Monday, March 03, 2014

Red Epic Dragon Sensor Wins DxOMark Top Spot

DxOMark gave Red Epic Dragon sensor a record high sensor performance score, higher than all Nikon, Canon and Sony DSLRs:


"With a 5-point lead over the Nikon D800E which was the previous best-performing sensor in our database, the Epic Dragon achieves the highest DxOMark score we’ve seen to date, at 101 points. Given that the Dragon is the new reference for sensor quality, it’s all the more impressive when you consider both its size (similar to an APS-H size sensor) and the fact that it shoots ultra-high frame rates at full resolution."

Red Dragon sensor is 19MP, 30.7 x 15.8mm Bayer pattern sensor with 16-bit ADC, and supports different resolutions including 6K video (6144 x 3160 pixels). For the tests, the camera was set to full 6K resolution at 23.98 fps.


"With a sensor area 0.56 x smaller by surface area than a 35mm (24 x 36 mm) full frame sensor, the results are very impressive. As the sensor and image processor can deliver very high frame rates, the Epic Dragon is certainly adopting multiple sampling techniques to reduce noise levels (also known as temporal noise reduction). Without such processing, such high SNR would only be possible from a sensor with an exceptional Full Well Capacity. Performances like this seem, to us, above the current technical capabilities of CMOS sensors.

As a side note, it’s interesting to speculate whether rivals such as Nikon, Canon or Sony are already adopting such techniques during video capture or in jpeg. But, this is the first time we can assess this type of performance on still RAW.
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19 comments:

  1. Does anyone know the vendor of the sensor? Or it's an in-house development?

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  2. In-house with industry expertise consultation. Jannard's pretty smart.

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  3. This high score is only due to temporal noise reduction over multiple sensor reads. DxO conclusions about the RED being superior to 36MP sensor are false.

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    1. That is incorrect speculation.

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    2. I wonder if the HDR mode was enabled during the DxO test... If it is, IMHO, comparison between the Red Dragon and a FF CMOS sensor with global shutter are not straigthforward.... Also I would be very interrested in the Dynamic vs sensitivity curves to check how the dynamic behaves on this sensor.

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    3. The alternative to the "incorrect speculation" is 100%QE. What is more probable?

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    4. Temporal averaging only increases DR (virtually multiplies the full well) but does not increase the low-light performance for a given total exposure time, it even lead to a higher read noise than a single exposure.

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  4. The Red camera designers should be congratulated on the high performance. I am not a big fan of the DxO scoring system but it is always good when you score high on a standardized objective test. Congratulations especially to the sensor design team. Very happy for you guys. You know who you are.

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    1. Given that RED sensors are sourced from Forza Silicon and Mr Fossum is listen as doing consulting for Forza I wonder if Mr Fossum here is playing a word game and actually is congratulating himself. ;-)

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  5. And does anyone know if RED uses GLOBAL shutter?

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  6. Since the low-light score is so high for such a small sensor (compared to FF), should the QE of the sensor be close to 100% unless there is something weird going on in the measurements?

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  7. Dragon's full frame resolution is 6144x3160 and it's sensor size is 30.7x15.8mm, so its bigger than any other cinema camera on market now.

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  8. AS , HD , MM , Great job

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  9. red epic camera sensor in small 3 dots. how to removing pls tell me

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