The RED ONE is perhaps this century's most hyped camera. So its but natural I thought lets take it for a spin on a low budget commercial. (note: whenever there is even a little bit of money, I prefer to shoot on film. I must also mention that I live pretty much a digital life, relying heavily on web 2.0, cloud computing and a paperless workflow, for those who might think I am old school. if anyone has ever studied how an image is formed in the photochemical realm, one would understand what a techno-porn it is.)
The basic things to remember about the RED ONE are:
1) The camera has an ISO rating of 320
2) The camera has a native colour temperature of 5000k
3) The camera records a 'RAW' image, uncorrected, irrespective of your settings for colour temperature and ISO. (these settings are only used for displaying the image and saved as metadata information, but the camera records its own 'RAW' uncorrected format)
4) The shutter is electronic (unlike the Thomson Grassvalley Viper, which has a mechanical shutter. Benjamin Button was shot on a Viper, so was Zodiac)
This is the official Red One checklist before you begin recording:
1) Set up desired physical configuration
2) Review operation guide (its available from the Red One Site)
3) Upload/install latest firmware
4) Perform Black Shading (details in the operations guide)
5) Verify back focus
6) Connect media
7) Setup project (4k, 2:1, 180 Shutter, ISO 320, 5600k, Redcode 36, 25fps, for example)
Format Media (important. every time you insert a media card, remember to format it)9) Develop exposure methodology
10) Frame, focus, record.
My experience:
1) You need a very good and cooperative crew. I felt the camera's back focus needed alignment, but the crew was adamant about not touching back focus. They kept telling me two features had been shot without a problem, and I kept telling them that's perhaps the reason to check the back focus. Also Aalok Shukla, who was working with me on the shoot, reported the camera backup tech guy asking for extra money for a second backup!
2) Lensing: as long as you are shooting 4k, and NOT wanting to crank up, you are ok. if you want to shoot higher fps, you HAVE to scale down to 2k. That completely messes up on the lensing. The camera crops a smaller (2k) size image from the sensor. So basically you get a cropped in image out of the full frame 35mm size. See attached images for difference. The lens used is Carl Zeiss Ultra Prime 14mm. At 4k the lens gives the expected image. At 2k, it looks like a 35-50mm. So essentially, with the current build of camera, shooting at 2k means sacrificing the wide end of your lensing.
3) The EVF/On Board Monitor : Some evening shots in falling light look darker in the edit suite than they looked in the EVF/On Board Monitor. Can the monitor be trusted? I don't know.
4) Large areas out of focus have visible banding around them. Perhaps because of low bit rate. (will post this image)
