West Post Digital Press
RED V HDDSLR: The Shoot Out
There's a shoot out happening, but not at the OK Corral or anything. This one is a rough and tumble match-up between two camera systems: RED, and the High Def DSLR family of cameras, generally represented by Canon's 5DmkII.
Jim Jannard, founder of OAKLEY, and the force behind RED cameras, recently fired off a shot. As quoted in Vincent Laforet's blog:
“I fully expect the DSLR mfgs to get it right at some point. Make a non-line-skipping 4K camera. At that point, the difference will be RAW 5K and 6K vs. whatever they make. Until then, a line-skipping 1080P camera is just not in the running for a pro camera. Can you make OK images with a line-skipping 1080P camera? Sure. Should you be embarrassed? Yes. We are not in that business."
"Them's fighting words," as a cowboy said on one movie or another. They sounded harsh to some ears, but Jannard later posted a follow up that reasserted the notion that DSLRs have a way to go and RED is simply the best. Lots of people agree with him.
Vincent Laforet, for one, is impressed with the Red Mysterium X and the RED EPIC. Then again, while the specs are amazing, the high price and sometimes limited availability of the RED line has been giving some shooters a headache. Jannard addressed some of these gripes in the RED user forum, writing that "I would bet that no company in any industry cares more about their customers than RED does."
Why all the fuss? People love RED but they are getting good results with the Canon HDDSLRs too, and that that camera system is way less expensive.
As Vincent writes in his blog, "Line-skipping is now the only major technical drawback standing in the way of Canon HDDSLRs being used to their fullest potential. I can work with the compression and all of the other well documented challenges that are inherent with HDDSLRs - line skipping is the only one I don’t have a solution to at this point. On some projects I can’t use the HDDSLRs at all (for example - one with lots of buildings (with bricks or sharp lines) in the background, lots of detail, or for example shooting a video on black and white tiles could be a potential headache."
Line skipping aside, the Canon gear has turned the world upside down. Listen to Peter Chang, who shot a series called Lightscapes that that has been released on Discovery HD. He shot timelapse stills on the Canon 5D Mark II and real-time cinematography on the RED One.
"We captured the timelapse sequences on the Canon 5D Mark II at 5.6K RAW - more than ten times the resolution of standard 1920×1080 HD and near IMAX quality. For the real-time cinematography, the Red One at 4K RAW came closest to matching that. Using Canon L lenses on both allowed us to maintain a consistent look - it was a great pairing. Combined with a RAW work flow to allow for maximum color precision throughout the post-production chain, shooting Lightscapes on the Red camera offers viewers the ultimate in high end motion imagery to match the fantastic low light stills capability of the Canon 5D Mark II, and renders a state-of-the-art presentation that is future-proof in its ability to be screened in 4K when the viewing technology is widespread enough."
Peter told us about an article he posted to DSLR News Shooter that has lots of technical details, if you want more.
Canon's 5D MKII is certainly a game-changer when it comes to timelapse work, and Peter Chang was inspired by a film called Baraka, a 1992 timelapse documentary that set the standard for many filmmakers.
So who wins this image acquisition "shootout?" The best thing anybody can tell you is to match the right camera to the job. "There's no one camera that is right for everyone," as Vincent Laforet says.
For timelapse work, a HDSLR package is lightweight and location friendly, but for real-time cinematography, it's hard to beat RED's quality if you have the bucks. It's really a choice between really great and really, really great. All life's choices should be so easy.
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