The Red Camera

My first time working with the RED CAMERA. A new cheap option for shooting HD - Far cheaper then the Arri D21 we used on "Crusoe" and also a lot cheaper than the Sony F35 we used on Natalee Holloway. The D21 and F35 have bigger chips which means a shallower depth of feild which seems to help make the digital images look less crisp and more film like, but this also means needing more light and a challenge for the focus pullers. So far I'm impresed with the RED Camera; it takes PL mounted 35mm lenses and they are planning a larger chip version of their cameras soon. Where the Red Camera really knocks their competitor's socks off though is the pricing the RED ONE body will cost you $17 500.00 where as the D-21 or F35 is in the region of $80 000.00 or more...

The D-21 has to be tethered to a DIT* system as an AD I hate this - it really slows things down, but it doea allow for more precise control from the DOP which is needed considering the lack of latitude that HD still has in comparason to Film. The F35 has the recorder attached or it can be configured to be tethered to a DIT. With the recorder attached (The way we did it on Holloway) it was a really heavy beast that made some of the steadicam shots have a slight shudder due to the weight and another issue was the amount of juice required to run the beast. Two batteries were required one for the camera, one for the recorder and everytime one of the batteries went down you would have to reboot the camera and review the recored to make sure you weren't recording over footage and tome make sure that the timecode was still set correctly (Us AD's don't have much patience for these kinds of delays - Film you load and then you can just shoot and the batteries last for hours...)

The RED CAMERA system that we used recorded onto 16GB flashdrives that held about the same amount of footage as a 400ft roll of film - not a bad concept because reloading is really quick and easy and I'm sure 32GB and 64GB drives will be available soon. The RED can also be tethered for full HD monitoring and even attached to a DIT if need be so it seemed to be the most versitile system.

The camera assistants were not too impressd with the quality of the RD though and they agreed that they all prefered working with the Arri D-21, but hey Arri also makes film cameras so I guess they are used to working on Arri film cameras that must be very similar to the D-21 in many ways.

All in all I'm impressed with the RED CAMERA and I will be keeping and eye on its progress, I think they have found a niche and if they can keep their priced low ARRI may be reduced to only supplying lenses, although I think Zeiss and Angenieux already have a head start in that department.

(*DIT: basically the recorders that record what the camera is seeing using a HD cable, The DOP will usually sit in the DIT tent along side the DIT technician and also have access to a degree of color processing and possible have iris contol on the cameras to set the premium stop for each shot and often will need to pull the stops due to the lack of stop latitude)