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!

Coming round the mountain when she comes!

But what’s got me excited is the spec list below. I’ll be getting my filthy little mits on one of these as soon as I can, surely a fantastic upgrade to my interim solution 500D.

EOS 7D Specs

-18mp
- dual digic 4
- 8 fps
- 19 af points
- ISO 100-6400 (L & H1 & H2)
- 63 metering zones
- 100% viewfinder
- Horizon Help Viewfinder
- 3″ VGA LCD
- FullHD Video

No word yet as to whether it is going to have manual controls for the video, but you would imagine that it being such a serious stills machine aimed at the pro/semi-professional photographer that it would have them included.

The official announcement is scheduled for tomorrow! Happy days!