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JP: Hi, this is JP Morgan.
Kenneth: And this is Kenneth Merrill [SP].
JP: And it's time for another camera review here on "The Slanted Lens."
Kenneth: We are going to compare raw stills from the Red EPIC-W 8K to the Sony a7R II.
JP: Pulled stills from the footage compared to the stills you shoot on the a7R II.
Louise: And why am I here?
JP: This is Louise Houghton [SP].
She's our wonderful model, beautiful lady who's gonna help us look good.
So let's get started and see what we can do.
Okay, we're back here at "The Slanted Lens," and we're ready to look at the findings we
got from that Red/a7R II comparison.
Kenneth: Yeah, I am super excited for this.
It's kind of a nerdy test, but I've been wanting to do it for a long time because Red's always
claimed that their cameras are built for stills as well as video.
And so the question is like how viable, I mean aside from the price and all of that...
JP: Yeah, aside from that simple thing.
Kenneth: …how viable is it to just use the camera as a stills camera?
JP: So the idea is, though, that you can shoot video and you can pull frames, and you get
a raw frame from the Red camera.
And so, how does that compare to a raw frame on the a7R II?
So let's look at…let's do the ISO test, start with that.
Kenneth: Yeah, so we did an ISO test, kind of like we do with a lot of the cameras.
And the first thing you're gonna notice, off the bat, is the Red is darker.
I'd say about a stop darker.
And I've heard that before.
I didn't want to push it around too much, but I've heard a lot of people say that the
ISO on Red's is darker than it is on a lot of other cameras.
JP: Well, that doesn't mean the ISO is darker.
It means the ISO is miscalculated.
Kenneth: The ISO is miscalculated.
In fact, I think in the new firmware they're coming out with, they're actually changing
it to be more accurate to whatever everyone else is.
JP: Because we did a meter reading off from a gray card, a spot meter reading off from
an 18% gray card.
So you're gonna get a meter reading that we set the cameras at.
It should give you straight up with an accurate [crosstalk].
Kenneth: It should be accurate.
And the exposure here is the same, same aperture, same shutter speed, same everything.
So it really is just the ISO is miscalculated.
JP: Yeah.
Boy, the color is very different, too, on this one.
Kenneth: That is also the first thing I noticed, too, is the color is a little more teal on
the...
JP: Well, the image was shot at teal.
We put a cyan gel on a fill light, and that fill light's filling in her shadows and throwing
in some cyan on the background.
Kenneth: It does look like she has a little more magenta in her skin tone though, too,
which...
JP: Yes, it does.
You're right.
Kenneth: On this one, it's a little more neutral on the Sony.
But anyways, so the ISO, I mean I would say the most interesting things we're gonna start
seeing are maybe at 800 ISO.
If you punch in here, honestly...
JP: It's pretty darn clean.
Kenneth: ...I can't see any noise on the a7R II.
JP: It's very clean, very clean, 800.
That's interesting.
I wouldn't have expected to see that on the…I thought the Sony would be starting to show
more gray at that point.
Kenneth: Sixteen hundred…
JP: Sixteen hundred, yeah.
Kenneth: …punch in again.
You start to see a little bit of texture in, like, the shadow areas around her face, and
the background, and stuff like that.
The key side is still super clean.
The Red, it's also really clean.
But it's also kind of hard to tell because I feel like this whole image should be a booster
to stop to bring it into perceptibility.
But I do have to say that this, the Red image is softer.
JP: It's a little softer.
Kenneth: And the megapixels, like the resolution on these cameras is pretty similar.
I think the Sony is like 50, or 41, 40, and the Red is 36 megapixels.
But the Red is noticeably softer.
JP: Yeah.
Well, it's a smaller sensor size too.
Kenneth: It's a smaller sensor size.
And it could be the…well, Red's famous for having like really strong low-pass filters
to get rid of any aliasing or anything like that, and so that tends to soften the actual
image.
JP: Which, for a video, makes a lot of sense.
It gives that kind of a dreamy film look, you know?
Kenneth: Right.
It takes some of the edge off.
JP: It doesn't feel quite so video.
But when we go to 3200...
Kenneth: The a7R II, I mean it looks good to my eye.
I don't know how this would print.
You'd definitely start to see, like, the blocking [crosstalk].
JP: You see it in the background.
You see it in her hairline here in the top where the shadows start to build.
Yeah, you just start seeing that building up.
That's what it looks like on the Red…well, wow.
Kenneth: The Red, you definitely start to see color, a lot of chroma noise.
JP: Yeah, chroma noise, especially in the background.
It has just more of a grain pattern to it, in the background on the Red versus the a7R
II, and that's at 3200.
Kenneth: The other thing that happens, too, with the Red, once you get up to the 64, is
it shifts, the color shifts.
JP: Yeah, the color did shift, whereas the Sony has not done that.
The Sony's been pretty consistent.
Kenneth: So, low light?
I mean I think, obviously, the Sony a7R II wins?
JP: Oh, absolutely.
Hands down.
Kenneth: For a cinema camera, I don't think the helium is much to laugh at.
I mean 3200 looked pretty good, and it's not bad.
But if you're gonna shoot stills, I think I would go with the Sony for low light.
JP: Good Idea.
No, definitely.
I mean ISO-wise, the Sonys hold up.
They really do.
Kenneth: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, dynamic range test.
JP: This test is always confusing to me a little bit.
But no, I mean I process the...
Kenneth: It's confusing to everybody.
I'm the only one that understands this test.
JP: Okay, at least you do.
Kenneth: Which means that maybe I'm just crazy.
JP: It was all that crazy man.
Crazy man Kenneth.
Kenneth: Kenneth and his crazy dynamic range tests.
So we did this one really simple, just over a couple stops, under a couple stops.
We didn't want to get too much into it.
So when we did the dynamic range test, we actually had to do it twice because the first
time we did it, kind of with the more contrast-y image, we, for some reason, shot both cameras
with ISO 800, because the Red's native ISO is 800 but the Sony's obviously isn't.
JP: Well, that's what we were set up light-wise.
It was just easy to do the a7R II and the Sony, and we realized the Sony is not a native…
Kenneth: It's gonna lose out.
JP: Yeah, it's gonna lose out in that deal because…but with the light we had, we were
only able to go back to 250 ISO.
So it still isn't ideal for the Sony.
We're still over the native ISO by a stop and a half.
But...
Kenneth: I would say it's more fair than it would have been.
JP: Absolutely.
Absolutely, much more.
But looking at the…it was very clean.
The a7R II is very clean, you know?
Kenneth: Over two stops, under two stops, both look great to me.
JP: Easy to pull 'em back when I'm in raw.
It was very easy to get them correct.
You know, a little bit of color shift in both those, a little bit, but not terrible.
Kenneth: It did fall apart kinda when you pushed it too hard with overexposure.
JP: Four stops, I couldn't recover it.
The highlights are gone.
And you get this…you know, the skin on her face just is overdone.
Kenneth: Well, what that tells me is, you know, if you're gonna shoot with a Sony, then
you wanna protect the highlights because we saw it from the ISO test and stuff, it does
really well with shadows.
I think you can push it pretty hard.
So if you kinda protect to those reflections, protect the highlights on the face or whatever,
then you can push it up the way you need to, post.
JP: The reality is, and that's what I always…well, go ahead.
The Red...
Kenneth: The reality is just properly expose it.
JP: Well, the reality is if two stops is pretty darn forgiving, that's a four-stop range you
can hit something, which is pretty amazing.
Kenneth: Absolutely.
JP: Outside of that, you know, you've really missed it.
Kenneth: Yeah.
And the point of this isn't to show like, "Oh, it doesn't matter what you expose for."
It's just trying to say, you know, "Oh, well, that window, if that window's in the shot,
it's not gonna be recoverable," or, "It will be," you know, that's what we wanna know.
So we go to the Red here.
Of course, the image, again, is a little underexposed to my eye.
JP: A little bit.
Kenneth: So this is the native ISO test for the Red.
It's…
JP: Eight hundred.
Kenneth: …800 ISO.
Minus two stops, bringing it back was no problem.
Again, it's a little dark.
Over two stops looks fine.
And this was surprising to me, over four stops looked fabulous, totally flawless.
JP: That's amazing because that's four stops, you have no problem.
Kenneth: I bet you can probably, maybe, even go up to five.
JP: I think you're right.
Kenneth: So, little different.
It seems like with the Red, you wanna feed it more light.
If you're gonna be shooting it 800 ISO or higher, definitely give it more light because
it's easier to pull.
I think it'll be easier to pull back the highlights than it will be to push out the shadows.
But of course, just expose properly.
JP: Of course.
Kenneth: All right.
So of course, the big difference here is that one is a cinema camera and the other is a
stills camera.
The point for me is, like, why would I use the Red to shoot stills?
JP: You know, that was the point of the test.
You know, is there advantage to running video and being able to pull these raw stills from
the video?
Is there an advantage?
Kenneth: Yeah, and I think there is.
If you're shooting a video, if you're shooting a commercial or something like that, the ability
to pull like a full resolution still frame from that is awesome.
But you do run into challenges.
JP: Major challenges.
Kenneth: And that's because when you shoot video, you shoot at 1/48 or 1/50 of a second,
which is not really enough to freeze any…it's not acceptable for a still image.
It's usually too soft.
So, we took some images.
We had the model just kind of posing, moving around.
This is when she actually paused for a second and she stood still, and you can still see
a little bit of motion blur in her face, and around her dress and stuff.
Anything that's moving is gonna blur.
JP: Well, I mean even people fidgeting, at a 50th of a second, you know…if she's leaning
forward, if she's twisting at all, you know, you're gonna start to lose it at a 50th of
a second.
Kenneth: I mean this shot, I really like this shot.
And it would have worked if we had shot it at 1/1000 of a second, her running her hands
through her hair.
But with this, it just turns into a blur.
JP: Just mush.
Kenneth: We didn't have too much light in the room, but we did a test where we did exposures
for 1/400, and that definitely helps.
You can see here she's swinging her jacket, and it kind of freezes most stuff.
She's throwing it over her shoulder, and it freezes it pretty well.
Her watch is blurry.
You know, some of her hair is a little bit blurry because it's moving.
JP: Well, that's because she's fairly still and she's throwing her hand, you know, and
so her body and her face are staying pretty, pretty still.
Kenneth: Really, to get a still image, you need to shoot at least, I would say, 1/1000
to really…if they're moving like this, 1/1000 of a second.
JP: If you wanna freeze 'em.
If you wanna freeze them.
So it doesn't really work if you're doing something in fashion where the person's really
moving around, it just doesn't work.
At that point, you just turn your video camera into a still camera because you've gotta jump
up to, you know, 1/1000 of a second shutter.
Kenneth: The video, at that shutter speed, is gonna look weird.
JP: Oh yeah, you can't use the video.
And so now, you gotta have a ton of light.
I mean my sense of this is why not just go to a strobe that's gonna have a very short
flash duration and it's going to freeze your action?
And you can shoot as fast as…you know, you can shoot 8 to 10 frames a second easily on
some strobe platforms.
Kenneth: And that's another thing, too, is at 1/1000 of a second on the [inaudible 00:11:37]
camera, I mean you need a lot of light.
And because it has a rolling shutter, you can't use strobes.
So you're gonna have to have 4Ks or 10Ks on your set to give you enough light to shoot
that.
I don't know, I guess I have heard of people doing this, I have heard of people bringing
Red into the studio and setting up huge continuous lights and shooting fashion and they'll shoot
30 frames a second.
I actually watched a video the other day where a guy talked about how he loved it because,
you know, he can be shooting his subject and he has it on a pre-record.
He has a 30-second buffer on this camera, so he'll just stand there and when something
happens that he likes, he'll just hit record and it'll capture everything from the last
30 seconds.
And then, of course, until he stops.
I guess there is a cool workflow.
If you're the kind of person that wants the exact right moment...
JP: Well, you certainly have that option because you got, you know…you can look at each frame.
Kenneth: You have 20, 24 of those per second, so that makes sense.
But personally, I think I would…it's a lot of trouble.
JP: It's a lot of trouble, I think.
And I think you can get strobes that are gonna give you something pretty darn close to that,
pretty darn close.
Kenneth: And based on what we've seen from the other tests, you know, the ISO and the
dynamic range and stuff, I don't know that there's like a huge advantage of the sensor
itself over, you know, your Sonys or your Nikons.
JP: So if we put these things, raw images, side-by-side, at 1/50 of a second, you know,
where's…
Kenneth: How do they compare?
JP: How do they compare?
Kenneth: In general.
JP: In general, yeah.
Because this video, you're pulling raw image, you're looking at raw image off from a still
camera.
How do those two compare?
Kenneth: I mean I think, obviously, like we said before, the Red is much less sharp overall…
JP: It is.
Kenneth: …probably because it's a low-pass filter.
It could've been the lens.
We did have a 35mm on mine, a 45mm on yours.
They were a different lens, but both cameras, both probably, very similar.
JP: Both cameras, both same generation, you know so like they've gotta be pretty similar.
Kenneth: I'm not surprised if Sony's sharper.
JP: Me either.
Kenneth: Honestly, because just the way that those sensors are designed is much more stills-friendly.
Whereas, I think it is okay to have a little bit of a softer image in cinema.
I actually prefer it.
Other differences, I personally really like the tonality of the Red.
I mean they both look nice.
It feels like there are a little bit stronger colors in the Red.
I mean, of course, its raw, you can bring out whatever you want.
You can change the background and make it pink, but...
JP: Yeah.
The latitude's so incredible.
But I think you're right.
I think the Sony has a tendency to be a little bit…a little greenish.
Kenneth: Yeah, a little greenish.
JP: A little bit, which is not necessarily bad.
[crosstalk] Yeah, more neutral, whereas others have more of a reddish tint to them, or a
magenta.
Kenneth: Honestly, at this point, you're looking at two raw images from two great cameras.
It comes down to like, what's your flavor, you know?
JP: Yeah.
Well, my sense of it is is that you use a still camera to shoot stills and you use a
video camera to shoot video.
Kenneth: I think that's definitely the conclusion here.
JP: Yeah.
To think you can do both those for the same camera, the same set up, I think is crazy.
I mean I have, though, however…and you and I have worked on a lot of stuff together.
It's like I've started to shoot in light a whole lot more with continuous light than
strobes, even though I may switch back and forth, you know, because it's just…or I
do this…I love this.
I just pop in a strobe light just to give me a little bit of a highlight and use the
continuous light that's there, and that's just kind of a compromise.
It's a easy set up, a quick turnover to change up to a stills set up without lighting everything,
but using the continuous light that's there.
Kenneth: And it is nice to be able to pull frames from your footage, you know, rather
than shooting on like a 2K camera, which those frames can't be blown up very big, you know.
Sometimes clients want stuff to put on their website or print and put on the wall.
It is nice.
JP: I think if you're going to have a situation…you always need to shoot stills on everything
you do, even if you're doing video, and if you don't have a still camera, then shoot
video like stills.
Get the person to just stop, look at the camera, smile.
Kenneth: Get a good thumbnail.
JP: Now you can pull images from that and you'll be able to use that as a thumbnail,
and it makes a huge difference.
Kenneth: Well, this was interesting.
JP: It was interesting.
I thought it was fun.
Yeah.
There you go.
Keep those cameras rolling.
Keep on clicking.
Oh, I did the whole thing.
Kenneth: Why did you do that?
JP: Oh, I don't know.
Kenneth: Steal my thunder.
JP: I'm so used to it.
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