Matthew Rogers

$500 says that they have the camera set to do playback at 1080p. When you are doing playback at 1080p, any 720p monitor (RED LCD, EVF, and most 17" HD-SDI monitors) will play a center, 720p crop of the footage. Turn it back to playback at 720 and you won't have any issues. I would be shocked if that's not the issue. Matthjew

Hey guys, I've got a used Arri 5.65x5.65 filter tray for sale. It has some scratches on it from being used, but still looks good and operates perfectly. It's designed for newer matteboxes like the MB-20 (although, it may work in older matteboxes, it was bought new a year ago.) Asking $200. Will ship anywhere in the US via USPS for free. Matthew

No, because those lenses are designed for a single plane chip while the HDX900 is a 3 CCD design. So you need lenses designed to work with 3 CCD's.

Sold.

I have my Cooke 20-60mm T3.1 lens for sale. Since I've gotten my RED primes I haven't used the lens and I don't foresee using it again anytime soon. The lens is in very good condition. I bought it from Able Cine Tech almost two years ago and they refurbed it before sending it to me. The iris, zoom, and focus are smooth and the lens has been totally trouble free for me. It does have a small scratch towards the edge of the front element. It was there when I bought the lens for Able Cine, but doesn't affect in any way that I've ever seen. Even when I've shown a flashlight straight onto where the scratch is, I've never see the spot on my monitor (it may actually be out of the FOV for the RED sensor) It comes with the lens, Pelican 1550 case with custom cut foam (not pluck-n-pull). It does NOT come with a lens support as it's just light enough (6.1 lbs) to not need one like it's bigger brothers, the Cooke 20-100 & 18-100. Asking price is $6000 and comes with free FedEx Saver shipping to anywhere in the USA. No PayPal (fees are too high), certified check or money order. Below are pictures. Here is a link to a full res jpeg screenshot from a short film I shot with the lens: http://www.macvilleproductions.com/cooke/larry.jpg

Hey guys, I am looking for either a 19mm (preferred) or 15mm LW follow focus. I already have an old Arri LW FF (Arri 16 I believe), and while it works good, it doesn't fit with my RED primes as it was designed for the smaller Ziess primes. I am looking to spend $1500-$2300. I would also consider a FF-2 if it was under $1500. Thanks, Matthew Rogers DP

I've had an issue with mounting some old Ziess lenses which were Arri B mount and had a removable PL mount on them. According to the owner, they worked just fine on a friend's RED, but neither of the two PL adapters would work on my RED. So yes, I believe some PL mounts just will not fit on some RED's. Matthew

One of the differences is that you can not use the DP series on film cameras as the back element will hit the spinning mirror. The other big difference is that it's .2 of a stop slower than the normal Optimo. Of course, that's really not that big of a difference. Matthew

I believe it may have something to do with a bad hard drive cable. I have come across an error like that before on my RED, but it's always just worked either after just pressing the record button again or restarting the camera, so it may not be a cable issue but just a firmware issue. Matthew

What are you looking at your footage in? If you are in just the Quicktime player looking at proxies, then you haven't seen what the camera actually recorded. Of course, you could have also exposed the camera improperly. Matthew

That scene has haze added to it. That's how you get the light rays streaking through the picture. You really don't have to soften the light to get that effect. The haze helps soften the light and you need hard lights if you want those streaks. It does look like the boy's face has a fill light on it considering how her face is kinda dark and it's very backlit. Matthew

Sounds like you are looking for a doorway dolly. It'll cost you between $1k-$2k USD depending on the brand (I suggest Modern Studio's dolly for it's price.) If you are going to run that on metal track, you'll need skater wheels (also called "bogie wheels" and "sleds"). That's about another $1k for a set of those. And lastly, you just have to buy track. Matthew

I highly suggest the Libec L-22 series over the Bogen tripods. If you only have $500 to spend, the Libec is night and day smoother than any sub $1500 bogen tripod. Matthew

I'm guessing that some hard drives are just more fragile than others. I wonder if it's how you had it mounted. What position was the drive mounted in? I normally have the cradle stacked up on top rails closer to a horizontal position than a vertical position. Did you have the drive vertical? Oh, a ring light. Not sure if it was a fan setting or maybe just some bodies heat up quicker. I shot an interview outside today with my RED in the sun for 2 hours straight without much problems. The camera gave me the triangle symbol with "temp" under it, but it keep shooting. When I had a two min break because of clouds, the camera ran it's fans at high and it went back to normal temp. Was the image fine on the RED LCD or on the HD-SDI output? It sounds like maybe the edge mode got turned on. I would say that False Color got turned on, but normally the description of it makes it fairly clear. I do suggest you find someone with a normal EVF as mine has a very nice, smooth image. I was even amiring today on how nice the image is in it and how I would hate to go back to using Varicam's B&W VF. Yeah, the Israeli arm does not work correctly for the EVF. It just weighs to blasted much to support that correctly. The Element Technica EVF arm is wonderful, and for a smaller budget, the Zacuto arm is pretty nice-especially for the price! Matthew

Not a huge difference in quality, but it really depends on what you are shooting. I've been shooting a ton of RC28 16:9 and the client has always been thrilled with the end footage. I think that different RED drives must have different tolerances on handling. I shot a country music concert handheld with the drive in the cradle for 90 mins without a single dropped frame (with a drunk/high director who grabbed the camera off my shoulders!) Did you have any loud noises in the studio? I know that gunshots and other loud noises like that can trigger that. What exactly is a "kiss" light? I've never had any problems with mine getting hot either indoors or outdoors. Of course, outdoors I always keep a flag over it to keep the camera and myself cool. Even 60+ min at a time takes the camera won't freak out. The fans will come on pretty hard when I stop rolling, but that's it. The rental house you got it from should have set the fans on auto as the camera will control itself the best. The battery issue has to do with bad battery plates. They seem to finally get some good ones in now that won't break after putting a battery on 20 times. BTW, why do you think the EVF is rubbish? Where you having issues with it getting lighter/dark as you paned the camera around? If so, in the viewfinder menu "dark detail" needs to be turned off. Also, turn on open gate or you will see a really exaggerated 24p effect. If I don't have open gate on I will actually get a headache in about 3 mins of using the viewfinder. Matthew

Let me correct some of John's notes as they are out of date. 1. The camera now shows an image about 10-15 seconds into booting. You can't change the shutter or record, but there is an image for monitoring. 6. You can mix resolutions AND framerates as long as the project is left in one base setting (aka, either 23.98, 24, 25, or 29.97). If you switch the base framerate setting, you will not be able to record until you erase the media to the new base setting. This is not an issue for probably 99% of projects (I've only ever shot 23.98 base on mine.) 7. You can now run the RED LCD, RED EVF, and a HD-SDI monitor or an HDMI monitor (I think you can run HD-SDI and HDMI both at the same time.) 9. I don't know why it matters if you can see the back LCD when you've got the EVF or RED LCD on the camera. It shows exactly the same info as the back monitor. 11. I personally, have not seen the codec error since last August. They've pretty much totally eliminated it. 24. I don't know why you've had issues with Tungsten and green screen, but I've done a couple of shoots like that and it works great. Tungsten on the background and daylight on talent works nicely and gives clean keys. Blue screen also works fine if it's lit with daylight on background and talent. 30. It has a limited color space on the HD-SDI monitor out, but I've never had any of those things transfer over when I actually look at it in RedCine or in Color off the RAW file. The color space you monitor in also makes a difference. I found on the render out that it looks best if the gamma is set to Rec709 and color space to RedSpace. I find it's best to monitor on set in Rec709. If you monitor in RedSpace, you probably will underexpose a little too much and get a noisier image in post. It's also nice to set the "RAW" view mode to one of the user buttons so you can quickly see if something is clipping in the actual raw, or just in the colorspace you are monitoring in. Matthew

I believe the 2d part was shot with the RED 18-50 (which is a pretty sharp lens). The first part (which was actually shot 2d) was shot with anamorphic lenses--which also means there was less resolution since the RED is native 16:9. I find it interesting that you found the RED images too sharp. Unless you add sharping in post, the default for the RED has sharping at 0%, which makes for a very sharp, but more "creamy film" type sharpness. Did you see Che projected digitally or off a film print? Not sure if projectors are designed to add sharping... Matthew

Yeah, I got a lot less excited when other people noticed the T stops this morning. In fact, the t-stop down right sucks on the wide end. 18mm T3.8, 21mm T2.9, 25mm T 2.9, 28mmT2.1, 35mm T2.1, 50mm T1.5 85mm T1.5. Personally, in my work I need wide and fast (I shoot hospital footage and other more non narrative stuff.) Looks like I am back looking at the RED lenses, the unknown German lenses, and the new super speed Lomo's. Matthew

Just saw this posted over at Reduser by Michael Bravin from Band Pro Film & Digital: Okay... so now I can talk about real lenses from a known reputable lens manufacturer, that we have in our posession. At NAB #C10408 we will show a set of 7 Zeiss Compact Primes, prime lenses that cover over full frame 35mm from Zeiss in Oberkochen, Germany. Made in the very same factory where MasterPrimes, DigiPrimes & UltraPrimes are designed and manufactured. We have a set in our facility and they look very nice, have excellent mechanics, and make beautiful pictures. Oh and they are noticeably lightweight while being very robust. They are true cine lenses. They feature front to back: -T* coating -Common front diameter 114mm -Focus is smooth with accurate expanded scales and no backlash just like all Zeiss cine lenses -Iris scales are expanded -PL Mount <30K Euro / $40K for a set of 7 Full sets will be available early July. http://www.bandprodigital.com/cgibin...t/BPDstore.cgi ----- So the race starts....it's the year of cine glass at NAB. Matthew

Do you really think baking in color temp in the RAW data is really going to make all that much of a difference? I mean, the sensor is locked at 5000k, so before or during post, the image is going to be stretched. Look at shooting at 3200k, it's just slightly more noisy. Would there be a difference if that correction was done before the data was compressed? I doubt there would be very much. If there was, why wouldn't they have designed the camera to do that in the first place? I mean, there is a valid complaint that the RED takes a hit in tungsten light. You really can't say that any camera is truly RAW then. Both the Viper and the Dalsa have OLPF's like the RED, plus it sounds like they are changing bits of data before they store it in their "RAW" format. People are complaining about the RED's low light performance? In comparison to what camera? I've shot some stuff at T3.1, ASA 1000 (so 320 native pushed to 1000) and it has about the same amount of noise as my JVC 110U HD has normally. Now, if you were to compare that to 500ASA film stock pushed 2 stops, the film might win. It's a question of how much noise before you think it degrades your image. And yes, I do like to keep things as high quality as possible. But not all compression is bad. There is useless information that is being recorded when you shoot in a 4:4:4 codec. It's also why REDCODE is not a constant bit codec. They knew some scenes needed more information and some needed less. Matthew

Peter, you seem to not understand RAW and metadata. Doing it in camera or doing it in post (at least with the RED) make 0% quality difference. The RED's sensor is fixed at 5000k. The RAW is RAW data (although, compressed). Actually, in a sense, the color temp is fixed in the RED since it's native 5000k. The thing with the RED is (and any other RAW camera) that if you preset the color temp, then it wouldn't be raw. Matthew

I think you may have hit a bug in the metadata. I know that some footage I shot back in Sept. when looked at in Scratch by the client was way underexposed looking and noisy. When they hit reset the reset button on the clip in Scratch, it turned out normal. I know that if it looked fine on the monitor, then good data is there, but RedCine and Scratch are incorrectly reading the meta data. Try loading a clip into RedCine and then in the color tab, hit the reset button. That should hopefully fix it. If that doesn't work, then there might be a way to strip out all the meta data so it defaults back to normal. Matthew

I guess I'm not communicating clearly what I am getting at. Look at the RED from the perspective of a company's first camera. Somehow I don't think Arri's or Panavision's first camera was all that great. RED has got a lot to improve on, I don't deny that. There are plenty of things about the camera that drives me nuts. Of course, coming from the video world there are tons of things that I find much better on the RED than other video cameras (such as exposure tools, color viewfinder, adjusting how the camera body is set up, etc.) But when you consider that it took them 50+ years to get a really nice and small 35mm camera for handheld use (and maybe I don't know of camera that was actually out there getting wide usage), it's interesting that in less than a year there is a solution for the RED-the mantis. Of course, that's kinda not a fair comparison since much of the mantis design is from handheld rigs like Arri's and others (over the past 40 years) I just think that the RED is very impressive for a company's first product. Especially since it seems like they've got much further in a shorter time than companies like Panasonic and Sony (Sony at least for their <$50k products.) Stephen, I'm confused about you shooting watches? How would it take 2 hours to reset the watches to shoot again? And when it comes to dropped frame with the RED, even if you do drop frames (which it's really only certain situations that are fairly easy to guess when it'll drop) at least the camera tells you right away. I hated, in the video world, of getting back and finding the tape had a dropout in the tape...I don't miss those days. What happens if you do find a hair in the gate on something you just shot? What if you can't reshoot it? With the dropped frames at least you know right after the take and not when you are getting ready to move on to the next setup;) It will be very exciting to see how Epic turns out. RED really seems to be starting to hit their stride. Matthew

But what does menus and long boot times have to do with actual operation of the camera? When the camera is doing what it's supposed to do, it does a very good job, just like a film camera. But when you start talking about ergonomics and what not, that's when there are more issues. Even the RED as a basic body does far far more than a basic film camera. Consider video taps for film cameras while the RED has that built in (although, don't some Arri cameras come with a tap built in?) When you just consider RED as a start/stop run camera, it works pretty well. But when you start adding all sorts of monitoring features, and external things (timecode, audio, etc), the RED is doing 10x times more things than a film camera, and to be honest, can not be compared on a 1 to 1 basis. I'd really like to see Panasonic or Sony do the same image quality, resolution, body size, and price as RED. Phil, I never said anything about the lens RENTAL market. That is an entirely different thing. The lens making manufacturing market is changing, and now it looks like there are going to be more options in both primes and zooms. Rental houses are going to have to change their angle and probably focus more on accessories than cameras (which cameras cost them much more than accessories when it comes to digital cameras.) The market is changing, figure out how to deal with it and adjust. Personally, over the last year I have given a rental house business that without my RED I would not have given because I would be sticking with broadcast HD lenses. Matthew

Sounds like you need to look at either Arri Standard Speed, Arri Ultra Primes, or Cooke S4's. All three are basically T2, sharp, and I believe all three are fairly close focus (2') Ultra Primes and S4's are going to be better with contrast with flaring, but of course their rental price is going be at least double the Standard Speeds. Matthew