TedRed
08-03-2008, 04:19 PM
Yesterday was the the Dog and Pony show at the DGA for "Digital Day"
The current REDreel was screened along with all the other players in the Digital Camera for motion pictures space... (F35, F23, Genesis, Dalsa, Arri D20 & D21 and RED)
All the footage was screened off of HD tape, so it was projected Digitally as 1080p.
Most interestingly, many people came over to me after seeing all the footage from all these different cameras, telling me how much they liked the look and feel of the RED footage as compared to everything else they saw. That the RED looked the most like film out of all the material played.
Pretty much everyone I talked with said that all the cameras they saw footage from could be a legitimate alternative to shooting film. But when looking at the form factor of each camera, the cost of renting these cameras, and most importantly the logic of having the tent on set vs. shooting "tent free" - when you add up all the factors, the RED wins in dramatic fashion over the other players in the field. That coupled with the footage looking the most "filmic" when projected is pretty powerful stuff for a camera that's been shipping for less than one year.
To my eyes after watching all that footage screened, (and this is just my opinion, somewhat educated in the field of looking at high rez digital pictures) The RED is indeed the most film like, has the most creamy, eye pleasing, high rez without artificial sharpening pictures. The D20/D21 is my next favorite - the images are beautiful, very sexy and very similar to what the RED images create. Then in descending order, I liked the F35, the Genesis, F23 and Dalsa - all those cameras make fantastic images to be sure, but they tend to my eyes have a slightly more video look than the RED or the D20 and D21 which is not as pleasing to my eyes. Some may like that look more, but not me, and not the people that I talked to at the DGA (and there were lots of people) that told me how much they liked the RED images best. Now to be sure, the Genesis had the most kick ass reel by hollywood standards. Lots of big budget movies back to back is damn impressive. The RED has a few of those now, and the next reel will hopefully have more (if we can get the rights and clearances - a full time job just doing that) The Dalsa perhaps got the unfairest shake, since their reel was made up of primarily test looking shots, not real production shots - the pix look good, but it did not look like it was professionally graded, so that probably limited it's success in peoples eyes as a choice to use.
What people love about the RED:
- Size
- Industrial Design
- Fantastic Image quality and resolution
- Cinema Depth of Field and ability to use Cine Lenses natively
- Ability to grow or shrink the rig to suit stedicam all the way up to big studio dolly config
- Shooting RAW footage
- Nice lightweight onboard LCD monitoring at high rez
- Fantastic EVF quality (best EVF people have ever seen - at any price point, is what people tell me)
- FCP workflow for native editing and ProRes editing
- Ability to screen footage after it's shot on a Mac
- Ability to do "instant dailies" either on a computer screen, HD monitor, or connected up from a Mac to a small 1080p projector
- Shooting onto CF cards or the RedDrive
- Easy to use Menus
- On Board audio for scratch track and "pre-synced" dailies
- Simplicity of operation of the camera (no on site engineer required)
- High speed options in 3k or 2k mode
- Friendliness and responsiveness of the RED staff
- Price of Rental is acceptable and not insanely expensive like some of the other options that were showing at the DGA
- The RED camera has "heart and soul" and the company and people behind it really care about the product and the pictures it makes
(and a bunch more things that people told me, that I can't remember)
+ Ted
Ted Schilowitz
RED
The current REDreel was screened along with all the other players in the Digital Camera for motion pictures space... (F35, F23, Genesis, Dalsa, Arri D20 & D21 and RED)
All the footage was screened off of HD tape, so it was projected Digitally as 1080p.
Most interestingly, many people came over to me after seeing all the footage from all these different cameras, telling me how much they liked the look and feel of the RED footage as compared to everything else they saw. That the RED looked the most like film out of all the material played.
Pretty much everyone I talked with said that all the cameras they saw footage from could be a legitimate alternative to shooting film. But when looking at the form factor of each camera, the cost of renting these cameras, and most importantly the logic of having the tent on set vs. shooting "tent free" - when you add up all the factors, the RED wins in dramatic fashion over the other players in the field. That coupled with the footage looking the most "filmic" when projected is pretty powerful stuff for a camera that's been shipping for less than one year.
To my eyes after watching all that footage screened, (and this is just my opinion, somewhat educated in the field of looking at high rez digital pictures) The RED is indeed the most film like, has the most creamy, eye pleasing, high rez without artificial sharpening pictures. The D20/D21 is my next favorite - the images are beautiful, very sexy and very similar to what the RED images create. Then in descending order, I liked the F35, the Genesis, F23 and Dalsa - all those cameras make fantastic images to be sure, but they tend to my eyes have a slightly more video look than the RED or the D20 and D21 which is not as pleasing to my eyes. Some may like that look more, but not me, and not the people that I talked to at the DGA (and there were lots of people) that told me how much they liked the RED images best. Now to be sure, the Genesis had the most kick ass reel by hollywood standards. Lots of big budget movies back to back is damn impressive. The RED has a few of those now, and the next reel will hopefully have more (if we can get the rights and clearances - a full time job just doing that) The Dalsa perhaps got the unfairest shake, since their reel was made up of primarily test looking shots, not real production shots - the pix look good, but it did not look like it was professionally graded, so that probably limited it's success in peoples eyes as a choice to use.
What people love about the RED:
- Size
- Industrial Design
- Fantastic Image quality and resolution
- Cinema Depth of Field and ability to use Cine Lenses natively
- Ability to grow or shrink the rig to suit stedicam all the way up to big studio dolly config
- Shooting RAW footage
- Nice lightweight onboard LCD monitoring at high rez
- Fantastic EVF quality (best EVF people have ever seen - at any price point, is what people tell me)
- FCP workflow for native editing and ProRes editing
- Ability to screen footage after it's shot on a Mac
- Ability to do "instant dailies" either on a computer screen, HD monitor, or connected up from a Mac to a small 1080p projector
- Shooting onto CF cards or the RedDrive
- Easy to use Menus
- On Board audio for scratch track and "pre-synced" dailies
- Simplicity of operation of the camera (no on site engineer required)
- High speed options in 3k or 2k mode
- Friendliness and responsiveness of the RED staff
- Price of Rental is acceptable and not insanely expensive like some of the other options that were showing at the DGA
- The RED camera has "heart and soul" and the company and people behind it really care about the product and the pictures it makes
(and a bunch more things that people told me, that I can't remember)
+ Ted
Ted Schilowitz
RED