Soft, Noisy and lots of Artifacts

[Michael McCaffrey]

Thanks for all the suggestions here.

To answer some of your questions:
1. Yes, I did a blackshade at 23.94 3K HD AFTER letting the camera warm up for 15-20mins. I blackshaded per current frame-rate/project size.
2. I agree the lenses arent the best. I have a 17-55 Canon f.28 coming (which is closer to an L series). HOWEVER, like someone said earlier, these lenses take great sharp photos on DLSRs at 18mp. So the glass cant be the whole issue.
3. I havent tried backfocusing yet. I will try that but there seems to be no standard way of doing that with the AL mount. Especially with the glass I have. I should get the new lens tomorrow or tuesday so I figured I might wait for it to do the backfocus.
4. I have tried lower compression ratios too, even going down to 3:1. Some at 5:1 but 8:1 seemed like it was still the standard compression for "good quality" results.
5. I have contacted RED. I sent them a trouble ticket Friday evening so I havent heard from them yet.

Matt, those stills are amazingly sharp.. and that is with no sharpness added??? That is absolutely nothing close to what Im getting! :(

[Matt Ryan]

Thanks for all the suggestions here.

To answer some of your questions:
1. Yes, I did a blackshade at 23.94 3K HD AFTER letting the camera warm up for 15-20mins. I blackshaded per current frame-rate/project size.
2. I agree the lenses arent the best. I have a 17-55 Canon f.28 coming (which is closer to an L series). HOWEVER, like someone said earlier, these lenses take great sharp photos on DLSRs at 18mp. So the glass cant be the whole issue.
3. I havent tried backfocusing yet. I will try that but there seems to be no standard way of doing that with the AL mount. Especially with the glass I have. I should get the new lens tomorrow or tuesday so I figured I might wait for it to do the backfocus.
4. I have tried lower compression ratios too, even going down to 3:1. Some at 5:1 but 8:1 seemed like it was still the standard compression for "good quality" results.
5. I have contacted RED. I sent them a trouble ticket Friday evening so I havent heard from them yet.

Matt, those stills are amazingly sharp.. and that is with no sharpness added??? That is absolutely nothing close to what Im getting! :(

Hi Michael,
That is with no sharpening but I did do a skin softening in PS to even out her skin. That is all that was done so it would actually look sharper without the skin softening I added as it took away a good deal of detail not only in the skin but a bit of the hair as well. I just exported a tiff from the R3D in RCX Pro, opened it in PS and dropped on the default skin soften filter, and exported as a jpeg and uploaded here. No fine adjustments, no color, no sharpening.

Keep in mind this is shot with Zeiss CP.2's which are known for being quite sharp. It helps to have sharp, good glass.

[LEON J-L]

after playing with your R3D file in REDCINEXPRO-14, I can only say: it seems you are using a poor lens, maybe improperly collimated or /and at its worst iris setting and you are over exposing two stops,
(details on the roof will never come back, they are lost, this is not a proper exposition)
remedy: try a fixed focal lens like a 50mm at f4 to f8, with ND filters or shutter set to reduce excess of light, do not overexpose and see what happens

[Michael McCaffrey]

I wish I had some primes and some L series or other nice lenses lol. Thanks for playing around with it. I know the roof is lost. I wasnt too worried about it right now. These are just tests I shot outside the studio here. I have an ND.6 so Ill try again with that.

[Nick Gardner]

I have an ND.6 so Ill try again with that.

So are we to assume that the lens was stopped down to a 22 or so for these shots? How did you set focus when you took these?


Nick

[Brad Allen]

Just took a look at your R3D file Michael.

Couple of things which are going to be taking away from maximum sharpness.

1) This shot was at 3K because you were using HDR
2) Your F-Stop was set at 12.8 which on a cheap lens could start to affect your sharpness negatively (though really, shouldn't affect it THAT much)
3) Shutter was set at 180degree's. This isn't really a problem per say, but if you are specifically testing for sharpness, it might be worth reducing that shutter time just to ensure any motion problems aren't added unknowingly.

My recommendation to test would be to shoot at 4K, 6:1, Non-HDR, f5.6-f8.0, with a fast shutter speed and then see how your sharpness is looking. Also, make sure to use the expand focus to ensure that you are getting focus as close to the mark as possible :)

[Michael McCaffrey]

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

Using 3.2.8.

Did blackshade in a dark room with lens cap on. Is it necessary to take the lens off and put the body cap on? Saw a few places (and in the instructions) it said to make sure the lens cap was on so I assumed it was ok to leave the lens on?

[Brad Allen]

Is it necessary to take the lens off and put the body cap on?

I wouldn't use as strong of a word as necessary. Using a body cap just reduces the chances that a lens could be letting light leak in somewhere :)

[Michael McCaffrey]

Just took a look at your R3D file Michael.

Couple of things which are going to be taking away from maximum sharpness.

1) This shot was at 3K because you were using HDR
2) Your F-Stop was set at 12.8 which on a cheap lens could start to affect your sharpness negatively (though really, shouldn't affect it THAT much)
3) Shutter was set at 180degree's. This isn't really a problem per say, but if you are specifically testing for sharpness, it might be worth reducing that shutter time just to ensure any motion problems aren't added unknowingly.

My recommendation to test would be to shoot at 4K, 6:1, Non-HDR, f5.6-f8.0, with a fast shutter speed and then see how your sharpness is looking. Also, make sure to use the expand focus to ensure that you are getting focus as close to the mark as possible :)

Ok here is a 4K, 6:1, non-HDR, f8 shot at 800iso and 5600k. It does look more promising. I also didnt realize the last test shot was HDR. I turned that off, however I did have shots before I know were not in HDR that also appeared soft. I also think the reason it was a 180 degree shutter was because of the HDR. I know I didn't set it that way.

This shot does look sharper but I'm still not sure its as sharp as it should be prior to sharpening? What do you think?

Full composition (not focused for subject):
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_f8_800iso_5600k.jpg

Unedited .R3D snapshot:
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_f8_5600k_800iso.R3D

100% crop before and after sharpening:
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/4k_comparison.jpg </a> already! :/

Here is another problem shot (3k, f5.6, 10:1, 55mm zoomed in so shallower DoF, focused on the white chair). Assuming the softness is because of DoF, the noise in the background in the shadows looks awful. Its 1280 ISO, but should it look this noisy? There is still a lot of light outside so I shouldnt be having to deal with such bad noise already. I've seen people get some great night shots with the scarlet and I cant get an evening shot :/
http://66.147.244.90/~laymenmi/red/problem_shot.R3D

[Brad Allen]

Hi Michael - after taking a look at these R3D's - I think it's totally the lens on its wide end being unacceptably soft. The problem_shot.r3d's sharpness looks much better to me and I think it's because the focal length was at 55mm. I'm also not seeing the unacceptable amount of noise you are either. (Especially for ISO 1250 which can have some noise)

Here is the problem_shot.r3d with an unsharp mask and a very very slight curve applied. Is this what you are seeing on your end? http://unravel.com.au/files/problem_shot.png

Also remember that when you are dealing with the R3D debayer and OLPF, you're going to need to downscale roughly 80% before you see full measured resolution.