Matthew Rogers

You've got to remember that with film, there are two designers, one of the film and one of the camera. While with the RED, it's one maker designing both the camera and the image (plus some post-production.) When you consider this is their very first camera, it's extremely impressive. When you consider the competition, it's really impressive. Is the camera perfect? No. It's got it's fault that will be improved on with the Epic. Will that camera be perfect? Probably not. But is there one film camera that you can't find at least one fault with? I doubt it. RED, at least, has gotten the glass market moving. There seem to be 6-7 makers who are releasing new prime lenses. Everyone has got to admit that's a good thing! Matthew

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Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had used lens cleaning tissues "Precision Lens Books" (http://www.filmtools.com/precision-lens-books.html) I've always used the Rosco tissues, but I am looking at the Prescision tissues or the Tiffen tissues since they are cheaper (http://www.filmtools.com/kodlencleanp.html) Matthew

I would. Considering that there are still tons of projects being shot, and tons more indie films (even in the down market), it's a good bet. Plus, the market will probably be up at least some by the end of the year. You've got to remember that these are $100,000 lenses. They are in the $15,000-$40,000 range. That makes them much more affordable, and people like ME can afford to have their businesses buy gear in that price range still. I'd say the markets that are more hurting right now are the markets below that range (more of the truly hobby type people), and the people above it (bigger rental houses that can afford not to really buy much gear this year.) Matthew

Yes, but that's because you were looking at lenses that all cost roughly the same amount. They are coming out with lenses that match the Ultra Primes and S4's at 32% the cost. If someone came out with a car that matched BMW/Lexus quality at $10,000, would you not be pretty impressed? My impression is that they were not expecting the lenses to quite be the optical quality of the top of the line primes, but they seem to be. So if you set the bar "here" and the end results end up being "wayyyyy over there", then you might be stunned also. The S4 killer comment was made by someone who is not employed by RED, but has a very good standing in the production community. I believe it was meant towards, why pay more for S4's when you can get the same quality for much less? Of course, depending on how the glass renders an image (warm/cold/soft/sharp/etc.) you might still like the look of S4's. And if anyone doubts RED's lens making (yes, the 18-50 was not a top end cine lens), get your hands on the 18-85. It is a VERY nice piece of glass both optically and mechanically. Matthew

Someone over at Reduser tried this adapter and it's crap. It makes the Nikon lenses macros, so therefore you can't focus to infinity. Also, the glass in it doesn't seem to be of great quality. If you are shooting on the RED then just put a Nikon mount on it. If on another camera, see if you can't find a rental house that can put a Nikon mount on instead of a PL mount. Matthew

Hey Oscar, is there any particular reason you only want to shoot in 2k? You do know that you will see more noise in your footage and it won't be as sharp, right? Why not just use 35mm lenses and shoot at 4k? It's really not overkill even for SD commercials-you can see a difference between the 4k and 2k. Matthew

For a while now on Reduser Mitch Gross who works at Abel Cine Tech in NYC said they were going to be showing a new set of primes at NAB. Someone the other day mentioned that Band Pro was going to be showing new lower cost Zeiss lenses and Mitch jumped on board saying that Band Pro would not be the only vendor showing these lenses. So until NAB, there's not much news except that they are Zeiss lenses. Not sure if Arri has their hand in them, or if someone else is just using the Zeiss glass. Matthew

From my figuring there are quite a few sets coming to the market. RED, IB/e, Jan's set, a new Zeiss set, and one more company that I can't remember the name (may actually be Jan's set.) Pretty exciting time for new glass. Matthew

From my understanding, he's not a distributor, he's just helping to beta test them. I believe they might actually be sold directly or through one distributor-at least in the US. Remember, it's not like companies haven't had some time to work on lenses. Someone said that it takes Zeiss at least a year to get lenses to the market once they've been announced, and Ziess is supposed to be releasing some new lower cost ones through Abel Cine and Band Pro at NAB. Of course, these are supposed to be available immediately so evidently Zeiss has been working on them for quite a while. Matthew

All the dolly grips I know use one form or another of skater wheels if they are running on track. Why? Because it makes your move much smoother. Basically, if you have more wheels carrying the load, then if there is a dip/bump or when you go over a track connection, there is less chance that the dolly will shake when you hit one of those. Not to mention that skater wheels seem to be more quiet when it comes to running on track. I've never had a shoot where we've tried to run a fisher 11 straight on the track without major squeaking from the wheels. Certain sprays help that (they help when skater wheels squeak also), but it seems to be less of an issue with the harder plastic on SW's. Although, Alexa was right in the fact that it's harder to stop when you don't have access to breaks! Matthew

The price for them is not bad, but shipping is what will kill you. My suggestion is calling up Modern Studio or Norms Studio Equipment and asking for their 25% off pay when you order discount. It makes it cheaper per bag than the Impact bags. Plus, if you order over 100lbs of bags (pretty easy to do!) they will ship it freight, which is much cheaper than UPS/FedEx. Let's say that my Modern Studio order (tons of stands, sandbags, skater wheels, flags, 8x8 w/rags, and a doorway day) shipping was only $250 from Los Angeles to Tennessee. Another option is buying empty bags, but you've got to have an industrial sowing machine to seal them closed once you fill them (a pain in the butt) Matthew

That's what I thought, but I was thinking aloud. I think it won't really matter with the Scarlett and Epic because it has sounded like they are getting the chips up to a much faster refresh rate. Matthew

Yeah, there's no reason to shoot on the RED (I believe) if you are only going to shoot 2k on it. Maybe the producers don't understand that the camera doesn't scale down the full FOV to 2k...? My suggestion is getting the Angenieux 15-40 and 28-76. Then if you need something longer, get two small prime lenses a 135mm and 200mm. Another option that might be much better is going to nikon lenses. Most zooms are very light and if you don't need to rack focus very much, then you should be fine. Even if you do rack, just zoom out a few mm's and then fix the breathing in post--you've got plenty of resolution to spare. Also, refuse to do the job unless they buy one of these (http://www.elementtechnica.com/products/view.php?p=29). You'll find that while the RED would be a few lbs more than say a Varicam, it will more comfortable pad because it adjusts to the angle of your shoulder. It is a little frustrating getting people to understand that the RED isn't a do all camera (not that any motion picture camera is.) Matthew

What about putting a cheap mechanical shutter in the RED, but still doing the monitoring via electronics? No optical focusing, but lose the rolling shutter. Personally, my eyesight is not all that great for optical focusing, but the 1:1 zoom on the RED is fantastic for making sure you have nailed focus before you start shooting. Of course, if RED did switch to a mechanical shutter, wouldn't all these new digital lenses (like the Agunx DP's) no longer work on the RED? Matthew

I think Jim means that the mechanical shutter runs at 4ms vs their rolling shutter at 5ms in the new cameras. Personally, I haven't shot anything yet where I have noticed the rolling shutter. But then again, I don't shoot the Bourne movies! Matthew

I've seen 3D shows where they use reusable glasses and I still don't like it. I just don't like having things on my face period so glasses, especially ones that can't adjust to your face, are a big no no for me. I'm also not crazy about the gimmick of 3D. I rather have theaters do the environment experience... you know, heat and cold, wind, spray water, smells, etc are much cooler and get you into the movie. If you've been to Disney's California Adventure park and rode the Wings over California ride you know what I'm talking about. IMAX dome movie that they "glide" you up into and then do all sorts of environment type things to you. It really makes you feel like you are handgliding over CA. Matthew

I still don't understand why Hollywood thinks most movies are going to go to 3D in the future. I personally have no desire to wear glasses while watching a movie. That's why I wear contacts instead of glasses! Looking at an HQ Flash trailer the picture quality (as far as coloring) looks pretty bland. But, it's a horror movie so maybe it's supposed to be. I'd say the lighting in general is kinda flat and not contrasty enough for my taste when you consider it's a horror movie. Matthew

Looks interesting. Do you know of prices? Matthew

Ok, so evidently I was wrong about the monitoring in regards to the histogram. This is from someone at RED (rephrased): False color monitors the color space it is in, whereas the histogram always is based on RAW mode no matter what mode you are in. Sorry about the confusion. Matthew

I have a question.... is everybody judging the RED by a 720P monitor on set, or are they looking at the 4k image downscaled to 1080p on a calibrated monitor in post? Matthew

AHHHHHH.....you can watch your histogram while using redspace, but the problem with that is it's telling you what's happening in Redspace, not the raw colorspace! It would be much better if the histogram told you what was happening in the RAW colorspace no matter what colorspace you were monitoring in. I wasn't at the scratch session in question. They just called me to ask why everything was so dark and I suggested resetting the metadata as a possible solution. It almost sounds like Scratch is setting Redspace into RAW colorspace by accident. I know that when I pull the R3D files into color and set them to Redspace that it looks much more colorful and an s-curve has been applied. Matthew

I'm wondering if there is a bug in Scratch that you are encountering. I did a shoot last fall that they corrected in Scratch and I got a call that the footage was super dark while the proxies looked correct. It turns out that for some reason it was reading the metadata incorrectly and applying some crazy curve. Hitting reset put the clips back to the correct display. Did you shoot the clips with Redspace on? What happens in scratch if you set it to REC709 or RAW? I really advise people shooting to NOT shoot in Redspace. It makes you want to underexpose too far. Using REC709 and adjusting the saturation in camera makes a much better, noise free image when it comes into post. Matthew

Very, very true Stephen. I actually think that Epic will not quite be like the the RED. Many HVX fanboys who bought the RED could BARELY afford it and won't be able to afford another $15,000 to upgrade to Epic (I know that the upgrade would be $10k, but I figure an extra 5k for other accessories.) It the way things are said. If Adam had said that the RED probably wouldn't be useful for whip pan type handheld stuff, I might have agreed. However, just saying that it wouldn't be useful for handheld work (which sounds like all handheld work), I object to that. From my experience, those numbers seem to be pretty consistent apart. RC36 seems to always been about 6-10MB's more per second than RC28. Jim has said that the difference between 28 and 36 is the amount of compression--so it seems odd that those numbers wouldn't mean something (instead of having a totally difference codec.) He's also talked about needing much more bandwidth for the new cameras because of the increased resolution and less compressed image. If those numbers don't mean anything, I wish they would say so. It seems silly to have numbers in a codec name when it doesn't apply to the bitrate--especially when codecs like Avid's DNxHD DO use numbers that way (which makes a ton of sense.) Matthew

I'm not saying that there are not problems with the RED, but I don't feel like Adam knew how to get everything out of the camera that he could (the fact that he didn't know about the IR issue is one of the things that communicates that to me.) If I went to your web page and saw that you rent film cameras, would that make you completely objective? I am just speaking from the perspective of someone who knows the camera very well, know hows to get the best out of it, and has been making a living off of it for the past 8 months. What I object to is people making it sound like the RED looks worse than an HVX200. In all the projects I've shot over the last 8 months I've had zero issues with skew. Yes, I still have equal lighting out more than I would film, but far less than I would have to with a Varicam. Even then, I've been able to pull a decent amount of information out of the highlight--but I also know how much I can under expose before I make the bottom end too noisy. I'm guessing that you didn't look at the specs of the new cameras. From the Scarlett up to the the 617 (28k RED), the data rates have been widened--drastically. Heck, going from the 4k RED, to the 5k Epic-X, the data rate has been widened 6.94 times (36 for R1 vs 250 for Epic-X). The Epic is supposed to have another stop of DR and the FF Epic is supposed to have two more stops of DR than the RED. Not to mention that by taking something like a 9k image and scaling it down to 2k, you should have less noise. That means you should be able to under expose more, bring it up in post, and then scale down to 2k with less noise. I know this is true because stuff I've shot at 4k, 1600 ISO on the RED under tungsten light scaled down to SD (480P) looks almost totally noiseless. I will admit that the D21, Viper, & Genesis have more dynamic range than the RED. It's not tons more stops though (not like the difference between an HDV and film). I prefer the creamier image of the RED over those cameras--especially the genesis. However, I don't really see the point in shooting with those cameras over film (unless you really like the digital workflow on set.) Once you factor in rental price and the massive amount of data storage needed for those cameras, you probably could shoot film for cheaper, or very close to the same price. It seems crazy to me to shoot digital unless you can save money! I see many productions (all types) under $200,000 that are loving the RED because they can keep the film look for much less money. Instead of stock, development, and telecine costs, they have been putting the saved money into more crew, better lenses, and better talent. BTW, I would just like to know what program Adam was looking at his footage. If he was using the proxies, then no wonder he thinks there's no data in the highlights. They look like they have about 5 stops of DR. Matthew