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High class:Red Digital’s first camera model, the Red One, has already found its way into the production of major Hollywood films, despite being released only late last year.
JR Rost
But it's the high video resolution that's most intriguing to photographers: it should enable users to take frame grabs straight from video recordings with at least five megapixels of resolution--more than twice as high as those possible with most of today's high-end camcorders.
That's helping interest photographers outside the newspaper world, who need that higher quality. Robin Balas, a commercial photographer and photography teacher in Norway and a frequent participant in online photography forums, says the Scarlet could give him more spontaneity in the way he works, allowing him to film models or wedding participants in action instead of forcing them to pose, for example. "Scarlet would be even better than Red One, since it's lighter, and a lot less expensive," Balas says. "The resolution is good enough for what I have in mind."
And Scarlet's announced use of the raw image format, which is minimally compressed and thus offers more flexibility, has also piqued the interest of professional photographers. Most high-end handheld camcorders record data in compressed formats.
Yet, excitement over the Scarlet is not unalloyed. On the Red online user forum, potential buyers have sharply questioned some of the company's design decisions, particularly plans for a fixed rather than interchangeable lens, a feature that might also dissuade professional still photographers.
Company executives have reacted somewhat defensively to the criticism.
"This is a camera that can be sold in large quantities and deliver pro performance at the same time," Jannard wrote on the company's user forums. "Interchangeable lenses means a different product that will sell in limited quantities...which means a higher price. Much higher."
Balas notes that the Scarlet's two-thirds-inch image sensor, while large for a camcorder, cannot provide the tight focus or depth of field adjustment delivered by a professional-grade digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, which uses a larger image sensor. Other professionals remark that very high-end still cameras now offer as much as 21 megapixels--a level still far beyond the reach of video cameras.
Aside from any technological limitations, there's also the matter of the inherent differences between filmmaking and still photography. Many photographers say that the process of shooting video is simply different from creating still images, a reality that limits the possibility of any true convergence.
"In still photography, one is stalking moments--you line up a shot and wait for the elements to converge," says Miami Herald multimedia producer Chuck Fadely, whose paper has also begun publishing HD-video-frame grabs. "In video, you're assembling a chronology and moments mean little.... You can't just go shoot video and expect to get good still photos from it after the fact."
Yet, at least from a technological perspective, the two mediums are undeniably coming together, and Red Digital appears to be leading the pack in more ways than one.
Toronto-based filmmaker Gregor Hagey, one of the earliest owners of the Red One, calls his camera, "essentially a digital SLR on steroids," and says that its raw data output has forced him to analyze environmental features such as light and exposure more like a still photographer than a filmmaker. "You get a much better understanding if you dive into the professional digital SLR world and understand how they're working with the same technology," Hagey says. "I think there's more and more crossover between cinematographers and still photographers, given how the technology is evolving."
Technology marches on. Get with the program.
Sure this thing will generate a ton of data which most people won't be able to use well right now, but don't miss the point. This camera is merely a sign of things to come. Petabyte sized hard drives WILL become standard issue, accessible video/photo software and processors WILL evolve to work with the output of these cameras and eventually, HD video WILL replace a great deal of our photography. This is the film vs. digital argument all over again. "Progress" always wins. We've gone from playing Pong to editing fullscreen video in just a couple decades. If you think this isn't the future you're just deluding yourself. Or maybe you're just more comfortable with the way things are now.
May I refer you to the following:
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly.
They told Marconi wireless was a phony, it's the same old cry.
(And so on and so forth.)
'Nuff said.
There has been more misinformation around the Red cameras than around cars in Honest Jim's Used Car Lot.
Check Adam Wilt's tests. He shows that $6.000 Sony EX1 1080p camcorder has about equal resolution as Red 4K camera, or about 2K. This Sony 1/2" camera has about the same noise figures as the much larger CMOS Red camera.
There is a forum, RedUser.com, where posts are repeatedly deleted and modified by the moderators.
More about how honest the whole campaign around Red is can be found on Cinematography.com. Go there to High Definition, then to Red. There you will also find a thread referring to the Adam Wilt's test.
Actually here is the link, just paste the 4 lines together:
http://
provideocoalition
.com/index.php/awilt/story/three_three_let
ter_cameras_ex1_f23_red/
As to Scarlet, if 4K Red produces 2K resolution, expect 1.5 K from Scarlet.
Scarlet is a video camera. The Red CMOS is inherently noisy. The lens is only F2.8, whereas major makers of cameras use lenses that are at least 2x as fast and less noisy sensors.
Sony makes a CMOS, used in a $1.000 Casio camera that combines high definition video and still photography performance. No other sensor is able to do that. Certainly not the outsourced Red CMOS.
Red code has about 10:1 compression and it is about the most compressed format in real terms, even MiniDV is only 5:1 compressed.
Red cameras have been plagued with so many problems that they became the biggest joke among the pros.
I can't think of a single pro grade zoom lenses that has an F-stop of less than 2.8 so I suspect your are confusing short prime lenses with zoom lenses.
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/st
ory/three_three_letter_cameras_ex1_f23_red/
YOU NEED TO PASTE THE TWO LINES ABOVE TOGETHER.
The comments are under the article.
Here real pros talk abou the 4K Red cameras that produce 2K resolution.
Also $17 K red camera costs 5x as much, when properly configured and real lenses, not the Red ones are added.
Convergence of Video and Still Photography
This is the reason Sony is so serious about the Alpha DSLR line. They initially announced that they are shooting for a No. 2 spot in DSLR sales. Now Canon and Nikon have 80% share and Sony 10%. Last year they had 6%.
Pentax, Olympus, Leics, Panasonic, and Samsung have a combined market share of 10% right now.
The new Casio camera is an example of this technology and Sony sensor leadership.
Sony has teamed with Nikon to unseat Canon in #1 DSLR sales position. The alliance works behind the scenes.
When large and fast enough sensors are made, which will allow the cameras to without mechanical shutters, Sony will be positioned to take the No. 2 spot, or at least this is what they are hoping for.
I don't work for Sony, just work a lot with Sony HDCAM pro cameras. In the broadcast and digital cinema world, Sony sells more cameras than all the other makes combined and these cameras are more light sensitive, more reliable, produce better pictures, etc. That is why the pros like Sony.
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middlebass
3 Comments
Absurd Title
Still cameras aren't going to be obsolete. Just because most still cameras now offer some video capability and most video cameras offer some still image capability doesn't change that. And even if a few exotics support both formats reasonably well, most serious photographers and videographers will always favor cameras optimized for their interests. The author should be ashamed.
Reply
ArtInvent
67 Comments
Re: Absurd Title
Agreed. This is probably a very significant camera in a purely video sense. But still photography is indeed very different from videography. Also, the price of the camera will be groundbreaking, but in order to make use of the titanic data stream one of these cameras will generate, users will have to have an order of magnitude more powerful computer and storage systems.
It's already hard enough for prosumers to edit ordinary 1920 HD on todays hardware. 5 megapixels 30 to 60 times per second in uncompressed format? A rough guesstimate says this will fill a terabyte hard drive in maybe 15 minutes. The unwieldiness of the data rate will mean that still cameras will remain far more attractive to almost anyone besides pro sports photographers and news people whose organizations can afford the infrastructure to make use of the mountain of data.
Reply
wbdeville
18 Comments
Re: Absurd Title
I don't think the title was absurd, nor that the author didn't reflect some of the differences between video and still photography.
Recently, David Pogue of the New York Times posted a movie demonstrating a point & shoot camera capable of taking video at 60 frames per second. He took a short burst of video during a gymnastic performance. Result: a still photo almost impossible to take with a still camera.
One doesn't have to fill up a terabyte of drive space to use high-resolution that way. Yes, sports action photographers will use video to pick good still action shots.
So, I suspect, will a growing number of people make use of high-res video to get that great still of a toddler, or of a group of people without having at least one of them with eyes closed.
Think a terabyte of storage space is a lot? Yes, it's more than any laptop has now. But the technology is rapidly advancing. Future portable computers/digital devices may well have hundreds of terabytes of storage space in the not very distant future.
Shudder at the thought of looking at thousands or millions of frames to pick just the right still photo? Why not let AI software suggest some good frames for you?
Don't fight philosophical differences between motion and still photography. It's the image that counts. It still takes judgement to pick that great image, even with lots of technological assistance. So take advantage of the technology. It's coming.
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