GO RAW

When the Red was first announced, one of the biggest breakthroughs it proposed was the ability to deliver RAW, uncolored-corrected, “nothing-baked-in”, images directly off the sensor ( much the same way a DSLR works ).  This remains one of the most powerful tools in the Red arsenal and one of the things ( along with a 35mm sized sensor ) that separates it from a traditional video camera.

But it created an unforseen problem ; if you don't know what you're looking at, raw images can be scary.  Raw looks very very very flat in its uncorrected state.  It can be hard to look at on set, especially for someone who has to make critical decision about other things than exposure ( like production design ).  So Red included preview LUTs, ways of non-destructively previewing the corrected image in different ways.  I don't blame people for wanting to look at something other than RAW on a day to day basis.  With one caveat : the knowledge that those preview LUTs are going to be thrown away.

Over time, some confusion has gathered about this.  Some people are starting to light and finish their projects with one of these preview LUTs baked in, especially REDSPACE.  This takes away one of the most powerful features of the Red and closes the gap between it and a video camera.  My respectful suggestion : Shoot RAW, post RAW.  Here's why :
( These images are from the film Two Birds, shot by Chapin Hall )

RAW ( w/ 2.2 gamma )

This is what the camera saw on the day of photography, with 2.2 gamma applied to make it viewable.  You can see that the sensor was properly exposed, nothing is clipped or crushed.

GRADED FINAL

The DP wanted to achieve a naturalistic, somewhat low-con look for the film, this is where we took it in the DI.

REDSPACE

This is what the DP would have seen on the exact same image if, on-set, he had looked at it through REDSPACE.  Notice how much brighter, more contrasty and more saturated it is than what we ended up doing in the DI.  If all I saw was this on-set, I'd be worried.  I would feel that we were over-exposed and that we had missed the mark on the intended low-con, naturalistic look.  In reality, there was nothing wrong with the image, it was only the distortion REDSPACE was adding that didn't actually exist in the negative.

Here's a different scenario, same principle :

RAW ( w/ 2.2 gamma )

This is what the camera actually recorded, again with 2.2 gamma applied to make it viewable.  Notice how red it is.  This is another important point.  By looking at the RAW on-set, the DP could see exactly how the sonsor was interpreting the color temp of his light.  Fortunately, this was intentional :

GRADED FINAL

The DP intended this scene to have a kind of straw, yellowish cast.  This image came out as expected.

REDSPACE

But if he had been solely monitoring REDSPACE on-set and had baked-in REDSPACE in post, we would have thought that the look went way too far and would have had a difficult time pulling it back in the DI.  Again, this is not an accurate representation of what was shot.

I realize you have to look at something on-set.  If RAW is too confusing to the crew, try REDSPACE or one of the other LUTs, knowing that it is not an accurate representation of the image that you are shooting or what is going to come down the line in final color.  Also, I strongly urge you not to “bake-in” any color space conversion into your footage before color correction.  It will severely limit what you can do in the DI.  In our experience, footage the is lit under RAW and graded from the RAW negative, tends to be much more organic, naturalistic, and film-like.  You will be happier with the images at the end of the day.

One last note.  A few people brought it to my attention that my "RAW" images are being viewed on-set and in our DI in 2.2 gamma.  They are correct.  The red and our Scratch add a 2.2 gamma curve to the "RAW" funciton to make it easier to see all the information.  "What the camera actually saw" is too dark without a 2.2 gamma curve to be able to determine anything about.  We still feel that this is a more accurate and informative way to look at what the sensor recorded than any other option.

THE SWEET SPOT IN THE NEGATIVE

Our four-part series dissecting the RED raw image is presented in order of, what I consider, importance.  I believe the second most important ( and sometimes misunderstood ) area is to not only exposing the image correctly, but hitting the sweet spot in the negative.

Again, I'm not going to tell a DP how to light, how to expose, or how many stops over or under they should be.  I'm only going to offer some thoughts on what has helped us create good looking images from the RED.

There is a clear difference between “what the camera is capable of” and “hitting the sweet spot”.  And you don't always want to hit the sweet spot.  Sometimes you're going for a very specific look and you want to intentionally overexpose the negative, or whatever else.  But most of the time, you are trying to create a well exposed, organic, film-like image with little grain and not too many blown out highlights.

Below are some grabs from a film shot by Ben Kufrin.  We did tests on this film before they shot and helped show them the ideal range to expose within.  I was very impressed with the results, its spot on.  I use these grabs as an example of a kind of negative I consider a perfect RED exposure.  I've posted the corresponding waveform readings and histogram of the raw negative.

RAW

WAVEFORM OF RAW

GRADED

RAW

WAVEFORM OF RAW

GRADED

RAW

WAVEFORM OF RAW

GRADED

These represent what I consider the sweet spot of the negative.  Notice anything?  The RAW's seem a little dark, don't they?  Thats a good thing.

If you're trying to achieve the most organic, rich image with the RED, its important to watch your high end very carefully.  Notice how nothing is either clipping or crushing in the RAW.  There are no blown out highlights or crushed blacks.  That means that we are going to be able to preserve detail both in the high end and low ( like film ) and most of the information is clumped in the lower middle.  That's where the skin tones live.  So we're also going to get a nice amount of tone and detail in the skin.

if the exposures were any hotter overall, we'd be clipping in the highlights and the skin would develop a plastic-looking loss of detail.  If we were any darker, there would be bad noise in the shadows.

This is a sample ( not shot by B. Kufrin ) that shows what can happen when you are underexposed in RED :

GRADED

WAVEFORM OF RAW

Notice not only the noise, but vertical compression lines ( or something, hard to know what is creating that but it appears without fail in all underexposed footage ).  That's very hard to get rid of, if not impossible.

Long story short, watch your highlights, watch your low end, and try to get a nice gathering of information in the middle of the exposure.  When we pull that RAW file apart in the DI, it will be the difference between possibly being able to fool the audience into thinking its film, and the audience knowing its digital.