Randall Brown
07-23-2011, 01:50 PM
So i wanted to contribute back to this community that has helped us so much in the past. I wanted to offer a perspective of the smaller guys out there who may get an Epic-M/X eventually.
After a long wait, we finally got our ducks in a row to purchase our Red Epic, and after some hurculean effort from Marco and the rest of the team at Red we recieved it via same day shipment the night before leaving to panama for a 6 day shoot. We are a 2 man documentary outfit. No big production team or support. Here are our thoughts on day 2 of ownership.
Unboxing
- the M ships in the pelican case inside a bigger box. The case is well cut for the cam.
- we recieved the camera, SSDs, monitor, cable for monitor, cable to adapt to red one brick and power accesories, and an epic specific AC power adapter. We are still waiting on the side handle, red volts, and charger
- the case is cut to store the epic with handle attached but not the monitor nor any cages may want to put around the camera
- it is very small. It really does feel like what the Red One should have been. It does change the game for small crew production merely because of its size
Our shoot
- we have a series of interviews and broll to pick up in panama for a project. Will be shooting in high humidity and about 90 degree temps.
- 80 percent of the work will be on tripod and 20 percent.hand held
- no lights, mattebox or follow focus
In Use
- the tripod sockets on the bottom of the body do not line up to ET baseplate for the Red One, or any of the baseplates i have used for our red one. What i mean by that is that while there are 3 screw holes in the bottom the spacing of them does allow but for one to be used. So the camera can twist a bit if you arent tight on that single screw. But it does line up on a Bogen 503HDV (more on that later!)
- since we had to use red bricks, we had to use rods to attach the red plate to the camera when we needed to go handheld, making the twist issue above even more important to resolve
- the fan on the camera is maybe a bit louder than the red one in standard settings, but it quiets when recording and you can adjust the settings
- it really would have been nice for RED to have included some mini plug to XLR cables for the audio, like they did with the red one mini xlr cables. Those little cables werre hard to find the day before, so we couldnt use any of our audio stuff. So we improvised, we shot sound seperate and in the airport purchase one of those auxillary cables to connecting your iphone to the car stereo. We disabled phantom power and plugged the line out of our sound recorder into the mic 1 port and voila, in camera sound. The scary thing is that it sounds freaking great! But we will get proper cables when back in the states. But it does work and the regular mini jack to mini jack got us by in our pinch.
- the camera handles the heat and humidty witjout a problem, but we have to take great care to acclimatize the camera to the indoors and outdoors
- Redbricks last a very long time. I would estimate over 2 hrs, but they dont seem to be reporting the battery percentage or voltage to the camera screen, so we had to check the indicators on the side of the camera
Surprises
- one of our checked bags with the cartoni tripod and red mattebox never made it out of the US! Luckily we had a bogen 503HDV for the GH2 Back-up cam. But we didnt have the ARRI dovetail to mate with the baseplate to mount the camera and rails and battery to the tripod! We dismantled the rail set-up and mounted the camera and lens (RPZ 17-50) directly to the tripod plate. Success! And wow, this little bogen is doing great with the two and counterblancing perfectly! Now we needed to do something with the battery plate and mount. Whille exploring some rope to attach it to the center column of the tripod i noticed the low position secondary mount that all of the bogens have in the center column, and it screwed right in to the mount and stablized the entire tripod! So now we had a rock solid mounting platform that further made the shooting platform stable. See pic for explanation. This set-up is working flawlessly for us and we have been pleased with the bogen thus far for simple moves and locked off shots.
- the dynamic range is amazing! I put this as a surprise because i am used to shooting film still cameras and on my Red One, i never felt it that amazing for range and so an "improvement" to that wouldnt have gotten my hopes up. I can honestly say the images i am.getting out of the Epic are.rivaling the range i am used to with film. But more than anything its the soft gradients and.teansition of color that are striking. I will post a frame that demos it later today.
Day 2 Summary
- Loving it thus far! I can see how the side handle and redmote will further evolve the experience. I cant wait to get those and 10 of the red volt batteries and be able to shoot for hours and use far cheaper and smaller support.
Footage is coming soon and will share what we can. Having a blast with this.
After a long wait, we finally got our ducks in a row to purchase our Red Epic, and after some hurculean effort from Marco and the rest of the team at Red we recieved it via same day shipment the night before leaving to panama for a 6 day shoot. We are a 2 man documentary outfit. No big production team or support. Here are our thoughts on day 2 of ownership.
Unboxing
- the M ships in the pelican case inside a bigger box. The case is well cut for the cam.
- we recieved the camera, SSDs, monitor, cable for monitor, cable to adapt to red one brick and power accesories, and an epic specific AC power adapter. We are still waiting on the side handle, red volts, and charger
- the case is cut to store the epic with handle attached but not the monitor nor any cages may want to put around the camera
- it is very small. It really does feel like what the Red One should have been. It does change the game for small crew production merely because of its size
Our shoot
- we have a series of interviews and broll to pick up in panama for a project. Will be shooting in high humidity and about 90 degree temps.
- 80 percent of the work will be on tripod and 20 percent.hand held
- no lights, mattebox or follow focus
In Use
- the tripod sockets on the bottom of the body do not line up to ET baseplate for the Red One, or any of the baseplates i have used for our red one. What i mean by that is that while there are 3 screw holes in the bottom the spacing of them does allow but for one to be used. So the camera can twist a bit if you arent tight on that single screw. But it does line up on a Bogen 503HDV (more on that later!)
- since we had to use red bricks, we had to use rods to attach the red plate to the camera when we needed to go handheld, making the twist issue above even more important to resolve
- the fan on the camera is maybe a bit louder than the red one in standard settings, but it quiets when recording and you can adjust the settings
- it really would have been nice for RED to have included some mini plug to XLR cables for the audio, like they did with the red one mini xlr cables. Those little cables werre hard to find the day before, so we couldnt use any of our audio stuff. So we improvised, we shot sound seperate and in the airport purchase one of those auxillary cables to connecting your iphone to the car stereo. We disabled phantom power and plugged the line out of our sound recorder into the mic 1 port and voila, in camera sound. The scary thing is that it sounds freaking great! But we will get proper cables when back in the states. But it does work and the regular mini jack to mini jack got us by in our pinch.
- the camera handles the heat and humidty witjout a problem, but we have to take great care to acclimatize the camera to the indoors and outdoors
- Redbricks last a very long time. I would estimate over 2 hrs, but they dont seem to be reporting the battery percentage or voltage to the camera screen, so we had to check the indicators on the side of the camera
Surprises
- one of our checked bags with the cartoni tripod and red mattebox never made it out of the US! Luckily we had a bogen 503HDV for the GH2 Back-up cam. But we didnt have the ARRI dovetail to mate with the baseplate to mount the camera and rails and battery to the tripod! We dismantled the rail set-up and mounted the camera and lens (RPZ 17-50) directly to the tripod plate. Success! And wow, this little bogen is doing great with the two and counterblancing perfectly! Now we needed to do something with the battery plate and mount. Whille exploring some rope to attach it to the center column of the tripod i noticed the low position secondary mount that all of the bogens have in the center column, and it screwed right in to the mount and stablized the entire tripod! So now we had a rock solid mounting platform that further made the shooting platform stable. See pic for explanation. This set-up is working flawlessly for us and we have been pleased with the bogen thus far for simple moves and locked off shots.
- the dynamic range is amazing! I put this as a surprise because i am used to shooting film still cameras and on my Red One, i never felt it that amazing for range and so an "improvement" to that wouldnt have gotten my hopes up. I can honestly say the images i am.getting out of the Epic are.rivaling the range i am used to with film. But more than anything its the soft gradients and.teansition of color that are striking. I will post a frame that demos it later today.
Day 2 Summary
- Loving it thus far! I can see how the side handle and redmote will further evolve the experience. I cant wait to get those and 10 of the red volt batteries and be able to shoot for hours and use far cheaper and smaller support.
Footage is coming soon and will share what we can. Having a blast with this.