Scarlet-X sensor detail on a 28mm photo prime

by Sebastian WöberDecember 18^th, 2011

Disclaimer: This is not a scientific test, merely a look at the sensors behaviour under the given condition.

This is a quick test to get a feeling for the sharpness of the Scarlets Mysterium-X sensor. And to make sure sharpness is not suffering from lens type I tried some PL lenses with a Scarlet PL mount as well. More on that later.

Setup:
Contax Zeiss 28mm T2.8
Recorded at 4K, ISO 800, 25fps, 1/25th shutter, Aperture 5.6 +1/2

Result (100% quality jpeg):
download jpeg

The image on the left is a 100% crop of the original 4K RAW file.
The image on the right was recorded with a 85mm lens and scaled down, so you can see the actual detail in the tree.

The 100% crop looks very blurry, but it’s a well known fact that cameras usually don’t record images sharp as life. Even the Alexa, although very sharp in comparison to other cameras isn’t 100% sharp, but then again its resolution is only a quarter of the Scarlets. I am not going to judge the images seen here, I’d rather ask you to inspect them for yourselves and state your opinion in the comments.

The lens I used is a photo lens from the very affordable

. Under the given light conditions it produced very good sharpness and could hold up with the PL lenses. I am not able to publish the pictures of the other lenses at this time as this would be considered a lens comparison which it is not. Also the PL lenses used were pre-production models and I cannot publish images taken with them.

You can download the original R3D RAW file here to play with:
DOWNLOAD

RED has a utility to inspect and do some grading on R3D files. Download REDCINE-X here.

A quick note about mounts on Scarlet-X: It’s extremely easy to switch back and forth between EF and PL mount. All you have to do is unscrew and screw 4 torx screws back in. Especially if you want to use PL you should calibrate your backfocus afterwards.