My RED rant for the night

[Jamil Stubbs]

So...Got home tonight after shooting a music video for a emerging pop artist and found some disappointing aspects of my RED ecosystem...

Don't get my wrong.. Color science and all that jazz is awesome with my old school scarlet and epic-m. But tonight the DP asked for wide 16mm for a pool dive in shoot. I pulled the 18mm RPP and we noticed with 6k WS there was a slight vignette on the corners. WOW.. just didn't expect that out of a RED ecosystem line. Maybe its because these are older items but dang... Still love my RPP and zoom set. Just a lil bummed the RPP's don't cover the full s35 frame.

[Scot Yount]

So...Got home tonight after shooting a music video for a emerging pop artist and found some disappointing aspects of my RED ecosystem...

Don't get my wrong.. Color science and all that jazz is awesome with my old school scarlet and epic-m. But tonight the DP asked for wide 16mm for a pool dive in shoot. I pulled the 18mm RPP and we noticed with 6k WS there was a slight vignette on the corners. WOW.. just didn't expect that out of a RED ecosystem line. Maybe its because these are older items but dang... Still love my RPP and zoom set. Just a lil bummed the RPP's don't cover the full s35 frame.

6K WS is larger than super 35. I might be wrong here, but the lenses were developed during the 5k days which are s35. I have a Scarlet MX that I still use and to my knowledge, all the RED lenses that I have owned or still own cover the sensor.

[Glen Powell]

The RPP lens set was designed for super35 - 6K Dragon DSMC1 is just larger than that.

My 18mm RPP will cover 6K HD, but 6K and 6Kws are just outside that coverage at most focus and T-stops. My super early RED 18-50 zoom (pre the 'pro' model) will cover Dragon 6K an 6Kws - but I'm pretty sure the internals on that are from a stills zoom.

[Brian F Kobylarz]

The RED Pro Primes were introduced over ten years ago - sometime in 2009 as I recall.

They were brought to the market to complement the RED One 4K sensor.
At the time, quality PL glass was extremely expensive especially when compared to the price point for the RPP's.
RED introduced affordable cinema optics just as they disrupted the camera market.

While the wider lenses vignette at higher resolutions, I continue to use the set of RPP's I have had for over a decade.
Same happens with many other wide PL lenses.

No need to rant - just choose the lens you need to achieve the shot you are looking for.

[Tyler Besh]

The RED Pro Primes were introduced over ten years ago - sometime in 2009 as I recall.

They were brought to the market to complement the RED One 4K sensor.
At the time, quality PL glass was extremely expensive especially when compared to the price point for the RPP's.
RED introduced affordable cinema optics just as they disrupted the camera market.

While the wider lenses vignette at higher resolutions, I continue to use the set of RPP's I have had for over a decade.
Same happens with many other wide PL lenses.

No need to rant - just choose the lens you need to achieve the shot you are looking for.

They were rehoused Sigma lenses were they not?

[Phil Holland]

They were rehoused Sigma lenses were they not?

They are not. Unique Optics and RED Pro Primes share the same design, but some breach of contract by Unique went down.

RPPs are/were designed for S35, only sticky bit along the way is RED eventually made larger than S35 sensors. Most of their S35 sensors are what I call S35+, but of course you can crop to the actual format size. For instance Dragon or Monstro at 5K or 5K HD is the width S35 and works fine.

[Alex Lubensky]

Nothing wrong here, at 6k it’s bigger than s35.

Actually, those are not the only one lenses, which are going to vignette on wides. Say, wider Master Primes vignette on Gemini @5K.

My own RPZ 18-85 zoom does cover 4K MX sensor, but at 5k 16x9 it vignettes slightly, and at 5k 17:9 DCI it does vignette up to 40mm.

So, in nowadays of huge variety of sensor form-factors and formats it’s better to do a brief test, or to check online before making a decision on which wide you’ll use.

Laowa has some extremely cheap and relatively good wide lenses, that cover up to FF though.

[jake blackstone]

Grading slight vignetting out of the picture by using an inverted vignette is incredibly easy. It's not a perfect solution, but under the circumstances, it's an easy fix.
To make the process even easier, just shoot an evenly lit card and then use that image to create a perfectly inverted vignette.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

In REDs defense, even the well established lens makers weren't thinking beyond S35 for motion work when the RPPs landed. RED has been ahead of the curve in many ways, but even the Madman doesn't have a crystal ball. I would add that the RPPs were an attempt to put cinema glass in the hands of owner/operators and smaller rental houses who couldn't ROI Cookes/Zeiss/Leica/Angie/etc. In retrospect, I still think the price/performance proposition was solid at the time of release. These days, I consider the Sigma CINE line the best value in cinema optics. YMMV.

Cheers - #19