RED's New Digital Stills and Motion Camera Pushing the Limits 219
rallymatte writes to mention that camera maker RED has announced a new digital stills and motion camera system that includes one model that can shoot up to 28K at 25 fps. The new system will come in three tiers: Scarlet, Epic, and their top of line model which won't be out until possibly 2010. Still image capture will range anywhere from 4.9 megapixels to an insane 261 megapixels. In addition to some impressive 'traditional' hardware, RED also announced a 3D camera.
28K what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shoot up to 28K whats at 25fps? 28 kilobytes? 28 kilopixels? Units, please!
Insane is the word (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meaningless numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawyers or Marketing people hopefully.
Anything that can shoot 28k of them at any rate is good enough for me.
Re:28K what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Check your decimal: 2250.
Re:What about lenses resolution? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely right, you do need a bigger sensor size.
That's why the sensor is over 7 inches wide.
Re:What about lenses resolution? (Score:2, Insightful)
Read the article before you comment. The 261 mpixel model is a large format back which will use custom large format lenses, not plain 35MM SLR lenses. It's also 186mm x 56mm, RED has a nice comparison shot of the various sensor sizes at http://red.cachefly.net/13/page12.jpg [cachefly.net]
Re:partial debunking here (Score:1, Insightful)
That page started out quite well, but then descended into sillines. The author doesnt grasp the concept of Bayer filters, the availability of lossless compression or the actual flow of information in a camera system... Nevermind.
Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thought you all might like the opinion of a working 1st Assistant Cameraman (known as a Focus Puller in Britain) in Hollywood, which means I am effectively the guy in charge of the camera and its operation and maintenance on a film set. I work with all of the cameras out there today, from the top-tier film cameras like the Panavision XL2 and the Arri 435, to the RED ONE and even prosumers like the Panasonic HVX-200. The bulk of my work, and the part of it I enjoy the most, is working with the 35mm film cameras, so my opinion is admittedly biased, but as someone who has actually WORKED with the only RED camera which has so far been delivered...
RED does one thing extremely, extremely well: marketing. They have sold 4,000+ RED ONEs, and a large portion of those have been to semi-wealthy directors and would-be cinematographers who want to have an edge in getting their films made by being able to supply their own cameras. This is compared to the traditional model of all but the absolute lowest-end productions: you get your equipment from equipment rental houses, because only the VERY most wealthy and successful cinematographers can afford their own gear; an Arricam Studio does not really have a list price but let's say it would be very cheap at $150,000 (plus the extra $200,000-300,000 you need to invest in lenses, accessories, etc.). Compare this to the $35,000 you can spend to get a very well-equipped RED ONE package complete with lenses and all (if you get old, used lenses, or go for the Nikon lens mount), and the difference in image quality is hard to justify on low-budget productions. Film still looks way better; there's no contest. But the RED is the first video camera that you can project in a full-size movie theatre without heavy modification and go, "Damn, that's really quite good-looking." (Star Wars Episode II, famously shot on the Sony F-950, had to go through so much post-production to look decent on a big screen it's not quite fair to include it in comparisons).
The thing about the RED, however, is that while it does produce an amazing image for a video camera (which many on Slashdot and in the film world are, understandably, wowed by), it just does not work very well. It is a beta product at best, and when it was first being sold it would not have been unfair to say that it was in an alpha stage. It crashes left and right, it overheats, it has a million and one weird and generally unexplainable glitches. My favorite example: I was working with it in the mountains at one point, and the camera kept crashing in the middle of shots, which meant none of the footage in the take up to the point it crashed was even usable because of the peculiar way it records to disk, and every time this happened there was a two to three minute downtime while the camera rebooted. We tried three or four times with the same result, the same crash at the same point in the shot, before I called the rental house to get a new camera unit, assuming there was a glitch in the camera. They did their job and brought us a new RED. We shot again...and it crashed in the exact same place.
I called RED this time and talked to one of their techs. He asked me where I was, and I told him the mountains. He asked me what mountains. I told him. He asked if there were trees around. I said of course, we're in the mountains. He asked what kind of trees they were, and I started laughing.
Turns out trees with a lot of detail in their branches, especially pine trees, can cause the camera software to go so apeshit that it crashes and just turns off. Now, for computer users accustomed to the odd quirks off getting computers to do things well, this is not surprising or abnormal.
For a tool used in cinematography, however, it's completely unacceptable. The amount of money being spent on film productions necessi
Re:Actual Red URL (Score:3, Insightful)