November 13th

Excitement is mounting over at the Red website, since in just a few days (soon to be a couple of days) they are going to release new information on the complete overhaul of both their upcoming Scarlet and Epic product lines. It only takes a quick visit to the sites forums to see how much people are really getting worked up, with most the attention seeming to be drawn towards the Scarlet camera.

Red have also released a few cryptic renders of zoomed in shots of either Scarlet/Epic, only showing glimpses of the product and causing much speculation. It seems as though, due to the Canon MkII's impressive capabilities, Red decided to completely overhaul their lines to compete more directly.

Of course the cameras will be very different beasts. It is kind of like comparing Intel CPU's to the AMD's of yesteryear- The Canon will certainly have a bigger sensor size, seeing as how it is already much bigger than the one in the current Red One camera, so has more raw power in theory just like Intel always had the faster clock speeds. But the power in Scarlet is of its speed and shooting format, which I liken to AMD's choice to increase bandwidth rather than raw power. Scarlet will shoot in lossless compressed RAW, which will offer the absolute most control over the final look of the footage, since you have so many options to play around with. RAW is a powerful format, since it means that the data captured by the camera hasn't been altered or limited in any way. White balance can be changed instantly, as well as tinkering with exposure levels as well as a multitude other settings. You can do similar things with finished formats, but only to a shallow certain extent - push too far and you will get very unnatural looking results.

I think this is where Scarlet's primary power will lie - in the amount of control and choices you will get with the footage, as well as the quicker frame rates and modularity. No doubt the Canon 5D MkII will be popular and have its uses, but for more serious productions on an especially tight budget, the Scarlet should be the better choice.

Guess we'll have to wait another couple of days just to see exactly what is revealed.

New Options for the Budget Filmmaker

Looks as though we are coming up to some fairly exciting times, with a couple of cameras being released in the near future that look to make it a lot easier to get premium, professional looking footage without an enormous price tag. Although technology seems to be moving fast at the moment, its seems like digital video has been around for a long time, and for times has progressed very slowly. Of course it didn't make too much of a difference if the video was destined for the standard resolution television screen or regular dvd, but high definition has changed the game plan somewhat. Also as cameras move away from tape based systems to solid-state media, we've also seen a lot of horrible compression systems and file formats. But times are good at the moment, because some really solid offerings are coming along for the filmmaker that can't afford professional equipment, which I'm guessing is a great deal of people. Judging by the enormous amount of activity on the Red forums, I'd say there are a lot of people out there very interested in good value filming solutions.

The first camera I have already mentioned, which is the Scarlet camera by Red. They have mentioned on the site that the camera is currently being completely redesigned due to current changes in the market, and will hopefully be releasing some information about it in November, with units shipping in large quantities some time in 2009.

The second camera was just unveiled recently, but is already gathering quite a bit of attention. The strange thing is that it isn't even specifically made for video - the camera I'm talking about is the Canon 5D MkII, which is an attractively priced semi-professional DSLR. This camera has a huge full-sized 35mm sensor (35.8x23.9mm) which means it can use the full gamut of 35mm lenses without crop factor, and produces very clean images with a high dynamic range even in low light settings. The sensor itself is an amazing 21.1MP. The feature that is getting the most attention however is the movie mode, which offers both 1920x1080 and 640x480 resolutions @30fps. There are a lot of people out there hoping that Canon will either release the camera with a 24fps mode as well for more cinematic style shooting, or allow a firmware update in the future to provide this setting.

A short film has already been shot with a beta version of the Canon camera, and looks quite sharp. The stills in particular look insanely detailed and colorful. Check out this link for the film, Reverie.


There are a few drawbacks to keep in mind about this camera, however, the main one being that this is primarily a stills DSLR first and foremost, so the movie feature isn't going to be as strong as its main purpose. Some of the issues coming up are the skew (jello looking footage from sharp movements), although it is nowhere near as bad as the Nikon D90. Also the footage output, which is converted directly to H.264 in camera may not be the best option for more professional productions or discerning users (compression issues and more processing power required for editing). A possible workaround for the compression issues is the availability of an HDMI port, which may offer uncompressed HD output. Guess we'll have to see how that goes once the camera is officially released.

Still, the price of $2,700 for the body is very attractive, especially considering Pro-sumer camcorders can go for $5,000 upwards and have largely inferior specifications.

It will be very interesting to see how the Scarlet camera pans out in light of this recent news, and also the DSMC (Digital Still Movie Camera) Red is working on as well. It can only work to the budget filmmakers advantage with all these great innovations coming out.

Slow Progress

Well I haven't updated this blog for quite awhile, but I thought I had better mention something before the blog gets moved back to the blogger hosting. I haven't really had much incentive to do anything on the site lately. Work and other things have been taking up most of my time, so I haven't done too much creative work at all lately. Also, the year term for my hosting is expiring this month, so the Eye of the Sky site will go down for the time being, until I have some new material or interest to back onto it. Since this blog was moved to the Eye of the Sky site, I'm going to move it back to the usual http://mccada.blogspot.com for the time being.

I'm not sure exactly when I will be coming back to New Zealand, or when I can get into some creative or more interesting work. But I will post any updates here as soon as I find them.