Photographer Ivan Agerton recently spoke with RED about his experience pulling stills-from-motion with the EPIC DRAGON. Ivan is a founding member and co-owner of Royal Galactic, a professional photography service for clients worldwide.
Ivan's experience with RED began almost seven years ago when he happened to drive past his current business partner, Justin O'Neill, shooting on a street corner using the RED ONE.
"It was so out of context that I just had to stop and pull over and ask him what was going on. Hearing about the technology and the ability to do stills and motion at the same time is kind of what put me on the path of [professional] photography."
He has been shooting with RED ever since. The EPIC DRAGON's modular design allows Ivan to use a variety of studio setups and rigs, while also giving him the option for a run-and-gun setup when he wants it.
"My #1 go-to setup is just the BRAIN, a v-mount battery on the back, the side handle and that's it. So it's set up very much like a medium-format camera. I'll usually have a follow-focus 19mm setup, so I'll just pull focus on that. We [also] have a set of old Zeiss Superspeeds, 1960s vintage. They're worn out and they're beautiful because of that. Combining that with the DRAGON sensor, the way the sensor treats highlights - it's my go-to."
The improved color science and light sensitivity of the RED DRAGON sensor helps Ivan shoot in a wide range of situations with minimal setup or lighting.
"Ninety percent of the time I shoot available light, and that's including at night or indoors. I'll augment sometimes, and typically I try to augment with practicals, but usually I'm coming in with flags, maybe a little bit of diffusion."
The EPIC DRAGON also reduces the amount of time he spends in post-production.
"I don't do a lot of mass image corrections to my images, so Photoshop is not really a tool that I use _ I use Lightroom. I can work with my negative still and get what you see in camera, and I'll bring it into REDCINE-X PRO. I'll do color correction in REDCINE-X, get it as close to where I want it. Then at that point I'll export it."
Its stills-from-motion capabilities makes the EPIC DRAGON an indispensable tool for Ivan. He recalls a trip to a village in Nepal where it was especially useful to have an all-in-one solution:
"We were flying from Pokhara to this little village that's about 15,000 feet in the Himalayas. We were flying in this pretty crazy terrain‹mountains basically above us as we're flying through this valley. I was just shooting [motion] as we were going, trying to hold it steady‹standing in the cockpit shooting the pilot, co-pilot, and out the window. I wanted to have the motion - two weeks prior to this, another one of these airplanes had just crashed into the side of a mountain coming up to the landing. So it was an event I wanted to capture because it's a notorious event at this airport. That is a shot I would not have been able to get - I would have had to choose, am I going for stills or am I going to get motion. But I was able to use this camera to do both."
To learn more about stills-from-motion capture with the DSMC system, check out the EPIC DRAGON and its accessories.