Red Build 30: Quick Thoughts

Red Build 30: Quick Thoughts

I've been spending the week with a Mysterium-X upgraded R1 and my brain is flooded with commentary. Expect something more in depth soon but for now, wanted to share a few impressions.

-I miss redspace and rec709 Video View. Redcolor takes a little getting used to. It's not a very faithful colorspace and because there's no way to affect the linear matrix beyond basic saturation and phase controls on the video tap, the live picture requires a little imagination on the part of the client, production, etc. I'm not sure why they dropped the other LUT's in the camera but kept them in the software. If they want everyone to use RedColor, great, but at least give us the tools to make the monitor look like the colors people are seeing. This is critical for product shots! 

-Increased sensitvity and noise reduction improvements are fantastic. You can safely "ride the ISO" now from 100 to 800. That's 3 stops of play on the lens. So if you find you need to shoot at a deeper stop you can set the T stop and then find an ISO that will put you back to your exposure and the difference in sensor noise is negligible. This is huge because of the time it saves. No more walking lights closer or further out, just make the camera more sensitive and stop down. Huge!

-You have to process all R3D files in Redcine-X now. I kind of liked the simplicity of RedAlert but I'm getting into the newest build of Cine-X. The previous version of it was nightmarish but v2, the version you have to comb posts on reduser.net to find (why not just put it on the website?), is fantastic. Slick interface and intuitive image controls. Love it. BUT default gamma and color space for file processing is now Redcolor and Redgamma. These look very plasticky and gross to me. Now when i process files I've been putting everything in 709 and then using the new Lift, Gamma, Gain controls to set the look. I tried to use redcolor and redgamma to get a nice, natural look but there was just something wrong about it. The tonality is very strange.

Love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Also, why are the QuickTime proxies yellow now?