I see Red
Well, that’s it. Having seen the RED camera footage start streaming through the door, I’ll say this to the detractors and the fan boys: it’s a bloody digital camera, get over it. Yes, it is better than Genesis (which is just one of these with a little Panavision sex). I’ll justify the Genesis statement another day. No, the RED is not “better” than film.
At ~$17k USD for a body (the Sony equivalent is $116k USD list), it is going to gouge out a big niche in the market. Think of the impact of cheaper digital stills cameras. And, you know what? It is exciting.
If you are able to expose correctly (don’t get me started), then it will turn out great results. It—and other cameras like it—will rule. In Sydney, the few that are available for rent are working their little sensors off. Good luck getting one. The new Scarlet camera—considering the little anyone knows is only that it will be cheaper and smaller—will rule as well. Say hello to a new breed of DP’s, just like the new photographers that have been born of the digital stills industry.
The image quality of the RED One is so close to a RAW digital still, that there is not question that it will be successful. Panavision, Sony, ARRI, et al should be shitting their pants, or at least coming up with Plan B.
Anyway, enough of the pontificating.
Under the current RED compression and storage scheme, which is writing to 8GB Compact Flash cards, I thought that the image quality would be pretty awful, especially when pulled apart. It isn’t. At least it is no worse than the artefacts you would see on other video formats.
As you can see in the above image, the noisiest channel is blue. Red and green survive pretty well. I know there are new implementations of the compression coming out seemingly daily, but it is interesting to see where they are at now. The HLS image is probably the most telling of how the compression is working and what you have to colour grade with, where the RGB will make a big difference if you are doing visual effects (hint: shoot greenscreen). The RAW image sits in that strange not-quite-log space of RAW digital stills. There is plenty toe and shoulder (for a digital image) to play with.
In short, it is impressive. Considering that it will only get better, I think this should be an intriguing year.