Scarlet-X Lowlight tests

Jeff_Lo

Jeff_Lo

Active member
So I got the camera a little over a week ago and have had some work and shoots that have kept me tied up. I was very excited to get some downtime and put this camera to the tests in the dark. It took a hit from C5D in a somewhat unfair test. Now I didn't compare it to another camera, these shots are my own, but I was shooting with an Epic shooter for some of the night and side by side shots showing how similar the Sensor is (it's the same), and showing differences in compression ratios between the two cameras.

My challenge was to shoot everything at 800 ISO when possible (which it was for all but several shots) and those shots I didn't shoot above 1000. I found very little noise in the image. I got to edit the raw footage through Premiere Pro CS5.5 at 1/4 resolution (which still looks amazing) on a 4K timeline. The machine I edited on was a dual core, Imac (older system I owned) with 4GB of ram. I was simulaneously coloring in RCX and importing straight to the timeline with no encoding. Very fast and effective. You simply load the .rmd's (color profiles that save once edited in RCX) and you color is brought over.

This is not meant to be a super tight edit I was trying to play with different frame rates and get as little noise as possible. It's quick and rough but it shows that in most cases with little to no light at all the camera still performs. I love the way it handles light. Some of the weird refractions were caused by a cheap UV filter. Upgrading here shortly.

Enjoy!

I apologize in advance if I embed it incorrectly. Watch it in 1080p, it's much better.

Lenses used:

Canon 50 1.4

Canon 24-70 2.8L (one shot only)

Canon 70-200 2.8L IS II

Tokina 11-16 2.8

Canon 35 1.4L

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But in all seriousness, super cool shots, I love the smoke ones.
 
I'd love to see a side by side with a scarlet x, fs100, af100, 5d and 7d... i feel like most of those other cameras could have produced the same image that you got from the scarlet x.
 
We did a test with the 5D, AF100 and FS100, I can't release the results but the only one that held ground was the fs100 in lowlight. The problem began when you put it at a 1080 sizing next to Scarlet 4K or 1080p (downsized) the flaws and codec show through.

Sure on a 360p web release it may look close but the detail and sharpness and the way the Scarlet handles light IMO blows the other cameras away. Now with saying that I still may pick up a FS100 it plays a huge role for different kinds of jobs. But the Scarlets detail and sharpness at 4K is tack sharp even in lowlight. Comparing that to FS100 in a full res shot at 1080p, it was still sharper before debayer.

There isn't one camera for everything. The AF100 got smoked by all the other cameras.
 
It was pretty funny actually. Usually when I went around with a 7D i got some stares, but with a RED it was shocking how many people knew what it was. I must've had about 5-6 people go hey that's a RED. Several drunk guys...RED Rocks dude. Some guy wearing an arri shirt going to the Nuggets game told me how much it sucked.
 
Surprised to see the dreaded purple fringe around the street lights, headlights, and some of the other highlights.
 
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