Red is finally making its Monstro. The company said yesterday it had begun shipping the new Monstro 8K VV full-frame sensor, which it says outpaces its predecessor, the 8K Dragon VV, in dynamic range, noise levels and color accuracy.
The new sensor will be included in the upcoming $79,500 Weapon 8K VV camera brain, Red said, which will capture 8K at up to 60fps, shoot 35 megapixel stills and deliver up to 300 MB/sec of throughput. Some current Weapon camera owners will be eligible for discounted sensor upgrades.
That’s good news for the Red faithful, some of whom have been waiting in line for pre-ordered Dragon 8K VV sensors since they were originally announced at NAB 2015. A few of those sensors have trickled out — they were used to shoot Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 — but Red had struggled with poor manufacturing yields.
Now, Red has discontinued the 8K Dragon VV and will upgrade paid pre-orders to the Monstro sensor automatically and at no additional charge. New orders won’t be fulfilled until early 2018, the company said.
“Thanks for waiting, and sorry again that it took so long to tame the VV process,” Red Fire Chief Jarred Land said in a posting at reduser.net.
Longtime Red users will remember Monstro — the moniker for the massive whale from the Walt Disney adaptation of Pinocchio — was originally announced by Red honcho Jim Jannard way back in 2008, when he suggested it would be an upgrade to Red Epic cameras as well as the foundation for an upcoming DSLR-style camera from the company. Red ended up folding the still-camera concept into a modular camera system it dubbed DSMC, for digital stills and motion camera. The current generation of Red cameras — Weapon 6K/8K, Epic-W 8K, Scarlet-W 5K and Raven 4.5K — are known as DSMC2.
Also announced yesterday was the release of DSMC software v7, which adds a variety to Red cameras and workflow, including Apple ProRes 4K and Avid DNxHD/HR 4K support for the Scarlet-W and Weapon MG cameras.
Finally, Red released IPP2, which the company called a “completely overhauled” but simplified version of Red’s image-processing pipeline, offering improved color management, and a new demosaic algorithm to preserve detail. Red is also standardizing around its REDWideGamutRGB color space and Log3G10 output curve to eliminate differences in color workflow from camera to camera and make the whole process more friendly for HDR.
