BTW: I know RED is a love hate thing for most dop's and operators, but for the price, the final look, I still think RED does the best job of any serious digital cinema camera maker.
IMO
BC
Couldn't agree more.
Strictly talking from the post production area, and
Of course everything being relative to personal tastes,
I simply love to work with Red material and for a number
Of resons.
This is actually true that the Alexa brings apparently
A more straightforward workflow for 90% of the cases
But it depends how one sees it.
Red did their own route but what matters to me is that
They managed to bring the tools for any sistem in post.
Avid and ProRes requires roundtriping in the chain and
Is linked to Apple. Red works the same way on anything.
True that their gamma jargon is confusing but file implementation
Is nailed and a joy to work with in post. Specially when
versionings have to be done in batch in real time.
The looks that can be acheive are robust and filmic without
Needing coffees. The way they implemented the metadatas
Files is really great and specially noticiable when it comes
To deal with big volume and long editing. It gives stability
And fleibility. So far. I haven't noticed any banding issue
With any Red material. Yes, as Coot pointed, noise can be present
But IMO it tends to look like organic film grain.
For the costs of a basic Red system, I think that nothing
So far brings so much for the money invested.
As far as noise is concerned when shooting flat, as there
Is always the posibility to dedo anything that was done
In production (for the Red One maybe not) because
All curve being in the end a simple metadata independant
Of the raw material that has been recorded, it's never
Destructive. (again, I'm not in prod and as the R1 uses a different
Implementation than the Scarlet-Epic, it may well be that
Shooting flat on the R1 is different. I ignore this fact).
Also, I ignore if with the R1 the widest range is obtained
At 800 isos, wich I guess it is and makes sense).
Anyway, in a world of proliferation of new cameras every week,
Of raws badly implementated, of 4k on the cheap that nobody
Needs on the cheap, (R we shooting Marvels?), Red is
The only truth profesional affordable system, universal (no
Pro-f....g-Res) , flexible, capable to suits from indy to
hollywood super prods. Nothing else on earth so far does that.
Ps: I've Heard from Alexists that they hate to work with Red because they heat-up too much, because the fan is noisy, because the profiles are a mess, because this that or the other...
and then you go to the Redists who claim the poor resolution and speed and cost of the Arri and that the DR advantage is a mirage and bla bla...
IMO, when it comes to photographers doing motion work (like most in such a website as Lu-La), Red is the system.
Ps2: there is a calculation worth doing (you know exactly like the smoker who makes calculations on how much is spent every month in tabacco...)
Since the DSLR saga, how much money have we spent from the 5D2 to the latest generations, including all the accessories circus, the time in adaptation from
a new magic tool to another, the time spent in transcoding, the time spent in testings in order to fix common issues, in order to hack the cameras etc...
well...with distance I think that a Red system and an Autodesk Smoke and end of the story. No more mess. Good to go for 10 years while the rest of the world is testing
and burning the wallet in every japanese novelty and post prod tools like FCPX.