Got the following note from our friend Bruce Allen, just prior to NAB. I’ve been so busy with post-NAB projects that this is the first chance I’ve had to post it. Here are Bruce’s notes on his experience so far shooting with HDRx material with the Red Epic camera.

My friend Sam Druckerman got his Epic-M. It’s a joy to use: stunningly compact, lightweight yet rock-solid. Slow-mo 5K is insane. HDRx is fun and useful. The SSDs kick ass. It’s great for handheld and super-intuitive to toggle different settings, frame rates, HDRx etc – even in a light aircraft :) We found that out when super-talented Director/DP Matt Uhry gallantly took us up in a plane for a camera test.

Here’s some HDRx stuff shot out of the window with a Duclos 11-16. For fun, I processed the two streams separately and combined them in After Effects. Several layers, curves, transfer modes and rendering later, this was the result:

http://www.boacinema.com/projects/2011/red_epic/HDR_FLYING_ba_v1.mov

Then – last night Jim sent me a secret internal RED program which included awesome HDR blending options built in.
These will be in RedCineX very soon, he says. Here’s a screenshot (reposted with RED’s permission, click the image above for full-size), with my After Effects render for comparison.

Compared to my After Effects comp – RED’s stuff looks better, renders faster – and can be applied in just a few clicks! Also, it’s free. So… RED wins on all sides of the Quality, Speed and Cost triangle. Plus Ease of Use :) Forget confining HDR for tweaking something in the finish… it means we can easily have HDR dailies if we wish. Only caveat is that most times Epic’s latitude is sufficient for what you’re shooting, without HDRx. Though it’s still useful to have in case just in case – and for VFX purposes eg tracking.

Epic really is turning out to be a killer tool. The more I work with it, the less I want to work with any other camera. BTW, anyone on FreshDV have questions about Epic? I will try to answer in the comments?

Thanks for the note, Bruce! If anyone has any questions about Epic or HDRx, ask below and I’ll make sure that Bruce sees them.