From hdforindies: Want more stills from a Red? I got more stills from a Red

[Gordon Prince]

- well lt -

What do you mean here? Misspelling or what? We're not native english speakers. The most part in this forum is not, but you're forgetting sometimes with your slang. I would like to see you in our position.

[R Fogg]

I think that translates to "well lit"

[Mark L. Pederson]

What do you mean here? Misspelling or what? We're not native english speakers. The most part in this forum is not, but you're forgetting sometimes with your slang. I would like to see you in our position.

sorry -

I type too fast while I am talking too fast while I am working too fast -

that should have read "well lit" as in very good lighting -

what is you native language?

[MikeCurtis]

Paul (indierider) - glad to be of service, I'm glad what I had to share was instructive. I learned a lot from you and the shoot as well, glad to share and share alike.

VERY much looking forward to learning more about the camera, as I work with the footage, combining that with my 15-20 years of pixel pushing and histogram tweaking, and my rapidly increasing knowledge of camera systems, I think I'll be able to get some really excellent results out of these cameras.

In that part of the brain that develops gut innate senses of better and worse, I'm starting to feel a theory/gut sense developing of what is going to make the best exposure, have the least noise, and work the best for maximum lattitude in post.

So far, I've been on the sidelines giving advice, but not in charge of anything - my role is to note, record, advise, answer questions when asked.

We're looking forward to having a big brain dump before I go back to Austin, we'll have a lot of good info on what works right.

Did I mention my goal is to be as knowledgeable as possible about Red and Red workflow...and to be for hire on how to get best results?

: )

Written at 1:30am after a few smug beers after a great day, so forgiveness please.

-mike

[MikeCurtis]

Plus, these things are cake to work with once you wrap your brain around it. I've been on sets, but always in a post super/vfx supervisory capacity, but I've been pinch hitting on setting up/tearing down Offhollywood's Red Ones.

These things are totally easy to work assemble/configure once you understand the concepts - it is an infinitely customizable erector set, awaiting you to build the rig that is best for any given user/situation.

We've been going out with a maximally built kit, tonight I started messing around with how to reconfigure to drop weight yet still deliver needed functionality.

That you even have that choice here is pretty amazing stuff.

That a camera assembly novice such as myself can tear down and rebuild in short order speaks volumes for the work the Red team (and big kudos to Matt Tremblay in particular) has done their job exceedingly well.

For obscure techie reasons, we had to swap out one camera for the other out of a fully assembled rig - rods top and bottom, LCD, shoulder and base plate mounts for on sticks conversion to handheld with handgrips, matte box, follow focus, battery pack, etc. etc. etc.

That it took me 10 minutes to carefully dissasemble 6 and rebuild #7 says a LOT. I know pixels, but I didn't know beans about matte box assembly, proper PL lens mounting, etc. But Red's system is VERY intuitive and flexible.

Rockin'.

Things that rock about the Red:
-image quality - you've seen the detail
-lattitude - excellent/awesome
-the body - a small tank with LOTS of outputs, and clever/correct/modern outputs
-the physical infrastructure - the erector set cage modular flexibilty - big or small as needed
-the concept - basically everything that a traditional DIT does (think Varicam/F900 paint box/matrix tweezing) can be deferred to post. Wow.
-the post - bag $100K decks - just use a Macbook Pro on set like we did.
-the workflow. hours of footage in your cargo shorts if you needed to. Offload to a laptop. Record 4K to something you can hide in your mouth and still carry on a conversation (hope you never need to - border crossing situation etc.)
-and of course, the price. Technology is only as valid as its price point, and by that standard Red is incredibly valid.

-mike

[Brook Willard]

You must've had a fun day, Mike... :)

[S. Um]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Would love to see the models shoot. Also, would love to see what Red can do in a minimal run and gun setup. (Actually, I think Jim showed us some of that from the race track - but let's see more!)

[Alvise Tedesco]

...If we had had the histogram working it would of been better exposured for sure.
Paul

Sorry for my ignorance, but what a histogram tells you more, compared to simply checking zebra levels to protect highlight in that particular situation (white cars, very sunny day)?

I'm loving to play with those tiff in Photoshop. Shame I don't know how to use it, so I don't know if there's really much more than "auto levels", "auto contrast" and so on. Well, it doesn't matter. Average motion film market in Italy is small, provincial and reserved, I never entered it (Nevertheless, always been happy with my more independend jobs with DVX/HVX+M2).
Thanks to the leader of the rebellion and all of you (I read a lot here, unfortunately not so easy to write in english..) I see new ways to follow up!

[Emmanuel Cambier]

A Histogram is necessary in order to know if you are crushing your shadows or not, wich zebras won't tell you.
But don't get me wrong, we NEED Zebras to know exactly what part of the image is clipping, wich a histogram won't tell you.

Histograms and zebras are definetly the tools you need in order to shoot proper images with the RED.
I don't think I would use a light meter while shooting but it could come in very handy during scouting and preparation when you don't wanna bring the camera with you.

My 2cents

Emmanuel

[Mark L. Pederson]

we didn't take the time to even try the zebras or false color - we now have mastered getting a "perfect" histogram by using FALSE COLOR - our images we are shooting now are WAY better than the car stuff we shot -