We heard about some of this stuff about a month ago, but these specifics are good to have.

It’s being offered with a fixed 8x zoom or an regular interchangeable mount; the spec sheet actually doesn’t note the F values of the lens, which suggests it’s not finalized. I’d guess it’ll be T/2.8 or thereabouts. There are a lot of specs and modes listed in the announcement which you can read there, but the price is quoted at $4750 at the moment for the fixed lens and $2750 for the brain only. The fixed lens version comes with an LCD, battery, and other accessories however, so for a filmmaker on a budget it might be a good unit. Plus, everything about it is compatible with the Epic modules, so you’re not wasting money on two different systems if you’re going for both.

There are other devices outlined as well — a new pro Redmote, the Red Ray Professional, and others. Head on over to the announcement thread to get the whole story.

Mmm… I’m liking the look of those new primes.

Here is the revised spec list. Of note are the internal motion sensor (good for recording metadata for adding effects later), GPS sensor, and a touchscreen electronic viewfinder (good for adjusting settings, but it also supports… touch focus tracking? -that’s not what I think it is, is it?):

New MYSTERIUM-X 5K sensor
5K (2:1) at 1-100fps
4K (2:1) at 1-125fps
Quad HD at 1-120fps
3K (2:1) at 1-160fps
2K (2:1) at 1-250fps
1080P (scaled from full frame) at 1-60fps
Increased Dynamic Range, reduced noise
Time Lapse, Frame Ramping
REDCODE 250
ISO 200-8000
New FLUT Color Science

Completely Modular System, each Module individually upgradeable
Independent Stills and Motion Modes (both record full resolution REDCODE RAW)
5 Axis Adjustable Sensor Plate
Multiple Recording Media Options (Compact Flash, 1.8” SSD, RED Drives, RED RAM)
Wireless REDMOTE control
Touchscreen LCD control option
Bomb-EVF, RED-EVF and RED-LCD compatible
Multiple User Control Buttons
Interchangeable Lens mounts including focus and iris control of electronic RED, Canon and Nikon lenses (along with Zoom data)
“Touch Focus Tracking” with electronic lens mounts and RED Touchscreen LCDs
LDS and /i Data enabled PL Mount
Rollover Battery Power
Independent LUTs on Monitor Outputs
Independent Frame Guides and Menu overlays on Monitor Outputs
Monitor Ports support both LCD and EVF
True Shutter Sync In/Out and Strobe Sync Out
720P, 1080P and 2K monitoring support
Gigagbit Network interface and 802.11 Wireless interface
3 Axis internal motion sensor, built in GPS receiver
Enhanced Metadata
Full size connectors on Pro I/O Module. AES Digital Audio input, single and dual link HD-SDI
Support for RED, most Arri 19mm, Studio 15mm, 15mm Lite, Panavision and NATO accessories

Dimensions- Approx. 4”x4”x5.5”
Weight (Brain only)- Approx. 6 lbs (2.72kg)

Jim also posted an actual picture of a brain with grips attached still-camera-style, with a Canon EF mount. Whether they’ll actually be able to take a bite out of established still camera makers is questionable, but we’ll see.

The Scarlet also gets an update, a response to serious encroachments by cameras like the 7D. Much better audio capability, increased bitrates and color accuracy, 1080p at 60FPS, and a touchscreen LCD among other things. No word on pricing or how these changes might affect it, but it’s still going to be a professional camera, not a consumer or even prosumer one, so expect it to be at least $3000.

Read the whole thread here; they’re still updating and adding pictures (they’ve added two since I started this post).

But unless they’ve got something pretty serious up their sleeves, RED’s Scarlet is still a threat to them, especially in the independent filmmakers market. After all, when you can have 3K digital RAW footage with serious color depth in a package the size of two cans of Sprite, the semi-pro Canon cameras start looking kind of plain. But really, it’s all wild speculation since the actual capabilities and price points haven’t been announced for the Scarlet, and Canon’s ace in the hole, if they have one, is similarly obscure.

The Canon fanboys are going off here, and the RED-heads are going off here. Go forth and flame. (Jannard responds here)

The opportunity to see a group of local freelancers and entrepreneurs coming together to make such an incredibly professional product was extremely valuable — technology has democratized and accelerated the independent film and music community to a degree I hadn’t realized. I was brought on because I had access to some special locations (most of the aerial and forest shots are near some family property in the San Juans) and so I could shoot a little behind-the-scenes video of the production. Go ahead and check out that video below.

The above contains video shot by me as well as production stills by both myself and the director, Matt Daniels of ThinkLab. Matt edited it, since I was taking forever.

We had two RED Ones to shoot with, which is rare to find anywhere, really. With careful lens selection, this allowed for some really great multi-angle shots without change in continuity or video quality. For instance, we had Marshall, the drummer of the band, wading in the water in extremely low light (torchlight). One camera was shooting handheld, up close with a wide angle, and the other was about 30 feet away, with a longer lens in a more stationary position. It allows the director and editor to work freely with the scene without worrying about continuity errors, and can also drastically cut down on the time a poor drummer has to be standing in freezing cold water at midnight.

Lastly, the all-digital process makes for such a streamlined workflow that, if we didn’t have to catch a ferry, we could have had a rough cut put together the next day — a huge benefit when you’re working directly with a client, as we were with the band. As one might imagine, this can lead to sloppy productions put together without the caution and care that comes with working in a valuable medium like film — and some people assume that because it’s possible, it’s expected. But that’s as far from the truth as the idea that a film medium guarantees a quality end result. Digital cinema tools simplify the workflow, but they don’t simplify the product.

The helicopter you see is owned and operated by AerialPan Imaging’s founder, Tabb Firchau. I subjected him to a brief interview:

So the camera on the heli is a Panasonic HVX, which accounts for the difference in texture and tone you see in the video. I noticed a similar effect while watching Planet Earth; the Varicams they used for much of the series weren’t able to be used under water, so they used some sort of smaller Sony (I believe) camera for those sequences. The video quality isn’t as high, but the Sony and HVX are far more light and compact than a Varicam or RED One — handy in those underground caverns, or when you need to fly it at 50MPH over water in an RC helicopter.

I was struck by the amount of specialized gear used by both Tabb and the RED operators (Mike Prevette on heli and DP Michael Ragen). Jury-rigged solutions for missing or broken parts, custom fast-charging battery packs, and the lenses… oh, the lenses. And of course, it was interesting seeing the familiar forest and beach we were tramping around on metamorphose into the evocative landscape of the video.

It’s amazing how democratized high quality stuff like this has come, with the advent of (relatively) affordable HD cameras like the RED and pro editing and effects software that can be brought with you to the field. Thanks, crew — it was a fun and interesting look at the soft underbelly of cinematic production.

Of course, it’s not necessarily the case that whoever made this video intended to equate the cameras in any way (the objective, aside from filming women in the dark, is unclear). But if they did, let’s look at this objectively.

Here we have three great cameras. One a micro four-thirds compact, one a full-frame pro DSLR, and one a professional digital cinema camera (two years old, for the record). You can take video under similar circumstances, but unless you’re prepared to put in the work to make each video look as good as it should, it’s a useless comparison. Putting a video on the web, even to a high-quality video site like Vimeo, is not the way to compare three cameras.

The 5D mk II records directly to h.264; this is a perfectly good codec for distributing video, as it is highly efficient, but the way the video data is stored and streamed makes it messy when editing and lossy in color correcting. The GH1 uses high-bitrate AVCHD but apparently wraps the 24p mode in 60i, which is something I’ve had to deal with and it’s a pain in the ass. Lastly, both cameras use a recombination method for producing the final image, illustrated here. This leads to strange artifacting and Moire effects.

The Red One (to say nothing of its upcoming replacements) records to a proprietary high-bitrate, high-color-depth RAW format, using as many pixels you want from the sensor and not recombining at all. This produces an enormous, highly detailed, and very flat-looking image which can be manipulated as much as a RAW image from your DSLR. It’s made for actually making movies, real movies, and is high-res enough that they can apply special effects directly, which normally require a higher resolution than the editing footage.

But when you take a few seconds of footage at a time, in situations with really bad lighting, and then resize the whole thing down to a web-streaming 720×480 file, you lose all the details that might have set any apart. I’d say that any differences you notice in this video are the result of chance or the lens.

I’m not advocating getting a Red over getting a 5D mk II or GH1, they’re three different cameras that happen to shoot video and beyond that they’re incomparable. I personally would love to have all three, and I’d value what they did in different circumstances. The 5D’s full-frame sensor makes it easier to use and set up in the dark than either a Red or GH1; the GH1’s compact size makes it an easy carry-around; both are much more convenient to use than a Red, which weighs a huge amount and requires thousands and thousands in extra gear to shoot right. And if I had to pick one, I’d get the 5D, since I’m primarily a still photographer and if I did need to shoot something serious, a careful cinematographer would be able to avoid the 5D’s weaknesses pretty well.

So that’s about 500 more words than needed to be said on this, but these comparisons persist after so long that I feel I have to just engrave it on the internet that they’re not admissible evidence, and the whole idea of a comparison is silly anyway.

A few weeks back I hopped onto my first Virgin America flight with Aircell’s Gogo service on-board. It wasn’t the first time I’ve reviewed Gogo and if you recall I was on the first commercial Gogo flight with American Air. The plan was to interview James Weatherson, Virgin America’s inflight entertainment engineer, while I was up in the air, but there was a scheduling mix up and the interview never went down. So we opted to do it the old fashioned way. Below is my brief conversation with James about Red and where it’s headed.

CrunchGear: Other than some content changes, I haven’t seen a whole lot of new stuff for Red. What can we expect to see this year from VX?

James Weatherson: Actually, we’re now right in the middle of a Red software upgrade that will allow us to create an even more robust entertainment content platform at every seat. Our platform is actually pretty new and ambitious for a system at 37,000 feet in-flight, so the upgrades that will go live this Summer are mainly focused on improving functionality, reliability and the speed of the Linux-based system. We’re aiming to increase the speed of the system and usability, as well as allow us to further build out the content platform. So we’re planning more video games, movies and other content in the latter half of 2009 thanks to these upgrades. And we’re also making some changes that came as suggestions from guests who emailed us in-flight via the Red feedback in-box, like being able to listen to your music play-list and play video games at the same time and giving business travelers receipts for their food – so when they swipe their credit card at their seat, they’re emailed a receipt. You’ll be able to do that as of June. The former is a relief for me, as the sound effects on DOOM for some reason get super annoying when you reach hour three of a transcon flight.

CG: Are the shopping and book services going live this year?

JW: Yep, once we get these software upgrades in place we plan to go live with the Shop platform in late 2009, with the Read section to follow. Stay tuned.

CG: I heard a nasty rumor that VX was thinking of getting rid of the touch-screens because the majority of passengers don’t know how to use a touch-screen. Any truth to that?

JW: No, we don’t plan to go retro on you on Red. Most of our guests are pretty tech-savvy and a lot of them have an iphone or other touchscreen PDA on them when they fly, so they work the system just fine. We do actually mention the importance of a “soft touch” in both our in-flight guide (attached) about the Red system and our flight teams also mention it when they explain how the system works. It has not really been a problem, but the interface just works better with light tapping, as opposed to thumping – just like an itouch or iphone. However, we are disabling the touch-screen on the games only, as the remotes just work better – that change goes live with our Summer upgrades in June.

CG: Maybe VX should make a video for people to watch that shows them how to use the touch-screen. I know I can’t stand people who sit behind me and punch the screen. What do you think?

JW: I like the video idea! We’ve got a depiction of that in our in-flight guide (PDF), and the caricature is of our head of web marketing, Jen Larson, because it is her pet peeve. If we do a video, we got to think of an appropriate spokesperson who could demonstrate that almost anyone can use Red. Maybe a Miss USA contestant?

CG: Anything else we can look forward to that you can talk about?

JW: We’re focusing pretty aggressively on our fleet-wide WiFi roll-out. We’ll be the first and only airline to have it on every single flight by this Memorial Day (it is now on 24 of 28 planes). And we just became the first airline to offer absinthe in-flight. Although, on second thought: the image of guests twittering at 37,000 ft while drinking absinthe is somewhat disturbing.

[thanks for the tip, Mike]

I like the little bump with fins, it appears to be a heatsink. The picture with a RED One on the right was made by forum member David Farland, and shows a bit of the comparative size and lens mount height.

Just a little camera porn to get you through the day!

[Thanks for the tip, Mike]

Rumor smashed! Wait, no, the other one… confirmed. Sorry! Anyhow, Microsoft has inadvertently (?) revealed the existence of the red Xbox 360 that we mentioned the other day. It’s an Elite, and it will be exclusive to EB Games. Well, that’s what’s going to happen in New Zealand; what happens in god old USA, who knows.

The shocking revelation comes from a Halo Wares-related e-mail that was sent to New Zealand retailers. The relevant portion:

Xbox 360 Halo Wars Standard Edition, $99.95 RRP. This Halo Wars offer does not apply to the Red Xbox 360 Elite console which is exclusive to EB games.

So there you have it, confirmation. From what I understand, President Obama is planning to throw a party at the White House in order to celebrate the system’s release.

Of note is the disclosure of 2K speeds up to 350fps on the larger sensors, 250fps on the smaller, and the pricing of the “complete” Scarlet with a fixed lens at $3750, which is pretty reasonable.

It’s another one of those “huge images stacked on top of each other” announcements so click on through to see everything.

(I’ve re-encoded and split them for your convenience, the JPEG quality is pretty bad though. The originals are at Jim’s post.)
(and thanks for the tip, dude)

“New announcement on Dec. 3rd. Everything has changed… just as we promised. :-)”

Give me a break!

This isn’t to say that these cameras are weak — on the contrary, they’re all perfectly good cameras, they’re just not the second coming of sliced bread, as their makers wanted us to believe.

For the last couple weeks, Jim Jannard of RED Camera has been teasing everybody on the REDuser forums with vague promises and outrageous claims of revolutionizing the industry. Skepticism would be the natural response, but after the original RED One camera turned the industry on its head in 2007, people learned that the company said what they meant and made what they said. Early adopters knew they were getting in the ground floor of something that would not only change the industry but likely completely metamorphose once things got underway. As it turns out, they were right, and RED’s announcement today represents the ideal of the RED camera system made reality. What does today’s bombshell mean for the hi-def video industry, and what does it mean for you and me?

Unprecedented

Let’s make one thing absolutely clear: these cameras represent much more than a black eye for Sony, Panavision, and any other player in the digital cinema game. To be honest, they already had a black eye from the RED One, and the original announcement of the Epic and Scarlet gave them a fat lip and a bloody nose as well. The announcement of this completely modular, low-cost, incredibly high-performance camera and accessory suite is nothing short of a knockout punch, a hardware haymaker which even some big names may not be able to withstand. This is not conjecture, it is as close to a statement of fact as can be made before the actual cameras are tested against the competition. The stated costs, capabilities, and resolutions of the RED sensor set and accessory/lens selection utterly outgun everything else on the market by a huge margin.

I’m not an insider on the subject of digital cinematography, but the difference at least in resolution should be plain enough to anyone who can count. These new sensors do not simply outstrip those in digital cinema competitors, which are still working to create a 4K camera to match RED’s, but also stack up against the most high-end medium format still cameras. Leaf’s newest and most advanced sensor, for instance, is 56mm wide, twice as wide as the RED One sensor but exactly the size of the second-largest Monstro sensor. That means that under the right conditions, a RED setup using a Monstro 645 will be shooting the equivalent of a medium-format digital photo from a $40,000 DSLR — fifty times a second. And this is to Redcode Raw, which has excellent color depth and dynamic range as well. The difference between that and capable but far more expensive cameras like the Genesis and Origin (from Panavision and Arri/Dalsa, respectively) is insane — and remember, we’re not even talking about the biggest sensor RED has. The absurd 28K Monstro 617 (not available until 2010, but we’ve seen how RED keeps their promises) will entail an aspect ratio wider than the ridiculous 2.76:1 used for films like Ben-Hur, which honestly seems a bit much; how left-to-right data pulling will work on a sensor that wide is something baffling even the experts.

Price and performance

The most frequent criticism of the RED system is the pricing scheme: sure, you could buy the “brain” or central unit for $17,500, but once lenses, rails, tripod heads, and everything else were taken into account, you’re looking at at least $60-70k for a real cinema setup. True that! But why don’t you try to price a comparable setup for its competitors? I think you’ll find that many of these cameras actually cannot be bought by a prospective cinematographer, and renting one costs at least $3-4k per day. Being able to buy a 6000-pixel-wide sensor for $12,000 and outfit it for another $40,000 is, in this business, an unprecedented bargain (if you don’t count RED One). It’s also worth mentioning that these increases aren’t comparable to the megapixel differences between, say, point-and-shoots and DSLRs. This is a change in order of magnitude, not an incremental improvement.

Many will ask, what is the purpose of such an insane resolution? Well, that’s a whole discussion in itself, but the world is increasing in resolution all over the place: 2K and 4K projectors will likely be standard in a few years and source video will have to be double that for producing special effects and so on. Right now the size and bitrate of the footage prevents easy direct editing, and this announcement exacerbates that issue, but filmmakers have dealt with that for a long time and they’ll deal with it now. More pixels is better these days, and this is a lot more pixels.

Let us not forget

And what of current RED users? Their prized, and still extremely well-specced RED Ones have just been completely obsoleted. Are they getting left out in the cold? I asked my friend, cinematographer Michael Ragen and owner of RED One #343. After assessing the announcement’s effect on the industry as “they shattered the hopes and dreams of every other camera maker in the world,” he mentions that as a RED One owner, the most enticing deal is for him to trade in his camera for $17,500 off of any Epic “brain.” That means that his camera has had zero depreciation, except for any accessories which may be incompatible with the new system, something which I don’t think has been determined yet. There are other deals: he qualifies for reduced pricing on a Scarlet body or new sensor as well.

Apart from the revolutionary nature of the sensors RED is putting out, the entire modular hardware suite they’ve created is absolutely stunning. As you can see in their announcement, you can practically stick a lens on a brain and you’ve got a working Scarlet shooting 3K, or you can put together dozens of custom parts to have a weather-sealed, multiple-lens monster setup with more rails than Amtrak. As a cinematographer this has to be exciting, as, like putting together your own PC, you only buy the parts you need or want. The compatibility with Nikon, Camera, PL, Mamiya, Alpa mounts and more means your lens selection is essentially unlimited.

But what does it mean for Joe the Plumber? (sorry)

I know what you’re asking: is there anything for you and me, the poor consumers and enthusiasts who don’t feel like taking out a loan to get the best gear out there? Well, the lowest-end device available appears to be the Scarlet all-in-one, the price for which isn’t available, but which we can safely guesstimate at somewhere between $3500 and $4000. That’s not exactly home video material, and of course 3K Redcode footage isn’t exactly iMovie material either. We may see something accessible come down the line, but the fact is RED was never meant to be a consumer camera company — even the Scarlet has always been intended as a professional camera, for handheld shots, small mounts, and so on. Unfortunately, that makes you and me into mere spectators of this momentous event — except for the fact that I may get to play with one later.

It should also be mentioned that the RED setups don’t serve every purpose; for example, they will only shoot up to 120fps, or far less for the larger sensors. This means that other digital cinema cameras like the PhantomHD will remain indispensable, so Panavision isn’t entirely rained out, and of course although the RED may have out-sensored Canon, Nikon, and even Hasselblad’s DSLRs, those cameras still have a far better form factor and infrastructure for still shots, so they’re not going anywhere either.

Damn

There’s a lot left unsaid, but this post is already far longer than it probably needed to be, so I’ll leave the rest of the commentary and discussion to those who know better (7500 reading the forum this very second). Let me restate, though, that this announcement really does live up to the hype that preceded it. RED already had the digital cinema industry sweating, and now every camera maker in the world will, trust me, be calling emergency meetings to determine the feasibility of even trying to compete. It’s a wonderful time to be in the business folks, with history being made as we watch. And somehow I doubt this is the last RED has to offer.

Update: Jannard has posted a clarification: the Scarlet system will be more restricted format-wise (video and audio) than the RED One and Epic. The Epic will be less restricted than the RED One. I guess something had to go to fit the Scarlet into a smaller package.

This, my friends, is a camera. Jim Janard over at Red has begun telling the world about his new modular camera system with its Mysterium-X sensor. There are a few upgrade paths for those who already own a RED ONE, the older generation including upgrading to the new sensor, trade in RED ONE for the price of an EPIC, or receive a sensor upgrade some time in the future. If the RED ONE costs $17,000 expect this one to be slightly more.


The kit can be used one of two ways – as a full-bore video camera like the original Scarlet or a DSLR. You take off most of the pieces of the video camera, for example, and then reconfigure them to make an SLR. Devin has been following these guys so I’ll let him tell you about it this afternoon but here are the images in all their glory.

I’m wondering whether these pics are from some super-modular system? They don’t strike me as being set up in a particularly on-camera way. Perhaps the announcement will include a new hardware “suite” for accessorizing the RED lineup?
Update: Added another picture –>
[Thanks, Mike]

I am now comfortable in saying that the most aggressive speculation will not come close to what we will announce Nov. 13th. We fully expect over 1,000,000 hits on www.red.com on the 13th.

Well well Mr. Jannard! Tooting our own horn, are we? Deplorable man!