Not quite as sexy as Scarlett Johansson. . .but almost! Pic: Jared Land - Reduser.net
Red, the folks behind the wonderful 4K Digital Cinema phenomenon the ‘Red One’, are at it again! Making bold claims while people wait, frustrated and anxious, for actual hardware to become available.
It seems like only yesterday that some of the boffins over on the DVXUser Forums were claiming Red was a myth, a dream doomed to never see the light of day. It was, what did they call it? Vaporware! That’s it! To think that Red stuffed about so much with the release of the Red One that somebody actually dubbed it Vaporware should explain why this latest announcement about their upcoming 3K, 2/3″ Sensor camera called ‘Scarlet’, while very exciting, is something many people won’t be holding their breath for. But to say that the spec list kindled that ever present pilot light of desire into a small inferno would be hitting the nail on the head. On paper, this thing looks good! Real good!
Aside from being a 3K camera, shooting in RedCode RAW (a proprietary compressed RAW format, with all the associated benefits that brings – think real grading in a codec with some real latitude and 4:4:4 colour space), it also shoots high frame rates and heaps of other cool stuff. I won’t regurgitate it all here with some spin, you can read it for yourself over on the Red Forums.
What really got me though, was when I read that you will be able to, via a special mount, electronically control Canon and Nikon Glass. Double take! “Electronically control Canon and Nikon Glass!” You have got to be kidding me. . .I nearly wet myself. I mean on the 2/3″ sensor version, meh. . .What will it be like in low light? Will it be noisy? What will the crop factor be? I don’t know the answers to these questions. But on the S35 Sensor, which is similar in size to the APS-C, I’d be very keen to shoot video in RAW, with Canon Glass, wave goodbye to poor h.264 compression, aliasing and all the other not so great things on the 7D.
The question is, is it worth the money for the end result? What else will I need to manage all this RAW Footage? What kind of beast will I need to edit it? Grade it? How many thousands of dollars would the RAID array cost to store it all?
As much as the possibilities of these glorious camera’s tend to make us technophiles drool, I for one will be holding off for a bit, seeing how the chips fall and maybe dipping a toe in the water once Scarlet’s been in there for a while, relaxed and ready to go!
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Make sure to add up all those extras that you need to buy… this is a RED modular camera we’re talking about here, so the $7000 S35 body is totally useless wihout recording module, Redmote, some sort of LCD, probably an EVF. And then you need an absolsutely absurd amount of processing power to chew through the footage. Think Core-i7 mac pro with RED’s proprietary grpahics card, the redrocket….
Before long, you’ve spent more on this camera than the price of a new car.
Forgot to mention the pro I/O module, recording media and assoicated recording media module, audio, and then cables to match.
RED is an expensive game.
Yeah, it’s definitely not a ‘body only’ solution.
But I’m still going to be watching developments over there very carefully.
The trouble is I know that if I ever were to buy one of those camera’s I would probably be utilising it to 1/10 of it’s potential. I’m not making feature length narratives or doco’s for 35mm film out’s. If I got one, it’d be pure self indulgence and 10 years from now when the whole rig is worth about $2K!
I can dream though!
Well a new digi beta would set you back $50K or more so it’s still a bargain, if you can afford to capitalise that much. But if the markets not there for rental or hire whats the point? If you can afford to have a 7D and it happens to make luverly video then thats icing on the cake (effectively for free if its the secondary use).
I do think that the Canon cameras are very niche and we wont find thm making to many in roads to TV or film production. Shooters in those fields rely on more robust equipment that gaurantees some minimum performance.
In a couple years RED might replace it for free, thats what they are doing with current Red Ones
You keep dreaming about Scarlet and I’ll keep dreaming about a 5DmkII….
Oh and have you seen this DSLR effort from the hot zone? Hearts and minds
It was featured on the RedCentre podcast with an excellent interview. Reminded me of your trips to the wild and dangerous outback!