Red One Has Landed

Just thought I'd talk a little about the Red One camera, and what impact it will make on the film making/television/documentary etc. worlds.

Now that the Red One is finally being released in small amounts, it may be a good time to quickly discuss some of the changes that are going to be happening once this camera gains a larger user-base. Although it will definitely be out of the price range of everybody, it is important to note the differences of price of similarly specked cameras. Probably the closest rivals the Red One camera will have are cameras based on either the HDCam or DVCPro shooting formats. These cameras already enjoy quite a bit of success in the television production worlds, and are slowly gaining grounds in the formerly film dominated movie industry. So what exactly are the differences between these cameras and the Red One camera? The differences are huge. And how much of a price difference is there between the two groups? This is also huge, but not in the way you might expect.

Pretty much on a price scale, DVCPro would be at the lower end, with an average DVCPro camera costing around $8000 US. Red One weighs in at about $17000, and for an average HDCam camera its around $50000. Wow, what a difference. The Red One camera pratically blows the socks off the best HDCam cameras, and yet HDCam's are over twice the price. Of course, there are slight differences. DVCPro and HDCam's typically have built in lenses, so you don't have to pay extra for those. With the Red One, you have the choice of either using Cinema lenses (very expensive), or with adapters you can use still photography ones to save cost. The advantage to this of course is the custom options available by using removable lenses.

The main competing factor for me is the image quality, which again is a huge difference. The current HDCam's typically have a sensor depth of 2.2 Mega Pixels, which is alright, but not compared with the Red One's 12 M.P. sensor. It's just amazing how much of a huge difference there is between the best current digital camera's and this new offering. I think that the main camera companies, namely Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon are really going to have to rethink their game plan.

So in conclusion although the Red One will be out of reach for many, it's not as out of reach as you may think. Especially considering the alternatives.

Red One also looks a lot bigger in real life than it does on the website, http://red.com, as this picture shows. I'm sure the day will come when I will have one of these fine pieces of machinery in my hands, although that may be some time from now. (Image courtesy of http://www.projectred.net/)