Mike Thomann

After seeing samples of the RED One and samples of other cameras in comparisons found online, I've been misled by all of the results into thinking that the RED One just wasn't up to par. One recent comparison in particular was with the Sony F23 and the Sony EX1 in which both the Sonys easily appeared to produce a better image than the RED One. I've also read many posts here that say that the RED One is mostly just hype, and with what I've seen I always believed it. Having difficulty locating footage of the RED One on these forums had also led me to believe there was a reason for that as well, as if there just wasn't anything spectacular to put up.

Then I went to red.com and found the link http://www.red.com/shot_on_red with lots of sample footage, and all I can say is that I was truly amazed beyond any expectation I had of any camera. Seeing that footage has completely spoiled me. I now honestly consider all footage from other cameras as nothing more than sharpened compromises and there is no going back. As of now I could not concieve of ever settling for anything other than the RED One. Even if I couldn't afford it, I wouldn't be happy with anything else and I would wait until I could afford it.

My favorite sample on the RED site is the still frame of the gray truck (http://www.red.com/skin/img/gallery-...red_50_150.jpg). As I zoom into the image in Photoshop the level of detail just keeps on coming. Even when looking at just 1/16 of the image from a foot away with a native 1920x1200 monitor the detail is simply amazing. It's not that sharp contrasty image that I'm used to seeing, it purely clean detail. With every other sample of raw footage from other cameras when viewed on a sharp 1080 native computer monitor, I have to move back too much for the detail to match the point of perception of realism. Quite the opposite with the RED One footage. On the gray truck I can zoom in three or four times and still have the perception of realism. All of the actual video samples on the RED site showed me something else I will never care to go back to, video noise. There is none in the RED One, and now the noise in everything else looks just aweful to me.

With all of the comparisons I've made with several hard disks full of online footage from all of the cameras over several years, and with all of the posts I've read about the RED One being a poor camera, I'm in disbelief about how little is generally known about the real value of the RED One. What RED has created is what video should be all about, and I'm really surprised at what the industry has become accustomed to due to nobody else thinking outside the box. Time to save my pennies.

Greg Boston

No, it has more to do with the fact that the full glory of the images take up a huge amount of space. Someone has to pay to serve that video. You can only imagine with the intense interest in RED, that it wouldn't take long to run someone's server bill through the stratosphere with mega-sized downloads.

-gb-

__________________
Greg Boston
Sony PDW-F350, Panasonic PV-DV953, FCP Studio

Steven White

You must have been looking in all the wrong places! I've been amazed by the RED ONE images since their prototype "Frankie" started spitting out data, and the endorsement of Peter Jackson at NAB '07 was the clincher.

In most of the RED footage I've seen, the main limitation has been the operator, not the camera. Which IMHO is the way it should be.

-Steve

Brian Drysdale

The comments are based the firmware builds which aren't the final spec and flaws dring the development like black suns etc. Quite a few are around having to work with the camera, the ergonomics, build quality of RED accessories, how well it works as a system on set. The camera has had noise issues under tungten light, which has resulted in some people using a 80D filter.

Some people don't like how the RED handles highlights, finding them "clippy".

The RED and the SI-2k, build on the ideas being developed for the Kinetta.

The RED One isn't the camera for all productions and the workflow is more EFP than ENG. Certainly using the RED One 35mm rig it isn't light and has issues like IR on the denser ND filters, but these are things that camera people are used to working around. They're also extremely demanding and the RED is being subjected to pretty normal demands and expectations.

Perhaps part of the problem is that some people see it as a replacement for film. This is a subjective, aesthetic question, not a technical one and people have to decide on the "look" that's right for their film and its budget. Currently, the RED seems to be more DSLR than film in how it looks.

Mike Thomann

It seems to me that the DSLR image of the RED is actually cleaner than film. If that is true, maybe it could be edited to look like film?

Meryem Ersoz

There is a lot of mis-information and dis-information about the camera. And early users, myself included are finding it easy to clip the highlights.

What is not readily discussed is that these highlights can be recovered in the post process. There is a lot of hidden data in the raw R3D files, and there is a pretty high learning curve to learning all of the flexibilities of this camera.

There is a full stop of recoverable highlights baked into the R3D files. Here is Mike Seymour of fxphd.com showing a demo on how to recover the data in a seemingly clipped highlight....(look at the window area where the red arrows are pointing, behind him, to see the contrast in the RAW data from the processed data...)

Seeing him demo this was a revelation, and it sent me back into RED Alert to see how I could recover highlights. There's a ton of data that can be pulled back out of the highlights, but the first assumption when you get the camera is that it is clippy. It's not clippy, though it is very post-processing intensive...

That's how shooting RAW is...

The real problem is that people, myself included, who receive the camera like to post their first impressions but then don't follow through so much when the correct information is acquired...

Attached Thumbnails

   

Meryem Ersoz

And Mike, there just hasn't been that much footage posted here at DVinfo, although there seem to be a lot of naysayers stating their opinions without a lot of back-up...

There has been a lot of nice footage posted publicly, not so much at DVinfo...also, many of the shooters do not have the right to publicly post stuff that is being shot for others' productions, so you don't see a lot of the best stuff on message boards.

Here's some footage by a DVinfo'er Obin Olsen. He already posted it publicly, so I hope he doesn't mind a re-post here--if he objects, I'll get Chris to take it down. But I think it is one of the best public examples out there of how flexible the image really is, and how beautiful it is, in the right hands.

http://www.dv3productions.com/red/red_test_sd.mov

Brian Drysdale

Film currently has a higher dynamic range than the digital cameras. How clean you want the image depends on the image you're creating.

Daniel Browning

All digital cameras have issues under tungsten light,so it's no surprise that RED ONE needs an extra stop or two of exposure in the blue channel under blue-deficient light such as tungsten. I guess the reason people think it's big news is because bayer sensors have about 18% less blue pixels than a 3CCD configuration.

You can filter the lens, as you said, gel the lights, overexpose red and green (and reduce dynamic range), then pull them back in post, use noise reduction, etc.

Meryem Ersoz

The blue channel on the RED camera is substantially noisier than the other channels. Shooting daylight rather than tungsten helps to manage the noise, and shooting blue screen, rather than green, is a good way to knock out this noise as well.

This isn't about the camera being good at this or bad at that...every camera has parameters that the operator needs to know in order to optimize the image.

I would speculate that they are working on cleaning up the blue channel noise for Build 16, because it is the one parameter that can hold the image back, if the operator doesn't have the right information, which can be challenging to find.

Funny how rumors and speculation are so easy to find and are endlessly repeated, while solid and useful info can be so much harder to glean...

Brian Drysdale

I think all you can do is regard any camera as a tool. You have to test it, compare it to other cameras and decide which is the best for the production in hand.

In the next couple of years it looks very promising in the digital cinema sector, apart from RED, there's the Dalsa Evolution, the Arri D21, Phantom and SI 2k. Plus the more traditional HD video approach of the F23 and the F35 with a film style layout (not forgetting the Genesis). Each is going to have advantages and disadvantages. Most will be rental, but production companies usually do that anyway.

Rumours are common in this industry and perhaps RED hasn't really helped itself by introducing the production camera before build 16 was in place. However, this should start settling down once this and other items become available later in the year.