Film is Dead.
Monday, September 1, 2008 at 5:44PM
;)
Well, maybe not dead -- but the revolution definitely will not be shot on film. I had the pleasure to shoot with a RED ONE for the first time this weekend and it really is the game changer that everyone says it is. I have been a fan of shooting video for a long time (I guess I am just of the digital generation), but the RED ONE is the first digital video camera to really compete with film in all categories. For the record, I would like to make comparisons between Common video formats(MiniDV, HDV, Digibeta, etc), Film and the RED ONE.
Resolution
- Video: Ranges from 640x480 pixels to 1920x1080 pixels with a variety of different pixel apsect ratios (rectangular pixels) thrown in there for good measure.
- Film: No pixels, but comparable to 4k. Though most digital intermediates are done in 2k resolution
- RED: 4k -- 4096 x 2304.
Recording Medium
- Video: Lots of tape formats, some proprietary solid state and hard disk formats.
- Film: 35mm or 16mm Negative Film.
- RED: High Speed Compact Flash, Raided SATA drives, anything that accepts HD-SDI
Dynamic Range
- Video: Varies wildly but averages between 4 and 6 f-stops
- Film: Depends on the stock, but reliably 11 stops.
- RED: Technically 11, but in reality around 9.
Image Plane Size
- Video: Anywhere from Tiny up to 2/3rds inch.
- Film: Super 35mm -- 24.89 mm × 18.66 mm
- RED: 24.4mm x 13.7mm
Hardware Cost
- Video: Starts from as low as a few hundred, tops out around 100,000
- Film: A new Arri 435 is around 75,000 body only. Prices vary in the + 20,000 range
- RED: 17,500 body only.
Shooting Cost
- Video: Some tapes and hard drives for editing. Quite cheap.
- Film: Raw film stock, Film Processing, Telecine. Hard drives for editing. Quite expensive.
- RED: Some CF Cards, Maybe a RED RAID, Lots of hard drive space -- probably a raid for storage. Not cheap, but cheaper than film.
Frame Rates
- Video: Most commonly 24, 25 and 29.97. Some newer cameras can shoot up to 60fps
- Film: As fast as your camera will let you go. Ultra high speed cameras can shoot 10,000 fps. Up to 120 is quite common
- RED: Varies depending on resolution. Up to 30fps at 4k, 60fps at 3k, 120fps at 2k
In all these categories the RED is fairly equivalent to film, but beats film in terms of cost. A few other areas where I think the red wins are speed of use and safety of footage.
Ease of use: We shot a short film in 48 hours in 4k resolution this weekend. This would have been incredibly difficult with film. Film needs to be processed and telecined before you can begin editing. Both processes that would have taken valuable time. It probably would have been impossible here in Switzerland due to the lack of 24 hour facilities.
Safety of footage: Film advocates will say that a hard drive can crash or a CF card could fail. However, film is obviously more perilous to use than digital. Just one little light leak and your footage is ruined -- not to mention what can happen in the lab to make your work unusable. With file based digital shooting you can make as many back ups as you want on set. With film your camera original is all you have until you have a work print made.
One of the areas where I found RED more difficult to use than Film was focusing. The RED shoots 4k, but as of now, all of the monitoring options only go as high as 720p. This makes it difficult to see what is in focus. There is a pretty nifty focus assist that outlines in focus areas with red lines, but this is not perfect. That said, with a little practice, I was able to pull focus fairly well.
There are a few other great things about the RED: REDCODE RAW, Speed Ramping, Stop Motion, User definable buttons, Modularity, etc. Too much for me to go into right now.
I am ready to shoot on RED again as soon as possible. Last weekend makes my dread shooting HDV again.
PS. I know I left out cameras like the F23, the Panavision Genesis and the like. They have lots of the same benefits of the RED but so far none of them shoot 4K.
Reader Comments (5)
Steve, you should know that Red is not really 4K. Even though the files written to each card have 4000 pixels. That's not the actually resolution you are getting from the sensor. There is also a host of other reliability issues with the Red camera that have not yet been worked out. I saw a comparison with a Sony F900R which showed more actual resolution and latitude using standard HDcam.
The only true 4K cameras available for this industry right now are from DALSA. Which have far greater actual resolution and dynamic range to everything else. I saw one last month while I was in London, I don't think anything else, including film, comes close.
This is true, no single chip camera has the the true "resolution" as the physical pixels on the chip. This is because single chip systems use a Bayer pattern or something similar to separate the different colors of light. The true optical 'resolution' of the RED is about 3.2k, but by this same token a 24 megapixel dslr is actually less.
However, due to smart interpolation of the RAW data you can generate a more than acceptable 4k image. Just like you can print 24 megapixel images from a Canon Mark III. This is not really an issue though because 90% of the time you will be downsampling to HD or 2k with the RED. Red just gives you an oversampled master.
The sony F900R most definitely does not have more actual resolution than the RED. If you down sample a RED image to 1920x1080 I think you will see that the RED will produce a cleaner image -- its just physics. As far as dynamic range, I lot of people misunderstood how to expose the RED and ended up over exposing. To fix this RED released the REDspace colorspace which makes shooting the red more similar to other video camera. As far as other reliability issues, I saw none.
The dalsa is as much a 4k camera as the RED. If it is shooting to a single chip, then it must be doing some kind of debayer process which loses some resolution. The big difference between the RED and the Dalsa are the size, the cost and the workflow. The Dalsa is huge, costly and generates incredibly big files compared to the RED because the red uses a wavelet compression scheme. Dalsa may be a better camera, I dont know. I just dont expect to see it in the hands of the masses anytime soon.
Well I saw a even-handed demo of 35mm film, the F900R and the Red. I would say that clearly was also the rank for performance. Film is still ahead by a wide margin.
It is true that the Red is cheap. A camera hire in the UK is only 300-400/day
Take a look at this video. Every time they cut to the Red, the Sony HDV camera looks sharper.
http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/reviews/index.cfm?reviewId=103680
Do you know about the Phantom65 4K camera?
I would be interested to see this demo. I have worked with F900s alot (not R though) and I find it hard to believe that a 1080p, non raw recording camera could be better than the red. Did they process the RED raw before they compared the footage? Did you see any over exposure in the red? If so I really think this would be due to shooting wrong. What camera build were they using? With older builds it was easy to key your exposure too high due to how people were interpreting the monitor.
Of course the sony looks sharper, but 'sharpness' is one of those video qualities that we have bee trying to get away from. Also, the people in the video review did not process the footage correctly, it looks bad. Have you seen the trailer for 'knowing'? it was shot 100% on Red.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/knowing/hd/
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