Viper Film Stream

[Andrew McCarrick]

Just wondering if anybody knows if the Viper Film Stream camera has ever had an 35mm adapter put on it for a feature? Looking for sample footage from the camera with 35mm lenses.


I also need to know about the Post-Production process. How is the footage (shot in FilmStream mode) transferred and corrected to a viewable HD image? What kind of hardware/software is necessary?

[Mark Pugh]

I'd think results would be inferior to a Red One, and more difficult all-round regarding workflow. I shot one feature on a Viper. Much prefer shooting on R1.

[Andrew McCarrick]

I'd think results would be inferior to a Red One, and more difficult all-round regarding workflow. I shot one feature on a Viper. Much prefer shooting on R1.

Well it a low budget project and I can get a Viper for 400 bucks a day.

Viper and S.Two recorder = 800 a day = 4800 for two weeks * 2 cams = $9600

So if you can find me two full RED packages for under 15k (for 2 weeks), then I'd shoot RED.

[jake blackstone]

I would disagree. I just did a 23 minutes short, shot in Filmstream mode with S two backs. Much easier and faster to do prep for grading, than RED. (not that the RED difficult). No debayer necessary, you end up with DPX files, that you can grade right after the conform. I believe lens were Digiprimes, but I could be wrong... If interested, you can see the trailer on my site. It's called "Successful Alcoholics"

I'd think results would be inferior to a Red One, and more difficult all-round regarding workflow. I shot one feature on a Viper. Much prefer shooting on R1.

[Andrew McCarrick]

I would disagree. I just did a 23 minutes short, shot in Filmstream mode with S two backs. Much easier and faster to do prep for grading, than RED. (not that the RED difficult). No debayer necessary, you end up with DPX files, that you can grade right after the conform. I believe lens were Digiprimes, but I could be wrong... If interested, you can see the trailer on my site. It's called "Successful Alcoholics"

What was the exact post process? How do I get a decent off-line copy of the material without having to grade everything before hand? I don't want to be staring at a green tinted shot for the whole offline process.

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Just wondering if anybody knows if the Viper Film Stream camera has ever had an 35mm adapter put on it for a feature? Looking for sample footage from the camera with 35mm lenses.


I also need to know about the Post-Production process. How is the footage (shot in FilmStream mode) transferred and corrected to a viewable HD image? What kind of hardware/software is necessary?

Andrew, I own one... Check this thread in DVXuser, a Viper with an adapter...

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=174960

With SGblade Rotorazor 3 ground glass the system will lose 1 stop so with Viper you will have 160ASA in Tungsten and Daylight...

Viper in Cinemascope mode 2,35:1 delivers more than 1400 lines as is obvius from the chart's, I have measure RED in the same chart and I have get the same results 1450 lines... Also have in mind that Viper has 3 x 9Mpixel CCD that is 4320 x 1920 each...! so is 4K in Red 4K in Green and 4K in Blue... it uses oversampling in order to deliver the cleanest 1080 signal...

Judging in what I saw in "The curious case of Benjamin Button" I don't thing that Viper has any handicap against RED... the movie shot with Viper had 13 Oscar nominations... So I don't thing that Viper will be the limiting factor for your feature not be in the Oscars...

In FilmStream mode needs a LUT to have the image viewable, S.two plus a good DIT that knows how to work with the camera will result a beautiful image with straight playback to tape for editorial. Viper needs to be handled in Log while in post, in CinemaScope mode you need a camera with the latest firmware because the first was very noisy... Apple Color is the entry level system, Viper is supported from all big CC systems.

Miranda in BB was using a quarter magenta filter to help the Green not to clip very fast. Viper was the first Digital Cinema camera that had a mechanical shutter, the second is the ARRI D21. In Fast horizontal pans it delivers extremely smooth motion far better than any other camera...

Viper has the widest DR than any other DC camera... its more than 12 stops...

Why Viper is not used any more?

Because... Sony tried to convince rental houses that had Viper, to buy F23... a task that was totally impossible... F23 is vastly inferior camera than Viper... So they did a competitive upgrade and they bought most of the Vipers that was around the world for a brand new F23 with all accessories... If you add the fact that the camera is EOL from 2007 and support will seize in 2011 you can understand why rental houses did it...

The Viper is one of the most advanced cameras that was ever build...

I will keep mine until I get another Digital Cinema camera that can really outperform it... EPIC FF35 or the new ARRI's is what I wait...

[Ace]

I'd think results would be inferior to a Red One, and more difficult all-round regarding workflow. I shot one feature on a Viper. Much prefer shooting on R1.

Mark shot Acolytes on the Viper, I thought it was stunning. The Dynamic range was pretty okay (but that had more to do with the great lighting design)

I did the website for the film.. Check it out.. http://www.acolytes.com.au/

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Why would you use an adaptor when you can get amazing results with digi primes and digi zooms?

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Why would you use an adaptor when you can get amazing results with digi primes and digi zooms?

Yes I agree, but there are some cases that its needed by the director...

[Graeme Nattress]

Actually, the Viper chips are 1920x4320, not 4320x1920. Significant difference is that they have a lot more pixels vertically than horizontally so that you can extract out different resolutions by different binning combinations of those pixels. The pixels are not individually addressed and read out, but binned on chip. 4 pixels are binned to get 4320/1080 = 4, and 4320/720 = 6.

The horizontal resolution is always 1920, and there is no way that the Viper can ever resolve more than 1920 lines horizontally.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Actually, the Viper chips are 1920x4320, not 4320x1920. Significant difference is that they have a lot more pixels vertically than horizontally so that you can extract out different resolutions by different binning combinations of those pixels. The pixels are not individually addressed and read out, but binned on chip. 4 pixels are binned to get 4320/1080 = 4, and 4320/720 = 6.

The horizontal resolution is always 1920, and there is no way that the Viper can ever resolve more than 1920 lines horizontally.

Graeme

Graeme, or three 4320/1440 = 3 in CinemaScope mode... The binning is an on chip averaging mechanism that effects the DR and the resolved MTF greatly...

I have to remind you that CinemaScope film 2:1 has different resolution in vertical than horizontal... actually it has the double in vertical than it has in horizontal and thats because vertical resolution gives more perceived resolution to the human eye...

Viper is doing the same thing... plus it gets all the pixels with all the color information... you see its doing oversampling to maximize DR and MTF... plus the mechanical shutter is giving that filmic smooth motion... see the trailer that ACE is pointing how smooth the motion is...

If you do a 4K Scope crop from RED and a Scope from Viper the resulting resolution is very similar... check out the DVXuser link... and remember its from an adapter... so lens / GG / lens and then CCD...

You have to agree that for a seven years old technology it is still on the edge...

For me these are the real cinema cameras F35-Genesis/D21/RED/Viper/Si2K and then everything else... each one with pros and cons...

[Graeme Nattress]

When 3 sub-pixels are binned, the sensor now has 1920x1440 effective pixels. Now, only the middle 1080 rows are used to achieve 2.37:1 aspect ratio. Vertical resolution must therefore be less than or equal to 1080. Measured resolution must be less than or equal to 1920x1080.

A RED one, similarly cropped to achieve the same aspect ratio will give a measured resolution of approx 3200x1400.

You'll have to point me at the literature showing higher vertical visual acquity. All I've read tends to show that on an eye test, you'll do better with the letters arranged horizontally, most probably due to learned / cultural effects of us learning to read that way.

Graeme

[Darren Orange]

Alright, We have worked with Viper we shot in CinemaScope mode with Zeiss Digi Primes. I'll warn you, that CinemaScope will cause you to give up roughly half to full stop of DR. The work flow is just the same as any other HDCAM SR camera. However unlike most cameras, when your working in

FilmStream mode, there is no white balance it just shoots. Frankly it reminds me of RED in the fact that you can control the iris, focus and shutter and thats about it. Everything WILL look green!!! However in post you will be able to white balance it correctly for each shot. I would not put a filter in front of the camera to try to get around this. To fix issues with clipping, I strong suggest you shoot ALL day light balance. We have found that the camera loves to get very noisy in the blue channel under 3200K type light. If you want things to look good, make sure to have ND's day shoots outside and have either two 1.2K's or 2.5K's to help balance the focus versus the highlights.

Toss and ND on the camera save the blue sky and light your talent or focus as much as you can. When this camera blows something out white, its really bad. I don't think i'd put 35mm glass on the camera I'd go with the Digi Primes. If you want 35mm depth use longer end of the primes. Digi's are just too nice.

Hope this helps...

[Graeme Nattress]

Darren, that's not surprising if it's only binning 2 compared to the usual 4 sub-pixels.

Graeme

[Darren Orange]

Hey Graeme,

Yea we found however, that you had to shoot carefully but the pay off was when you where finishing. When you take that full rez desqueezed image of 2560x1080 and scaled it down to 2K finish or 1080P it looks fantastic. The issue still remains though to do that and make it look good there you got to protect your highlights big time and be all daylight balanced. Biggest issue is that when grading the footage if anythings blown out you have almost no room to work, so even is some stuff is a little dark with some more noise...I'd go that route then have blown highlight.

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

When 3 sub-pixels are binned, the sensor now has 1920x1440 effective pixels. Now, only the middle 1080 rows are used to achieve 2.37:1 aspect ratio. Vertical resolution must therefore be less than or equal to 1080. Measured resolution must be less than or equal to 1920x1080.

A RED one, similarly cropped to achieve the same aspect ratio will give a measured resolution of approx 3200x1400.

You'll have to point me at the literature showing higher vertical visual acquity. All I've read tends to show that on an eye test, you'll do better with the letters arranged horizontally, most probably due to learned / cultural effects of us learning to read that way.

Graeme

Yes it is 1080 the effective pixels but the resolving resolution is 1400 lines...

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/Relay_F4-5_Zeiss-50mm-F2_F2-8-5_Viper_235-1_4K.jpg

See the center resolution...

I had to take the anamorphic 1080 to scale it in 4K in a way that I will fix the aspect ratio and this is the resulting image through the adapter...

That is Zeiss 50mm F2 macro ZF, then ground glass (SGblade), my relay lens and then the CCD...

The Canon Cinestyle zoom had more aliasing artifacts because it couldn't resolve that many lines...

With F23 or F35 or Si2kdont mention F900... you can't get this resolution... only RED is surpassing it by a little and D21 when used in 4:3 and with anamorphic lenses...

[Graeme Nattress]

You're playing games with how you're defining resolution. If that image were framed full height (which it can't be as you're shooting 2.37:1 not 16:9) then indeed, any vertical resolution on that chart would be what you read it as. But your aspect ratio is different and you've framed it fit to fill horizontally.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

You're playing games with how you're defining resolution. If that image were framed full height (which it can't be as you're shooting 2.37:1 not 16:9) then indeed, any vertical resolution on that chart would be what you read it as. But your aspect ratio is different and you've framed it fit to fill horizontally.

Graeme

No games, in the same chart if you shoot with RED in 16:9 frame of coarse (RED doesn't have anamorphic) and do the crop for 2.37:1 you will get the same result...

I'm home now... tomorrow that I will be in the office I will find it and post it...

Thing a little bit... hint its anamorphic... RED is not... you can do the same test if you have the chart...

The one is anamorphic so no crop... the other is not so you have to crop... crop = less resolution

EDIT: With Hawk anamorphics, RED would easily surpass it...

[Graeme Nattress]

Of course it's games - if you don't frame the chart in one dimension, the numbers in that dimension don't mean what those numbers say any more. You can't say you have a vertical resolution of 1400 or so if you can only ever count 1000 of them before falling off the edge of the chart! It matters not that those lines are there on the chart outside what the camera captured.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Hey Graeme,

Yea we found however, that you had to shoot carefully but the pay off was when you where finishing. When you take that full rez desqueezed image of 2560x1080 and scaled it down to 2K finish or 1080P it looks fantastic. The issue still remains though to do that and make it look good there you got to protect your highlights big time and be all daylight balanced. Biggest issue is that when grading the footage if anythings blown out you have almost no room to work, so even is some stuff is a little dark with some more noise...I'd go that route then have blown highlight.

There are a lot of Vipers with old firmware/dsp board... the new firmware is fixing exactly the DR in Scope mode... If you have one harry up because in two years it will not be serviced...

Vipers are collective items...

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Of course it's games - if you don't frame the chart in one dimension, the numbers in that dimension don't mean what those numbers say any more. You can't say you have a vertical resolution of 1400 or so if you can only ever count 1000 of them before falling off the edge of the chart! It matters not that those lines are there on the chart outside what the camera captured.

Graeme

You will make me go to the office now!

If you have with RED, on the same chart in full frame 1500 lines in the center and forced to crop the image to do a 2,35:1, the resulted image that will have missed the top and the bottom, will look exactly like the one above... what it would change in order to make the lines more, than what you see here?

Grab a frame of the chart with RED, full frame ofcoarse 16:9, export 4K tiff, go to Photoshop see the line count, they will be 1500, then crop it to be 2,35:1 and count the lines again would they be more? no they will stay 1500...

Put Viper in scope mode, frame the chart in exactly the same area that the above 2.35:1 cropped RED frame has, export a tiff that is anamorphic 1920 x 1080, open Photoshop make a new image with the same resolution as the previous cropped RED has (that is 4096 x 1742), fit the image HV... and the result is the above Viper image.

That shows the same 1450 lines...

What games?

[Graeme Nattress]

We all know that a sensor with 1080 pixels vertical cannot ever resolve more than 1080 lines vertical. It doesn't matter if you bin sub-pixels or not - we have 1080 rows of pixels that get recorded. There is absolutely no way that 1080 rows can show more than 1080 lines. If your chart is showing otherwise, we must look at your measurement methodology.

TV charts are usually labeled in lines per picture height. That means, for the numbers to mean what they say, you must frame the chart so that the top and bottom of the chart are lined up with the top and bottom of the picture. By lining it up so that the left and right match, and the top and bottom fall off, those numbers no longer mean what they say.

Back in the days of PAL and NTSC with a fixed number of horizontal lines that made up the picture - it made sense to measure resolution in lines per picture height to give a fair number across different aspect ratios.

However, with film, we've always measured resolution horizontally because of the wide variety in aspect ratios, and the use of anamorphics.

That is why I use my circular sinusoidal zone plates for measuring resolution. I frame horizontally as I want to measure horizontal resolution. I get accurate, repeatable results, great measures of any aliasing and can plot MTF very quickly. Resolution "trumpets" are not anywhere near as nice nor easily interpreted for such measurements.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

We all know that a sensor with 1080 pixels vertical cannot ever resolve more than 1080 lines vertical. It doesn't matter if you bin sub-pixels or not - we have 1080 rows of pixels that get recorded. There is absolutely no way that 1080 rows can show more than 1080 lines. If your chart is showing otherwise, we must look at your measurement methodology.

OK I will go to the office, hope I will find it...

It is a 1920 x 1440 image that falls on the Viper sensor... and then is cropped to Scope anamorphic 1920 x 1080 inside the sensor by binning the pixels differently (3 pixels one output)...

I never said that it has higher resolution than RED, I just said that it has slightly less than RED's and much more than all the rest...

So If I find it because its being shot a year ago... you will see what I'm saying...

In an hour I will be back...

[Graeme Nattress]

Thanks Evangelos. From what I read from the Thomson papers on Viper, binning the sensor in 3 gives the whole sensor an effective pixel resolution of 1920x1440, of which only the middle 1080 rows are read out in 2.37:1 mode. Is that also your understanding of the process?

Graeme

[Darren Orange]

Graeme,
Correct me if I'm wrong but is this not a little bit of a mute point, after all no mater what it records at 1080P 4:4:4 The sensor I think we all agree can resolve that, but that can't ever be greater than that recording limiter. From the glass to the sensor to the recording medium. I'm I missing something here?

The only real question I see here is, whats better, putting Hawk 35mm anamorphic glass the V-lites for 16:9 sensors or having it do its CinemaScope mode for recording. I would say its CinemaScope mode would be a better choice.

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Thanks Evangelos. From what I read from the Thomson papers on Viper, binning the sensor in 3 gives the whole sensor an effective pixel resolution of 1920x1440, of which only the middle 1080 rows are read out in 2.37:1 mode. Is that also your understanding of the process?

Graeme

I'm back...

Yes this is what I say...

The RED Viper res comparison... with REDalert 20.1.8...

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/Vertical_center_res.jpg

Following are the full frames...

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/Viper.jpg

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/RES-chart-RED.jpg

This is the R3D that resulted the res chart above

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/A001_C001_080314_001.R3D.ZIP

Remove the .ZIP extension after the download... it seems that there is a problem with the R3D extension...

Its easy observed that RED resolves higher resolution than Viper.

The difference is not huge as its between RED and F35 or F23...

Viper surpass the 1300 lines easily, having in mind that all the above is with a 35 adapter so the light passes from a Zeiss 50mm ZF F2,
then from a spinning ground glass, a condenser lens, a flipping prism, a relay lens, the CCD prism block and finally to the 3 CCD's...

My Canon Cinestyle zoom cant go higher than 1200 lines, so I dont know if I put a DigiPrime how clean the image could be...

The fact is that an F900r can't go higher than 900 lines, so an F23 would be similar, the F35 can't go higher than 1000 lines, the same with Si2K,
similar number you get with 3700 etc.

D21 with anamorphic lenses is reaching the same levels...

So yes Viper is one of the best cameras existing in terms of resolution...

I don't want to go into the discussion of what could be the same comparison if we compare a red light or blue light
transmitive resolution chart... because what we compare is just the luminance channel that results from all R G B pixels...

Let this legacy camera (Viper) do few more features until it vanishes forever... it is a real breakthrough in the digital cinema history.

So no games.

[Graeme Nattress]

Link to R3D is broken.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Link to R3D is broken.

Graeme

Remove the .ZIP extension after the download... it seems that there is a problem with the R3D extension...

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/A001_C001_080314_001.R3D.ZIP

Hope it helps.

[Graeme Nattress]

Someone should check my math here but:

If you have a 16:9 chart, which measures resolution in TV Lines per picture height, and you have a 16:9 camera and frame the chart, then, if it says 1000 lines, that means the horizontal resolution is 1000*16/9 = 1777, or 1.7k in film-speak.

Now we do the funky 2:1 aspect ratio pixels. The full sensor has 1920x1440 of them, but we use the middle 1080 because that's all we can record to existing tape formats, and it conveniently gives us a 2.37:1 aspect ratio when un-squeezed by 1.333333.

And as luck would have it, the vertical resolution of ~1400, when divided by the 1.333 gives us 1050 lines (just under the max 1080) and because there's reasonable MTF there, that accounts for the mild aliasing we see. 1050 vertical res, *16/9 to get horizontal 1866, which is about right for a 1080p system with max horizontal rez of 1920.

Does that work for an explanation for the numbers?

Graeme

[Dan Hudgins]

Sorry to get into the issue, but it is possable to resolve more lines in what you see than the pixel count if the subject is moving over the sensor.

The aliasing will average and some details will reinforce and the contrast will be lower than the peak at about 0.7x the line count, but you should be able to get visable resolution on moving subjects at un-even ratios of the line count from frame to frame.

Movie images seem to have twice the detail when moving as in a still frame because your mind blends detail from one frame to another to "see" details smaller than the grain size.

Likewise, slowly moving the sensor would let it pick up more detail than having it stationary when you watch the images and intergrate the sub-pixel details.

You need true RAW sensor data to see those sub-pixel effects because the wavlets used in some compressing methods will disturb the sub-pixel values.

Movie film cameras weave the image around, that lack of steadyness helps detail pass through digital scanning and projection at a sub-pixel level, if you shoot with a stationary digital camera you do not have the constant motion of the subject around on the grid of pixels falling part way off to the right on one frame and part way off the left on the next frame and so on. That cosntant motion is also used by our eyes to hide the grid of cells we see with, the brain smooths out the dots and connects the details that pop on and off as our eyes shake in micro movements.

Old analog video looked more "live" (on non stick camera tubes, not the later ones) because the raster on the tube and monitor moved over the image details, and you could get a little past the line count in the vertical if the electron beam was focused well. It was a high order interlace (related to the AC ripple in the power supply of the camera).

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Graeme, what you say is right...

The bottom line is, when we need the big cinema format which is the Cinemascope 2,37:1 for whatever reason, with cameras that can shot only spherical and they have a 16:9 sensor like RED, F35, F23 etc we do the crop.

Crop = loss of resolution

The solution is either an anamorphic adapter like Canon AVC235 or the Hawks 1.33 anamorphics...

Or a trick like the one Viper is doing, that allow us to use our regular spherical lenses and get all the pixels to count...

That alone puts Viper on top of all the 1080p cameras...

RED users should learn that the Hawk Anamorphics are the only way to get all pixels to count when shooting in Scope format...

RED users if they don't use Hawks, a Viper with DigiPrimes could make high resolution images almost as high as RED can... plus mechanical shutter and good tungsten performance and unfortunately minus 35mm DoF...

[Andrew McCarrick]

Would there be any benefits to shooting 1920 x 1080 with a 1.333x anamorphic lens on the Viper; instead of using CinemaScope mode? If so where could I rent Anamorphic lenses?

[Graeme Nattress]

Evangelos - thanks. Glad we got to the bottom of that and learned more how the Viper works in the process!

Cropping does indeed imply a loss of resolution. And the Viper has a clever solution to this issue - it does crop at the sensor level, but still manages to put a full 1920x1080 meaningful pixels to tape. That's a darn good idea. However, what we did was to go out to 4.5k giving at least a 3.5k measured horizontal rez, and around 1.5k measured vertical rez, which, although cropped from what the sensor sees, is still more than enough resolution to do the widescreen justice.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Would there be any benefits to shooting 1920 x 1080 with a 1.333x anamorphic lens on the Viper; instead of using CinemaScope mode? If so where could I rent Anamorphic lenses?

There are no anamorphic lenses for 2/3 b4 mount.

There is just the Canon AVC-235 that has being out of production, it gets in front of the camera, it adds 15 cm and inverting the image, and after that you put the lens... so its Lens >> AVC-235 >> Camera

Or you use Viper's scope mode...

If you use an adapter like SGblade with my GG.relay in S35 to get the missing 35mm DoF you can still benefit from Vipers scope mode but you will lose 1 stop so Viper will became 160ASA... which is very close to what RED and D21 have as general consensus....


Evangelos - thanks. Glad we got to the bottom of that and learned more how the Viper works in the process!

Cropping does indeed imply a loss of resolution. And the Viper has a clever solution to this issue - it does crop at the sensor level, but still manages to put a full 1920x1080 meaningful pixels to tape. That's a darn good idea. However, what we did was to go out to 4.5k giving at least a 3.5k measured horizontal rez, and around 1.5k measured vertical rez, which, although cropped from what the sensor sees, is still more than enough resolution to do the widescreen justice.

Graeme

A good idea is to do some kind of binning in the up coming cameras to mimic what Viper does......

Yep is good enough on both cameras...

For all non RED users I hope its clear why Viper after seven years, still is the best 2/3 camera ever build for digital Cinema...

And why a film shoot for CinemaScope on F35 without Hawks would be always inferior of what a Viper can do...

So for me to summarize it... Its RED or D21 or Viper... in any random order...

[Andrew McCarrick]

There are no anamorphic lenses for 2/3 b4 mount.



Well I just emailed Band Pro Digital about altering or constructing new digiprimes that are anamorphic... still waiting to hear back. And was thinking more of 35mm anamorphic lenses with an adapter.

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Well I just emailed Band Pro Digital about altering or constructing new digiprimes that are anamorphic... still waiting to hear back. And was thinking more of 35mm anamorphic lenses with an adapter.

New DigiPrimes??? ok...

To put an anamorphic 35 to an adapter needs a 4:3 sensor... Viper is 16:9... so its not working either...

[Graeme Nattress]

The binning on Viper is only useful though due to the highly non-square pixels it uses. Binning gives you no help in a square pixel camera. Also, the other key thing about the Viper approach is that half of it's benefit is that the camera is tied to 1080p output. It's a way of squeezing more of the sensor information into that fixed bucked which is the 1080p output. With what we're doing, we just keep making the bucket bigger.

Graeme

[Steven Caesare]

_SNIP_

So for me to summarize it... Its RED or D21 or Viper... in any random order...

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, those 1:1 crops make it no conetest: the RED blows the Viper away for image quality.

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, those 1:1 crops make it no conetest: the RED blows the Viper away for image quality.

The image in the 1:1 crop its being made with very odd lens system...

The light in this crop passes through:

1. Front lens Zeiss ZF 50mm
2. SGblade 35 DoF adapter spinning ground glass
3. Condenser lens to minimize vignette
4. Image invert prism block
5. Relay lens that mounts to the camera
6. CCD prism block
7. finally on 3 x CCD

Did you expect something cleaner? RED has just a lens...

http://www.motionfx.gr/Files/Viper_blade_5.JPG


There are also other qualities apart from luminance resolution that are making one of the three unique...

For instance on Viper there are 1920 x 4320 = 8294400 individual pixels that capturing the Red channel and another 1920 x 4320 = 8294400 that are capturing the blue channel... on RED we just have 2240 x 1260 = 2870200 for red channel and a similar number on the blue...

Do you thing that this huge difference (8.294.400 pixels vs. 2.870.200 pixels of RED) doesn't give the slightest advantage to Viper for... let's say... skin tones in low light?

On RED is the REDcode RAW workflow that makes it unique along with the S35 sensor...

D21 has an S35 4:3 sensor and a mechanical shutter...

Viper has a 27Mpixels sensor with mechanical shutter and it has also a Scope mode with spherical lenses... but it doesn't have the S35 sensor...

[Graeme Nattress]

Ah, but the whole point of this thread is not what pixels you have, but how you use them....

The Viper uses up to 6 sub-pixels to make a single pixel. It's a clever system that allows them to address different pixel aspect ratios for 720p, 1080p and 2.37:1 aspect ratio images from the same sensor. Very clever, but.... The sub pixels are also very small.... And what is key is pixel design. Many factors.

Luma resolution is not the be all and end all of imagery, but it's a primary component of what we see, so it's important.

Graeme

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

So let me rephrase it...

The SUPER digital cinema camera will have...

It will have S35 size sensor like RED and D21...
It will be 4:3 like D21
It will use the REDcode and all the Greeme magic like RED
It will have a mechanical shutter like D21 and Viper
It will have an optical viewfinder like D21
It will use pixel binning to archive a native 16:9 and a native 2,35:1 like Viper does
It will have the 12+ DR that Viper has
It will have a crazy resolution of 27Mpixels like Viper
And a super forum as REDuser is... like RED has...!!!

Ohh and an ergonomic design like an AATON... a bit irrelevant but somehow relevant...

So thats my dream...

[Andrew McCarrick]

Well they (Band Pro) pointed me to the Canon Anamorphic atachment but it looks ridiculously long for hand-held work.



New DigiPrimes??? ok...

To put an anamorphic 35 to an adapter needs a 4:3 sensor... Viper is 16:9... so its not working either...


I'm not getting why you'd need a 4:3 sensor?...

Wouldn't a 16:9 sensor with a 1.33 anamorphic produce 2.37?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Well it a low budget project and I can get a Viper for 400 bucks a day.

Viper and S.Two recorder = 800 a day = 4800 for two weeks * 2 cams = $9600

So if you can find me two full RED packages for under 15k (for 2 weeks), then I'd shoot RED.

i`ll get you definitly two for two weeks cheaper

[Steven Caesare]

The image in the 1:1 crop its being made with very odd lens system...

The light in this crop passes through:

1. Front lens Zeiss ZF 50mm
2. SGblade 35 DoF adapter spinning ground glass
3. Condenser lens to minimize vignette
4. Image invert prism block
5. Relay lens that mounts to the camera
6. CCD prism block
7. finally on 3 x CCD

Did you expect something cleaner? RED has just a lens...



Well, in your original post you said:".. it uses oversampling in order to deliver the cleanest 1080 signal... ", and then subsequently provided these images as addditional ammunition.

They don't help your argument, IMO. Perhaps removing the additional lens system provides a cleaner image, but as the comparison stands, the Viper + 35mm lens adapter doesn't hold a candle to RED's image.

-sc

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

They don't help your argument, IMO. Perhaps removing the additional lens system provides a cleaner image, but as the comparison stands, the Viper + 35mm lens adapter doesn't hold a candle to RED's image.-sc

Not "perhaps"... it really is, a day and night difference...

We use adapters to put beautiful dirt in the image... film is not so clean as RED is... it is totally subjective... I have DoP's over my shoulder when doing CC and they push me to put dirt in the image... they don't like the "clinical" super clean RED image...

We even filmrecord on camera negative to get the dirt...

So as an engineer I like the super clean... but artistically, DoP's don't like that...

Not a candle... have you ever tried to pull the sat curve on red/yellow in a low light scene to lift the skin tone with footage from RED and Viper to see the difference?

Yes, Andrew you are right the 1.33 anamorphic's would work...

But I still prefer the DigiPrimes route... but again is aesthetics... as I said above, the dirt and the anamorphic artifacts is what we are after...

[Gary McClurg]

I don't have time to read all the posts...

To the original poster...

I would call a place in LA called the Camera House... one of the two places in LA who still work with the Viper... they have a post house... so they can work with the workflow as well... same deal $400 bucks a day...

There are two streams... video stream & film stream that the Viper can shoot... so do your research on that also...

Best to get your advice from those who worked with the camera... I only know bits & pieces... but we ended up not renting Vipers for a shoot...

One thing the adapter will do is soften the image... a film out will do the same thing...

[Steven Caesare]

Not "perhaps"... it really is, a day and night difference...

We use adapters to put beautiful dirt in the image... film is not so clean as RED is... it is totally subjective... I have DoP's over my shoulder when doing CC and they push me to put dirt in the image... they don't like the "clinical" super clean RED image...

We even filmrecord on camera negative to get the dirt...

So as an engineer I like the super clean... but artistically, DoP's don't like that...

Not a candle... have you ever tried to pull the sat curve on red/yellow in a low light scene to lift the skin tone with footage from RED and Viper to see the difference?

Yes, Andrew you are right the 1.33 anamorphic's would work...

But I still prefer the DigiPrimes route... but again is aesthetics... as I said above, the dirt and the anamorphic artifacts is what we are after...

Are you telling me the artifacting visible in the Viper pics you posted in post #26 of this thread are desirable and you use lenses to introduce those on purpose?

Preferring some grain or the "warmth" of a particular lens I understand. That's neither.

-sc

[Andrew McCarrick]

I don't have time to read all the posts...

To the original poster...

I would call a place in LA called the Camera House... one of the two places in LA who still work with the Viper... they have a post house... so they can work with the workflow as well... same deal $400 bucks a day...

There are two streams... video stream & film stream that the Viper can shoot... so do your research on that also...

Best to get your advice from those who worked with the camera... I only know bits & pieces... but we ended up not renting Vipers for a shoot...

One thing the adapter will do is soften the image... a film out will do the same thing...

Actually The Camera House is the place I found it for 400 a day.

But now doing a price comparison it's looking like RED might be cheaper... The 800 is only Camera Body and Recorder... I'd have to add all the accessories (tripods, matte boxes, follow focus, ect.), which I could get from a Zacuto package minus the camera body; but that pushes the costs above a RED rental from Indie Rentals.


How common is it for rental houses to do student discounts?

And does anybody know where to rent 1.33x anamorphics?

[Evangelos Achillopoulos]

Are you telling me the artifacting visible in the Viper pics you posted in post #26 of this thread are desirable and you use lenses to introduce those on purpose?

Preferring some grain or the "warmth" of a particular lens I understand. That's neither.

-sc

hoper edei deixai... or in ancient Greek "ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.