Jay A. Kelley
09-23-2007, 03:50 PM
Well,
I wrote to them.. Saying in so many words, "I don't agree, and you guys are wrong".. Well something like that I don't really remember..
Anyway, they wrote back... Here is the letter, it's interesting reading.. I think some others on here wrote, and they got a letter too:
Dear ladies and gents on the set,
sorry for not having answered your e-mail immediately. After the big shows like NAB and IBC there are 16 hours of work a day through many weeks.
You were the first ones in this case who sent to us an e-mail with a sense of fine humor.
And thus I wanted to answer not with just two sentences.
So:
If the article has amused you a little bit and made you a good laugh,
I am happy for beeing able to contribute to a good atmosphere on the set.
Because this is very important for a successful production.
I assume you saw the article (or better said the first few lines of part one of our three issue NAB show review 07 with seven pages devoted just to cameras and optics) in english under
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2479
Unfortunately there are some false translations which change the feeling and the sense of this article in a very unpleasant and misleading way.
One of many examples: in German was written "opferten", which does not mean the waiting people "wasted" but "sacrificed" their time - to whom? The must be god of marketing, I wrote before. This is an important difference. "wasting" has a totally negative meaning, "sacrificing" has to do something with religion and believing.
You know, time is money on these shows. And somebody who made people come and stand around his tent on a show like NAB and wait for hours, must have excellent marketing skills, if the then one and only product is far from being ready to ship.
To say it clearly: I am not laughing at these people! I am marveling that this is possible. And I am never laughing at people who risk something for new ideas.
On the other hand, this kind of impetus of RED as a company that emerged into the world of movie and broadcast production, causes also a problem in Europe: Beyond the understandable fact that these people are very excited about their product, it is simply not true that people who are not following full of excitement are enemies. This black and white way of thinking has caused a lot of problems of understanding between Europe and the USA not just in the world of technology. There is a world of subtile colours out there!
I for my own had to learn by experience in the world of production that the user interface - hard and software - is about 80 percent of the work that has to be done in the development of a new system. This is the reason, that is seemed fairly logically for me, that the camera was not ready at the NAB 07.
And I beleive that a good journalist must not be an unfiltering mouthpice of PR-agencies.
Of course I have seen "crossing the line" On big screen and on the Apple screens.
This is a remarkable short film, made by an experienced director, Peter Jackson, who knows his business. And that is the problem. It is so thrilling, made with such a lot of action, that you hardly are able to just look at the quality of the pictures. And obviously nearly every frame of this 1,5 million USD looking picture has gone through postproduction. It is impressive.
But is not a film for showing tests for a completely new camera. I know a lot of people who don't dare to say that a cameraman could see what is coming out of the camera and what is done in post in "crossing the line".
Yes, if you have a single chip of 24.4mm x 13.7 mm, the depth of field works like with 35mm cine lenses. That makes DoPs happy. And the way of thinking, that you can work with that camera as you are used to film, whether it is 35mm or 16mm, because of the active area that is taken from the sensor, that is also an interesting aspect. And if you have a chip of this size, the amount of light a single pixel is able to catch is a lot bigger then on smaller Sensors with high resolution. That should result in a more noise free picture. That is a naturally pro of the concept. We have seen this in many stills from lots of different digital still cameras and also on the homepage of RED. And in my first NAB review I wrote about some specs of the concept, but also that this were specs of an announced camera. And that especially on this show a lot of HD-Cameras were announced in a style, that we know from NAB, which is totally different from lets say IBC in Amsterdam. I wrote nothing about gamblers, like somebody claimed.
But people outside there are also very keen on seeing how and what the Wavelet compression of this camera is doing.
If one builds a camera that uses just one sensor - which is not working with three planes similar to the one of Foveon - he has to use something like a Bayer pattern and to calculate the RGB pixels eg. from a square with two green, a red and a blue one (I could not find different informations on the RED homepage about the mysterium sensor). And that results into a resolution which is significantly smaller then the original amount of pixels on the sensor. So if the active pixel array of the sensor has 4520 x 2540 Pixels as we can learn from the spec sheet, you can't speak of the same 4K that people in postproduction count with.
Of course resolution is just one parameter of picture quality and if you upres a clean picture to 4K, it can still look very good. But why upres and then fight against bigger data rates? That is the reason why a lot of people have problems to name the RED one a 4K camera.
What we could see in Europe were the pictures of very clean cars and smooth surfaces under special lighting conditions in ibc 2006 with a very slow moving camera, "crossing the line" at NAB 07 and now at IBC under very good projection conditions on a huge screen.
What was coming directly out of the camera for the people on the showfloor was the output of the viewfinder. This is not in 4K, this is 720p. I doubt that one can see the quality of a 4K camera through a viewfinder in 720. And without a proper lighting - double not.
RED should show the output on a 4K screen as they do now exist in the market, so that the people could see at least in some cases how the camera is reacting. When I told this to Ted Schilowitz in 2006, and that this would be very interesting not only for me but for a lot of people, he just said "nice to meet you" and went away.
To remember: I never said or wrote, that Jim Jannard or his guys are swindler or betray people. Like A. Hoehn wrote under reduser.net and in an reader's letter in our magazine. I printed this letter and corrected it immediately in the next issue of PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTION: our article had said, that we don't think of a fraud, in view of the background of Jim Jannard and because RED had promised to give back the 1000 USD if the project would be stopped. To take 1000 USD subscription for a product in that stadium of 2006 is very unusual in this market. Not only in the German one.
The whole thing was, that a non-enthusiastic german journalist, who had talked with a lot of people about their opinion on what they had experienced and on what one could see until then, was sceptic about the appearance of RED and the religion-like behaviour of many enthusiasts. On that base I let my phantasy play a little bit and put things together (That people at RED were able to name early adopters without beeing able to see their badge is not based on my invention). Not more, not less. Which I put a stress on at the end of this tiny part of the show review. And for this I stand.
By the way: many other people from Germany and many other journalists were and are sceptics. But some journalists nevertheless now seem to try to convince Ted Schilowitz, that they always have been belonging to the strongest RED supporters. I am not so shure on whom one is able to count more.
As with the end of IBC 07 50 Cameras were delivered you are now in the happy situation to see on your own how the RED one and the workflow is doing. In my opinion and out of my experience in this market that is the only thing you as production people really can count on.
Just one more thing (a sentence also by a god of marketing who by the way is in close connection with RED):
Our magazine is the one in Germany which has been doing articles about productions in HD for many years on a regular base, in order to show cameramen how the reality is changing. I tried to have 50% film and 50% HD. Believe me, it was not so easy in the first years.
And I never spoke to a guy named Laguun who runs redrental.de. I am not based in Berlin or Stuttgart. So it is interesting how he could hear from me something that never a movie would be made with a Sony F-900. I think some persons have to try to remember more carefully in order not to mix up the magazines in this market. I had articles about the star wars episodes which were shot on Sony F-900. Because they were made on HD.
Best regards and a successful production
Ruodlieb Neubauer
I wrote to them.. Saying in so many words, "I don't agree, and you guys are wrong".. Well something like that I don't really remember..
Anyway, they wrote back... Here is the letter, it's interesting reading.. I think some others on here wrote, and they got a letter too:
Dear ladies and gents on the set,
sorry for not having answered your e-mail immediately. After the big shows like NAB and IBC there are 16 hours of work a day through many weeks.
You were the first ones in this case who sent to us an e-mail with a sense of fine humor.
And thus I wanted to answer not with just two sentences.
So:
If the article has amused you a little bit and made you a good laugh,
I am happy for beeing able to contribute to a good atmosphere on the set.
Because this is very important for a successful production.
I assume you saw the article (or better said the first few lines of part one of our three issue NAB show review 07 with seven pages devoted just to cameras and optics) in english under
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2479
Unfortunately there are some false translations which change the feeling and the sense of this article in a very unpleasant and misleading way.
One of many examples: in German was written "opferten", which does not mean the waiting people "wasted" but "sacrificed" their time - to whom? The must be god of marketing, I wrote before. This is an important difference. "wasting" has a totally negative meaning, "sacrificing" has to do something with religion and believing.
You know, time is money on these shows. And somebody who made people come and stand around his tent on a show like NAB and wait for hours, must have excellent marketing skills, if the then one and only product is far from being ready to ship.
To say it clearly: I am not laughing at these people! I am marveling that this is possible. And I am never laughing at people who risk something for new ideas.
On the other hand, this kind of impetus of RED as a company that emerged into the world of movie and broadcast production, causes also a problem in Europe: Beyond the understandable fact that these people are very excited about their product, it is simply not true that people who are not following full of excitement are enemies. This black and white way of thinking has caused a lot of problems of understanding between Europe and the USA not just in the world of technology. There is a world of subtile colours out there!
I for my own had to learn by experience in the world of production that the user interface - hard and software - is about 80 percent of the work that has to be done in the development of a new system. This is the reason, that is seemed fairly logically for me, that the camera was not ready at the NAB 07.
And I beleive that a good journalist must not be an unfiltering mouthpice of PR-agencies.
Of course I have seen "crossing the line" On big screen and on the Apple screens.
This is a remarkable short film, made by an experienced director, Peter Jackson, who knows his business. And that is the problem. It is so thrilling, made with such a lot of action, that you hardly are able to just look at the quality of the pictures. And obviously nearly every frame of this 1,5 million USD looking picture has gone through postproduction. It is impressive.
But is not a film for showing tests for a completely new camera. I know a lot of people who don't dare to say that a cameraman could see what is coming out of the camera and what is done in post in "crossing the line".
Yes, if you have a single chip of 24.4mm x 13.7 mm, the depth of field works like with 35mm cine lenses. That makes DoPs happy. And the way of thinking, that you can work with that camera as you are used to film, whether it is 35mm or 16mm, because of the active area that is taken from the sensor, that is also an interesting aspect. And if you have a chip of this size, the amount of light a single pixel is able to catch is a lot bigger then on smaller Sensors with high resolution. That should result in a more noise free picture. That is a naturally pro of the concept. We have seen this in many stills from lots of different digital still cameras and also on the homepage of RED. And in my first NAB review I wrote about some specs of the concept, but also that this were specs of an announced camera. And that especially on this show a lot of HD-Cameras were announced in a style, that we know from NAB, which is totally different from lets say IBC in Amsterdam. I wrote nothing about gamblers, like somebody claimed.
But people outside there are also very keen on seeing how and what the Wavelet compression of this camera is doing.
If one builds a camera that uses just one sensor - which is not working with three planes similar to the one of Foveon - he has to use something like a Bayer pattern and to calculate the RGB pixels eg. from a square with two green, a red and a blue one (I could not find different informations on the RED homepage about the mysterium sensor). And that results into a resolution which is significantly smaller then the original amount of pixels on the sensor. So if the active pixel array of the sensor has 4520 x 2540 Pixels as we can learn from the spec sheet, you can't speak of the same 4K that people in postproduction count with.
Of course resolution is just one parameter of picture quality and if you upres a clean picture to 4K, it can still look very good. But why upres and then fight against bigger data rates? That is the reason why a lot of people have problems to name the RED one a 4K camera.
What we could see in Europe were the pictures of very clean cars and smooth surfaces under special lighting conditions in ibc 2006 with a very slow moving camera, "crossing the line" at NAB 07 and now at IBC under very good projection conditions on a huge screen.
What was coming directly out of the camera for the people on the showfloor was the output of the viewfinder. This is not in 4K, this is 720p. I doubt that one can see the quality of a 4K camera through a viewfinder in 720. And without a proper lighting - double not.
RED should show the output on a 4K screen as they do now exist in the market, so that the people could see at least in some cases how the camera is reacting. When I told this to Ted Schilowitz in 2006, and that this would be very interesting not only for me but for a lot of people, he just said "nice to meet you" and went away.
To remember: I never said or wrote, that Jim Jannard or his guys are swindler or betray people. Like A. Hoehn wrote under reduser.net and in an reader's letter in our magazine. I printed this letter and corrected it immediately in the next issue of PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTION: our article had said, that we don't think of a fraud, in view of the background of Jim Jannard and because RED had promised to give back the 1000 USD if the project would be stopped. To take 1000 USD subscription for a product in that stadium of 2006 is very unusual in this market. Not only in the German one.
The whole thing was, that a non-enthusiastic german journalist, who had talked with a lot of people about their opinion on what they had experienced and on what one could see until then, was sceptic about the appearance of RED and the religion-like behaviour of many enthusiasts. On that base I let my phantasy play a little bit and put things together (That people at RED were able to name early adopters without beeing able to see their badge is not based on my invention). Not more, not less. Which I put a stress on at the end of this tiny part of the show review. And for this I stand.
By the way: many other people from Germany and many other journalists were and are sceptics. But some journalists nevertheless now seem to try to convince Ted Schilowitz, that they always have been belonging to the strongest RED supporters. I am not so shure on whom one is able to count more.
As with the end of IBC 07 50 Cameras were delivered you are now in the happy situation to see on your own how the RED one and the workflow is doing. In my opinion and out of my experience in this market that is the only thing you as production people really can count on.
Just one more thing (a sentence also by a god of marketing who by the way is in close connection with RED):
Our magazine is the one in Germany which has been doing articles about productions in HD for many years on a regular base, in order to show cameramen how the reality is changing. I tried to have 50% film and 50% HD. Believe me, it was not so easy in the first years.
And I never spoke to a guy named Laguun who runs redrental.de. I am not based in Berlin or Stuttgart. So it is interesting how he could hear from me something that never a movie would be made with a Sony F-900. I think some persons have to try to remember more carefully in order not to mix up the magazines in this market. I had articles about the star wars episodes which were shot on Sony F-900. Because they were made on HD.
Best regards and a successful production
Ruodlieb Neubauer