How is the RED's performance in dark lit scenes?

[Sean Yu]

I recently placed a deposit for a RED ONE. I wish to know how well the RED ONE camera produces blacks, shadows, and contrast (color and brightness). I'm preparing to shoot a dark film about a detective investigating bizarre murders. I'm looking to use primarily hard and moody lighting, strong relief patterns, and high contrast. I need blacks to be as rich and dark as possible. I absolutely cannot afford to have the blacks turn out to be dark grays, with microscopic white noise grains. I would also like the colors to be rich, and the whites to be clear. In other words, I'm looking to achieve the results equivalent to color reversal film stock, except shot on RED ONE. I know much of this also depends on the kind of lenses I use.

I was wondering if someone would give me some advice on how to achieve what I just described above. What settings should I use on the camera (ISO/ASA)? Again, I'm looking to use hard lighting, and shoot on a relatively normal f-stop, which can probably get rid of some of the poor quality and noise one receives when opening up the aperture to a very low f-stop. I'm hoping to use primes often, obviously to achieve better sharpness and detail.

I am a novice filmmaker with LOTS to learn. I was wondering if someone can give me some tips, regarding the RED, and different lenses that anyone might be familiar with. If I made any mistakes in things I pointed out, someone please correct me.

[esmilis]

Noise in red, relates directly how much you push your dark tones. There are some tests around here, but to keep it short, if you expose for asa 320 and clip bottom 3 stops, you will get very pure black without any noise.

Just keep that in mind, when lighting a shot and exposing your camera.

Take a look here for more information
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12863

[Finner]

Sounds like a vision III 5219 shoot to me.

[Steve Phillipps]

Opening the lens aperture does not affect noise 1 bit, image quality/sharpness wide open yes, but not noise.
It's funny but if you look at the various tests on the web some look great and some look awful (for noise and other stuff), which really does seem to show that a lot of the skill is in the post process. When you shoot, keep everything nice and medium, ie don't crush anything too much and certainly don't clip more than you can help, then learn or get someone who already knows how to do top-notch RAW processing - I think that'll account for 50% of the image quality in a lot of RED work.
Just my thoughts,
Steve

[Christoffer Glans]

I believe Built 16 or even 17 will be out when you get your camera so I assume that the noise handling is better with it then how it is now.