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First RED DRAGON video on Vimeo
  • You can watch it here:

  • 65 Replies sorted by
  • analog..for skin tones

  • Skin tones are a bit greenish...muhahaha.

  • MMmmmmmotorboat!

  • Boobs test. Someone prefer Alexa boobs, someone prefer Sony boobs. I think analogic is still best choice for boobs. :-)

  • Arty one here hmmmmmmm - I dunno guys. I just still think that it's a lot of kite to spend on a camera to get pictures lacking in mojo. I know you can make it look how you like within a range and it is incredible tech for our time and sure the colour science is being fiddled with as we speak. But I just seem unable to connect somehow. And in the dark scenes - noise - you can have as much resolution to capture the scene but what if your grains of noise are about four pixels each or larger? Kinda missing the point then? HD seems fine to me. I can see the excitement surrounding the Arri Almira. Not hating on RED - just perplexed how it is soooooo hard to just give a punchy fat colourful image. I dunno - I love the specs but the pic looks like very clean high resolution moving DSLR pics in good light. It will have its place no doubt - time will tell how much of course........

    Compare Real 35 mm

    Compare DOF Adaptor

    Compare Arri Alexa. I though tit was film before e-mailing the colorist and he said it was Arri Alexa 4444 logc

    Well at this stage I cannot afford any of these but if I wait long enough????????

  • If you see "Knowing", Nick Cage has a plastic face (I don't know if he have a plastic face even in the real life, anyway...). My impression is, but i can say a wrong thing here, that more you go into real face colors, and more the footage seems more videoish.

    Try to take a look at some movies: Taxi Driver, Carlito's Way, Scarface, Apocalipse Now, The age of innocence, The silence of lambs. Tell me if you see some natural skintones, or a strong make up and lights that makes the shot composition.

    Cinema is not like real life, it never was. I met Cameron Diaz (just to bring an example) in Rome when they did Gangs of New York, she have a ton of freckles, in her face, in her decolleté. Did you saw her freckles in the movies she made? Did you know Sharon Stone use to have her personal DP (Zigsmond) for close up and body shots?

    Now this skintones thing is becoming a concerning for many DPs, maybe it's the cinema evolution, but good make up artists use to fix this issue at the best possible way. On set.

    Now all must be perfect and lifelike just out of the camera? I think it does, but just for neo-neorealism movies and some comedy-drama.

    I think big studios don't give a damn about this skintones problem, just take a look at the blockbusters they make. The concern stays more in the low budget, independent things.

    Then, if you bring up the DR, everybody are happy to have great DR, that's why the Alexa success, since two years ago, over Red and Sony in my opinion.

    As @nomad said, 5DM3 is good with skintones, and i agree with him. Videoish image, good skintones.

    It is not in HD, ok, but tell me about skintones here: I have the blu ray of this movie, and there is no separation in skintones.

  • It's the sensor, folks. RED used to have problems with skin tones, since their sensors up to now were industrial/technical sensors. Very hard to grade and little margin for error.

    The Dragon is their first sensor made for cinematography, and I think it will scare some others. Graeme Nattress knows a thing or two about color…

  • hmm skin tone look almost as 5DM3 with ML RAW (now you can stone me)

  • @thepalalias Per, I'm by no means an expert and I have no idea how people grade the footage but I've seen some really nasty stuff come from REDs on all forms of media. Actors looking sick, bad red tint, way to sharp in conjunction with bad makeup. Just not alot of room for error there. Everything that I've been in front of the camera and shot on Alexas are friggin gorgeous! RED, eh, plastic looking. Honestly the best footage I've seen from a RED was from a college kid I know that works at Hollywood Cameras now. I couldn't believe what his thesis looked! He wants to be a director of course but I told him he needs to get in color! He could teach alot of the pros how to do it right!!

  • @vicharris I would think that most actors would want good skintones. :)

    Honestly, though, I have found that RED skintones can look great with a good LUT (or heck, normal grading - it doesn't really matter how you get there) but I'm sure there's something that makes it difficult for some people that I'm missing.

    What exactly is it about the footage skintones that makes them more difficult to grade than other cameras?

  • Wow! Yet again I'm really blown away by this sensor. Like I've said I've never been a fan of REDS. Not sure if it's just the way people grade them or what they do to actors skin (Little biased on this one since I'm one of those actors!) Anyways, just really great, organic, sharp, lovely images. I much prefer this over the SONYs too.

  • @rockroadpix Okay, good to know. :)

    Sometimes I think people get the idea that there is a "look" using RED that really comes more from the way that some people apply than the camera itself. The Dragon looks even more flexible than the MX sensor I worked with in the past.

  • I liked the skin tones a lot better and the night time stuff. It def had more of an oomph for me. Yes, more soul.

  • @rockroadpix I liked the one where you had the sparkler, skintones and shadow in frame at once. And the way it handled the beach shot with the sun in frame - I do shots like that in HDR all the time.

    So you liked this footage better - did it feel like it had soul to it or was there something essential that still felt like it was missing to you?

  • Wow! Mucho bettah...

  • Aliud est facere, aliud est dicere.

  • @Jean71 - I don't care for his antics, but yeah I have no idea what his soul possesses. It was more sarcastic flippant joke than anything.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    "Jim Jannard steps away, Jarred Land is now the boss."

    Jannard have the habit to discuss with all the people that don't like Red cameras.

    In my point of view that's a bad habit, since he's legitimating people that are not in his league.

    The day a great DP or a great Director will step up and will say: Red cameras are shit, that will be the day to discuss with that people. But he can't go away from his forum, just because some 2nd category DPs loves to tell he is a dumbass, etcetera.

    It's like one come here, out of the blue and say: Vitaliy hacked that camera, why he didn't work on the other camera?

    Or other people saying: Vitaliy did this? I can do better!

    Prove it! What this people prove? Jannard made Red cameras at $17.500 when Sony 900 was at $200,000.

    Now Sony cameras are VERY good and we can choose where put the money (if we have it, LOL, not my range of prices).

    Anyway, Jannard will come back, i think he likes drama :D

  • I think anyone nitpicking about things like dynamic range and resolution at this price level should go ahead and take a look at this for a second:

    http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-update-from-your-friend-who-just-upgraded-to-a-vimeo-plus-account

  • The Sony F55 wouldn't be here by now without Red. They have learned quite a bit from them – good or bad ;-)

    I disagree here. While they learned some things, main issues were simple technical similations that are now much more easy to overcome (sensor speed, LSI perfrmance, RAM speed, fast enough SSD, etc).