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First flight of the Red Dragon

Discussion in 'MōVI Showcase (Photo/Video)' started by Tabb Firchau, Feb 5, 2014.

  1. Tabb Firchau

    Tabb Firchau Administrator
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    Posted this over on Reduser but wanted to share here as well.

    I got the email from Fedex on Thursday saying our Dragon had shipped and would be arriving on Friday. We have all been super excited to get our hands on this beast and see how well it can hide our inadequacies as operators. Dragon arrived Friday night just in time for happy hour and for everyone to fawn over it. I woke up at the crack of dawn saturday morning to prep our octocopter to fly the dragon. Saturday lunchtime it was ready to fly but the weather had turned and was drizzling. We lucked out and caught a beautiful break in the weather just at sunset and grabbed 2 quick flights.

    My thoughts from this initial outing were:

    1. Wow - I have no idea about best practices with Dragon! I have no idea what compression ratios you can get away with, how to expose properly, etc. I have lots to learn and would love feedback from other Dragon shooters as to what is working well and tips / tricks you have learned

    2. Beautiful dynamic range - We had no iris motor installed for this flight so I had to try and find a compromise between the very dark shadows down on the pond and very hot sunset. I was probably a stop or more off where I should have been but the Dragon handled it very nicely.

    3. I still can't believe we can have this kind of resolution, dynamic range, and image quality in a ~5lb package that I can fly on my toy helicopter. I dreamed of this stuff 10 years ago flying big helicopters and now it exists Just incredible!

    4. Specs for these clips: 6K 60FPS | 180 degree shutter | Tokina 11-16 | 13:1 compression | All footage played back realtime | small tweaks to the curves for color | - I have lots to learn on extracting the most out of the Dragon!

    Hope you enjoy this quick test video - and thanks to Ben MacDougall for the music



    Tabb
     
  2. Sam Fleishman

    Sam Fleishman Member

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    First thing I would do with a fresh out of the box red dragon is dangle it 2 feet over a pond ;) Very Beautiful Tabb! Some slick moves there.
     
  3. Patrick Thompson

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    Sold.

    Looks great. REDLAB in Toronto just had an Alexa/Epic/Dragon shootout; the results were pretty impressive for the Epic, even when outputted on a 180" 2k screen.

    Thanks for posting this.
     
  4. Drew Kachurak

    Drew Kachurak Member

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    Looks great Tabb! Can't wait to see your results after getting her fine-tuned!
     
  5. Dave King

    Dave King Well-Known Member

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    Very nice! I assume that the Dragon has HDRX where you can record a secondary track and expose a few steps lower. I can only imagine what the data rates are on that per second at 6K/60p.
     
  6. Gary Haynes

    Gary Haynes Administrator
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    Patrick have you got a link to the review from Redlab?
     
  7. Patrick Thompson

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    [​IMG]Hey Gary,

    The REDLAB test was an invite only function, in their master colouring suite. DOP Jason George was asked by Redlab partner Vinny Borrison to shoot a variety of real world tests, i.e. no colour charts etc, and then invited roughly 30 local shooters in for a review & discussion over pints. The lead colourist, Walter Bijan, matched everything and cued through all the scenes at 2k.

    I'll have him pull some comparison stills from the session for review.

    PT
     
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  8. Jason Herring

    Jason Herring Member

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    Tabb,
    What copter are you flying the new camera with, what flight times are you getting?
     
  9. Wayne Mann

    Wayne Mann Member

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    Looks beautiful Tabb. I wish I could help with the camera settings, but I am also lost with that camera. I spent two nights last week in New Orleans flying a Dragon over the Mississippi river and sunsets in the swamps. No stress what so ever.:)


    Wayne
     
  10. Augusto Alves da Silva

    Augusto Alves da Silva Active Member

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    Hi Tabb:

    I have the same rig Cinestar 8 and would like to know what flight times are you achieving with the RED...did you have a follow focus? Are you using the 5S batteries?

    Thank you

    Augusto
     

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