RED ONE hands-on, RED NAB booth tour
By Ryan Block 
posted Apr 16th 2007 5:56PM
posted Apr 16th 2007 5:56PM
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LOL @ everyone who labled this vaporware at last year's NAB.
I don't know what that 4(?)-legged bladed thinger is, but I want it.
Looks like they made a RED ONE anti-theft-death bot, won't ever have one go missing now.
Um, photo captions, please?!?!!
You got it! Captions added.
~splooge~
Wouldn't that be "spooge"?
Freakin' awesome. Maybe they'll consider doing a standard digital camera, maybe even a DSLR down the road. I'd be interested.
Pfft...what's $13,500 when some people buy $100,000 sports cars for the hell of it?
It's actually substantially less expensive than any other cameras that come with the similar features.
RED's closest competitor is a Dalsa Origin camera (you can't buy one, it's about 5 times the size, and it rents for $3000 a day). It's in the same field as the Panavision Genesis, the Arri D20, or a high-end Sony Cinealta, like the F23 (all of which cost well over $100,000).
So $17,500 for a camera that stands toe-to-toe (or better) with any one of the above is a freaking STEAL.
Considering how much a Panasonic DVCProHD Varicam costs (upwards of $50K CDN) and that it can be rented for several thousand a day, the price of this machine puts it right in line for indie filmmakers who already rent out much more expensive gear that doesn't promise what Red does at all.
FYI an $8000 HVX200 Setup including 60GB disk, 16GB of Flash storage and all the other elements costs about $375 a day. A Sony XDCAM with a some kit and lenses costs upwards of $1700 a day. This will be much more affordable in the end.
Red's founder, Jim Jannard, is quite an interesting person. I admire him a great deal. He decided one day that he wanted a great video camera. Nothing being made would do. Cost was not really an object; the person who paid almost $100,000 for a single lens in his collection isn't going to balk at the $130,000 a Vericam or CineAlta costs. But what he wanted was something that would work like his $8,000 Canon 1Ds, that would create a 12 megapixel RAW image for each frame. This would provide unprecedented image quality, and that is in fact something the RED camera can do, although of course it makes such massive video files that most people are going to use stronger compression methods.
A RED camera actually doesn't cost $17,500. Like a Canon 1Ds, it's useless without a lens or memory card. The typically purchased lens will cost around $6,500 and the cheapest memory option is the 320GB RAID setup for $900. Then you have to add one of two viewfinder options ($1,700-3,000) a rail system ($1,200-2,700), batteries and charger ($1,500) and a few other odds and ends. So if you want a RED One out the door it will cost you about $31,000. That's still about 1/4 the cost of the competition, and you'll get significantly better image quality.
After hearing about the quality of the footage shot with the camera, I really have to congratulate Jim Jannard and friends on a job most impressively done. He has already announced a smaller (but still professional) model; maybe the Compact RED will be a bit easier on the wallet for some of the rest of us.
Until then, though, this is an amazing story about remarkable people doing groundbreaking things, and I think it's well worth understanding and appreciating the great achievement that's been made here.
D
It looks cool, the price is great, but can you rent it or buy one yet? Our people using them?
I knew when I first saw this that it was going to be big... Can't wait to get my hands on one :D
Does this mean that there will be more HD TV shows and local news? I love my HDTV, but wish the channels would broadcast in nothing but HD.
If they buy and use these, yes I guess, though I really expect this to be used mostly for films. But I thought in the US quite a bit gets produced in HD.