It seemed that everyone had an opinion of the "first-light" 24 fps test images Red Digital Cinema showed to those in attendance at IBC. Some said the left side of the frame (showing black-and-white and color images of a moving Oakley watch, people blowing cigar smoke and chewing-gum bubbles, and a sports car) looked slightly out of focus. Inadequate lighting and a bad tripod setup were blamed. Others saw a dropped pixel here and there, but on the whole the "greater-than-4K" images were stunning, considering they came from the company's proprietary 12-megapixel "Mysterium" sensor, which is in its infancy.
Assimilate's Scratch software tools were used to edit, color-grade, and format the footage to 4K for display in the IBC theater. Red also showed some of the footage in their IBC tent-style exhibit stand at 2K. A new "Red Rail" shoulder-mounting system and "Red Grip" for handheld applications was also shown. Also announced was a new "Red Cage"-which features a series of holes for mounting on cranes, tripods, studio pedestals and anywhere you could fit a small-barreled image acquisition device-and RedCine telecine software for image processing, color correction, resizing and encoding applications.
All of the software-based operational controls are located at the back of the $17,500 camera, and a 32 or 64 GB internal Flash memory cache will be included.
As of the end of IBC (and including NAB pre-orders), Red has now taken more than 500 pre-orders for the camera and more than 30 for the 300mm prime lens (under $5,000) it announced at NAB in April. There's a new 18-85 F28 zoom lens coming next year (for $10,000), but pre-orders are not yet being taken.
The company said that all announced specifications are subject to change before the camera actually ships (sometime in first quarter of 2007?). Indeed, a pistol-grip device shown at NAB was nowhere to be found at IBC.
For more, visit www.red.com.