DynamicRange
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First Red Dragon 6K footage shown, boasts three more stops DR (video)
After a considerable delay from its slated late 2012 release date, the 6K Red Dragon sensor is finally ready -- and it seems to have been worth the wait. The first test footage (after the break) has come from cinematographer and Red booster Mark Toia, who stress-tested it in difficult conditions like high contrast daylight and dark night scenes. Afterwards, he said the camera has three more f-stops of dynamic range than the MX-equipped Epic and thinks the new sensor brings the "best highlight falloff I've ever seen from any digital camera," including Sony's $65,000 CineAlta F65 4K model. Though Red put on a show of upgrading Epic and Epic-X cameras with Dragon earlier this spring, the company recently said that deliveries would start in September. Meanwhile, Dragon equipped cameras are in the hands of other notable DPs and directors too, like Peter Jackson, Michael Bay and Darius Woski -- meaning you can likely expect a deluge of Dragon eye-candy over the coming weeks.
Sony: 4K isn't just about the resolution
With M. Night Shyamalan already shooting his next movie -- After Earth -- on the F65 4K camera, Sony's PR machine is going all out to assuage remaining doubters in the film industry. One of the more curious aspects of the awareness campaign is that it doesn't focus solely on the exorbitant resolution -- in fact, it gives almost equal weight to other visual promises that Sony hopes will persuade producers, directors and cinematographers to make the leap before anyone else does. What might those eyeball treats be? Philippe Ros, a DoP hired by Sony to shoot a 4K promo film, put it succinctly at a showing we attended in London this week: "Only the first row in the cinema may notice the resolution, but I'm more interested in the colors than in the 4K." According to Ros, every terabyte that floods out of the F65 per hour of filming contains color and dynamic range info way beyond what you normally get when shooting digital. The end result? Crews on the ground can relax just that little bit more, knowing that any mundane-looking scenes can be given far greater impact later. Now, even bearing in mind that Ros couldn't have said anything bad about 4K without things getting awkward, it's still interesting that he admits to being skeptical of the resolution itself. But if others on independent shoots discover the same post-production flexibility that he did, then the push for 4K might come from filmmakers rather than those further down the food chain.
High dynamic range gets trumpeted once more
Much like SED, OLED and Laser TV technologies, high dynamic range has been lingering in the background for what seems like ages, but a new writeup over at Sound & Vision is bringing it back (at least partially) into the spotlight. Reportedly, Dolby -- which purchased BrightSide Technologies earlier this year -- will be making some sort of announcement about the tech at CES, but judging by current estimates, we won't see sets based on HDR for "two or three years." For those who've forgotten what the fuss is all about, high dynamic range is purportedly able to offer whites whiter than white and blacks darker than anything else out there, but such luxuries aren't apt to come cheap for early adopters. Dolby refused to cough up an estimated price range for the first retail models, but who knows, maybe we'll learn a touch more about all of this in just a few weeks.
