The Red Digital Camera

#1

A radical new digital cinematic camera has been announced.

The “Red One” is developed by the Red Digital Camera Company.

Designed for HD Broadcast and Digital Cinema (does not shoot standard SD video resolution).
It uses a CMOS image sensor, called the “Mysterium” image sensor, rather than conventional CCD. CMOS is manufactured using the same fabrication process as silicon chips.

It is capable of shooting 4520 x 2540 resolution, and can run at 60p (frames per second) even at its highest resolution.

Price at US$17,500 for the base camera (lens and data storage cost extra). Sounds expensive, but it is 10x cheaper than competitors, so will make digital cinema production available to many more people.

Interview with RED creator Jim Jannard
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/6388.html

http://www.red.com/

Here is the lens that goes with it:

Image from showiki.com.

Full article at Showiki can be read here:
http://www.showiki.com/wiki/The_Red_Camera
(has lots more info on the camera)

#2

It’s HAL!
2001: A Space Odyssey

#3

I think this camera will allow smaller companies to get into feature film production.

Not only is the camera 10x cheaper than what was available before, but because it is electronic (rather than film) it could reduce the lighting costs.

It should be great for independent film makers.

#4

the “Mysterium” image sensor? can only supervillans buy this?

#5

arnt CMOS sensors horribly noisy? hence why CCDs are used instead?

however it does sound awesome 4K at 60fps and 2k at 120! 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 aswell most impressive

#6

CMOS sensors are actually better than CCD’s when dealing with noise - all of the Canon DSLR’s use a Canon CMOS chip and the high ISO results are far superior to other CCD designs. at low ISO’s the Canon chips are practically grain free (especially in the blue channel which typically is the noisiest of the channels).

Cheers, Simon W.

#7

Yeah caught the news over on FXguide. Would love to do some 2 or 4 K live action/CG compositing with that thing. After having to make it work in DV all these years it would be so sweet to actually have some pixel depth and no fields. The slow mo should be amazing too.

So who wants to go in on one?

-Shea

#8

How do you figure that?

#9

It can capture RAW, so feasibly you can do a lot of lighting manipulation in post.

#10

Not really. Saving in RAW still doesn’t have all the color range that a piece of film negative has. You would need an HDRI camera to do that. Still, I love my 1DS and its CMOS chip, so I think this RED camera could be quite neat. I might pick one up if it’s as good as they say it is.

#11

I’ve been pretty excited about Red. It’s going to become one of those watermarks in film history where a piece of equipment changed the landscape of film production. The people who hated the idea of shooting feature films with video, but had no money for film stock will now be able to get into the game and get the look they want for a fraction of the price.

#12

Just a couple of comments.

If it is really capable of that resolution that is amazing.
But what is up with the design of that thing. It looks like no piece of professional broadcast or film equipment I’ve ever seen, and I doubt that design would be embraced well by the intended market. Second, what is the storage medium for the data? Are you going to need to have this plugged into a super high speed massive disk array at all times? That seriously limits its versatility.

Other than that I think it’s exiting that cinema cameras are beginning to delve into the sort of resolutions that the current generation of high quality DSLRs are capable of.

#13

Well, it does look odd, but you have to remember, that the pictures shown of it are without a lens. Once you throw a panavision, or fuji lens on it, it won’t look as weird.

And yes, ideally you would capture it’s recording to a disk. However, at 1080 resolutions, you could output a full 4:4:4 RGB signal to a HDCAM SR deck.

I believe at 4k resolutions, it can also record to RED’s own proprietary codec.

Quite exciting indeed.

#14

This thing looks like it can destroy planets.

Thumbs up for design!

#15

Yeah, I realize there’s no lens on it.

I went and read the interview and the design makes a bit more sense now. It’s supposed to be fully modular so I guess there would be some sort add on for shoulder and/or steadycam type mounting if necessary. I realize that what we are looking at is probably a none working concept at best, but somehow it just looks too “sci-fi” to me.

#16

seems that the red camera is capable of a much higher dynamic range :slight_smile:

quote from the fxguide interview:

the Red Camera has dynamic range similar to 35mm film. Estimated to be between 11 and 15 stops.

#17

Hahahahaha, I snort laughed at that one.

#18

Sweeet… what I’d do to get my hands on one of those for just a few weeks. :drool:

#19

It looks like it was designed for the military. Right now it’s vaporware. They don’t even have a working prototype at NAB (just a mock up).

#20

All those specs sound almost too good to be true. That res, at that frame rate, at that dynamic range and all for that price. I really hope they can pull it off, but for the moment I’ll remain sceptical until I see some actual footage streaming out of it.