Shutter smear...

[Antoine Fabi]

I saw the short twice, once very close to the front, the next time at the mid-way point in the theatre for a better overall viewing perspective.

As far as strobing goes, I saw nothing that was more (or less) than I would have expected from the same subject matter shot on film with the same shutter.

Exactly,

I saw it twice also. ...and i looked very very carefully.
I go often to cinema, and it looked about the same as 35mm.
Now you may want to play a little with the shutter speed for the desired motion caracteristics.

I was litterally charmed by the image, its texture, its beauty.

This is a @#@# of an achievement.

Congrats! This is unbelievable.

[Gbabymogul]

The strobing really is a result of the fact that 24 fps is barely fast enough to hide that you are capturing motion as a bunch of still frames, so we need a certain amount of per-frame blur to create the illusion that the motion carries over into the next frame. Too little blur and the motion looks pixellated; too much blur and it looks smeary.

If the shooting/sampling/projection rate were high enough, then strobing wouldn't be a problem and we could get away with less blur per frame. But then you get into that problem that high sampling rates make digital photography look like classic 60i interlaced-scan video photography, which does look smoother than 24 fps film or 24P video. So to some extent, the strobiness of 24 fps is just something we've become conditioned to.

David, how do we emulate the motion characteristics of film with high end digital cinema (like the D20, Viper, Genesis, and now RED ?). Don't say 'shoot film" , hehe. I know there was a lot of talk about some shots in Apocalypto, but I've seen enough high end digital films that didn't have any of that strobe look to prove it an exception to the rule.

So far, there isn't enough footage to properly evaluate RED in that respect, but if it were a factor, i'm sure you would have mentioned it in your review (very cool btw). I know each of the aforementioned cameras use a different shuttter aesthetic (almost as proprietary as codecs, it seems). Personally, i'd rather give up some data for better motion, then preserve it without - especially since I plan to do a lot of tracking... "New World" type work.

And since it's not a mechanical shutter, couldn't we have a menu of shutter choices ? (although that'd probably be cost prohibitive, and might be patent infringement).

[Alexander Nikishin]

I'm wondering, which camera shutter did the Red team choose to emulate in the end?

[Jonathan Payne]

So a few things:

1) Jarred I just want to make it clear that the purpose of my post was not in anyway related to strong-arming you guys into posting footage. My portion of this thread probably isn't even relevant to the PJ footage because they were also shot with early versions of the RED one. I certainly haven't seen the PJ footage. If you ever see my name next to a post, let it be known that I am never trying to smear RED, troll the message boards, or make fun of you guys or your beautiful achievement in anyway. Personally, in regards to showing the new footage, I have voiced my support for Jim's suggestion to set up screenings. I'm sure you agree that a screening in a theater in 4K is much more effective anyway. Plus it can all be done to the RED team's own specifications and comfort regarding how and when the material is shown.

2) I am just wondering about how the particular look of the electronic shutter has progressed -- something akin more to the milk girls footage [the only footage I have seen projected], or something more akin to the shutter/motion blur of a 35mm camera with a mechanical shutter? I am still just intensely curious about whether or not a decision was made to go ahead and try to emulate (or at least give the option to try and emulate) the look of a 35mm mechanical shutter (as much as can be done with an electronic one)? I realize that the two are inherently different and there is probably no way to completely mimic a mechanical shutter look without a true mechanical shutter. But I also think it's a valid question of aesthetics and as I mentioned before, Graeme and Jim were both commenting in that old thread on this subject that they had some leeway in creating different looks and that they were, at the time, trying to decide what the look of the RED one's particular electronic shutter would be.

3) Graeme said that there were shots in the new footage that looked "nice and smooth" and that's always good to hear.

[Jonathan Payne]

I guess I should have just written what Alexander Nikishin just wrote.. #2 in my post is just a more verbose version.

[Jarred Land]

Jenga your good in my books dont worry.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Jarred, I've got beef with you for slapping my gf's hand when she touched the Red spider camera setup. :weight_lift:

[Jannard]

This is not an easy topic... and we aren't ready to discuss it fully yet because we are still experimenting with different combinations. It is a bit more complicated than you might expect.

Jim

[Alex Boothby]

The only thing that matters is the image. People often get hung up in pointless technical analysis and forget the most important thing.

[Gbabymogul]

I believe many of those cameras use a mechanical shutter (Genesis, D20, not Viper).

There was a long discusion about shutter speed over at dvinfo. Here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...t=76426&page=3

Lots of technical stuff about image tearing & mechanical shutter vs. rolling shutter vs. global shutter...

Well, i ain't no expert but I believe that the Arri has both and electronic and mechanical shutter (mostly because of the needed OVF), and the Genesis is an electronic shutter. I was wrong about the Viper (just assumed) ; apparently it is a mechanical shutter only according to Mathew Greene, from the same thread you quoted :

Not that strange. Many people don't realize that all Frame Transfer CCD cameras (Like the ones currently manufactured by Grass Valley) have a spinning mechanical shutter. If the shutter wasn't implemented these cameras would have horrible vertical smear. You can find them on Phillips, BTS and now Grass Valley cameras. The Viper is one example.

My main point was that since RED isn't using an OVF (no shutter required) and since i've heard everywhere that there are no moving parts in the cam; this guy assumed "electronic shutter". In that case, I was positing an in camera processing of the CMOS output to emulate a variety of shutter looks. I'm no chip engineer, so that's probably a stupid idea...



:Guinness: