By site editor Dan Chung:
RED EPIC DRAGON – ITS THE REAL DEAL ! from Mark Toia on Vimeo.
DP Mark Toia has posted some stunning test footage from the much anticipated Dragon sensor. It is a $9500 US upgrade for the sensor in the Epic-Mysterium-X, has a 6K resolution and is said to have greater dynamic range than any other digital cinema camera on the market – which looks to be borne out by Toia’s testing. Availability is still unknown and there are many users waiting in line for the upgrade. Hopefully RED won’t keep them waiting too much longer. It seems like a new round has truly begun in the battle for supremacy in digital cinema – one wonders what Arri and Sony will do next?
Here is what Toia had to say in a post on Reduser: “The Red Dragon sensor has 3 F STOPS more than before. 1 in the highlights which rolls over wonderfully !, 2 solid extra stops in the darks…. maybe 3 once the colour science has been perfected.
“But there is still noise, but nothing like before. I ran some 250d 2k film rushes next some of my 4000asa stuff, And silly as it sounds, it looks like film grain, not noise. Don’t ask me how, as I wouldn’t have a clue. But it looks great!
“Red Dragon now has the best highlight fall off I have ever seen from any digital camera. Beating film! Big call I know, but after shooting film and pushing it around in telecine chains for more than a decade, I can categorically say that this new sensor has a better range than film ever had.
“Single still frames compared to a top of the line professional 35mm Digital stills cameras, I’m going to say that the EPIC matches, if not betters most. Don’t ask me how they do it, but every single frame from the DRAGON is 109meg !! @16bit when saved as a tiff from RCX. and at 100 Frames per second.”
Head over to Reduser to read Toia’s full report.
