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Author Topic: Scarlet  (Read 77543 times)

Hywel

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #20 on: November 17, 2011, 06:07:08 am »

We used a 5D2/7D combo for our motion work for a year or so but were very relieved to move on to a Panasonic AF100 because of all the niggles with the Canons for video work. (They're top notch as stills cameras, of course, and we still have them as backup to our MF kit for low natural light and fallback).

The Moire caused us lots of issues. The lack of monitoring generally was a pain.

The sound connectivity caused us grief. With no audio bars, you couldn't tell if a flimsy 3.5mm jack had become a bit displaced. Ended up having to reshoot a few scenes which is NOT good. Switching to dual system sound helped but that was a workflow pain (Pluraleyes, I do not miss you!)

But the killer for us was overheating. We often shoot fetish stuff with a tied up model, and you absolutely CANNOT tell a tied up model just to wait for 10 minutes while the camera cools down. Not acceptable for Health & Safety.

Shooting with the AF100, with built in waveform monitor, focus-in-red on a B&W viewfinder, full 4:2:2 SDI and HDMI out for monitoring, audio bars, XLR connections was absolute HEAVEN by comparison. We've not shot a frame a video on the Canons since getting the Panasonic (we even use our older HVX200's as B cameras since they are so much more robust and better to work with for video work).

So without denying that you can do great things with a 5D2, we would it a great relief to go back to dedicated video cameras.

Which is one bit of the Red Rhetoric I take with a big pinch of salt- using their motion cameras as stills cameras. I have stills cameras for that.

  Cheers, Hywel
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Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #21 on: November 17, 2011, 06:25:29 am »

If we are speaking in absolute quality terms, the footage from a DSLR is pretty good. However:

The 5D cannot be used consistently well for high-end documentaries, ENG or handheld work due to either poor form factor, the jello-effect, no ND filter, lack of XLR, need to change lenses through entire focal range, recording limit, no timecode, etc.
The 5D cannot be used much for action videography - mainly due to the jello effect. The 5D cannot be used for high-speed photography for slow-mo, or for any kind of ramping (up or down).

The 5D should not be used where the footage has to undergo heavy grading or visual effects. In an ideal world, people shoot perfect chroma keys, but in the real world, it's 50:50.

The 5D should not be used by any high-end production that seeks to meet the broadcast standard of greater than 50mbps for interframe compression. Also, the 5D Mark II samples at 4:2:0, where the broadcast standard is 4:2:2 for high-end productions.

The 5D is also too light, and needs to be rigged up heavily for film work - which has limits. Focus-pulling is tough due to shallow DOF. Any minor vibration will transmit to the footage easily. It also has an unacceptable HDMI out that makes nailing focus a nightmare.

For 90% of the professional film and television world, the 5D Mark II fails. But for 90% of the professional video market, consumers and the indie crowd, it can work very well.
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bcooter

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #22 on: November 17, 2011, 07:34:57 am »

In the motion world you can rent anything and usually at favorable rates to still equipment in the fact you bid out your rental requirements and 2 days usually equal a week (at least in L.A.)

Still, a RED One kit with a few lenses normally retails at about a thousands U.S. a day so even at a two day week puts you at a few thousand a week and a long form 3 week project puts you a 6 grand.

Add it up and buying a RED One, or Scarlet makes sense if your busy.

Now I gotta admit I'm very positive RED to some extent.  (and fyi I pay retail).   

Previously I hated their purchasing system and their little accessories are way over priced, but I can put all that behind me for the look of the file.  To me it looks like film (I know that's an over worn phrase), but the RED does not look like video to me where most of the video cameras look like video i.e. the AF 100 Sony.

Also we're dead solid on the RED workflow using a RED Rocket in portable and desktop configurations, but the main thing I like about the RED One is it's tested and solid.  Knock on wood, but we've had zero issues . . . no shutdowns, no artifacts, no moire, no glitches, no breakdowns, no overheating.

I know early on there were issues, but our to MX bodies to date have been more reliable than our 1ds3 canon still cameras (we blew out two last week) which I think is pretty amazing as we use the RED's continually.

The best part is there is no jury rigging on the RED as every sound technician, boom operator, focus puller and steadican operator knows the RED One front to back.

In fact if I didn't own two RED's I wouldn't contemplate the Scarlet and though we've placed our order, I'm thinking about switching it to the Epic.   I would like a little smaller form factor on the camera.

Regardless I have to admit that adding full fledge motion has been good for our business and allowed us to grow.  It's been a hell of a leap and changed our working and pricing model, required us to add staff and build a whole new data base of outside suppliers, but doing motion with little compromise is a market that is growing.

Now they say the camera doesn't matter (I've said it a thousand times) but when you have moire, or funky skin tones, or complicated color grading from some of the other combo cams or video cameras, the actual motion file matters a great deal and right now RED is serving our purpose and I don't think the RED One's will be obsolete within the next few years.

I do know if I was looking at the Canon 300 or any other motion camera for that matter, I'd rent a RED One and give it a try.  For about $45,000 you can build a RED One kit with a set of fast Red PL mount primes and accessories that come in for less than the Canon 300 and one Canon PL zoom.

IMO

BC

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fredjeang

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #23 on: November 17, 2011, 10:02:29 am »

I agree with what Hywel, Sareesh and James wrote.

All you say is true. I'm a strong supporter of Red system and I'm aware of the Canon's limitations.

My point was a little different.

I'm frighten that we start to get crazy about resolution, performances etc...and that the overall tone of the motion forum is going to look like: we all need Red
and in the end falling in the same non-sense as what we know in MF. People talking about millionaire equipment and for the most part doing, well, not millionaire imagery.
Because that's what the most part of the MF internet world is about.

I personaly think that it would be a pitty because this forum is so far rather healphy.

My point about the 5D2 was not to say that this camera is the grail. By any means. It has problems and there are better options.

But it seems to me that a lot of time we tend to put the things in a wrong order.

The other day we shooted with a "so so" model and there is no way, no escape: resolution or not, lightning or not, it doesn't work.
Or not a long time ago we needed a strong wind machine and they saved money on not renting a bigger wind machine but yes renting the Alexa, and guess what: it didn't work.
It would have worked better with the 5D2 and the wind machine we needed.
Regular MUA have ruined results and it's long to save in post-prod, same with stylists etc...


And yes, we see a lot of regular models with regular MUAs and so so lightning, and bad pre-prod...but with top-end gear. What's the point then?

In general, we rarely put priorities on what makes the result a winner result, and spend a lot of money on useless things: the camera, as crazy as it sounds, is just a little part of the equation.

I just hope this forum is not going to turn into reso-power kind of stuff and billionaire hollywood equipment talks that only 0,00001 % will ever really need to use practically.


 
« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 10:12:02 am by fredjeang »
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Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #24 on: November 17, 2011, 10:43:01 pm »

On a lighter note: One thing I didn't like about the Scarlet is its name - I would have preferred Red Two (since Red One is no longer a priority) or Epic-Mini (since it is almost a twin). The new Scarlet has nothing to do with the earlier 'online' version of the Scarlet, and doesn't even cater to the same market - the indie crowd. I guess they had invested too much in the name to give it away, and nothing else exciting is in the pipeline.

And this is from a camera company that revolutionized camera names with the Red One - a very powerful name. I once owned a JVC with the name: GY-HD111E, and that was a prosumer camera! Full broadcast cameras have unprintable names. Even the small kitten-size super popular and excellent mass market DV camera by Sony is called the DSR-PD170P - small wonder then that their ground breaking camera is called PMW-F3L. At least give it a nickname!

And I have no idea why every camera has to have an 'X' in its name for some reason - as pointed out by Michael in his latest post - but then again C300 sounds boring. What's the weirdest camera name you've ever heard of?
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billy

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #25 on: November 18, 2011, 01:51:30 pm »

kinda off topic but will the scarlet or the canon c300 be able to shoot vertical without any weird workarounds?
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pschefz

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #26 on: November 18, 2011, 02:23:24 pm »

turn it sideways and deal with everything that comes with that...since both use external monitors or finders it should not really matter much....
i understand why you would want to shoot the red vertical but i am not sure why you would want to do this with the c300? i hope you understand that an iPhone will give you a much better image then a c300 still "frame"?
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pschefz

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #27 on: November 18, 2011, 08:05:29 pm »

one camera that has not been mentioned here is the sony fs100...same super 35 chip as the f3...shoots to sd card or 4:2:2 via HDMI...because of the short flange it can accept pretty much any lens made via adapters....and it costs under 5000$...
i think we will see some fun stuff coming out in the next year or two...
« Last Edit: November 18, 2011, 08:37:08 pm by pschefz »
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bcooter

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #28 on: November 19, 2011, 12:24:16 am »

one camera that has not been mentioned here is the sony fs100...same super 35 chip as the f3...shoots to sd card or 4:2:2 via HDMI...because of the short flange it can accept pretty much any lens made via adapters....and it costs under 5000$...
i think we will see some fun stuff coming out in the next year or two...

We have the fs100 with the plan on using it beside our reds, as a crash cam, small handheld and for the moments we need autofocus.  We added the kit lens and a few of the fast Zeiss A mount zooms with the Sony adapter.

All I can tell you is to try it before your buy it.

I love the form factor, somewhat like a hasselblad v with a articulating viewfinder, the autofocus is good, the Zeiss lenses superb.

It has large xlr inputs, headphone jacks, sound bars and a pretty good but small lcd.

The downside is the camera's file.   It blows highlights quickly and not that pretty.  It also is hard to hit skintones with under any lighting we've tried.

In fact grading this file regardless of the setting has been difficult for us.   There are a lot of color, tone setting . . . a some canned and user preset profiles, including a cinetone look much like the flat 5d2 and Canon 300 look that is made for post production grading.

Still, I just can't seem to get the file to look pretty like film, as it has a cast to it and I know this is very subjective  . . . the Sony file regardless of frame rate and shutter is very video like to me.  Not the worst, but certainly not something someone would say, wow what film did you use?

The last issue I have with the camera is the many little buttons for settings, some confusing some require the hand-eye coordination of a brain surgeon.  Just setting the aperture on the side of the camera takes very careful turns and push to use, push to lock but don't push and turn or it goes to AE.

It's a great idea, could have been a 5d2/3 killer if only it shot a better file, but once again that is very subjective.

Try it before you buy it.

IMO

BC
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pschefz

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #29 on: November 19, 2011, 02:39:15 pm »

are you using the HDMI port or are you shooting to sd card?
i love the form factor, and yes, i don't get all the buttons either....and why they did not build in ND filters is beyond me.....it does not make sense to me to specifically make a handheld (even with steady shot and working AF) self-contained unit and not put in ND filters...
like i said i am excited about the next versions of all these things...
sony's path of making their own sensors is starting to pay off....just like with canon in the early days...
« Last Edit: November 19, 2011, 04:33:30 pm by pschefz »
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fredjeang

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #30 on: November 19, 2011, 03:32:03 pm »

I heard that the sensor is too close to the back lens to allowed engineers to built ND filters on this model. If this is true, this is indeed a big missing feature.

Having to change those filters from the matte-box is something I really do not enjoy and they are expensive. Screwing them is even more painfull and really not a suitable solution on set.

I'd find it acceptable on a Red because the goodies are such, but on that Sony no.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2011, 03:38:18 pm by fredjeang »
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billy

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #31 on: November 19, 2011, 04:35:21 pm »


"Having to change those filters from the matte-box is something I really do not enjoy and they are expensive. Screwing them is even more painfull and really not a suitable solution on set."

how come? it seems like an easy solution to buy screw on ND filters and bypass the big mattebox ( I use lens hoods anyway ), it takes like 5 seconds to screw on a filter. I am not saying you are wrong or anything like that, you always make very sensible posts, I am just curious.

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fredjeang

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #32 on: November 19, 2011, 06:23:59 pm »

"Having to change those filters from the matte-box is something I really do not enjoy and they are expensive. Screwing them is even more painfull and really not a suitable solution on set."

how come? it seems like an easy solution to buy screw on ND filters and bypass the big mattebox ( I use lens hoods anyway ), it takes like 5 seconds to screw on a filter. I am not saying you are wrong or anything like that, you always make very sensible posts, I am just curious.



Because on set, in the middle of the mess, having to screw and descrew a little object is always more distracting than having to pull and insert a big filter with an handle. Yes, screwing filters takes a few seconds but it's not fixed into the structure wich is independant of the cameras+lenses. You also have to descrew the hood wich is another manipulation.
Those filters are easy to drop, they are fragile and also easy to loose. It's difficult to see wich is wich immediatly. Then you need different diameter and several filters for each lens diameter.
It's ok when you work with reduce lens set and on your own with no pressure. IMHO.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2011, 06:31:38 pm by fredjeang »
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #33 on: November 20, 2011, 05:12:55 pm »

As and FS100 owner I can agree that ND is a PITA

Not a problem filming for fun in the park but with clients/subjects waiting looking on it is fumble city

I have step up rings on all my lenses to take the screw to 72, then I own multiple 72mm NDs

ie filming outside I can leave nd on two or three lenses

Nds seem prone to unpleasant flare when on the front of the lens too meaning I have had to construct a matte box (from an bronica bellows)

As for the file - yep its challenging unless the light is soft

----------

I handled an Epic this week - I was intantly struck by the rigidity and feeling of 'proper' ness compared to the FS particularly in the lens mount with a PL lens - wow it goes together clink clunk like a proper thing

this allmost sold Scarlet to me with the same body

----------

As for us stills people getting stupidly demanding for our motion gear - well we are used to high res raw, nice files and solid kit with good batt life, enough media for a days shoot, an adequate 'monitor' etc

we have high expectations

I also have clients who have high expectation of colour accuracy / control

to seek such things in our motion work seems to come naturally - and that could be expensive!

S

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billy

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #34 on: November 22, 2011, 01:40:53 am »

Stu at Prolost is very informative and a great writer ( friggin funny as well ), he just posted a damn good comparison of all the new cameras:

http://prolost.com/blog/2011/11/21/red-scarlet-canon-c300-and-the-paradox-of-choice.html

me? I am leaning towards the c300 as I am learning about all the baggage that comes with shooting raw footage from the Red ( money for storage, time for editing, money for batteries )
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #35 on: November 22, 2011, 04:13:39 am »

me? I am leaning towards the c300

I cant see buying this. of course its all about your job and clients

I guess that..

Batteries, Im pretty sure that soon Scarlet will run off of 'cheap' long lasting Vlock batteries

Media: As photographers we tend to do short takes - I certainly do

RAW : I think there is a lot of mythology amongst film makers about Raw workflow, as experienced still shooters the concept of Raw and how to deal is natural to us

Yes there might be some transcode times but im certainly used to a 'Tea based workflow' even with stills - ie setting the computer a task (like exporting a bunch of Tiffs from raw) and having a tea.. or even sleep while the computer does it

This can of course impact on jobs that need fast delivery

RAW: As a stills shooter having a non raw image seems just dumb bascially - yep I live with non raw on my sub $5k motion cameras - but spending $15k plus and not having raw - bonkers IMO

RAW: enables accutrate colour (do you work for people who make clothes etc who care about these things - I guess a lot of photographers doing motion will have such clients)

RAW takes the stress of onset monitoring away to some extent
RAW enables matching multi cameras no doubt

1080 - We all know that a 1080 still is basically a pretty crappy thing - we also know that 3k or above can bascically used for anything !

Now if you shoot 1080 and need to crop, straighten, stabilize pretty soon you only have a 720 deliverable

Lenses: the C300 is a choose PL or Canon, (what about nikon, contax) the Scarlet takes them all (?)

Of course the C300 is great in Low light and probably can deliver fast..

S

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jjj

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #36 on: November 22, 2011, 06:15:00 am »

It may be worth reading this real world appraisal if you are considering a Scarlet.

Philip Bloom Scarlet summation
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bcooter

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #37 on: November 22, 2011, 06:53:19 am »

It may be worth reading this real world appraisal if you are considering a Scarlet.

Philip Bloom Scarlet summation

This is good information, but with the Scarlet for 20 grand you get a 4k, 24fps camera with interchangeable mounts that shoots raw at a clean 1000 iso and someday (who knows when in RED world) they'll have a dragon sensor that goes much higher.

Not a bad deal and if the Canon 300 did this the world would have gone goofy crazy for it.

It seems some people like RED some don't, but until you shoot with one it's kind of difficult to explain the look.

All I know is we use the hell out of our two RED One's and since Janurary the only glitch was two freeze ups which required a reboot and we've shot them in conditions that our Canon 1ds 3 still cameras just couldn't handle.

Last week we blew the shutter out of one of the Canons, the other a circuit board went south but the RED's just kept running.

As far a 5 grand for the RED rocket, that's pretty much a no brainer as it drops your processing time to real time, vs 4 or 5 times even using a very fast computer.

Motion ain't cheap in the front, middle or back end, but compared to a few years ago and film production the RED's are a steal.  Compared to the Alexa they're almost free.

I had plans to change my Scarlet buy to an Epic but decided to stay with the Scarlet and my RED ones after talking to a production company that has used them all, including the Canon.

If I need 120 fps of the Epic, (which is very rare) I'll rent.  If I need a billion iso of the Canon, which is also rare, I'll rent . . . actually if the Canon was a 5d2 replacement that came in at 7 grand I might buy it just for low light work, but it didn't so it's on the rental list.

IMO

BC
« Last Edit: November 22, 2011, 06:55:32 am by bcooter »
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jjj

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #38 on: November 22, 2011, 07:00:08 am »

Media: As photographers we tend to do short takes - I certainly do
For film making and ads, short takes are the norm.
It's usually live events and documentaries where you shoot continuously or for long periods.
Which is why film makers were not really bothered by the 'short' capture time afforded by say the 5DII.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2011, 07:21:44 am by jjj »
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jjj

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Re: Scarlet
« Reply #39 on: November 22, 2011, 07:20:04 am »

This is good information, but with the Scarlet for 20 grand you get a 4k, 24fps camera with interchangeable mounts that shoots raw at a clean 1000 iso and someday (who knows when in RED world) they'll have a dragon sensor that goes much higher.
But as many people got overexcited by a Scarlet that they thought would cost less than 10K.
Not to mention that shooting at less than 4k results in crop sensor shooting.

Quote
Not a bad deal and if the Canon 300 did this the world would have gone goofy crazy for it.
After having read the cinematographer's guide to using the C300, it makes a lot more sense. 
What is worth bearing in mind is that it's mostly photographers, not film makers are the ones clamouring after a RAW cine workflow as photographer became used to the better workflow with RAW images. Or maybe  became lazier with RAW due to its get out of jail abilities.....
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