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Filed under: Cameras •Production •

RED Build 16: A Camera Whose Time Has Come

PARADE HISTOGRAMS: A MOVING TARGET

We now have the option of seeing RGB histograms in parade view. Hurrah! One of the first lessons I learned about the RED ONE is that there isn’t much in the way of knee control, and whereas other cameras will hide the fact that one channel will frequently clip before the others depending on the saturation of objects within the scene, the RED ONE doesn’t; or at least not very well. That’s good, because if you know that only one channel is clipping you can sleep peacefully at night secure in the knowledge that RedAlert or RedCine can rebuild detail in a clipped channel using data from the other two channels. (RedAlert calls the highlight recovery feature “DRX” while RedCine calls it—wait for it—“highlight recovery”.)

The problem is that histogram clipping is affected by what color space you’re in, and doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s happening to the sensor. Not good.

If you’re in RedSpace, for example, and you clip the blue channel according to the parade histogram and the traffic light, you can flip into RAW to see what’s really going on… and find out that you have plenty of headroom according to the histograms in RAW mode. Same thing with REC 709. If you clip anything in any other color space other than RAW you will probably have a bit of headroom left over… which, on the one hand is nice, because you aren’t losing detail in the highlights. On the other hand, you aren’t using the full range of the chip either.

Personally I’d prefer that the histograms ALWAYS show what’s going on with the sensor, unaffected by gamma and knee compression. That’s not possible right now, though, so we’ll have to make do with assigning a User Button to toggle in and out of RAW mode. This works fairly well: in RedSpace, for example, we assigned User Button 3 (on the viewfinder) to toggle in and out of RAW mode. This is very helpful when judging exposure but not very pleasant for everyone else who is watching the camera output: rather than being able to assign RedSpace to one monitor output and RAW to another, the entire output chain is affected. One second the director will be watching the crisp super-saturated RedSpace image, and the next they’ll be staring at a flat gray image seemingly devoid of color. RAW doesn’t look very pretty on the monitor, but it’s the only way you’re going to be able see exactly what’s going on with the sensor. Prepare the director for that switch sooner than later.

All this and Christmas too on the next page:

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Thanks once again for such useful info. I hear you on the Macbeth chart—but I also think we (actually, SMPTE or somebody like them) need to come up with some sort of electornically generated color pattern that helps us set up the new monitors. The SMPTE Split Field bars miss a lot, while addressing things that aren’t really that much of an issue for digital, namely phase. Understandable since they were designed decades ago for the transmission of composite NTSC color, and nothing else!

And congrats on you guys finally being able to go forward with the wedding! The best news of a turnaround of a turnaround I’ve heard in a long time!

Posted by Steven Bradford  on  07/04  at  01:27 PM

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[That’s fine for a film stock, but I’ve not worked with many HD cameras that react to a meter the same way twice.]

that’s exactly how it is with a DALSA, which is why I try to work with camera that whenever possible

red’s build 16 is a mild improvement, complicated, and the camera is still a PITA. no thanks.

mXb

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/04  at  10:20 PM

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Thanks for the info and mucho congrats on getting married. One piece of advice. Don’t take a serious camera on your honeymoon unless your wife’s a DP too.

Posted by davhud  on  07/07  at  08:25 AM

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okay
has its time come?

is there anywhere i can go and see an actual movie done by this camera ( i saw zodiac, and it was sort of cool the way the viper did the digital look of the darkness)

any movies out i can see? even just on DVD….

Posted by billS  on  08/08  at  04:02 AM

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