Beyond HD

Playing with RED test footage in REDcineX

I've been playing around with some RED test footage lately. RED has recently released their new Epic camera into the wild, and I'm curious to learn more about this type of imaging technology. To give you an idea of what this camera is capable of:

5K resolution - The epic features a massive 14 megapixels of resolution (5120 x 2700 pixels). Do we really need that many megapixels? Depends on who you ask. I've often found that, in order to get a nice, crisp high definition look, you need to start off with a higher resolution than what your output is going to be. It also leaves some room for cropping in post.

Shooting RAW - Imagine being able to color grade your footage with the same ease as editing a RAW photo in Aperture or Lightroom. In fact, each frame of video footage on the Epic is in effect a RAW photo. All this power comes at a price of course, in the form of huge file sizes.

Flexible frame rates - Up to 120 frames per second, for epic (pardon the pun) slow motion shots.

High dynamic range - The Epic has a built-in HDR more, in which a second, shorter exposure is made for each frame, increasing the available dynamic range.

Modular - The Epic is not so much a camera, it's a modular system. At it's core is the "brain" as RED calls it, in essence a box with a sensor in it. You can attach all sorts of storage, power, monitoring and other modules on the back and lenses on the front of the brain. This makes it extremely flexible and versatile.

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Recording dual system audio outdoors or in noisy environments

Some time ago I found myself on a boat, capturing footage of whales off the beautiful coast of South Africa. In between shooting the whales (with the camera that is) I was trying to get some good shots of Jason, co-owner of Ivanhoe Sea Safaris, who was explaining all sorts of interesting facts about the whales.

I was using my trusty combo of Canon 5D mark II plus Zoom H4n to record some decent audio. I quickly found out however, as soon as there was some wind - which is all the time if you’re out at sea - or the engine started roaring, the audio from the in-camera mic quickly became unintelligible, making it a challenge to sync the audio with PluralEyes, or even manually.

If the H4n were mounted on the camera I could have easily fed it’s signal into the 5D's external mic input, but  I find that setup ergonomically cumbersome, plus the noise from focusing or merely touching the camera will be audible. So in this case my wife/assistant Brit was operating the H4n separately. Running an audio cable between two continuously moving people on a wobbly boat with other passengers moving around at the same time would not have been very practical, so afterwards I came up with a different solution.

The basic solution: wirelessly transmit the audio to the camera

Using my Sennheiser wireless kit, it’s possible to transmit the signal from the H4n to the 5D, giving you a nice clean in-camera audio signal for syncing in post. This setup works for any noisy or windy environment, where the camera's built-in mic might not alway be able to capture enough of the dialog or interview audio.

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