RED's New Digital Stills and Motion Camera Pushing the Limits

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.

Comments

Actual Red URL

[xmas2003]

Here's the actual info & specs from Red themselves - be sure to scroll down to the bottom where they have the "Oh ... by the way - 3D" teaser. Crazy stuff (makes my Canon 40D look pokey) - we'll see if they deliver.

Re:Actual Red URL

[duguk]

Amazingly, I was playing around with this yesterday after watching Quantum of Solace in Digital Cinema. Astounding quality.

I found some example videos, here and especially on here. Amazing. My PC can barely play it in high quality, and my monitor can only do 2048 pixels across, but still it's impressive!

Re:Actual Red URL

[blhack]

I hope you're not comparing the video capabilities of your 40D (which has a CMOS sensor) to the Red (which has a CCD sensor). The former is great for taking youtube videos of your cat, the later is great for creating films.

Re:Actual Red URL

[sith]

Wow. That's ... wrong.

The RED has a CMOS sensor, as do a number of other fancy-pants video cameras these days.

Re:Actual Red URL

[davolfman]

What I want to know is what's the yield on the 617 sensor? 1 for every 100 wafers? It almost sounds like vaporware as even most incredibly expensive 6x6 backs actually use a 4x4 sensor.

Re:Actual Red URL

[Klaus_1250]

Quantum of Solace in Digital Cinema. Astounding quality.

Quantem of Solace, is that the new James-Bond-movie-that-again-fails-to-be-a-James-Bond movie?

Digital Cinema is nice in the sense that it delivers a very crisp image without the normal signs of wear, but it is "only" 4096 x 2160px. That doesn't beat a good 35mm film, let alone 70mm.

Re:Actual Red URL

[duguk]

Digital Cinema is nice in the sense that it delivers a very crisp image without the normal signs of wear, but it is "only" 4096 x 2160px. That doesn't beat a good 35mm film, let alone 70mm.

Yeah it is that film. I enjoyed it though it isn't very Bond-like. Still an improvement over Casino Royale (which is even less an a Bond film, imho!)

Sure Digital Cinema might not beat film in terms of resolution, but the clarity made it appear to be far more detailed; and certainly seem a lot higher definition. Especially without the distracting signs of wear that film has, I found it a lot easier to watch and a lot easier to see details of the astounding amount of product placements.

Re:Actual Red URL

[Anonymous Coward]

And some digital still cameras. Pentax has worked with Samsung to put a new CMOS sensor in their new line.

Re:Actual Red URL

[blhack]

Jeez mods. There was a discussion the other day about why the new Nikon D90 was (and the 40D) were NOT a replacement for the RED. I was misinformed about the sensor in the RED, but the 40d and the D90 are STILL not replacements for it. My comment still stands, it was NOT a troll.

The sensor in a digital still camera serves a different purpose than the one in a video camera. Using a digital still camera for video results in something called "jello-cam". Watch this video (or any video with fast motion in it show with a DSLR) for an example of what I'm talking about.

I wasn't trolling, I was misinformed about the sensor in the Red.

Re:Actual Red URL

[prestomation]

That is interesting about the CMOS in the Red cameras. How are they combating the "jello" and why aren't Nikon/Canon(havn't seen any MkII vids yet) doing the same thing?

Re:Actual Red URL

[nattt]

RED sensors are very, very fast, being designed for moving images. That means any skew is reduced to very low levels, and hence no jellocam. Stills cameras use physical shutters, and hence didn't worry about the rolling shutter speed - it just wasn't an issue for them until now.

Of course, film using a spinning shutter that also suffers from skew, but like the RED, it's hardly visible most of the time.

Re:Actual Red URL

[Fluffy Bunnies]

40d doesn't have video, you're thinking of 50d. Also, 5d mk2 doesn't suffer from the same problem.

Re:Actual Red URL

[X0563511]

I don't think digital will ever "surpass" film, as with any analog->digital transformation you loose data. Not that it will practically matter soon.

Re:Actual Red URL

[alphakappa]

Why is everyone talking about the video capabilities of the 40D? As far as I know, it's the 5D Mark II that has those capabilities, not the 40D.

Re:Actual Red URL

[lysergic.acid]

doesn't beat it for what? unless you're shooting a movie that's going to be displayed in an IMAX theater why would you need more than 8 Megapixel? pixel resolution means nothing unless you have something capable of displaying the pixel data. and there are few applications in which you would observe any noticeable benefit by going beyond 1080p.

here is a comparison of digital video formats. even if you have a 150" plasma screen TV capable of displaying 4096x2160 resolution, you're not going to notice any difference in video quality above Digital Cinema 2K (2048x1080) or HDTV 1080p unless you're sitting less than 2' away from the TV.

saying that it's only 4096x2160 is like dick-sizing about having a still-camera capable of more than 10 Megapixel resolution. sure, there are people out there that need a 36 Megapixel camera, but for 99.9% of the consumer market it'd be a monumental waste of money. even if you were creating a billboard you could just upscale a 6 Megapixel image at, at most, 72 dpi (and often as low as 9 dpi).

Re:Actual Red URL

[Phurge]

yeah and 640k of RAM should be enough for everyone.

Re:Actual Red URL

[lysergic.acid]

that's a rather dumb analogy. RAM usage increases because as computers become more advanced, so too does software, so naturally more memory resources need to be made available. unless people start getting bionic eye implants, there's no practical benefit to be gained from pixel resolution increases that are imperceptible to the human eye.

Re:Actual Red URL

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

doesn't beat it for what? unless you're shooting a movie that's going to be displayed in an IMAX theater why would you need more than 8 Megapixel?

It's quite common for scenes to be zoomed in after they're cropped, especially with FX shots.

sure, there are people out there that need a 36 Megapixel camera, but for 99.9% of the consumer market it'd be a monumental waste of money

You should click the link and look at the NOT consumer camera.

Re:Actual Red URL

[Phurge]

Unless say the filmmaker needs to crop a particular scene (this ability could have applications elsewhere). Also the max capacity somewhere else in the thread is 60x40inches at 300 dpi. I don't know about you but that would be great on my living room wall when the right projection technology becomes available. Matter of fact my wall is larger than that, so I wouldn't mind more.

But really the point of my post was to point out that many people many times before have have said something along the lines of the infamous 640k statement and have been subsequently been proven wrong. Sure you might have a point with the existing applications of that technology, but I'm sure you don't have a crystal ball. Saying that you have reached the limits now, inhibits future growth along paths that you might not foresee.

Re:Actual Red URL

[lysergic.acid]

what percentage of high-end professional-grade DSLRs are above 12 Megapixel? a consumer is just someone who consumes goods or services. even a professional photographer who purchases a high-end camera is still a consumer--as opposed to the producer/manufacturer/retailer.

and even with a 2540p frame you can still pan & scan and have a reasonable level of freedom to crop your image at HDTV quality. i also never said that no one needs picture resolution above 2540p. obviously there are going to be useful applications for Super Hi-Vision, not to mention existing astronomical cameras with non-standard sensor resolutions. but for the average person to complain about 2540p as not good enough (especially in the context of playback resolution at a regular movie theater) is pretty banal.

Re:Actual Red URL

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

a consumer is just someone who consumes goods or services. even a professional photographer who purchases a high-end camera is still a consumer--as opposed to the producer/manufacturer/retailer.

Uh huh. Except in this context we're talking about whether it's millions or thousands of units sold. The people purchasing this camera are pretty derned likely to want to do post work on the footage, they're not brand new grandparents taking home videos of their recently born grandchildren.

but for the average person to complain about 2540p as not good enough (especially in the context of playback resolution at a regular movie theater) is pretty banal.

Only to somebody observing from the outside.

Re:Actual Red URL

[The Bender]

There is no analog -> digital conversion involved. Digital can be shot directly to digital sensors (rather than film), so it can certainly surpass analog.

Re:Actual Red URL

[electrostatic]

"There is no analog -> digital conversion involved." So, stored on the tape is what? I guess you need analog memory in the PC to edit it as well.

Re:Actual Red URL

[GodKingAmit]

It is stored in a digital format throughout the lifecycle (CCD -> Harddisk / SD card). If the theatre does not have a digital projector than a final, analogue tape version will be made.

Re:Actual Red URL

[blane.bramble]

So, the CCD *doesn't* convert the analog light input into digital data then?

Re:Actual Red URL

[allanc]

The 50D doesn't have video either. Just the 5DII (and the D90 on the Nikon side)

Re:Actual Red URL

[DavidSev]

If you want to get pedantic, light is digital, the CCD counts photons, and there aren't even that many with high shutter speeds etc.

Re:Actual Red URL

[pz]

Have you compared the output of a high-end digital camera to the output of a high-end film camera with high-quality film?

I have.

I'm a semi-pro photographer (have had 5 solo shows of my work). I had top-of-the-line 35 mm Olympus equipment when I was shooting film (still miss my OM4T bodies, as the design had unique features that made it easy to get the exposure dead on). I switched to Canon pro-grade digital equipment a few years ago. Recently, I had cause to compare some of my digital images with film equivalents of the same subjects. These were taken at comparable ISOs (I normally shoot at 50 or 100 ISO). I used to shoot both chromes and negs; Kodachrome or Ektar, primarily.

The digital image quality blew the film quality away. There was no comparison. The small number of images I took with my Bronica 645 were comparable in quality to what I get with my modern Canon digital equipment. The 35mm film was not up to the capability of modern digital imaging.

With the data I have available, your assertion that digital will never surpass film is a little shortsighted and a few years too late.

Also, it is ignorant of the fact that modern digital camera sensors are working with relatively small numbers of photons -- to the point where at the highest ISO ratings you are most certainly no longer performing analog sensing as the CCD wells are literally counting photons. (The assertion is also ignorant of the fact that film, at its base, is a digital mechanism as well. When a photon hits a grain of silver halide, it converts the entire crystal -- a digital phenomenon. The only reason the process appears to have an analog behavior is because film manufacturers were able to fit millions of very very tiny silver halide crystals in the area of a negative.)

Re:Actual Red URL

[albyrne5]

Ha! Nice comeback.

The Upper Limits.

[Ostracus]

Looks like they're pushing the financial limits too. Anyway that picture reminded me of Lego.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[m3rck]

Actually cinema film cameras go for $65,000 and up. Add film and film editing to get that analog film into digital ($100K), Red looks pretty cheap.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[Vancorps]

I was under the impression that film cameras cost upwards of 110k for HD with no analog conversion since all the HD transmission methods are digital.

Of course the camera itself is about 65k, but then you need a lens for it which bumps it up especially if you need multiple different types of lenses since they all have to be custom made.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[forkazoo]

I was under the impression that film cameras cost upwards of 110k for HD with no analog conversion since all the HD transmission methods are digital.

I find what you are saying confusing. Film isn't digital. HD is. (As far as broadcast, or BluRay, or Internet distribution, etc.) The two worlds (film and HD) don't really interact unless you scan the film and make it digital. There's no such thing as film sourced material distributed in HD, without some sort of analog digital conversion.

Something like Red is a digital cinema camera, but it has nowhere to put film in it.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[Vancorps]

It's a difference in use of vocabulary. You are correct in that there is no digital film. Film cameras refer to either a type of camera which you are using or a grade of camera which I am using. Something they use to film a blockbuster movie with would not be stored on film if it's in HD or higher resolution.

The term is still called filming though. When you shoot a scene you usually say I am filming this 67 Shelby at sunrise even if you aren't using film in your camera. There's no real reason to change the vocabulary just because it all went HD and digital.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[zippthorne]

All film cameras must be converted to digital if you want digital. On account of.. you know.. the film: a plastic substrate (historically manufactured from plant tissue) impregnated with photosensitive chemical dyes. Which is inherently rather analog (grain-boundaries and such notwithstanding)

Re:The Upper Limits.

[musicalwoods]

Of course the camera itself is about 65k, but then you need a lens for it which bumps it up especially if you need multiple different types of lenses since they all have to be custom made.

I don't think you need completely custom-made lenses.

Via Engadget:

Scarlet will launch ... with a variety of lens mounts (yes, Canon and Nikon)

Re:The Upper Limits.

[blhack]

I could be misinformed about this, but from a little googling, it looks like the red will lenses that were intended for use on DSLR cameras.

$1000 bucks and you've bought yourself some nice glass. Keep in mind that nikon has been making lenses with the same mount for the last ~50 years. Some of them can be had for CHEAP on ebay.

Re:The Upper Limits.

[g0at]

I was under the impression that film cameras cost upwards of 110k for HD with no analog conversion since all the HD transmission methods are digital.

Huh? This sentence makes no sense; what are you trying to say?

-b

Grammar nazi!

[Anonymous Coward]

wont =/= won't. If you are wont to rely overmuch upon the spell checker, you won't ever write properly. Also, do the names of the three tiers really begin with lowercase letters?

Re:Grammar nazi!

[morgan_greywolf]

Whatsa spell checker?

Could someone tell me...

[Abreu]

...what would be the printed size of a 261 megapixels image, using current printers?

The mind boggles

Re:Could someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

About 12 feet by 4 feet, at approximately 200 dpi.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[Hankenstein]

    Well with a standard 3:2 format the dimensions would roughly be 18360x12240 which at 300 dpi printing (somewhat standard high quality printing) would equal ~ 60x40 right out of the camera.

Mind boggling indeed.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[zigziggityzoo]

93.33x31.11 Inches at 300DPI.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[PopularEthics]

Or almost 8 foot by 3 foot. That would look FANTASTIC above my couch.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[Chris Kamel]

About the same size as the drive you'll be using to store the files.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[internerdj]

Depends on who was in the shot...

Re:Could someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the intended use of such a large sensor is high-detail digital projection onto a huge screen ... the digital version of IMAX.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[JCSoRocks]

Jan Levinson-Gould of course. Also, those shots also look great in a warehouse.

Re:Could someone tell me...

[X0563511]

Yes, but who would print something like that at 200dpi? You want at least 600dpi.

So, at 600dpi, about 4 feet by 1.3 feet. Still pretty damn big.

28K what?

[Alioth]

Shoot up to 28K whats at 25fps? 28 kilobytes? 28 kilopixels? Units, please!

Re:28K what?

[nattt]

28,000 x 9,334 or 261mp.
28k is the horizontal resolution, which is typically how frame sizes are measured in digital cinema.

Re:28K what?

[Trevin]

My first guesses were meters (range) or grams. (Of what, I'm not saying...)

OTOH, SI units normally use 'k' for kilos, not 'K'. 'K' is used more for computing units of 2^10. But 28KB seems awfully small for an image which contains over 4.9 Mpix.

Re:28K what?

[zigziggityzoo]

What sucks is that a 261MP photo at typical RAW format is roughly 400MB in size. You'd fill up a 1TB disk (900GB Formatted) with just 225 images.

Re:28K what?

[ChrisA90278]

In the motion picture industry "4K" means there are 4,000 pixels across the long edge of the frame. Consumer cameras are advertised by the total number of pixels in the frame. Typically measured in "mega pixels"

But as it turns out resolution is proportional to the number of pixels across the long edge of the frame. Note that movie cameras are marketed to profesionals who understand this while consumer cameras are marketed to "the masses" who just want a big number of "whatevers"

Re:28K what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your decimal: 2250.

Re:28K what?

[pipatron]

But as it turns out resolution is proportional to the number of pixels across the long edge of the frame. Note that movie cameras are marketed to profesionals who understand this

Too bad that the "profesionals" don't understand that it depends on the ratio between the width and height of the sensor as well, thus "28K" doesn't mean a thing unless you know the aspect ratio.

Re:28K what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So frames are always 3 to 1?

As a comparison, what's the resolution of film?

Re:28K what?

[digitalfilmmaker]

Yes. And 25fps, is frames per second. So the top end camera takes 25, 261 megapixel images per second.

Re:28K what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you are smoking, but 'k' is always 'kilo' and the SI unit 'K' stands for degrees Kelvin. The method of removing confusion between base 10 and base 2 units is to add an i. kB = 10**3, kiB = 2**10, MB = 10**6, MiB = 2**20 (and 'b' is for bits, and 'B' is for bytes=8 bits)

Re:28K what?

[iluvcapra]

The horizontal resolution is the most important, because it is kept invariant among all the distribution channels. 16:9 and 4:3 teevee, 2.35 or 1.85 or 1.66 projection, they only cut off the top and bottom, never the sides. So the horizontal resolution becomes the best way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of an imager, since it's generally a given that what you're shooting is going to get cropped on the top and botto, but never on the sides.

Re:28K what?

[camperdave]

I'll give you a big hint on upper and lower case use when related to anything digital: Anything goes. 'b' can mean bits or bytes, as can 'B'. 'k' means 1024 and 'K' means 1000, except in cases where 'k' means 1000 and 'K' means 1024. 'm' and 'M" can both mean 1000000, 1024000, or 1048576. 'G' or 'g' has too many variations to list here. Since most of the time it is obvious from the context whether the author is talking about bits or bytes, the 'B' (or 'b') is often left off.

Unfortunately, word never got out to most of the writers of tech articles and adverts that SI-style units have capitalization standards. As a result, there are no hard and fast rules. Whatever looks good to the journalist/ad-writer/blogger is what gets published.

The situation gets blurred a little when talking about digital cameras, as both pixels and bytes come in mega-sized units. Also the motion picture industry measures horizontal pixels only, whereas consumer grade digital cameras measure the entire image sensor. So, as this is a motion picture grade camera, and 28 kilobytes is far to small for memory usage, the 28K must refer to the number of pixels horizontally.

Re:28K what?

[israel_zayas]

28,000 pictures at 25 frames per second. Movie standards.

And the mega pixel resolution up to 261

Re:28K what?

[X0563511]

You do realize that's normal right? They need massive storage for CG as well.

Re:28K what?

[camperdave]

Forgot to mention: That's 28000 pixels horizontally with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1

Re:28K what?

[Arterion]

So you're saying my argument that the aspect ratio of a film doesn't have to have anything to do with how much information it contains?

My friends used to argue for wide-screen formats because with a 4:3 aspect ratio, you lost visual information to either side of the visible area. Pan and scan technique, basically.

But I always argued that wasn't an inherent quality of the aspect ratio. One could easily look at it in the sense that with a widescreen format, the top and bottom had been cut off of the image. All that really mattered was the resolution.

And NOW you come along and tell me that, yes, they DO cut off the top and bottom of the image to fit a particular aspect ratio. Hot damn!

Re:28K what?

[iluvcapra]

So you're saying my argument that the aspect ratio of a film doesn't have to have anything to do with how much information it contains?

I made no claims about the amount of information it contains, just that the pixel count isn't as meaningful for comparisons between camera systems, because of certain facts inheirent in Hidef workflows.

My friends used to argue for wide-screen formats because with a 4:3 aspect ratio, you lost visual information to either side of the visible area. Pan and scan technique, basically.

I'm talking cameras, you're talking projectors.

And NOW you come along and tell me that, yes, they DO cut off the top and bottom of the image to fit a particular aspect ratio. Hot damn!

NOWADAYS they do, either composing for a common topline or center, and exposing more of the film than they need for a 2.35. But before Super 35 and HiDef, movies were shot on formats that didn't expose extra negative area. There's really no way to tell if a film with full aperture hasn't been panned-and-scanned or just cropped off a larger negative. In any case, the closest approximation of the director's creative intent w/r/t composition is generally the going to be the letterboxed version.

28k! 261mp

[nattt]

Incredible. Imagine the possibilities.

Re:28k! 261mp

[niiler]

Am I missing something here? In my current lab, we're using 8 of MAC's Eagle cameras at the relatively low frame rate of 200 fps.

The Eagle Digital Camera, with a resolution of 1.3 million pixels at 1280 x 1024 full resolution at up to 500 frames per second, 1280 x 512 at 1000 frames per second, 1280 x 256 at 2000 frames per second, and a processing rate of 600 million pixels per second, revolutionizes the motion capture industry with its extreme resolution, unprecedented high frame rate, upgradeable functionality, and ease of use.

MAC has just put out their Raptor camera:

The Raptor-4 uses the Micron Corporation MI-MV40 sensor and operates up to 200 fps at a full resolution of 2352 x 1728 pixels, and up to 10,000 fps at reduced resolutions. The Raptor-4 Digital Cameras provide today's motion capture technicians with a tool that assures reliable and accurate data. With digital technology there is no degradation of the signal over distance, less noise, and no resampling of data on another piece of electronics.

These have onboard tracking technology which allows for auto identification of shapes (usually circular markers) in 2/500 of a second.

It seems like this RED camera under-performs in all categories.

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It's not a high speed camera
2. The 28k refers to the horizontal resolution of the image, so you're Raptor-4 would be referred to as a 2.3k. The RED captures a 261 Megapixel image vs the 4 Megapixel image the Raptor-4 captures. Or nearly 65 times as much spacial resolution. The Raptor-4 does have a higher temporal resolution, though.

Re:28k! 261mp

[omnipresentbob]

1 megapixel = 1 million pixels
Therefore:
261mp = 261 million pixels

If I'm not mistaken, you're missing something like 259.7 million pixels ;)

Re:28k! 261mp

[Tsujiku]

The RED cameras with 261MP appear to have about an order of magnitude greater width than either of those. However, I have no real idea what I'm talking about.

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets try this again:
28k per motion frame means 28000 x 9334 pixels
That's 261352000 pixels or ~261 million pixels. Per frame. And it can do that at 25fps.

~261mp/f * 25f/s ~= 6533mp/s

Or a whole order of magnitude faster than the cameras you list...
Raptor-4: 813mp/s
Eagle: 600mp/s

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

These are completely different kinds of camera with different intents. Your Raptor is a 4 megapixel HIGH SPEED camera meant for, apparently, motion capture.

The new RED system goes up to 261MP(over 65 TIMES the resolution of the raptor) at standard cinema speeds. You're not going to use a camera like that for motion capture, but for feature film production.

Talk about apples and oranges. Where again does the RED camera underperform?

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you can't read, or you're just trolling. The camera in the article is 261 Megapixels. The Eagle you're talking about is roughly 1 Megapixel - "Extreme resolution" indeed! The thought of shooting a movie with something like that is ridiculous.

Anyway, when it comes to "performance" you're dead wrong too. The throughput from the Red at 25fps (6.5 Gpix/sec) is over ten times higher than the Eagle's, and eight times higher than the Raptor's.

Re:28k! 261mp

[fastest fascist]

The thing is, the other "digital film cameras" out there have, so far anyway, tended to cost a whole lot more than what RED offers. RED's equipment isn't necessarely strictly the best out there, nor does it try to be. It's affordable while still providing a very decent quality. A lot of their accessories seem to be aimed at the budget market, too. The thing is, the way RED has priced their offerings, especially with the newest line starting out at 2500 dollars, it's possible for even freelance cinematographers and small production companies to have their own digital 4k camera. Apparently they've been selling quite well.

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you are missing something. 261 Megapixels per frame times 25 frames per second ~ 6.5 Gigapixels per second for the RED. Your Raptor puts out 200*2352*1728 ~ 813 Megapixels per second. The framerates you mention are irrelevant for the common case in feature films (i.e. non slow-motion scenes), and the RED has at least about 8 times the datarate of the Raptor. This, of course, assumes that the color depth is identical for the two systems; I would tend to think that it might be greater for the RED, further exacerbating its data rate advantage

Re:28k! 261mp

[niiler]

My bad. I was looking at specs like 28K and thinking 28 kilopixels (bleah!) total not width. The only place it mentioned the 261 mpix was in regard to still photography. So again, my bad.

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, red isn't a scientific camera - it's for movies/tv. Who in their right mind would shoot anything for a movie at 10,000fps...?

Re:28k! 261mp

[im_thatoneguy]

Double the framerate per half horizontal resolution.

So if they're pumping out 6k at 100fps then they can do 200fps at 3k and 400fps at 1.5k. Which is comparable to what you're reporting. Furthermore one of the huge bottlenecks of the red camera is that it in real time compresses to a JP2k compatible codec and doesn't require a RAM storage device.

Furthermore let's compare the quality of your 1.3 megapixels to red's 1.3megapixels. The red will most likely have exponentially superior dynamic range (aka lower noise) and color reproduction.

Re:28k! 261mp

[Anonymous Coward]

1280x1024 is 1.3 MPixels. This camera is 261 MPixels. It has approximately 20X the number of pixels. So its framerate of 25Hz means that it has approximately the same pixel rate as the Eagle (25x20=500).

Red hasn't announced what their cameras would window down to, but looks like they've matched the pixel rate as these cameras.

Red is targeting people who need more resolution than super high framerates.

Meaningless numbers

[ATMD]

can shoot up to 28K at 25 fps

28K what? Does it mean 28000 somethings, or is K itself a unit?

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a temperature! 28 Kelvin, or -409 degrees Fahrenheit. Fuck! That camera is ICE COLD!!!

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Xest]

Lawyers or Marketing people hopefully.

Anything that can shoot 28k of them at any rate is good enough for me.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[pluther]

28 Kelvin.

The superconductors used in the camera only work when it's really, really cold outside.

If you buy one of the first 1000, though, they give you a free pair of gloves.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Johnny_Longtorso]

My guess is $28,000.00 for the complete camera

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever been in Wisconsin during the winter? 28K is damn warm.

Vapor codewords...

[nweaver]

"Specifications subject to drastic change"

They've been promising this thing for what, 4 years now?

Re:Vapor codewords...

[MoonBuggy]

Actually they've been shipping cameras for a while, these are just the next in the range. The Red One was considered vapour for a while by some people - they started taking pre-orders in April 2006 and actually shipped the first 25 units in August 2007. There is apparently still some wait time between ordering and receiving the camera, but they definitely exist.

They announced the Scarlet and the Epic in April this year, and announced today they they've somewhat revised the design of them.

Re:Vapor codewords...

[xmpcray]

Wired had posted a really detailed article on where Red is in its September issue. You can read it here - http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-09/ff_redcamera?currentPage=all

Peter Jackson loved the camera so much that he suggested Steven Soderbergh to use it for his new movie on Che Guevara...which he has made now. So definitely it is not vaporware.

Still, DSMC is a whole new ball game.

Re:Vapor codewords...

[nattt]

I think there is now no waiting queue for the cameras.

Re:Vapor codewords...

[iluvcapra]

I have seen these rigs, and they're quite impressive. Soderberg shot "Che" with it, and though they've got some integration and workflow problems, it seems that they're on their way to demolishing the film industry as it is-- my GF is a DP and she and all her friends have been storming rental houses to get some time practicing with the gear so they can at least tell people they know how to use it. When everyone else is charging $70-$100K for something Red is selling for $15K, the writing is sorta on the wall. All RED has to do now is fill orders.

Re:Vapor codewords...

[g0at]

I've had my hands in two feature-length projects shot on the Red, and I can attest that not only is the camera real, but it can produce fantastic picture. :)

-b

Re:Vapor codewords...

[X0563511]

Yea, but that's still just under half my damn yearly earnings.

Cheaper please! Mere mortals would like to play!

Re:Vapor codewords...

[Da_Biz]

Indeed -- I also shot a small film project with the Red One. All things considered, it's a user-friendly package (as far as professional-level cameras are concerned) with superb performance and a virtually unbeatable price.

Ostensibly, as of last year, the only competitor to the Red One camera (package cost: around $50K) was an offering from Sony (cost: around $200K).

When Soderbergh said that this camera was going to "revolutionize independent film," he wasn't joking.

Re:Vapor codewords...

[iluvcapra]

Mere mortals can play, just charge a reasonable rental rate to the production that hires you to shoot the show and you can probably pay off the whole package with one shoot.

If you charge your show $1k a day you'll be beating the book rate for an Arrflex by a significant amount and you'll have the rig paid off after one or two shows.

Of course, if you're a hobbyist, this is not your camera. Buy a Scarlett.

Insane is the word

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Quick glance through the article did not mention anything about dynamic range. These pixel counts mean nothing if the range is still the same old three orders of magnitude. At least if they come up with an image sensor with better range, we could upgrade to that. So the idea of modularized camera system makes sense. But it is high time sensor makers quit the stupid megapixel race and concentrate on things like color correctness, dynamic range etc.

Re:Insane is the word

[Anonymous Coward]

In the brochure it stated that the dynamic range would be approximately 13+ stops on the the 28k sensor.

Re:Insane is the word

[fastest fascist]

What RED says and what it actually is are two different things. I'm told the RED One is supposed to have an 11-stop range, but in reality it seems to be more like 7 or 8.

Re:Insane is the word

[DreadPiratePizz]

The dynamic range is 11 stops.

Rule 34

[mfh]

I can't wait for 261 megapixels. How long before we can download that at a relatively reasonable rate?

I think the way to go would be to adopt Google's map technology for speedier downloading of these larger images.

The detail on these pix will be so massively good, I wonder how much blurring would occur due more to human error than technology?

Re:Rule 34

[Wheely]

No it won`t. It would out resolve current lens technology by an order of magnitude.

This is a gimick. If you want a quality camera that has the benefits of speedy focus, shutter speeds, flash sync, good bulb shutter, great light metering, white balance and can drive a flash at low power/high speed, can be quickly adjusted to suit the shooting conditions etc etc etc, you want a device where the R&D has gone into making a camera. If you want video, you need a video camera.

Re:Rule 34

[Anonymous Coward]

considering that in a 6mp camera more blurring occurs due to human error than due to the resolution limits, I think you have your answer.

Re:Rule 34

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can't wait for 261 megapixels."

That capability is beyond lens resolution, I believe. And imagine what a picture that size looks like scaled down to 1024x1024 to put on Flicker. I think there will be artifacts shrinking it that small for computer viewing.

Re:Rule 34

[Zerth]

Not likely, the sensor is over 7 inches wide. You could probably use it without a lens.

Re:Rule 34

[pipatron]

I think there will be artifacts shrinking it that small for computer viewing.

No.

Well ok, a longer response could be that it's more or less trivial to "shrink" or enlarge images to any resolution you want.

Re:Rule 34

[setirw]

Depends on the size of the sensor. 35mm, yes. For a 6x17cm sensor, 261 MP isn't unreasonable.

Re:Rule 34

[pipatron]

Well, we can already download it at a reasonable rate if "we" live in civilized countries.. :)

Also, the technology you're talking about is called JPEG2000 and is already a standard, but since it doesn't offer that much quality improvement over standard JPEG it's not much used yet. The good progressive update would be great for the web though.

Re:Rule 34

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the object you're shooting is thin, transparent and can be placed right on the sensor. Otherwise, there is no "image" to be captured from an object without a lens. As soon as reflected light leaves an object, the electromagnetic field gradually changes from an accurate representation of that object in the very near field to the Fourier transform of that object in the far field. You need a lens to reconstitute the image or be able to actually capture the phase of the field along with the magnitude (i.e. a hologram).

Re:Rule 34

[Retric]

Not to be pedantic, but a pin hole camera uses no lens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera.

Re:Rule 34

[allanc]

Beyond the resolution of 35mm lenses, maybe. I believe the particular RED back with the 261MP sensor was designed to mount large-format glass.

Re:Imagine goatse in 261 megapixels!

[YrWrstNtmr]

Someone needs to update the goatse.cx to make use of all the 261 megapixels!

It doesn't work that way. You can't put more info into the thing than was there originally.
Oh, wait...

What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[wandazulu]

Red makes a big splash here in the tech world, but I'm curious to know how their cameras stack up against anything from Arri or Panavision; they're theoretically the "big dogs" when it comes to filming motion pictures. Do they see an upstart like Red as a threat? Do they have similar products? Yes, Googling is my friend and I could find out models, prices, etc., but what I'm really trying to get at is whether or not these companies are feeling in any way threatened by this announcement, and whether filmmakers see Red's cameras as a way of making blockbuster-quality movies cheaper, better quality, etc.

More precisely, why would anyone continue to shoot film in this day and age? Especially since programs like Avid and Final Cut are likely going to be the tools to edit the movie, regardless of origin. Seems a pure-digital workflow would be the way to go.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Squapper]

The big thing about Red is that they make this technology affordable to smaller companies. The Red One is really cheap compared to similar cameras made by the big dogs.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Pope]

Because film can still do things digital can't. Digital still has a long way to go for low light shooting, though its dynamic range continues to improve.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

They stack up and very well, why rent a panavision when you can buy a RED one for less than a week worth of rental? You can do color correction on the fly with their software correct aperture exposer and balance with out refilming.

Also no need to digitalize as it already is digital, only one transfer has to be done to have the finished product. The company who I see is at more of a loss is SONY with there cine alta which costs 10x and is a lot less competetive.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Zerth]

One plus of film is that you can carry an hour of film. You can't really carry the SAN you'd need to store an hour's worth of data from that enormous 261Mp camera. It sucks up around 6 TB/minute. You'd need a pallet jack just to move the finished 90 minute film, let alone all the takes.

This is how you reduce film piracy, give the pirates a freaking hernia.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital is much better than film at low light levels. There's a reason why DSLRs support up to ISO-25600 sensitivities.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[forkazoo]

Red makes a big splash here in the tech world, but I'm curious to know how their cameras stack up against anything from Arri or Panavision; they're theoretically the "big dogs" when it comes to filming motion pictures. Do they see an upstart like Red as a threat? Do they have similar products? Yes, Googling is my friend and I could find out models, prices, etc., but what I'm really trying to get at is whether or not these companies are feeling in any way threatened by this announcement, and whether filmmakers see Red's cameras as a way of making blockbuster-quality movies cheaper, better quality, etc.

Compared to other digital cinema camera, Red One is very much a threat. It offers good value for the price, sort of blowing away anything in the same range. Biggest drawback to Red is the fact that you need a Red specific workflow, and the fact that is has a "rolling shutter" which can result in some strange effects. (The top of the frame is sampled earlier in time than the bottom, so a moving camera shooting straight objects can result in a frame full of bendy lines in the final image, and a strobe light can make only part of a frame illuminated under some circumstances)

Compared to film, the biggest difference is probably dynamic range. Red is damned good. It's a hell of a lot better than a standard 8 bit video camera. But, film still handles extreme ranges of brightness better than Red.

Other people will point to other things as the most significant differences, but that's what stands out in my mind. As for the new camera's, I don't know anybody who has shot with them. For now, I can only talk about Red One. Ask again next year when there are some of these new cameras in the wild, and you'll be able to get more information about the drawbacks of shooting with them.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[raynet]

Umm.. An hour of 70mm film (which is smaller than the the 6x17cm sensor in this digital camera) weights about 200pounds, not something I would just carry around for fun. Assuming the RED camera uses JPEG compression, one frame is about 10-25MB, or 800-2100GB per hour, and a SAN of few terabytes should be less than 200pounds.

Ofcourse I am just pulling these numbers from google, but film is probably less portable you think and digital film more portable, though you most likely don't wanna be running around with either of them.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Patchw0rk F0g]

I've worked with a studio in Toronto that uses these cameras, especially for the image capture. I've been most impressed with the quality of images I've gotten out of it. I was giving them a really insane task (capturing a spray of liquid) and they came back with a "no problemo" answer. I didn't believe.

Needless to say, when we got to studio shooting, it was as seamless as spraying beer around a closed area could be (please allow for physics in this case!). If equipment like this wasn't available at an affordable price to smaller studios, there would be a lot of creative visions that wouldn't be realized. As another post above said, not everyone can afford to rent a Panavision for a day... especially when that day could be a few... or a few weeks.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Digital sensors have and have had for a long time better dynamic range than even very, very slow film.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[XeresRazor]

Well, they haven't announced anything about storage for the new systems other than a CF adapter for the lower-res units so I can't judge it yet. The Red One however's been out for awhile and has a couple of storage systems. They've got a CF adapter built in with 8GB and soon 16GB high speed cards available. The 8GB cards provide about 4-5 minutes at 4k which is about the same recording time as a 400' film canister (though much, much smaller obviously). Unlike film you can shoot a scene, swap cards and walk that card over to your on-set laptop and dump the footage onto it and a couple of external drives for backup and start editing together a rough cut while the next scene's being shot and then go reuse the card for another shot.
They also offer a hard drive option that uses a pair of 160GB 2.5" SATA drives in RAID-0 and can record 3 hours of footage at 4k (4096x2304).
Compact storage is pretty advanced these days, and RED has a very effective codec that wavelet compresses the RAW footage instead of the processed RGB data. The current camera has 2 encoding modes that work out to approximately 28 or 36 MB/sec at 4k. The top end of the new models is about 35x the resolution of current camera though so even accounting for codec efficiencies they're still going to need quite a bit of bandwidth to actually record that much video data.
Then again given the size of this unit, especialyl once you add lenses, it's pretty much going to be tripod or dolly mounted for any motion shots, not a big deal to have a storage pack on the trolley built into a carrying case. A couple hundred terabytes of RAID configured for speed and hooked up via cable wouldn't be out of line for a setup like that.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[nattt]

How do they stack up - from what I've heard from some top people in the industry, is that the RED One looks fantastic. There's a lot of FUD about RED though - understandably as some people don't seem to get what they're doing, and some just like to be critical. But from the images I've seen from the RED One, I can only imagine how amazing these new cameras will be.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't use JPEG, it uses either raw(his 6 TB/Minute) or a proprietary 4:1 format(1.5 TB/minute)

But if you're shooting cinema, you probably aren't going to compress it.

Assuming a stack of 1 TB 3.5" hard drives, not counting power & enclosure, that is ~540 pounds.
You could at double that for the enclosure and triple or quadruple it if you aren't near an outlet.

If you went for 2.5" drives, you could get the compressed weight down to ~180 lbs, again before enclosure/power. If you were shooting compressed, that be only around 45 pounds for the drives, but it'd still be the size of a mini-fridge.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[yo_tuco]

"The big thing about Red is that they make this technology affordable to smaller companies."

It is also a disruptive technology. Finally, at an affordable price, the consumer can get a RED ONE camera that has wanted features without purchasing the outrageous professional versions offered by the main manufactures who's marketing departments continues to decided what features you get at a price point. I, for one, am really looking forward to this video camera.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[yo_tuco]

Correction: I meant a RED SCARLET

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[sunderland56]

On the other hand - the captured images are already in a ready-to-edit format. With traditional film, it first needs to be sent out to be developed, then it needs to be run through a film scanner. Both are time-consuming operations; and both need experienced operators, especially if you are doing any form of color correction during the film scan.

So that adds a day, if not more, between shooting and being able to see the raw footage. (Hence the tradition of "dailies", where you see what was shot yesterday). With a decent RED setup, you could review a shot *immediately*.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[nattt]

Film has a rolling shutter also though.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Sicily1918]

I've talked to a DP (director of photography) or two -- Red is more hype than product. It has a lot of problems but the company's marketing is brilliant -- everyone talks about Red and, on paper, it's fantastic, but the post-processing involved is tremendous because of the uneven output (massive graininess, bad sound, improper white-balancing, dynamic range issues, lost footage, etc. -- all depending on which firmware rev. is on the camera).

While it's considerably cheaper, you get what you pay for, although it may be ready for prime-time in the next 3 - 5 years.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The new four hour Che Guevara movie is shot on a Red.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[raynet]

I wonder if you could shoot video and record it on Ultrium tapes :)

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[DAldredge]

Spraying beer in a closed area isn't creative.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[im_thatoneguy]

Actually they have a proprietary JP2k compatible wavelett codec called "REDCODE". It reduces that 261Mp down to a manageable 13GB per minute.

With the 'lower end' 9k cameras you only record 3GB per minute.

Compare that to film where an hour of film would ... 5400 feet of film and your 1TB Raid per hour for 24k footage is actually smaller, lighter and less fragile.

Furthermore if you want 24k quality footage from film (Which is impsosibl or at least nobody makes that large of a format motion picture camera). You would nee something like 50,000 feet of footage. Which would enormous and probably require a truck to move.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

It reduces that [7TB/minute] down to a manageable 13GB per minute

Really? Wow, I want to see a lossless compression codec that gets 472 to 1 and runs in realtime on a processor that can run off a camera battery. That's got to be a miracle of software engineering.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Franklin Brauner]

Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Ché, was shot on RED cameras. They regularly overheated on set, and the solution was to keep two cameras so that when one overheated they would pull the other one out. Issues like this will get ironed out, but for conditions of extreme heat and extreme cold these cameras simply don't cut it alongside robust 100 year old technology like celluloid. Which brings us to the second part of your question, why doesn't everyone switch to digital, and the answer is bandwidth. The pipeline for all of this deep-bit goodness simply ramps up the cost of posting a production to astronomical levels. Film is cheap, and you can run film in any cinema in the world. Digital still has a way to go. Don't get me started on the proprietary codecs involved. Film is the ultimate open source medium -- free as in free. Digital isn't. Period.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[hamiltondaniel]

Here we go, my first Slashdot post...been reading forever, and now I am finally fool enough to open myself to the torrent of humiliation which accompanies any opinion stated here...oh well, here goes:

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:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

film is just TOO much money for a small time indie film maker. The cost of film is thousands of dollars plus the lab work doubles that. Then you are just gonna digitize it anyway to edit. A cheaper pro camera will make a splash esp for indie documentary makers, although they shoot on video now.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Patchw0rk F0g]

I disagree. It's not only creative, but very lucrative. And the models in the (wet) white tank-tops didn't hurt. T'was a Bud Light ad, my friend.

I'm really sorry you weren't invited... perhaps you were coding a pet food web page at the time? ;-)

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[Da_Biz]

Perhaps that's true for still, but the dynamic range of the Red One in the dark has apparently been comparable (or even slightly better than) film.

Film can do things digital can't, but most certainly, digital can do things film will simply never do, including in the arena of cost and camera handling. The Red One delivers an experience that rivals film at a fraction of the cost and a whole lot less weight!

There's no way a project I worked on earlier this year would ever have been possible if it wasn't for the Red One.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[totally bogus dude]

LTO4 is only 400 GB native which would be enough for half a second worth of data - you may be get a bit of compression though, but yeah, you'd still be eating one tape every second or so. That doesn't sound very practical. Not to mention its maximum speed is around 120 MB/sec which works out to about 7 GB/sec. If the grandparent's numbers are correct, well... that's slightly short of 1.5 TB/minute best case scenario.

I think you'd have to make do with having a van (or bus) packed full of disc arrays sitting nearby whenever you're filming. One day you might be able to send that kind of traffic over wireless, and you'll be nice and mobile.

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[totally bogus dude]

LTO4 is only 400 GB native

HAHA disregard that I suck cocks.

I just looked at our tapes and they're very clearly marked as being 800 GB native, 1.6 TB compressed. Even so, one tape might be able to barely hold one second worth of footage, and it definitely can't write it anywhere near fast enough. Disc bus it is!

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[BostonPilot]

Like other people are saying: digital has film beat for low light work. I did a project which I first tried to shoot on film. Couldn't do it - available film wasn't sensitive enough. The Nikon D3 allowed me to take these: http://photos.copters.com/p404438907

Re:What about the "traditional" camera companies?

[opportunerain]

one reason is compression.

For many intents and purposes, even theatrical releases, shooting digitally is a fine way to go, but as someone who's had to pull a greenscreen key off of (Vision Research's) Phantom footage before, I can tell you that until they get the compression better there's always gonna be people shooting on film.

dynamic range

[Anonymous Coward]

on slide 3 they show the dynamic range. Depending on the sensor it can be 12 to 16 bits, which means 11+ to 13+ stops (estimated).

Re:dynamic range

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The A/D converters full potential is never reached by most image sensors. They are limited by noise levels and such stuff. This just tells the maximum possible dynamic range, and it is not too different from the cameras already in the market.

I think Olympus was trying to get extra dynamic range. Something like each pixel having two sensing elements, one saturating slowly and another saturating rapidly. Properly done, you are essentially getting one under exposed and one overexposed pictures taken simultaneously. By changing the weights of blending, you could get much better pictures. Exported in RAW file format, one could do this processing completely offline using more powerful computer, memory intensive operations taking more CPU time. The work is based on earlier Fuji camera film. They were trying to get two sets of grains in the same negative (one at ASA24 and another at ASA400).

In chemical processing you can not really adjust the weights between under and over exposed pictures and the technology did not take off. But in digital cameras it should find more applications.

I wonder if it is possible to read the charge in the CCD without really erasing it. Thus a still image exposed for, say, 1/100 sec we could save a picture after 1/1000 exposure, and a 1/500, 1/200, and then the 1/100. Now we have four pictures and we blend them with different weights off line using RAW images! Don't know if it is really possible.

Re:dynamic range

[kcitren]

I wonder if it is possible to read the charge in the CCD without really erasing it. Thus a still image exposed for, say, 1/100 sec we could save a picture after 1/1000 exposure, and a 1/500, 1/200, and then the 1/100. Now we have four pictures and we blend them with different weights off line using RAW images! Don't know if it is really possible.

I wondered about that too a few months ago. Turns out you can't read the charge without erasing it. But, if you can read and clear the element fast enough, you could theoretically take (for example) 10 1/1000 second exposures, accumulating the results in a buffer, then write that out for the equivalent of a 1/100 second exposure. Repeat as required. You'll run into problems of noise and transfer rates though. But that's a problem for the engineers.

Re:dynamic range

[Anonymous Coward]

The A/D converters full potential is never reached by most image sensors. They are limited by noise levels and such stuff. This just tells the maximum possible dynamic range, and it is not too different from the cameras already in the market.

Except in this case, we're told that the sensor has a maximum of ~11+ stops, not the A/D converter's potential.

I wonder if it is possible to read the charge in the CCD without really erasing it. Thus a still image exposed for, say, 1/100 sec we could save a picture after 1/1000 exposure, and a 1/500, 1/200, and then the 1/100. Now we have four pictures and we blend them with different weights off line using RAW images! Don't know if it is really possible.

No it is not possible; the charge in this case is the electrons accumulated from the light knocking them out of the substrate and into the gate. The gate is then emptied of its newly gained charge and the level is stored digitally. However, we know how to make very fast charging, fast emptying gates, so it is theoretically possible to take a lot of composite pictures at higher speeds and emulate the behavior of a lower speed camera.

The disadvantage of this is that it creates a much noisier picture than the slower camera would, which defeats the purpose. Something like Olympus' system of having an over- and under-exposed cell layout would be better, but would be technically hard to make work, since you would only want to store the charge of some of the transistors at one time and the rest at another time, which more than doubles the amount of complexity in reading a row of pixels off the sensor. Both sensors would also need to be smaller than one sensor to use the same order of magnitude of silicon, which means that the picture would also be worse because each gate is absorbing less of the photoelectric charge (i.e. closer to the noise-floor of the sensor).

Re:dynamic range

[Mozo]

The sensor that was designed with a "fast" and "slow" pixel, analogous to film designs (by FujiFilm, Kodak, Konica, Agfa, etc) is exclusively FujiFilm. They've recently updated the design:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092210fujifilmexr.asp

The concept works, but leads to very large raw files. The wedding market likes this technology (white dresses, black tuxes, unpredictable light), but often shoots in-camera JPEG for file size reasons.

The FujiFilm concept in the link above is to take two photos simultaneously using interleaved pixels, and combine the result to get a high-dynamic-range image.

Re:dynamic range

[zippthorne]

It's not possible. To read it out, you have to march the charges to the edge of the chip and then down the side (or onto a bank of A/D.)

You might could march them back in on the other side but you're definitely going to lose some detail there. And you can't do it in the O(significantly less than 1/500s) that you'd need to for it to work.

What you can do, though, is something astronomers have been doing for ages: take a series of pictures and combine them after-the-fact. Of course, in astronomy, the read-out time is significantly less than the exposure time, though.

Re:dynamic range

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cypress Semiconductor CYII4SM6600AB 6.6-megapixel CMOS sensor does this.

Re:dynamic range

[im_thatoneguy]

This is possible and the Viper camera does it. It effectively can do a delta(luminance) read where it reads off a pixel site before it fully saturates. And records how fast that happened.

The problem is it's not too useful for cinema applications which is the domain of RED.

If you have an object moving through the frame at 10pixels per second and you read off one at 1/100th of a second one another pixel at 1/50th of a second you have a different shutter speed for each pixel. The result is dark parts of the image are really blurred and bright elements have no motion blur.

Beyond limits

[retech]

There's currently nothing that can project the resolutions they're talking for the upper range.

Beyond just the camera, a server farm will be needed to edit a full length movie just for the mid range.

And... where does all that data get stored afterward?

Legacy data?

He's got a long history of incredible promises with this camera range but these logistical issues are just massive.

Re:Beyond limits

[pipatron]

If you shoot at the resolution you are tend to project at, you can't modify the frames in any non-trivial way other than colour/contrast adjustments. Anything else will in practice degrade the resolution. Shooting at a higher resolution gives you a lot of headroom that can be used to for example cut away areas that you don't want to use, and zoom in interesting areas. Similar to when music studios record and work with 192kHz audio signals to give some headroom for processing, then resample to whatever resolution the end user wants, 44.1 and 48kHz for example.

Other uses could be for reporters, journalists or nature photographers who can film at general areas of interest and then later cut out and scale up interesting areas.

Re:Beyond limits

[retech]

The RED system is geared towards that resolution projection. Final Cut Studio has been modified to edit native. There are a few projectors slated to be released to go along with it.

James Cameron just shot and is editing Avatar in full resolution. There's a server farm dedicated to just this purpose.

Re:Beyond limits

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

If you shoot at the resolution you are tend to project at, you can't modify the frames in any non-trivial way other than colour/contrast adjustments. Anything else will in practice degrade the resolution.

Aside from the obvious cropping/zooming, why is that exactly?

Openness would have been nice

[leandrod]

For a modular system, I would have expected support of open or, at least, industry standards such as TIFF/EP, Adobe DNG, Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds. These would not have covered all the system, but would have been steps on the correct direction. Instead they went for a proprietary raw file format and popular but proprietary lens mounts.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[Sinbios]

They're modular with themselves - that is, you can exchange modules for other bits made by RED. I don't see how this has anything to do with using open file formats, which makes it modular with other people. Why would you expect otherwise, anyway? Nearly all high-end camera makers use their own proprietary RAW formats.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[rgomezc]

I'm not sure Four Thirds or Micro Four Thirds mounts would make sense in a camera/system like this, specially when the sensor size is not that size. Supporting Adobe DNG would be great for stills, but I'm not sure the specs of it support movies. Actually I don't think there is an open spec for raw movies.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[leandrod]

I'm not sure Four Thirds or Micro Four Thirds mounts would make sense in a camera/system like this, specially when the sensor size is not that size.

...nor where most Nikon and Canon lenses created for digital 24×36mm sensors. Ðey have trouble enough wið APS-C sensors.

But answering your question, obviously there should have been a Four Thirds sensor in the lineup.

I don't think there is an open spec for raw movies.

Unfortunately, I have to agree here.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[leandrod]

They're modular with themselves - that is, you can exchange modules for other bits made by RED. I don't see how this has anything to do with using open file formats, which makes it modular with other people. Why would you expect otherwise, anyway?

Because I value liberty?

It also makes sense because it makes the system more useful and, potentially, cheaper, for the user.

Nearly all high-end camera makers use their own proprietary RAW formats.

So what? The images are mine, I want them in an open format where I will not depend on dcraw reverse-engineering files...

Re:Openness would have been nice

[XeresRazor]

They already provide freely downloadable tools for processing the encoded RAW footage into more common formats (http://www.red.com/support REDCine works on Intel Mac or Windows) and can export to TIFF, JPEG, and OpenEXR (and possibly more, those were just the ones I saw mentioned in the latest release notes). They're also putting out a SDK for the format so it can be integrated into more software. It's not exactly locked down.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[Sinbios]

Because I value liberty?

Then surely you must also value the liberty of the company to use whatever format they damned well please :P

It also makes sense because it makes the system more useful and, potentially, cheaper, for the user.

Doubtful. Using an "open" format would mean that you don't get to keep much of the information specifically produced by that camera (histograms, exposure, white balance, etc.), which is the whole point of shooting in RAW. That is definitely not more useful for the user. You could always convert to a format without the benefits of the proprietary RAW format, like TIFF, later, but you can't add the extra information that the camera can save into the RAW.

So what? The images are mine, I want them in an open format where I will not depend on dcraw reverse-engineering files...

Fine, shoot in jpg then. Of course, that means postprocessing is going to be extra painful for you, and the final product isn't going to be nearly as good, but that's the cost of an "open" format which does not support the full capabilities of the camera.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[Anonymous Coward]

DNG doesn't support wavelet compressed RAW, and the great compression RED does is needed when you're shooting 261mp at 25fps. Standards are great as long as they don't hold back progress. Once they do that, they're just dead weight.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[iluvcapra]

For a modular system, I would have expected support of open or, at least, industry standards ... Instead they went for a proprietary raw file format and popular but proprietary lens mounts.

Proprietary is the standard for the motion picture industry I'm afraid. Hell, Panavision invented their own lens mounts, and you can't even OWN a Panavision camera, they're rental only. Avid and Final Cut Pro continue their Kashmir-style range war over OMF/AAF/MXF with no end in sight, and don't even get me started on Pro Tools...

Re:Openness would have been nice

[leandrod]

Then surely you must also value the liberty of the company to use whatever format they damned well please

And mine of not buying eir products, and criticising em. Granted ere is is ißue of price too.

Using an "open" format would mean that you don't get to keep much of the information specifically produced by that camera (histograms, exposure, white balance, etc.), which is the whole point of shooting in RAW.

Misinformation. TIFF/EP and, specially, Adobe DNG do all at.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[leandrod]

DNG doesn't support wavelet compressed RAW

Obviously DNG applies only to digital still photography, not to moving pictures.

Now you got me ðinking about extending DNG into moving pictures...

Re:Openness would have been nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe have Cinema DNG, but it's still uncompressed, which is next to useless for high fps, high data rates, high megapixels.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[kidgenius]

nor where most Nikon and Canon lenses created for digital 24×36mm sensors. Ðey have trouble enough wið APS-C sensors.

What in God's name are you going on about? 24x36 is a full frame of digital. Canon & Nikon have been making lens for DECADES (basically since the creation of either one of those companies) that support that size, as have Zeiss, Leica, etc. And APS-C is actually a much more difficult thing to design for than full frame. A 15MP on APS-C is equivalent to about 35MP on an FF camera. In other words, a FF lens is MUCH easier to design for.

Re:Openness would have been nice

[im_thatoneguy]

The file format was sort of non-proprietary at one point. It's JP2K compliant at its heart (or at least it used to be until they encrypted it) but with some fancy proprietary tricks.

What the hell is an open source lens mount? Anyone can make a canon or PL compatible lens mount. And if you did make an "open" lens mount were are you going to find "open source" lenses for super 35mm? There's no such thing. The reason they call it "Four Thirds" is because it's for a very specifically sized sensor.

PL is the defacto standard. And every cinema lens company makes lenses to that standard.

Red is delivering a product that its customers can actually use. And if some standardized lens mount did come along red can release it. The lens mount is replaceable.

partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rcjohnso.com/REDFACTS.html

Re:partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course they are talking about the RED One in your article. Let's see how RED's stuff improves.

Re:partial debunking here

[nattt]

Sure, but the only bunk there is coming from Rian, who seems to swallow the Sony cool-aid quite happily.

Re:partial debunking here

[CMF Risk]

How is a giant wall of text considered a "debunking" in relation to picture quality between different cameras?

Re:partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

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:partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't think anyone puts the RED on the level of the F23 or the Genesis....

The article fails to see that the RED is a 20k$ solution... where the F23 is more than a 100k$ and the Genesis... well the Genesis you can rent it for about 4000 dollars a day.

The RED allows low budget houses to produce film quality within certain limitations.... I would like to see this same write up, comparing the RED against any camera within the same price market....

Re:partial debunking here

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Wow. Monospaced? And what the heck crummy old font is that? Too bad the article is formatted like a piece of crap on an old typewriter.

Re:partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW! Pretentious gibberish from a guy who clearly fancies himself way too much. Nobody in their right mind would listen to a guy who uses the word "proselytes" like that... and his movies sucks too.

Re:partial debunking here

[mrcaseyj]

Who is this rcjohnso.com? Some shill for the other camera manufacturers? In his page at

http://rcjohnso.com/REDFACTS.html

he says that "Kodak invented the [DPX] standard to be the digital equivalent of film" and "To get all the information of film, you need 1.8K pixels". Then when he's called the fact that 35mm film has more than 2K of resolution across the frame, he denies he said 1.8K is enough to caputure "all" the information. But it is what he said and he didn't even go back and take those comments out. I might forgive such a mistake if he'd gone back and corrected it, but why did he leave it in?

He also tries to say that the other cameras get 42 bits of image information per pixel and that the Red only gets 12 bits. But it would be more comparable to say that the Red gets 48 bits (4 times 12) from the four(assuming they're square?) photosites that the Red has for each pixel of the other cameras. Though 48 to 42 isn't nearly as big an advantage as you would expect from the Red's claimed 4K image.

Unfortunately Red has stooped to dragging the megapixel fraud over from the digital still camera field into the digital cinema field where the other camera makers seem to have been maintaining more honest specifications. I suppose the other camera companies will just have to triple their pixel ratings(not change the actual number of pixels, just say there are three times more) to level the playing field with Red. But I hope they will be honest in their specs that they're counting sub pixels instead of trying to pass off their bayer sub pixels as full color pixels like still camera companies do.

Puny!

[johannesg]

Only 261Mpixel? That's not particularly impressive, compared to GAIA (1.5 Gpixel!)...

film = ~100Mpel per square inch

[davidwr]

If you really want to replicate the image-capturing resolution of film, you'll need about 150 megapixel for 35mm film.

A good - not great but good - pro 35mm camera with good film and lenses can capture about 100 line-pairs per millimeter. That's 100 white lines and 100 black lines interleaved. Some very-high-end ones can do better. To capture 100 line pairs per millimeter digitally you'll need 400 dots per mm thanks to some worst-case-scenario digitization side-effects. On 24mm X 36mm film that's 138,240,000 pixels. 6x9 medium format is 56mm × 84mm, or 752,640,000 pixels. For 4"x5", assume 100mm x 125mm, or 2,000,000,000 pixels.

Multiply that by 6 bytes per pixel for good dynamic range. That's 0.8GB for a typical 35mm shot-equivalent.

Having said all of that, unless you really like to zoom in close or make huge prints, you don't need that kind of resolution. Today's 8Mpel cameras are fine for most users, and even the 1.3-2Mpel cell-phone cameras are good for web-shots if you don't zoom.

Re:film = ~100Mpel per square inch

[Sinbios]

Having said all of that, unless you really like to zoom in close or make huge prints, you don't need that kind of resolution. Today's 8Mpel cameras are fine for most users, and even the 1.3-2Mpel cell-phone cameras are good for web-shots if you don't zoom.

That's like saying you don't really need blade servers with 16 cores because beige box PCs are fine for most users, and even eees are good if you don't play games. Or that you don't need trucks because minivans are fine for most families, and even sedans are good if you don't have kids.

These things are made for professional digital film production and billboard/poster shots. They're just not meant to compete with the consumer P&S/prosumer/DSLR segment; if anything, they're made to take a bite out of the digital medium format/large format market.

Re:film = ~100Mpel per square inch

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you vastly over-estimate the resolution of film. For 100 line pairs you only 200 sample points, not the 400 you quote.

Convergence of Video and Still Cameras

[Lev13than]

There are a lot of really interesting developments in video these days, not the least of which is the increasing convergence of video and still cameras. We're not talking about crappy video on your cell phone - this is all about taking the unique properties of still cameras into the realm of full-motion video.

Still cameras traditionally have better resolution, ISO sensitivity and dynamic range than their video counterparts. Furthermore, DSLRs have much better control over depth of field due to their sensor size and lens options (traditional digicams generally have a very large depth of field, which is great for shooting your kids' birthday party but not so good for artistic effects). Furthermore, by taking a 20+MP sensor and downsampling it to 1080 video, you get a very clean and noise-free image. It's also easy to see how the ability to shoot broadcast-quality video from a DSLR would be very attractive to professionals such as photojournalists.

A great example of this is the Canon 5D Mark II. The 5D MkII is Canon's latest full-frame offering, which in addition to a new sensor, improved dynamic range and greater resolution also shoots full 1080 video. The results are impressive, to say the least - check out this sample video by director Vincent Laforet.

This is a perfect example of convergence done right - taking the best features of different tools and making something better.

Re:Convergence of Video and Still Cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

"Furthermore, DSLRs have much better control over depth of field due to their sensor size..."

Are you sure about that? I mean, a non full-frame DSLR sensor (smaller than 35mm frame) results in your shots having more depth of field (why consumer video cameras don't have narrow depth of field and you get that "video look"). That is less control in my book. Better if you want more depth of field for a given setting of course but bad if you want it narrow.

Re:Convergence of Video and Still Cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the GP's point? On traditional digicams, pretty much your only option is "everything in focus". This has also held true for professional digital cameras. However, on a DSLR with it's large sensor and wide range of lenses, you can set the depth of field to be very narrow or very deep as required.

Re:Convergence of Video and Still Cameras

[SuperBanana]

check out this sample video [canon.com] by director Vincent Laforet.

That's quite possibly the worst quality "music video" I've ever seen. Horrendous acting, he clearly didn't even bother to use a steadicam-like mount for *anything*, and the editing, even on a pure technical level, was shit as well. He didn't even bother to put the camera on a tripod for the end moon shot!

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

It links to a very interesting discussion of the claims made by RED.

actual videos shot on a RED

[Chalex]

Here are two that I know about:

This lets you see the possibilities of having an HD (or higher) resolution camera shooting at 120FPS.

http://www.vimeo.com/1124192

http://www.vimeo.com/1124192

What about lenses resolution?

[Yag]

Ok 261 megapixel, yeah, cool, but, since RED cameras use canon/nikon photo lenses how they suppose to obtain such a resolution? I mean, currently with new cameras (like 5dMkII) coming out we are allready speaking about lens limits (also for "top" lenses like L marked ones). So, how can they push this camera to that resolution without enlarging sensor size? For 261 megapixel you will need AT LEAST 6x6 sensor rather than normal 35mm. And 6x6 sensor requires really big lenses (like hasselblad) and probably won't keep up either. So, i think there is too much "megapixel" marketing here rather than "real" resolution.

Re:What about lenses resolution?

[Zerth]

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?

[XeresRazor]

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

Re:What about lenses resolution?

[nattt]

It's a big 617 sensor. Look at the picture. It's large format photography with a standard mount for existing large format lenses.

Re:What about lenses resolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing several of their products. The 261Mpixel is an announced product (i.e. vaporware) for a 6x17cm digital sensor that would take the same size image (56x168mm) as a 6x17cm film camera. They state they'll use 6 micron pixels, the same as the shipping high-end medium format digital still camera sensors from Leaf and PhaseOne and (soon to be) Leica. Good lenses can handle 6 micron sensors just fine. Nobody has made a sensor that works that's over 54x41mm in size yet. Good luck to Red, that would be an impressive product.

A few manufacturers, Linhof and Seitz, have produced 6x12cm or 6x17cm digital scan back cameras. These act just like a little scanner, where the sensor is a 56mm wide strip that scans across the image plane. BetterLight and Anagramm make "4x5 inch" scan backs (really take about a 72x118mm image, where 4x5" film takes a 96x121mm image). Those get up up to 1020Mpixels. For a price...

A 56x168mm image, film or digital, requires a lens that projects a 178mm image circle. These lenses, from companies such as Schneider, Rodenstock and Fujinon, are generally marketed towards large format cameras. Here's one such camera: http://www.linhof.de/technorama-e.html

Red has announced a "35mm Full Frame" 24MPixel unit that will use a 24x36mm sensor with 6 micron pixels. "35mm" (film or digital) still cameras use a 24mmx36mm image, which requires about a 44mm image circle. The "35mm FF" and smaller sensors are the ones that will use Canon and Nikon lenses (as well as Cooke and Red's own, most likely made for them by Cooke), not the "6x4.5cm" or "6x17cm" sensors.

Re:What about lenses resolution?

[Scannerman]

Read the article before you comment./p>

But....

This is slashdot.

are you suggesting that information is a prerequisite to opinion?

That will never catch on as an approach.

Any tests/reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking at the photographers favourite: www.dpreview.com No reviews.. I know its not really a mainstream model, but how come there are basically no reviews of the older models?

Re:Any tests/reviews?

[kidgenius]

The older camera was intended as a video camera, that's why dpreview doesn't have anything on it.

28k furlongs

[Joce640k]

It's a pretty good lens system. Hope they have good anti-shake processing.

Great

[Johnny_Longtorso]

Yet another camera mere mortals can't afford. Next.

More to the point...

[Joce640k]

What handheld device can write 19 gigabytes/sec.?

(25 x 261000000 x 3)

Shoulder-mount?

[Animats]

With all that resolution, you're going to need either a tripod, Steadicam gyros, or stabilization processing. Stabilization processing won't help if the "shutter time" (really integration time) is more than a millisecond or two; the individual frames will be blurred.

High resolution with big enough collecting optics to get the shutter time down to 1ms or so, plus rate gyros to get info about camera movement, would be a useful option for news gathering. Just point in the direction of the action, take a bigger frame than you're going to use, and fix it up in post.

Re:Shoulder-mount?

[sahonen]

With all that resolution, you're going to need either a tripod, Steadicam gyros, or stabilization processing. Stabilization processing won't help if the "shutter time" (really integration time) is more than a millisecond or two; the individual frames will be blurred. This is only an issue in still photography. In motion photography, motion blur is actually desirable because it functions as a form of temporal antialiasing, allowing frames with motion to blend into each other and create the illusion of continuous motion. Faster shutter speeds that suppress motion blur are used more as an effect rather than being the norm. High resolution with big enough collecting optics to get the shutter time down to 1ms or so, plus rate gyros to get info about camera movement, would be a useful option for news gathering. Just point in the direction of the action, take a bigger frame than you're going to use, and fix it up in post. Um, no. Newsgathering is all about having the most efficient workflow to get footage from the field to the air as possible. What you would propose would require hours in the edit suite for all of the stories that have to make the air, for no appreciable benefits in any other part of the workflow. Believe me, you're already seeing the best possible footage that news shooters can get under the constraints they work under.

Re:Shoulder-mount?

[Animats]

In motion photography, motion blur is actually desirable because it functions as a form of temporal antialiasing, allowing frames with motion to blend into each other and create the illusion of continuous motion.

That's old-school chemical photography thinking. Now you want the sharpest frames you can get. Any blur can be added later if desired. The coming technology is smart frame interpolation/morphing. This gets you, among other things, arbitrary slow slow-motion. This is already being used in some sports coverage.

The sports people want to sell ESPN HD Football, and the people who buy that want detail.

Re:Shoulder-mount?

[sahonen]

That's old-school chemical photography thinking. Now you want the sharpest frames you can get.

Pure nonsense. Perfectly sharp frames with no motion blur look unnatural and distracting. Also, look at animation and video games, where pictures are being created from scratch and can look however their creators want them to. Video games are starting to use motion blur effects for camera movement now that it's cheap enough to do it (see Valve Software's latest iteration of the Source engine, released with the Orange Box), and 3D animation has always attempted to incorporate motion blur whenever in the budget (i.e. any major motion picture release).

Any blur can be added later if desired.

What benefit is there to shooting without motion blur, then adding it back in post? It's an unneccessary complication for the workflow. Big productions might have big budgets but that's no reason to waste money that could be spent in an area with actual tangible benefits.

The coming technology is smart frame interpolation/morphing.

Your "coming technology" is more expensive and complicated than just shooting it the way you want it to look in the first place, and also adds time and expense to the workflow.

This gets you, among other things, arbitrary slow slow-motion. This is already being used in some sports coverage.

Which sports coverage is that? If you're referring to the super-slow-motion looks we've been seeing on high end shows like the superbowl and world series, those are in fact special cameras that actually shoot at extreme frame rates, not post production tricks. And before you ask, yes I work in broadcast sports production and have seen these cameras in use. The problem with trying to use post production tricks on live broadcasts is that if you're going to show a replay, it has to hit the air within seconds of the end of the play, and must finish airing before the start of the next play. Post production tricks that require rendering are right out in this situation.

The sports people want to sell ESPN HD Football, and the people who buy that want detail.

The people who buy that want good sports coverage. In any case, say you actually do shutter up all the cameras so motion is perfectly sharp. The only detail you actually gain is in objects that are moving, because static portions of the screen won't be motion blurred. In other words, the only extra detail you actually get is in areas of the screen that will be different in 1/60th of a second anyway! Any extra detail you'd get over a properly motion blurred scene flashes by too fast for you to perceive it! So why not just let it look natural?

not so

[butterflysrage]

there have been several films made on RED cameras actually...

No sample photos?

[HermMunster]

Sweet looking camera but I don't see any photos. Anyone have a link to the photos that show off the benefits of this camera?

CID detectors

[AliasMarlowe]

Turns out you can't read the charge without erasing it.

That's true for CCD and CMOS type detectors, but not true for CID detectors. CID detectors were designed for repeated reading without destroying the charge. In fact, the signal in any pixel can be read out repeatedly while accumulating photoelectrons without interrupting the exposure.

Alas, although silicon-based and employing the same photovoltaic principles as CCD or CMOS, CID requires more complicated chip construction and remains expensive. Indeed, it has been "tomorrow's technology" for a couple of decades already. However, they are used in some scientific and forensic imaging devices, where extremely high dynamic range must be recorded.

It is locked down.

[leandrod]

They already provide freely downloadable tools

Not free software tools.

for processing the encoded RAW footage into more common formats (http://www.red.com/support REDCine works on Intel Mac or Windows)

Not on any other platform.

and can export to TIFF, JPEG, and OpenEXR (and possibly more, those were just the ones I saw mentioned in the latest release notes).

What about the format which counts in digital still photography, namely Adobe DNG?

They're also putting out a SDK for the format so it can be integrated into more software. It's not exactly locked down.

If one can't see the source code of the SDK or at least the specifications of the file format, it is locked down. And I bet one cannot use the SDK in free software, nor in anyðing but MS Windows and Mac OS X AMD64.

Re:It is locked down.

[kidgenius]

So let me get this straight. You are complaining that their conversion tool only runs on Win/Mac and not Linux. Then you say that it won't convert to Adobe DNG. Both are admirable points on their own, but the fact of the matter is that it really doesn't matter because nothing is out there that lets you open Adobe DNG in Linux. Therefore, even if it converted into DNG, you couldn't open in in Linux, nor if it worked in Linux, would it convert to a format that you would be happy with. I think you need to step away from the keyboard and get out a little.

Nice 3D renderings of a camera :)

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I hope they make a real version of it soon ;) All of those shots are 3D rendered product shots.

Re:Nice 3D renderings of a camera :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Plans are for full working prototypes at NAB in April 2009.

Not vapor. Product.

[dazedNconfuzed]

"Angels and Demons", along with other current & soon movies, was shot using a Red camera.

They're in the process of fulfilling 4000 orders. Not promising to, actually building & shipping them.

dcraw does support DNG on GNU/Linux

[leandrod]

nothing is out there that lets you open Adobe DNG in Linux

You are misinformed. dcraw and all derived software such as UFRaw, RawStudio &c do run on GNU/Linux. Quite some excellent software too.

Re:dcraw does support DNG on GNU/Linux

[XeresRazor]

Either way the current camera isn't a still cam but a motion camera and has outputs and software for the formats and software tools that are used in digital film editing. And besides, complaining that there's no free software for a camera setup that's around $30,000 for a basic moderately featured setup is kinda silly.
I have no doubt the new still capable cameras will support writing standard .jpg, .png, .raw, etc. onto CF cards when running in still mode.

Vignetting

[leandrod]

24x36 is a full frame of digital. Canon & Nikon have been making lens for DECADES (basically since the creation of either one of those companies) that support that size

Size is not everyðing.

Film can take light at pretty steep angles. On the other hand, what we call sensors are actually maßive arrays of individual sensors (we usually call them 'pixels'), each of which is actually at the bottom of a well-like cell; thus, light arriving at an angle diverging much from the right angle will not fully reach the sensor, causing vignetting: darkening at the corners of the image. Software can do some correction, but it really looses quality. Even APS-C digital cameras are affected, only Four Thirds seems to be safe from vignetting due to a careful design combining a smaller sensor array and lenses specifically created to be nearly telecentric on that array size. Thus the stellar quality Four Thirds system gets on even cheap, compact lenses.

Lenses that avoid vignetting on 24×36mm and even APS-C are usually quite heavy, expensive and slow -- take any two, and usually ðree.

APS-C is actually a much more difficult thing to design for than full frame. A 15MP on APS-C is equivalent to about 35MP on an FF camera

That would not be mainly a design iße, but quality control in order to get the higher poßible resolution. That is why profeßional Leica and Olympus glaß is hand-made, but even cheap Olympus and Sigma lenses do perform quite well even on Four Thirds, which is somewhat smaller than APS-C.

Red is Low Res

[PenGun]

A decent scan of a 4x5 will yield well over a Gig. 5000 dpi on a 4x5 is 25,000x20,000. Happily print to 70" at 360 dpi.

 

What is open

[leandrod]

The file format was sort of non-proprietary at one point. It's JP2K compliant at its heart (or at least it used to be until they encrypted it) but with some fancy proprietary tricks.

No one can be half pregnant, nor can something be half standard. Either it is compliant, or not.

What the hell is an open source lens mount?

That would make no sense. But an open standard for lens mount is one where the mount format and size, sensor size, register distance, mount contact, their functions &c are not proprietary to a company but set by a body, such as a consortium of companies. There are patents in Four Thirds and that is unfortunate, but it is much more open than the Canon or Nikon mounts.

You don't seem to know the difference between open source and open standards. Open source refers to free software, thus it does not apply to a lens mount.

Anyone can make a canon or PL compatible lens mount.

I don't know about PL, but the Canon mount is subject to Canon's whims. They can change it and exclude everyone in the future whenever they want.

if you did make an "open" lens mount were are you going to find "open source" lenses for super 35mm? There's no such thing. The reason they call it "Four Thirds" is because it's for a very specifically sized sensor.

The whole point of the system in the original article we were commenting on is that it accepts different sensor sizes, therefore it would have made sense to have a Four Thirds sensor and mount for digital still and HD video photography.

PL is the defacto standard. And every cinema lens company makes lenses to that standard.

Great. So Four Thirds is even better, only for still photography.

And if some standardized lens mount did come along red can release it.

It did come and is with us for some years already.