OK - What the hell am I talking about?
Those who have been following my rants will be only too aware of my previous excitement and resulting articles regarding the convergence of Digital SLR and HD video technologies. And, more importantly, the hopeful resulting burst in the quantity of high quality movies produced by photographers. YouTube & Vimeo content that looks damn good! After all - Who is better positioned than a photographer to create stunning shorts which are in themselves effectively a series of stunning compositions. Have a peek at the Canon 5D Mkii short in a previous post.
The movie industry have caught on to this over recent years and recruited photographers for just that reason and the results have been simply spectacular. Imagine the possibilities of your average photographer having access to the type of equipment that only a few months ago would have cost one hundred thousand dollars plus - and then some - but now entry level access can be achieved for the cost of a pro-sumer DSLR - As seen with the Nikon and Canon prosumer models.
Well, now it’s time for a total tide change with the offerings from RED Digital Cinema. How do you fancy a camera that can take 24mp images at 100 frames per second and then switch to 3K cinema quality (never mind HD - This is huge, huge quality)? Or how about a large format 28K cinema camera that with the flick of a switch becomes a 261mp panoramic stills camera? Oh - and you can use your Canon and Nikon lenses on it all too...
Of course you’re interested - So read on....
The RED systems very unique selling point is it’s modular approach to, well, just about everything. Where they have made a very clever move, is to enable existing Canon and Nikon users to use their lens portfolios with the new systems. Whilst their modular aproach is very clever - and sensible in the extreme - the really clever part of their DSMC systems is that they have made them compatible with our exiting lenses. So we are not going to have to fork out for a new range as we would if we decided to use Hasselblad (and trust me when I say that does get expensive).
The DSMC for us photographers come in two flavors - The Red Epic and the Scarlet. Here’s a spec table of the range for those of you who need the ‘details’. Or you can just go and have a look at their website. They have gone ‘old school’ with a scrolling single page.
The Range...
Now these things can wind up being expensive - But if your sensible and just go for what you need at the time, you can add and upgrade at any point in the future. This is where the modularity seriously comes into it’s own. If a new sensor comes out, or you just want to go for an existing higher resolution one. Then fine. All you have to replace is that sensor and not the system. This goes for everything else too. Now this isn’t totally new. You can do almost the same sort of thing with the Hasselblad system. What you can’t do is take super HD film using proper lenses and even more importantly, the lenses you already have and all at a fraction of the price it would have cost yesterday. Do you have any idea how much a cinema quality camera with an f1.2 lens would cost? No, neither do I as I can’t find that combination anywhere out there. But I suspect you’d need a Ridley Scott budget to use one. I understand the body only is going to be about $2,500 - $3,000, which is very reasonable and if you already have a Canon 50mm f1.2, then you could always hire it out to Mr Scott for a reasonable fee...
Here’s the ultimate in RED’s genious/madness - No relevance to this article, but it so stunningly cool I had to insert the image.
In addition, here’s an article from Chase Jarvis on his blog about this shift in technology. Worth a read - similar in nature, level of excitement but an opinion from a part of the planet quite distant from ourselves. Plus he usually makes a good read.









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