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

[sith]

Wow. That's ... wrong.

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

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: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.

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?

[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: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.

partial debunking here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rcjohnso.com/REDFACTS.html

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: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.