Soft, Noisy and lots of Artifacts

[Michael McCaffrey]

Got the Scarlet last week and am getting poor results all the way around. Can't get any shots with nice crisp focus. I see noticeable noise in shadows, even when shooting outside at mid-day at 4K & 3k at 5600k and 800ISO at 24fps, 8:1.

Been shooting with the EX1 for the last three years and my EX1 footage looks cleaner than what I'm getting with the Scarlet. I look at .R3D and .JPG stills others have been posting in these threads from various projects and I'm getting nothing anywhere close to as clean or sharp, (even comparing the raw .R3D's without any sharpness added). I'm viewing the footage full screen on a 1920x1080 LCD monitor. My 4k and 3k footage at 1920x1080 looks lower resolution than the EX1's 1080p footage.

I've either got a bad camera or a bad backfocus. Using a 17-55 f3.5-5.6 Canon IS EF lens and an 18-135 of the same kind. I've tried to do everything I can as far as treating the image goes. I'm importing .R3D's into Premiere CS6 on a MacPro. I've set the sharpness to "Maximum" inside Premiere's "source settings" for the .R3D file. I've also added unsharp mask which helps, but is still far from sharp and if anything makes the noise and artifacts more noticeable. In the image below you'll see I have absolutely NO detail in the shadows (like in the bushes on the lower left). You can see the artifacts and noise really only when its in motion.


Here are some images:
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/blurry_shot_still.R3D

http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/Scarlet_blurry_shot.jpg

[Max M.]

you could try to put a canon 70-200 F2.8 II lens on it, and see if the images are sharp then, because that lens is insane sharp. I never worked with the lenses you described, but they are not the the high end canon zooms, so probably won't give the sharpest result to start with, that could be a something that causes your problem...

[Matt Gottshalk]

+1 that glass is definitely not the best.

Scarlet has scads of resolution. But of you out inferior glass in front of it don't expect it to magically make your shots looks great.

[Aaron Holmes]

I can't imagine that the 17-55 is to blame here. We're talking about a lens that people use on 20 Megapixel still cameras and get off crisp shots.

[Jacek Zakowicz]

I would contact Red.
This looks like gone through a bad diffusion filter. I've seen much better stills from Scarlet.
Have you tried shooting the same frame with the same lens with Nikon camera?

[Les C.]

I put your 18-135 and a CAnon 16-35 2.8 L II USM into this and compared (your other lens wasn't listed) and compared at 18 and 16 mm

http://the-digital-picture.com/Revie...mp=0&APIComp=0

That looks like a pretty soft lens?

[jochem bakker]

well, your overall depth of field looks really deep to me, have you been shooting with iris closed down really far by any chance? cause that totally compromises the performance.
to alleviate noise in the blacks, make sure to do a proper black shade according to the resolution you shoot in. I would cancel out the thought of faulty back focus, seriously sure these lenses should produce somewhat of a sharp image, but investing in quality glass when investing this amount on a camera isn't totally out of the question. The lack of resolving power comes out in a lens when shooting 4k. If you want to be sure about these lens issues, put on some fast 50mm prime, and expose around f4-5.6, then you'll know if you should be looking further, or the used lenses are your culprit.

[Serge Polevitzky]

Hello -- just to check on the some details: (disclaimer, I'm quite new to this myself, so I may have some of this off-kilter)

What firmware are you running ?

Have you done blackshading & if so, did you do it with your Scarlet 'warmed up' for 10 - 15 minutes & with the RED body cap installed & in a fairly dark room ?
When blackshading, I take it 'Project' is set to the same as your frame rate. That is, Settings --> Project --> Time Base .. should point to a frame rate, and this frame rate should match the frame rate you will be shooting [ (thanks to Phil Holland for setting me straight on this)]
Depending on the firmware, you'll need to watch out for which option you 'black shade' against <default> or the <frame rate you're going to use> looks like you're doing the default frame rate.

Your image looks to be a bit dark. I've found that Scarlet seems to LOVE a lot of light -- expose to the right (ETTR). You might try ISO 320 if indoors or in shadows. Otherwise 800.

Good luck -- hope this helps .. if you find any of this has misdirected you, please advise, as I'm still building up my Scarlet 'best practices' notebook --
Serge

[Bob Gundu]

Try some footage without HDRx, around f5.6, manual focus and proper exposure and see what you get.

[M. Bergeron]

I may be wrong but I've had some problems on Epic with shots that have lots of details. For me, the softness on the road and the foliage looks to come from a compression that is too strong. In these situations, if possible on the Scarlet, try using 6:1 or less.