive when they notice the sound

- long runtime of recording material. animals and kids, for whatver reason, seem to dislike first takes and usually improve their performance beginning with take 1237

- buffered recording - that means if you press record, you record as example 7 seconds -before- you press record. important to get that moment when the animal decides to come out the hole/water etc

- long (really long!) lens can be extremly helpful, and wildlife shooting is one of the reasons extenders can be godsend.

- a not to shallow DOF -can- make things easier. especially if you have to shoot wideopen at ~250mm and up some creature moving at 30-50mph+ in an unpredictable manner.

- a good dynamic range (oceans, jungle, snow, deserts etc can have pretty impressive shadows and highlights)

- a high asa (many creatures begin their schedule at night or dusk)

- HD resolution or film, in my humble opinion, is mandatory - many of the stations wont accept sd (also hdv isn´t accepted by several broadcasters) -and- often there is that ultrarare specimen in the image, and even with 450mm you just don´t get it close enough, and you want to scale it up in post.

p.s.

We did some wildlife in 2003 (series), and for us (being in Europe) the Sony 750 was the logical choice, Angenieux 7.8-208F2 (extender 416mm).

In the USA, or any NTSC area, i wouldn´t recommend the 750 (790 meanwhile) however, but the 900R, as in the EU 25P is 100% ok for cinematic, while in the US 24P is a must have.

All of the high school students who clog up the reduser.net forum will by Nikon lenses.

I don´t think that all poorer buyers, including students will go for nikon/canon.

Simply for the reason that the adapter costs 500 dollars - and i suppose some of them might decide to buy some very cheap prime lenses instead for that money, like really old zeiss planar T2 or cooke speed panchros and use pl-adapters. Visual products usually has old primes at ~300-500$, so that might even be cheaper for the ultimate striped down starter kit.

If students buy their own red cameras, they will probably be using nikons & canon photolenses very often, certainly, that is: If their university doesn´t buy red.

The universities & colleges buying cameras however, usually have a good selection of gear.

We get request from younger people for our 35mm PL glass as they want to use it on the p&s every second month or so - usually for the typical diploma or short-film.

It will be interesting to see how many reds will be sold to the educational sector.

All of the real industry people who will actually be able to afford to shoot with the cameras will have proper cine lenses.

Certainly. The people in production shooting with red as we speak (Steven Soderbergh, Timur Bekmambetov) use classic 35mm cine lenses. Soderberg is the first one to shoot with the red zoom on "guerillia", iirc. Bekmambetov, who shoots "wanted" on 35mm and red certainly has non-red lenses in use, as he started very early. Peter Jackson used cooke primes and angenieux zoom for "crossing the line". Rodney Charters, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor did use red lenses - but that was for their testdrives, so it remains to be seen what they finally will use.

I think even big rental houses will invest in some RED lenses,

indeed, some did.

It would be pretty interesting to know if they also became market leader in orders in that segment - i don´t think so.

if only to use them as -- dare I say it -- crash cam glass.

i would surprised to see red crashcams in 2007. the resale value is higher than buying price and there are good offers for low reservation numbers. So - producers who know their job wouldn´t be to eager to waste the money.

At $17,500 a pop, I know that it's one of Jim Jannard's fears that RED Ones will be purchased to be used a relatively cheap crash cam cameras. Disposable technology for a certain crowd.

i am curious - how do you know that? did you have a talk with him or do you have a source?

however, i suppose red doesn´t care to much for what reason a buyer buys the camera - as long they sell their cameras.

Sidenote: 17.500 won´t give you a working red, don´t be blinded by the price of the body alone. Add at least screen or viewfinder to actually control & setup the camera (1.700-3.000$), a storage option (~900-6000$) in order to record the 4k image (for 1080p/2k you could use the hd-sdi), a a PL lens, or +500 for canon/nikon adapter & glass. And power supply.

I would be willing to be the majority of Red users will probably end up using the adaptors for nikkor or canons EOS lenses. Nobody said they had to use PL mount lenses. I think a fair group of them care more about the box than they do the lens attached to it.

For Germany, i would take that bet. How much? Or is that offer only valid international? ;)

- Ludwig & partners in Munich have 10 Red coming. They have a huge selection of Canon, Zeiss, Fuji.

- We & partners have 2 Reds coming. Well stay with our 5 Angenieux Zooms (3 PL, 2 2/3 HD) and the 2 Zeiss primesets.

From the other 6 units coming this year to Germany i know of, i don´t know exactly what they are planing - however the mayority here clearly is on Canon Film, Zeiss, Angenieux, not Nikon/Canon Phto in this part of Europe.

Still more broke the bank on the 17500, and don't have funds left for PL mount lenses.

While i do agree that there are several newcomers who have red on order, I am not really certain if that applies to the A-Budget directors (Peter Jackson, Steven Soderbergh etc) who have several units or several units coming, to the large rental houses (ludwig) and mid-sized ones.

One thing is for sure: this particular camera has customers from worldclass top-end to HDV-users.

i agree.

Speedgrade and Framecycler are excellent products and priced to competete.

the other topnotch german company for 2,3,4k should also be menitioned: DVS.

their new clipster is a real 4K powerhouse - it even outputs DCI masters directly.

http://www.dvs.de/

Fairuse snippet of Iridias PR:

Real-Time Playback at 3K Resolution

IRIDAS, who introduced the first live playback of RAW files earlier this year, today announced support for real-time de-Bayering of ARRI D20 digital camera footage. The ARRI RAW file format, which offers 3K resolution and 12-bit color depth, can be played directly in FrameCycler and SpeedGrade. Since RAW files are one third the size of uncompressed RGB formats, this means substantially lower storage requirements and will save filmmakers the time that would otherwise be required to render RAW footage before it can be viewed.

"The new IRIDAS RAW playback capability is the link that has been missing until now," said Achim Oehler, D20 project manager at ARRI. "Now we have a seamless solution for working with the D20 RAW data in its native format."

"Working with RAW is just much more efficient," said Lin Kayser, IRIDAS CEO. "There's less data to move, less, to store, and yet you're working at full 3K resolution. This will be tremendous for digital dailies workflows with the non-destructive color correction capabilities of SpeedGrade DDS, for example."

The ARRI D20 is the third RAW file format supported by IRIDAS. CineForm RAW, and the Phantom camera RAW format are the others.

The big 4K 35mm sensor on the RED is really more of a novelty right now it seems to me. You'll find that using 35mm lenses isn't as easy as your average HDV graduate would like. Also, the wide sweeping misunderstanding of how DOF works on given lenses and formats is way off because of marketing on RED's and its fan's part. Lets say you get your RED with a big 35mm lens out and you shoot a shot at T5.6. Shoot the same shot with a similar field of view S16mm lens on the SI at, say a T1.8 and your DOF would probably be shallower on the SI. (just an example to get the idea across, correct me if need be).

Sorry, Yes, you need to be corrected here.

Red shoots at s35, s16 and 2/3 sensorsize. So you can actually use the formats you want.

The sensorsize can be selected. s16 is 2k, 2/3 1080p and s35k 4k and 2540p.

However, regarding the S:I. camera - it think its a great product.

And, as i am owning sony hdcam, old arri 35mm and have red on order, i think its interesting to know that i am considering to buy a SI.

Especially the mini is really interesting.

That said, i think there are other unique strenghts in the SI concept.

The integration of Iridias Speedgrade and Aspect Ration are excellent feature.

Also the 72fps overcranking is a great feature.

I know many people who can polly-parrot the boiler-plate mathematics under wet cement, but when you ask them for help with composing software obviously they have no clue!

Oh i forgot. You wanted talk about "compositing" software, correct?

Hi Jan,

First I would look at the lens on a lens projector, if I liked it I would try it on a camera.

I agree.

However, as we didn´t order a red lens so far, i can´t offer a testride in the near future.

We might be getting the zooms, but due to the equipment we already have we are not in any hurry.

For the camera/lens test to be of an value to me there should be no compression or processing whatsoever.

yes, if you measure a component, the chain should not introduce any artefacts.

if not, one doesn´t measure the component, but the chain.

Thank you for all the patronizing techno-babble. Are you sure you are not an Englishman sir? :lol:

if you don´t understand mathematics or written language, a image might help.

may i point your attention to:

- the violet tones which are not present in the originally monochrome master.

- the influence of the 1 pixel green in the master (weighted distributed 40/60, worst case scenario for cmos) which expands to 8 pixels due to dct.

I understand perfectly well how compression works

Obviously not.

Very shortly the lens will be available for independant back to back testing with other lenses, at that time we will get the answers to this question.

Stephen

I fully agree.

To test the devices, we also need to test the lenses on other cameras and vice versa.

Furthermore, it is recommendable to have qualified persons with a suitable education for the digital processing.

Images can be screwed in the classical and in the digital lab, if you don´t know exactly what you are doing, as has been demonstrated here.

That is why many DPs prefer to have experts in the lab, as DIT, as in the DI, as etc.

sorry, i forgot.

The image clearly shows chromatic aberration which cannot be explained as an artifact of JPEG compression or resampling because the falloff of the edge is approximately gaussian not sinusoidal and the isoluminal axis is not preturbed by macroblock boundaries.

you are wrong.

opinion and bias are no replacement for science and mathematics.

Red can easily verify their claims. The fact that they choose not to invites the following conclusions:

- The interpolated ~4000 pixel output of the camera includes very severe demosaic and interpolation artifacts

- The 300mm lens has very poor chromatic aberration and resolution.

Say it ain't so - and prove it.

Phil

your opinion and reality might be slightly misaligned. very old news, but here you go.

red 4k, red 300mm. published months ago.

http://homepage.mac.com/brookwillard/redfaq/digital2.jpg

remember to realise that the quality improved quite a bit since then - these shots were done with pre-series prototypes which had inferior quality.

Don't worry, I've reported it already as I really don't see the point of such a disguised ad. This thread is in serious need of deletion.

Disguised add? What are you talking about?

Highly creative, respected and well known DPs and directors as Peter Jackson, Steven Soderberg, Rodney Charters just to name a few, who have worked with the RED camera shared their opinion, and it seems their impressions are pretty consistent.

If you dislike their opinion - Fair enough, you made that clear. However, if someone thinks that a product is revolutionary or excellent, thats rare enough.

And so far, we have only got quite positive statements from wellknown people regarding the red, if i might add, so this is nothing exceptional at all.

p.s.

did you see "crank" from Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor?

Nevertheless, increasing the colour saturation in Photoshop reveals quite a bit of chromatic abberation for a prime lens. Or have I spent too much time in the company of Zeiss Ultraprimes? :lol:

I suppose you rather haven´t spent enough time of learning basic JPEG functionality like DCT (discrete cosinus transformation), entropic Huffman encoding etc., the way how to take care of multistage datareduction artefacts, how to avoid impact of postprocessing pipelines on image quality and finally how to judge quality of digital interpolators (thats what you call the scaling).

Your image doesn´t expose 4/8 pixel chromatic aberration.

To help you understand:

1) Image is recorded.

2) b/w contrast edges have slight hue offset, lets suppose typical chromatic aberration of 0.5 pixel, distributed on 1 pixel each.

3) digital interpolation (in this case downward scaling, and lets suppose bicubic filtered)

-slight hue is mixed to a block of before 4 pixels, or 8, depending on interpolator used

4) Image is sent through datareduction pipeline 2, aka JPEG for publishing.

4a) Lowpassfilter and Subsampling of colorseperation

4b) Subdivision of filtered values in 8×8pixels (if you still can follow me, 4 pixels to 1 in stage 3 in the scaling, now 8 pixels to 1)

4c) lossy Quantisation

4d) reorder

4e) entropic encoding, typically Huffmann.

now, 4 former black or white pixels have -slight- colorhue and saturation mixed in.

- unaware user gets the image.

- unaware user scales and saturates the image, pushing the mixed colored pixelgroups to color.

now, 4 former black or white pixels have -strong- colorhue and saturation.

So, if you now jump to the wrong conclusion, that you found wide chomatic aberration, a hint.

#1 all colorgradients in the image are multiplies of 4 (remember point 3 and 4b?)

If all of this was to precise science for you, the easy shortform:

Half a pixel saturated from aberration influences one/two pixels with its hue and saturation in the master, depending on its position to the sensorgrid.

After scaling this hue & sat affects 4 pixels each, as the scaledown mixes the 4. This is why all cologradients are 4 pixels wide in your photoshopconstruction.

By increasing saturation and scaling up, you expose this, but not the size of aberration on the original. could be 0.5, could be 1 pixel. not 4, as in your image - then you would see 16/32 wide colorgradients.

So, congratulations, you just understood some of the basics of digital image manipulation, and how datareduction is working: summing up average values, including color.

Its pretty easy to jump to wrong conclusions, if you mix optical and digital processes and don´t understand one of the two.

RED could make up an algorithm that software distorts the RED, Green and Blue images to correct the abberations of a particular lens, and then the correction table could be fed into REDCODE to give Ultraprime results from a Coke bottle lens :lol: Perhaps Jannard could patent it! But wait. Mentioning it here is Prior Art, oh me and my big mouth! No wonder Jannard feels so sorry for me!

This standard procedure, which seems new to you, is even available on broadcast cameras.

We however will also stay with our Zeiss primesets and Angenieux Zooms, even as they have no cooke /i on them as the red optics do.

And it is a huge operation to attempt to do this well in a live, on the fly realtime in camera solution. In the end that's likely why they removed the function.

Furthermore, we shouldn´t forget, that even if feasible, that open ups some new cans, or barrels, of worms for the coders.

Mr. Natress would have more than double the work at hands if he would have to QA these functions.

However, as sad i am that we might have no 2k in camera - we have been sold for the camera being only 2k onboard.

Now its 4k. Thats a huge improvement.

Oh, you can ask...

This is not something I'm personally at liberty to say.

why did i expect that answer...

;)

Let me add to the helpful posts here another way, the "D.I." way.

In that scenario, you

- shoot s16

- scan the film to 2k or 1080p

- now you can edit / grade in full quality on the editing system. *1

- output the film as imagesequence (dpx etc) or as videostream (quicktime etc) or as a tape (HDCAM) or as distribution media (Blueray, HD-DVD, DVD etc). *2

- for film-out of your short, you will have to record that with a celco, arrilaser etc. *3

*1 several NLE applications allow off/online with digital media. Using inexpensive programs as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut on inexpensive computers would not allow for full uncompressed 2k or 1080p without additional hardware. so, these softwares convert the master 2k/1080p to a datareduced HD format for editing. For the final master, they then compute in not realtime using the original images. For Adobe, you should look into "Aspect Ratio HD", for Final Cut into "pro res".

*2 depending for your purpose, HDCAM or filmout might be the better way. Most mayor festivals and broadcasters use hdcam as one delivery format those days.

*3 be aware that recording filmout for a short will cost you $$$$ and you probably will have a 35mm blowup master.

This was a big change in the specs around January I believe.

I missed that one, good to know. So it will be 4k>2k onset/notebook or in the studio then.

I am starting to catch up right now (had been buried under 2 full-feature productions in the recent months) as delivery is getting close.

The only 2K output is a windowed sensor. It's a heck of a thing to do on the fly in camera, so I guess they decided that they couldn't do it to the quality they wanted in realtime. I agree it would be nice, but it's also a big task.

The specifications have changed quite a bit. When we ordered, 4K redcode on-camera -wasn´t- announced. That was a mayor improvement.

p.s.

Might i ask, how many cameras Abel has on order? Certainly more than our 2, i suppose.

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.

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.

I thought that the option for shooting the full 4K sensor and oversampling down to 2k was only possible in post, not in camera. It was an early spec of the camera that was later changed and frankly I miss it, but that is a lot of computing to be done on the fly and I can understand why it's gone.

If this feature isn´t available anymore, it would be interesting to know if thats in the initial camerasoftware, will be upgraded in the camera later or won´t be in the camera at all but in the redcine application.

As producer, i would also like to have it oncamera. From the postproduction perspective however, i suppose most folks there would welcome a "4k only"-policy.

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.

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.

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.