RED One #954 is ready to roll.......

Afectionately known as "Deep C" my ordered RED One Digital Cinema Camera is now ready for shipping. Its been a long wait but now worth it. Whilst I have paid for the beast I won't be collecting it until April as I will actually be collecting two units as opposed to one and have to wait for the second to be finished. Man thats gonna be a head turner when she's all decked out. It sure decked my bank balance too though......

Will keep you all informed as to the progress, with piccies for sure.

Cheers,

Mark.

Well cool Marky me old mate...

Hope it does all you want it to and more !!!!

Looking forward to seeing the footage when they make a 4K screen i can afford...

Dive safe

DeanB

Cheers me old Skipjack Knacker Flap, me hopes it performs too......

Be well ye fair traveler.

Mark.

congrats mate, I'm sure your gonna be stoked! What lenses are you going to use?

J

Lets talk english ya?!!?!? Bloody southerners ruining the language and Dean as well....

Mark, can't wait to see some results!

Jonny, using an adapter made by a company called Birger Engineering I will be using Canon EF-S lenses. They will cover the full 4k sensor and also allow me to buy more glass for my Canon DSLR. Just got the 400D but looking to upgrade sometime within six months.

Mike, will be happy to share once I can get the damn thing wet.

Mind you, I've just parted with most of my 'happy tokens' so time to get some work done.....the only way is up.

Cheers,

Mark.

I hope this hasn't been posted here already..

I've been eager to see some U/W footage to and came across a one clip in case anyone is interested. I believe the footage was shot by Kenneth Corben - not sure of the housing/port/lens info..

1080p Version (recommend right-click and save-as)

[Edit] Found more info here.

Not bad.... although if this guys was a pro you would think he would clean his glass first. Look at the top of the screen when the large clip is playing.

For a large setup he is pretty wobbly as well.

Mmm if only I had the bucks.....

Ah - Interesting - hadn't noticed that the first time. I would think that based on the focus these would have been blemishes on the actual 18-50 zoom lens? Yeah, I would think it I were taking a $$$$$ setup like this u/w I would have spotless optics!!!

I'm guessing the surge/depth may have contributed to the wobblyness (especially if the diver was more concerned with his super expensive toy then getting his trim correct in that DUI drysuit ) Also - from the looks of this first housing, I'm not sure how well balanced it is (it looks pretty basic from the pics on the referenced thread.)

I'm a little confused of the references in the thread regarding using the "new paradigm" of shooting RAW. They claimed that white balance was not an option (assuming grading would be done later?) and therefore no control for WB was needed. WHAT??? I've have reviewed some of the RAW RED footage (which looks like really stepped down footage) compared to the CC footage, and the color looks great.

This being said, I'm jealous as @#*% of these guys!!!!

I dive california every week and in those shots there is almost no surge, you can tell by watching the kelp. I hate to bring the rain but I've worked with real RED footage from a shoot in Dubai(not like it makes a difference just makes me feel that much cooler) in FCP and had nothing but problems. So far it's been short of a nightmare, I really hope they fix these compatibility issues soon. Good luck with your new setup when you get it, just be prepared that not everything will work flawlessly, or at all. All in all though the footage looks really good and if I could afford one I'd jump all over it. Well, at least the next version comes out.

Billy

C'mon now. The surge is there - the kelp would not be moving at all otherwise. The current can be seen as well. Not drastic (definately not your average Laguna Beach shore dive), but can still affect your footage. (try filming a macro critter on a kelp leaf at 15' off Catalina and tell me there's no surge!)

Truth be told, I'm not impressed with the quality of the footage. Maybe this RAW footage looked great in 4K, but there's no way this can be dropped into a timeline without grading. I'd really like to see some cleaned-up footage.

As far as compatability/workflow etc. - sure reminds me of the begining of (pre)HDV with the JVC HD1/HD10.

Wow that's a blast from the past. Ken released that clip about 5 months ago. Speaking of which, Gates should have some stuff from last year's test with Howard Hall in Indonesia.

Billy

Red just shipped about 7 mths ago. Teething problems are to be expected with new codecs and workflows. Especially since there are only 900 cameras out there vs thousands of XDCAM HD etc. Look at the simple mt2 support. STILL missing after being announced a year ago. The problem is shooting in 4k hits a lot of the limitations of FCP. Then you have the TC proxy problems with QT and other NLE. At least DPX files sorta work

Ken is a professional and has been shooting film for years. We spent months together in S. Africa filming White Sharks, Tigers, Bull Sharks, etc. If there is a wobbly spot then I'm sure it would be there regardless of whomever was shooting it, that's probably also some of the first ever footage that was shot with the camera housing combination. I'm sure that they're still tweaking the housings and optics on the prototype housing for weighting, balance, optical ports. Mike's working on getting a glass port for the housing, right now they're using plastic I think.

As with anything new, there are always things to work out with underwater camera systems, optics, etc.

I wish Ken the best in shooting with his RED. He was one of the first people to shoot UW with RED.

And congratulations Cam Diver on your new RED. I'm sure we'll meet each other sometime in the future. Say hi to Mark for me.

Wow that's a blast from the past. Ken released that clip about 5 months ago. Speaking of which, Gates should have some stuff from last year's test with Howard Hall in Indonesia.

Billy

Red just shipped about 7 mths ago. Teething problems are to be expected with new codecs and workflows. Especially since there are only 900 cameras out there vs thousands of XDCAM HD etc. Look at the simple mt2 support. STILL missing after being announced a year ago. The problem is shooting in 4k hits a lot of the limitations of FCP. Then you have the TC proxy problems with QT and other NLE. At least DPX files sorta work

Drew I totally agree, I just wish these people would release their equipment and accompanying software when it's ready. I'm not saying that it should be perfect, just not nearly this buggy. IMO the amount of problems that people are having with a camera this expensive is unacceptable and it probably should not have hit the market for another year. It's costing the customers loads of unplanned money and time to go through these issues and some to no avail. Just my $0.005

Billy

C'mon now. The surge is there - the kelp would not be moving at all otherwise. The current can be seen as well. Not drastic (definately not your average Laguna Beach shore dive), but can still affect your footage. (try filming a macro critter on a kelp leaf at 15' off Catalina and tell me there's no surge!)

 

Truth be told, I'm not impressed with the quality of the footage. Maybe this RAW footage looked great in 4K, but there's no way this can be dropped into a timeline without grading. I'd really like to see some cleaned-up footage.

 

As far as compatability/workflow etc. - sure reminds me of the begining of (pre)HDV with the JVC HD1/HD10.

I must be missing something because I don't see any surge at all and the kelp looks to be almost completely vertical, I can't remember the last time I was on such a beautiful dive out here. But I doubt I couldn't do any better though so I guess I shouldn't be commenting on the more than perfect conditions.

And there are still issues with HDV, that's why I won't work with it. Especially 720 which is the highest res that the JVC will output. I'll take DV 24P footage over HDV footage any day.

Billy

Billy, Red did its job by releasing the Red codec to Apple. Apple screwed it up with QT 7.4.X and a lack of a definitive workflow.When I was working with Red Code in 4k on FCP 6, we got it to work but had trouble with time code and proxies and couldn't use Color (2k max) and other programs. A bit of a drag.

We then moved over to Scratch and it was easier to work with. It's windoze but Red Raw 4k works pretty well with it.

Hey Frazier,

I'll be sure to pass on your words to Ken. I will be shooting Tigers with him and RED next month here in Aliwal.

Cheers,

mark.

P.S Thanks for the email.

Obviously there are some serious issues with quicktime, my fully loaded MacPro had issues where FCP would shut down if I tried to access any proxy file and quicktime would do the same even with the downgraded version. My buddy had to erase every component compressor has and then reinstall it to even be able to export. I agree that there were issues on apple's part but that's the type of stuff that IMO deems it not ready for release. Apple seems to not want to conform to anyone and that obviously has to be taken into consideration as well. For 9 months I was running Avid off of a separate OS on a separate internal drive because it wasn't compatible with the newest tiger update. But that's a totally different issue. I'm not quite sure what happened in Dubai but they also said that they had some serious operating issues with the camera too. Read the Dead Red thread(hahahaha) on the Red User forum, you might think differently about it's worthiness of release. Sorry to be the skeptic, but I'm also a 35mm fanatic and after hearing accusations of the Red taking out 35mm, instantly I wasn't a fan.

Billy

Billy, Red did its job by releasing the Red codec to Apple. Apple screwed it up with QT 7.4.X and a lack of a definitive workflow.When I was working with Red Code in 4k on FCP 6, we got it to work but had trouble with time code and proxies and couldn't use Color (2k max) and other programs. A bit of a drag.

We then moved over to Scratch and it was easier to work with. It's windoze but Red Raw 4k works pretty well with it.

I can't remember the last time I was on such a beautiful dive out here. But I doubt I couldn't do any better though so I guess I shouldn't be commenting on the more than perfect conditions.

 

Billy

Yes, conditions have pretty much been horrible out here lately. I had some great conditions at Catalina a few weeks ago, but otherwise it's been pretty bad. Really hoping this weekend pans out (on the Seabass with the OCUPS).

Mark - D Day is approaching mate! I'm sure it will be a real success and make a few eyes pop out with amazement/envy/disbelief in no particular order once they see some of the images that you are going to capture from South Africa before you head off to pastures new (or old) wherever they may be!

Cheers, Simon