New RED Cameras Have Impressive Specs, Enormous Price Tag

The RED Digital Cinema Camera Company has only existed for a few years and yet the video cameras it designs and produces are already revolutionizing every industry that uses still or moving pictures. Most people don’t realize that many of the movies they’ve seen in the last few years have been filmed on RED cameras (like District 9, Gamer, Night at the Museum 2 and Angels & Demons), and RED has been winning over many filmmakers and photographers worldwide.

Those familiar with the quality of RED cameras have been anxiously awaiting news about the EPIC-X and Scarlet cameras RED announced last year. Today the wait is over as the specs for EPIC-X and Scarlet showed up on a RED user forum.

And just as you’d expect, these specs for the EPIC-X are mighty impressive:

• New MYSTERIUM-X 5K sensor
• 5K (2:1) at 1-100fps
• 4K (2:1) at 1-125fps
• Quad HD at 1-120fps
• 3K (2:1) at 1-160fps
• 2K (2:1) at 1-250fps
• 1080P (scaled from full frame) at 1-60fps
• Increased Dynamic Range, reduced noise
• Time Lapse, Frame Ramping
• REDCODE 250
• ISO 200-8000
• New FLUT Color Science
• Completely Modular System, each Module individually upgradeable
• Independent Stills and Motion Modes (both record full resolution REDCODE RAW)
• 5 Axis Adjustable Sensor Plate
• Multiple Recording Media Options (Compact Flash, 1.8" SSD, RED Drives, RED RAM)
• Wireless REDMOTE control
• Touchscreen LCD control option
• Bomb-EVF, RED-EVF and RED-LCD compatible
• Multiple User Control Buttons
• Interchangeable Lens mounts including focus and iris control of electronic RED, Canon and Nikon lenses (along with Zoom data)
• "Touch Focus Tracking" with electronic lens mounts and RED Touchscreen LCDs
• LDS and /i Data enabled PL Mount
• Rollover Battery Power
• Independent LUTs on Monitor Outputs
• Independent Frame Guides and Menu overlays on Monitor Outputs
• Monitor Ports support both LCD and EVF
• True Shutter Sync In/Out and Strobe Sync Out
• 720P, 1080P and 2K monitoring support
• Gigagbit Network interface and 802.11 Wireless interface
• 3 Axis internal motion sensor, built in GPS receiver
• Enhanced Metadata
• Full size connectors on Pro I/O Module. AES Digital Audio input, single and dual link HD-SDI
• Support for RED, most Arri 19mm, Studio 15mm, 15mm Lite, Panavision and NATO accessories
• Dimensions- Approx. 4"x4"x5.5"
• Weight (Brain only)- Approx. 6 lbs (2.72kg)

As you can see, they thought of everything when putting the EPIC-X together. All this hardware doesn’t come cheap, though; the EPIC-X already has a price tag of $28,000. In other words, this isn’t just an impulse buy, but you get what you pay for.

The Scarlet 2/3-inch camera is aimed at a slightly different market. It’s designed more like the DSLR cameras on the market that also shoot HD video. The Scarlet camera doesn’t have a price yet, but some early specs for it hint at a similarly feature-filled camera:

• Increased REDCODE data rates
• New FLUT Color, Gamma and Sensitivity Science. Now same as EPIC.
• More extensive modular system integration.
• Interchangeable Lens mounts including focus and iris control of electronic RED, Canon and Nikon lenses, along with Zoom data (Scarlet 2/3" Interchangeable)
• "Touch Focus Tracking" with electronic lens mounts and RED touchscreen LCD's (Scarlet 2/3" Interchangeable and 8x Fixed)
• Two independent microphone level channels, balanced input circuits, 48V Phantom Power, digitized at 24-bit 48KHz.
• GigaBit Ethernet port
• Scaled 1080P at 60fps

The EPIC-X is expected to come out first, although there are no release dates for either of these cameras. These two RED cameras are designed to be more modular so photographers and moviemakers can mix and match components to fit their needs and save video directly to flash memory or a hard drive. Basically you ad components around the “brain,” or processing core until you have what you want. The new approach is what prompted RED to come up with a new category of camera to describe it: the Digital Stills and Motion Camera, or DSMC.

No matter what you call it, it’s still an extraordinary innovation in camera technology.

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