Red Scarlet X #316 "Skully"

[Peter Staubs]

I'm guessing a Canon 50mm 1.2.

Also Phil, what a pleasure to see all the great stuff you are doing test wise, can't wait to see the stuff you put out in the future that is more than a test!Peace and goodwill, man

[Andrew Walker]

Looks like you got a pretty sweet setup there Phil. I'm sure I'll see you around LA shooting. Now that I just got my Canon mount for my Epic I'm going to be taking it out quite a bit more. Not to mention running it on some motion control rigs. Just need to have a real timelapse function in Epic and Scarlet. Then I might be leaving my 5D2s at home.

[Peter Mosiman]

Phil,

Thanks for being so detailed and precision oriented with your test and with your analyses.
Hope to work with you on something someday (if you ever need a gaffer!)

Cheers,
PMOS

[Phil Holland]

Happy 2012 everybody! I've got some low light/high ISO material coming online in a few minutes. Uploading right this second.

very nice to see some pro-tests! Great Stuff... if our paths cross one day Phil, I owe you a pint... maybe two!

Cheers Michael. I'll certainly take you up on that.

Great work Phil others have said it better than me. Interested to know how you mounted that 15mm handle to the camera as the base of it isn't flat, made up a part or purchased a big washer from your local hardware.?

P.S..I was unaware you are also a musician. Congrats. some great sounding tracks, VST, digital or Analog ? Interesting I use to also play similar vein a long time ago but it was all analog then with names like Prophet, Jupiter, OB Xa, Arp, Moog, Fairlight. I still have a tiered stack sitting beside my work desk, which I play every now & then drowning the neighbourhood in sub bass!

Thanks Mike. The very quick 15mm rod setup I "hacked" together happened because A. I got my Scarlet X earlier than expected and B. I couldn't wait to actually use the camera. So the evening I brought the Scarlet X back to my cave I took a standard Manfrotto baseplate and an extra clamp from my Easom "Halo" Cage and did this:



It's temporary and not the most sturdy thing in the world, but it has allowed me to shoot with a follow focus and attach the Scarlet X to my hacked together shoulder rig as well. I'm visiting my machinist next week and I'll have a whole different rig soon. Although, I will say this shoulder setup is growing on me. I really like the "three legged dog" thing happening right now. I learned that I can hold the camera like a machine gun and operate just last night.

Musically I've gone all digital for the most part. Although I sample a lot of real instruments and wild audio. I've been creating music "on the side" for a bit. I've done some extremely minor scoring and licensed a couple tracks for commercial use. It's not my primary function, but it's certainly a great release. I've been working on my second album for a while now. Much more of an electro-rock thing. Had to get my voice back up to snuff too. Took about 6 months of vocal lessons. (used to sing in a performing arts group in another life)

Hi Phil,

I noticed you said you had an Easom cage, I've got a halo one and was hoping it would fit with scarlet. I found the cage very good for adding lights and shotgun mic and extras. Not to mention it help my camera from getting banged around a lot. I like the tactical design, but for a bush environment, a cage is nice. Did you find anything usable? Would a 9in version work. Proaim has a rip of (or could be the other way) of Easom cages with a 9 inch that may work. Cory said a while back he may design a conversion kit to work with scarlet.

I can confirm that the Scarlet X will fit in the Easom Halo Cage. However, mounting it with a plate is where things get tricky. Totally possible with rods. I may find a way to incorporate the cage arms on my new rig. We'll see soon.

Lens?

Peter Staubs is correct. That was the Canon 50mm f/1.2L.

Also Phil, what a pleasure to see all the great stuff you are doing test wise, can't wait to see the stuff you put out in the future that is more than a test!Peace and goodwill, man

Thanks Peter. I'm itching to get this camera into the war zone too. I'll be back to production work around the 16th. First two shoots are VFX shoots for larger motion pictures. Got two music videos coming up after that. B camera on another video shoot in February. In discussion for a gig in Costa Rica in March. I'll be the Director of Photography on a feature in April and we'll be shooting with the Scarlet as A cam. Still looking to fill in the gaps next year with some commercial work and hopefully another feature late summer early fall.

Hi Phil, what noise reduction did you use on the 6400 picture? Neat video? I love the gradient and how information survived the noise reduction pass. In a 5D that would look like a big mess!

All of the noise reduction you've seen thus far has been accomplished via Neat Video. From my previous experience using the Red One and Red Epic you can use Adobe Camera Raw and several Adobe After Effects plugins to produce as good or better results. Neat Video just plays really nicely with Adobe Premiere Pro and I don't have to export a still sequence to process separately.

Looks like you got a pretty sweet setup there Phil. I'm sure I'll see you around LA shooting. Now that I just got my Canon mount for my Epic I'm going to be taking it out quite a bit more. Not to mention running it on some motion control rigs. Just need to have a real timelapse function in Epic and Scarlet. Then I might be leaving my 5D2s at home.

I'm curious about this as well. Still photography is "still" a big part of what I do. Between timelapses, Spherical HDRIs, and VFX plate/texture reference work I just can't escape the still camera. I really do see the allure of using the Red Scarlet X as a panorama camera having that live feed and capturing many more in between frames can really helps if you are shooting moving subjects. See you around LA!

Thanks for being so detailed and precision oriented with your test and with your analyses.
Hope to work with you on something someday (if you ever need a gaffer!)

Thanks Peter. I'll spread the word!


4k upload still in progress. I'll be back in a few minutes.

[Phil Holland]

Now the $15,000 question. What about low light performance?

Here's a video with examples of ISO 320-6400 at f/1.2-f/2.8 apertures, f/8 on the city vista shots. Lenses used here include the Canon 50mm f/1.2L and 135mm f/2L. Also used are the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8, Leica Summicron-R 90mm f/2, Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron SL II, and a modified Canon 55mm f/1.2 FL lens.

Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. Graded entirely in RedCineX Pro. All noise reduction was executed with Neat Video within Premiere Pro.



Some shot notes. The shots of the yellow SUV, who at some point decided to follow me at shoot spitballs at my Scarlet, were scaled to 105% as a bit of my window was in frame. The medium shot of me near 1:50 with the flashlight at the ladder was illuminated by a 75 watt incandescent 22 feet away from the ladder. No HDRx used, but damn I'm impressed by the dynamic range performance. That's Santa Cruz Island in the upper left at 0:13, good camping there now that it's been opened up for things like that.


Conflict, Confusion, Ego, and Disclosure: Since I've started post content from the Red Scarlet X on sites like vimeo and YouTube I've received comments about the material. Surprising comments from primarily HDSLR shooters. Mostly coming from the defensive front and stating things like "I can do that with a GH2". And let me be clear and direct about this. No. No you can't. If I can't do better with a GH2 neither can they. There is no HDSLR on the market today that can give you Red One, Scarlet, or Epic quality. I can't even believe I need to state this. But it's also to be expected and we'll see more of this "attitude" from people who haven't shot with higher end systems. And we'll likely see more of it from others who are new to higher end systems and workflows.

I want to give you guys a little background on me to clarify my point of view on things. I feel it's necessarily as I'm stating opinions in a public arena that's accessible to other working professionals. Part of the work I've been doing for several years has been testing and using cameras from the lowest end "vacation style" camcorder to the highest end motion picture cameras. We've used the Panasonic HVX200 and TM700, the Canon 5D Mark II and XF305, the Sony FS100 and F3 to shoot material used on large budget productions and projected onto the big screen. I've also used and specialized in working with the Panavision Genesis, Arri Alexa, Red Epic, Red One, and now Red Scarlet X as well as a great deal of S35 film cameras and other companies high end 1080p/2k systems. Viper, Cunima, etc. I've spent a lot of time (too much time) scanning S35 at 4k, 6k, and 8k on propriety scanner technology as well as the Northlight Film Scanner. I also have too much time spent filming out with the Arri Laser Recorder. I served as a Digital Colorist for several years and was under the watchful eye of studios, producers, directors, VFX supervisors, and directors of photography. I've been fortunate to work on F65 material as well as the new Canon C300 in 2011 as well.

The camera tests over the last few years have focused on lenses, light rendering, resolution, dynamic range, color reproduction, etc..... All so we know what they'll do "on the day" when in use on a set. We also have done a lot of stress testing for VFX use. Pulling keys, tracking, etc. I will state that any of what would be considered prosumer/entry level professional cameras has needed post processing to make it work at all for the big screen. And always with compromises.

I'm going to sound like Jim or Ted here, but Red cameras are motion picture cameras that are completely capable systems without any of those compromises. They are designed with the future in mind as well as the "now".

Everybody likely reading this on RedUser likely already knows that. Anybody who has shot on a feature with the Red One or Epic or has seen one in a theater already knows that as well.

They key to unlocking quality material with any RedCode Raw .R3D is how you process the material. It's really very easy to make Red material look not so good. But, in the hands of somebody with experience or even a novice Red shooter with a willingness to experiment you can produce tremendously high quality imagery.

I'm not getting paid to say this. I believe this from my experiences. So much so that I invested in Scarlet X and hopefully in a few months an Epic.

Sorry about the rant, but I feel it needed to be said.


Web Compression Hell: I'm having a heck of time making my 4k material look decent on youtube. I don't expect it to look stellar, but for some reason I notice that detail shadow and dark areas seem to get processed very poorly when transcoded to their compression. I've sent them an email to see if I could get some more specs on what I can do to make the material more to their standards. I'll post that info here when I receive it.


I have a couple more lighting tests to do. I hope these three videos show what is possible and easily achievable with the Scarlet. Every test was shot in about a "half day" of single user operation. Except for the night tests, which were shot here and there. Everything edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, graded entirely in RCP. It's the pipeline I've used for Red material ever since the Adobe Red Importer Plugin was released. It's an extremely powerful and fast workflow. I hope that the Adobe Importer Plugin gets updated because I'm loving Alchemy, but that's not supported just yet. You can export frames though at the moment as a work around.

If you guys have anything that you'd like to see, just let me know and I'll see what I can do. Heck, I may have shot it already :)

[Michael Millichamp]

Yea, I definitely got some "feedback" from F3 lovers and DSLR groupies about how they can do everything a Scarlet-X can, with a 7D, and how I wasted my money.

But what do you expect.

Great work Phil.

[Luc Bouvrette]

Great info Phil, thanks for the post. Really looking forward to receiving my Scarlet.

I like to imagine the spitball gang were probably DSLR fanboys out to get you. Or maybe they were just dicks with nothing else to do. :D

[Luis Caffesse]

Phil - thanks for posting the video, and for the detailed thoughts and background.
Much appreciated.

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

I'm having a heck of time making my 4k material look decent on youtube. I don't expect it to look stellar, but for some reason I notice that detail shadow and dark areas seem to get processed very poorly when transcoded to their compression. I've sent them an email to see if I could get some more specs on what I can do to make the material more to their standards. I'll post that info here when I receive it.

Phil, I found that h264 is just a stellar codec......... EXCEPT for lowlight footage. I had some t2i footage from shorts I made ( found Here and Here and Here ) that was problematic to begin with due to the heavy compression DSLRs make. I found a nice ProRes workflow that let me keep most of the details as intact as possible, but when it came time for exporting, h264 just chewed up a LOT of scenes! anything that was purposely shot to have detail in what I think of as the lower 25% of the brightness range just became a blocky nightmare. The best option I found was to go back in time to mp4 compression, which has it's trade offs, but made nice quicktimes for showing at meetings. I recommend trying other codecs that YouTube lists as compatible, might help.

Now, it's worth saying, that this is DSLR talk, which only made the problem ten times worse, but it was a clear example of a problem to overcome. All the lowlight stuff I have shot with Red is around 95 times easier to work with, lol. But web compression is all the same, at the mercy of an algorithm.

[Michael Su]

Thanks Phil for lending your time and efforts in doing these tests. This gives us future owners a great baseline to begin with. It's much appreciated.