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Jumping the RED

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Those of you that know me can attest that I've been wanting to get the RED ONE 4K camera in the air for a long, long time. I currently make my living as a RED camera tech/DIT, so camera access was easy enough. It wasn't until Craig O'Brien got in touch with me that we were finally able to do it.

Craig made 5 jumps with the camera last week - with Sean MacCormac, Eli Thompson and myself [plus one jumper whose name I can't remember :$]as the subjects. The footage is freakin' sweet.

The camera body weighs about 10lbs, so flying it is lighter than an Arri 235 or similar 35mm film cameras. It's still huge, though.

For those that don't know, the RED ONE is a 4K digital cinema camera. Its sensor is the same size as motion picture film and it uses motion picture film lenses and camera accessories. Every frame that the camera shoots is 9.5 megapixels - roughly 4.5x the resolution of 1080p HD or 10.5x that of 720p HD. The dynamic range is a measured 11.3 stops - a little less than film, but significantly more than any other digital video/cinema camera you can strap to your head.

We shot using an 18mm prime lens [which would be equivalent to an 18mm lens using a 1.6x cropped Canon or a DX Nikon] at T16 with a 45 degree shutter.

I'll leave the discussion of the camera's freefall ergonomics to OB... I'm hardly one to comment.

Here is the whuffo cut of the footage I made for the RED camera forum. This clip is 1/16th the resolution of the original footage.

It was a fun day! Can't wait to do it again. Next time we'll use some wider lenses. We'll also shoot some 120fps footage to go along with it.

The attached pictures were taken by Eli Thompson. Thanks to everybody who was involved!
I really don't know what I'm talking about.

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Dude. Wow. Just managed to watch the video.

The quality is almost as outstanding as the flying ;)

That is some very good quality sky porn right there. VERY good.

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

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I know Greg was using a neck brace, I can not tell from the pictures if Craig was using one.

Greg has a long history of jumping heavy cameras. If you guys have never seen his Arri footage, its pretty neat. You can see how he tends to deploy with big format cameras. Probably not a recommended style for newbies :SArri Flex 235

-Trunk

HYPOXIC

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I know Greg was using a neck brace, I can not tell from the pictures if Craig was using one.

Greg has a long history of jumping heavy cameras. If you guys have never seen his Arri footage, its pretty neat. You can see how he tends to deploy with big format cameras. Probably not a recommended style for newbies :SArri Flex 235

-Trunk



All I can say is if you think the file in the link is good, you should see it full res.I've seen the full resolution version of that footage and all I can say is that it is unbelievable.
"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
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I'm sure this is a real newbie question but all I hear is the soundtrack and have a blank white screen. I have downloaded the latest version of quicktime. Any ideas?
I feel like Homer when he was waiting to go to the chilli cookout. :D Thanks

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I'm sure this is a real newbie question but all I hear is the soundtrack and have a blank white screen. I have downloaded the latest version of quicktime. Any ideas?
I feel like Homer when he was waiting to go to the chilli cookout. :D Thanks



You could always try installing the k-lite codec pack... always a good idea. I don't even have quicktime, I am watching it in WMP after installing the pack.

At least you don't feel like Homer AFTER the chili cookoff. :P
www.WingsuitPhotos.com

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Those of you that know me can attest that I've been wanting to get the RED ONE 4K camera in the air for a long, long time. I currently make my living as a RED camera tech/DIT, so camera access was easy enough. It wasn't until Craig O'Brien got in touch with me that we were finally able to do it.

If this is merely 1/16th the resolution, the full resolution is probably better quality than some of the footage they had to blow up to IMAX for "Adrenaline Rush". I bet the 4xHDTV (4096x2048p or 4520x2540p, which RED is capable of) footage that you captured is absolutely stunning! The lens would probably be a limiting factor, as that's a pretty small lens for 4520x2540p video.

Can't wait to see portions of this stuff filter down to compacts. (well, except for the lens -- that's always gonna be expensive). Even the lowly new Sanyo Xacti HD1010 can continuously take 7 frames per second of full quality 4 megapixel JPG images, only slightly 3 times more speed and you can take 24fps of full quality JPG's, full film rate motion. It won't be nearly as good, but I'd love to see a consumer HD camera that takes video with each image as good as a full-resolution still taken from the camera.

120fps footage should be fun to try. One can tell the difference in 60fps versus 120fps for fast action stuff, such as some gaming material - my old NEC XG135 CRT projector (139lbs from 8 years ago!) was capable of 120Hz refresh rate, and I did some tests with that many years ago in the days I used to work in the home theater industry... Gaming tests were done at 640x480, as computing power wasn't high back then 8 years ago, and I did not have 60Hz versus 120Hz film-based material (nor the computer was capable of playing this at the time).

Exciting stuff to see -- it will be hard for consumers for a long time to get the full benefit of 12 megapixel video clips without making a film print.

Should make really amazing 1080p downconverts for Blu-Ray, should help maximize the sharpness that can be crammed onto Blu-Ray with the source material being well beyond Blu-Ray resolution, and the extra resolution allows the luxury of using a good downconversion algorithm that preserves as much sharpness as possible when downconverting to 1080p. (This is similiar to the situation where high quality 1080p masters are downconverted to 480p for DVD authoring, often end up looking much better than original 480p material that are mastered more directly to DVD.)

Hey, maybe see if you can make Blu-Ray's for sale, I'd like to buy a skydiving demo Blu-Ray from RED footage. If you have the camera long enough to fill one with good material! From tandems, to CRW, freefly, RW, and more. Maybe even a record attempt or the next Perris 100-way camp.

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Do note the RED shoots at 2K half res. when going for 100 fps framerates.

We shot a videoclip (including some high fps. underwaterstuff) with the RED, and the sheer size and quality of the footage makes it a joy to work with...

Would love to shoot some wingsuit footage with this babyB|

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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I'm sure this is a real newbie question but all I hear is the soundtrack and have a blank white screen. I have downloaded the latest version of quicktime. Any ideas?



Try VideoLAN. It will play almost anything you throw at it, without having to install extra codecs. Plus it has a bazillion features and is open source and free to boot!
Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

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sweeeet. I'm officially sold on HD formats.! Here is to hoping that the launch of Scarlet is without the issues of the Red One. I can totally see myself replacing my GL2 with one.
A dolor netus non dui aliquet, sagittis felis sodales, dolor sociis mauris, vel eu libero cras. Interdum at. Eget habitasse elementum est.

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If this is merely 1/16th the resolution, the full resolution is probably better quality than some of the footage they had to blow up to IMAX for "Adrenaline Rush". I bet the 4xHDTV (4096x2048p or 4520x2540p, which RED is capable of) footage that you captured is absolutely stunning! The lens would probably be a limiting factor, as that's a pretty small lens for 4520x2540p video.



While it was in the original spec, the RED cannot shoot 4.5K/2540p. As it stands, 4096x2304 is the maximum resolution of the camera. That resolution is roughly 5x HD or 4x 2K.

At those resolutions, lenses still resolve fairly well. A traditional 35mm negative will capture roughly the same amount of information as a digitally captured 4K file. A 4K scan of film is not enough to capture all of the information in a film negative [8K is a better scan figure], but since a digitally captured 4K file is devoid of any grain, the resolution is roughly the same.

That said, certain lenses behave better on film and certain lenses behave better on the RED. As it stands, the Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes are hands-down the sharpest lenses you can put on a RED. They're also fairly lightweight as far as cinema primes go... and they come in focal lengths as wide as 8mm. :)

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Hey, maybe see if you can make Blu-Ray's for sale, I'd like to buy a skydiving demo Blu-Ray from RED footage. If you have the camera long enough to fill one with good material! From tandems, to CRW, freefly, RW, and more. Maybe even a record attempt or the next Perris 100-way camp.



You never know... not a bad idea. I have a RED or 10 sitting at my place any day of the week, so any day Craig is up to it, I can provide a camera. 4K bigways... not a bad idea.

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Do note the RED shoots at 2K half res. when going for 100 fps framerates.

It's 1/4 res, to be a tech... :P
I really don't know what I'm talking about.

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