Nice bit of kit

alexx

alexx

alexx

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Joined
18 May 2006
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785
totally off topic but I got handed a RED camera today to shoot pickups for the short UK Film Council film were producing, so with over 50ks worth of equipment at my disposal I decided to take a pap iphone snap before I threw it on my shoulder and ran in a muddy wood with my fingers crossed and 30+lbs of camera on my shoulder!

happy days, these are a thing of beauty - shame the firmware is a bit temp :D

red.jpg
 
RED make the infamous top end movie/stills cameras used by actual pros with pockets that are the size of boats. :p
 
Basically the dogs danglies of cameras:

http://www.red.com/


I'd much rather see the end footage than a rubbish phone pic, but I'd love to have a play with one of these. How actually was it?
 
i seem to remember watching a short film by peter jackson about ww1 that was shot with these red cameras, it did have a strange hyper realistic quality about the picture..
 
I might grab a still next week if your lucky, its all hush hush :) its a short with Natalie Press and Vicky Mcclure.

I wasnt the DOP on the main shoot I was the D.I.T and Data Wrangler guy so I'll give you a brief low down as I've worked with the camera from every angle.

Data Managment
2gb - 1min footage - 4k res, semi live play back in redcine which is nice and a really perk is the luma and colour settings as you can check focus quickly and apply colour templates or create new ones on the fly to see how it will grade down.

We shot on 16gb cards because REDs harddrives (aswell as there lenses) are more tempremental than anything I've seen classed as prosumer.

Took about 30mins per card with a raid backup all over firewire 800 inc review time


------

CAMERA
the menu system is intuitive with some small niggles like why have they put format card next to unmount card? but its all easy going with a little joy stick that spins and clicks

The red monitor is pretty average but shows a lot of info so it does its job

The viewfinder is good but I got a lot of rainbow ghosting and im not overly sensitive to it

The lense system and functionality with the supplied rails is fast and a pleasure to change lenses

We used a set of 6 Zeiss Primes at about 6k a pop! (no grubby fingers please!)

We also tested a hand held shoulder rig (asides from the main steadicam we used) and managed to nearly drop the red as the bonded rods came apart! noice.

MOST IMPORTIANTLY!
Once you set up a good workspace on the camera the footage you get in return is astounding, its beautiful, sharp, deep and vivid.

It is an expensive camera for me and you but in the scheme of things £50k IS VERY CHEAP compared to Arri counter parts or film which this isnt even a drop in the Ocean

Its very very good, but it has its mood swings and sometimes needs powering down and back up again (takes 2 mins, pretty frustrating)

You forget all the niggles when you watch the footage back

If you find picking up a prosumer 5k video camera up and knowing the menu, then the red is just as easy but you need to know your **** of you will be shown up

so if you make videos and you get a £1k kit hire budget and your very cheeky you'd get a good weekend on a red!

also does 50fps on 2k but i think thats a steep price for a 1/2 res drop if your mastering for the big screen

thx al.
 
Hyper realistic in what sense? the dynamic range on the red is fantastic, thats probobly what you mean?

same with all cameras though, if the light is flat and boring it'll look crap, likewise if you shoot a fire and dont add any other colours into the mix it'll be noisey as hell even on iso 320 (which is what we shot at also contraversal as most people rate it using closer to 200).. weirdly the Arri thats coming out vsoon is 100kish and rates at iso 800 native!?!? wtf? maybe they like that grit brit look a bit too much
 
Forgot to add were taking it into FCP for the edit and the downconvert for the offline took a bit of an age but now its there its all gravy and were offlining at 720p (shot at 4k HD which gives a perfect ratio downscale as its cuts a few lines of true 4k)

and also on site review you have quicktime proxies giving you 3 different files of varying quality for instant playback

also the camera can be in playback mode with the touch of 1 button and fast
 
i have a nice RED camera aswell its awesome!

i took some pics with my mobile phone :p

60x Optical zoom , perfect for spying! like binoculars but better! :eek:
itsred.jpg


Zomg carl zeiss lens! i have no idea who he is but aparently he makes good lenses!
gotlens.jpg


/thread
 
Had the pleasure of working with one of these when I worked for Chase Jarvis earlier in the year - amazing bits of kit...imagine my horror when I spilled a class of water over the Peli case that the lenses were stored in! Thank God it was shut!
 
Pelicases are awesome they saved my personal gear on a 15 foot drop onto sharp rocks with no damage!:D

ps nice red camera haha :D
 
alexx said:
totally off topic but I got handed a RED camera today to shoot pickups for the short UK Film Council film were producing, so with over 50ks worth of equipment at my disposal I decided to take a pap iphone snap before I threw it on my shoulder and ran in a muddy wood with my fingers crossed and 30+lbs of camera on my shoulder!

happy days, these are a thing of beauty - shame the firmware is a bit temp :D

red.jpg
Click to expand...

Wow. Since when did the UK Film Council get those?

Which RED camera is that specifically? (afaik there are many different models).
 
UK Film Council fund digital shorts also and have done for the last 5 or so years and there arnt many models out at the moment you'd have only seen the "one" build in use but shortly there will be some more goodies coming out :)
 
My friend that works in media told me about the RED camera, it's the object of his dreams, so I can appreciate how it must've felt to use it :)
 
alexx said:
UK Film Council fund digital shorts also and have done for the last 5 or so years and there arnt many models out at the moment you'd have only seen the "one" build in use but shortly there will be some more goodies coming out :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've wondered about how to get funding from them/work for them/whatever. If they're using those cameras all the more reason to do so!
 
They are purely a funding body they dont have equipment, you get funding for a project then you hire whatever you need within your budget.

Your best applying for a small 2.5k application as its harder to get the 50k ones for obvious reasons :)

Just to be clear this is nothing to do with uk film council other than they supplied the cash to fund our project :) its not there equipment we hired from provision but panavision or any other hire company could have fit the bill if they have a red which im sure they will just provision are matey with us and have a great service
 
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