The (Oakley) Red Camera

[mpixls]

After the NAB “demo” of the Red camera, I would be very hesitant to place a deposit on this product. There were no images from the output of the camera shown, and the mountain bike footage that was shown was super 16mm “to simulate the output of the camera”. Sounds like snake oil to me. However, the Fraunhofer imaging technology is something to get excited about.

[Anonymous]

Th deposit is fully refundable 🙂 for any reason right up to when the camera is shipping, sometimes you just got to have faith 🙂

Mike

[Michael Pekic]

hey mike,

you already placed your orders, don’t you? 😉
do you guys from fxphd think you can get your hands on a “beta” and post some test shots, asap? since we are on an fx site, green- and bluescreen footage with some fast moving fg would be great. 🙂

thumbs up (is this still the appropriate term?) for your fxphd project.

cheers!
rayk

[Anonymous]

hemmerli wrote:

hey mike,

you already placed your orders, don’t you? 😉
do you guys from fxphd think you can get your hands on a “beta” and post some test shots, asap? since we are on an fx site, green- and bluescreen footage with some fast moving fg would be great. 🙂

thumbs up (is this still the appropriate term?) for your fxphd project.

cheers!
rayk

We will be aiming to work as closely as we can with not only RED but companies like Codex for recording. When we spoke to Jim Jannard he said that there were test images but they were not releasing them yet, as you can imagine – the second they release an image – even if it is just a test frame – they will be judged completely.

fxphd is going off – so thanks for the comments – we hit half our first 3 month target within 24 hours. People have been really great and the response is amazing.

If things pan out we will be doing RED operation and workflow training as part of fxphd.

thanks again for your support.

mike 😀

[zinnia]

I’m much more interested by the Raid system that is going to be sold as an optional accessory. At 4K res, 60fps, 4.4.4, 10bits lossless, it should sustain something like 2GB/sec. I really can’t wait to see such thing, especially if their price will be as agressive as it is for the camera.

I really don’t know what to think about Red. Their camera is really a dream machine. But, we are near half 2006, and they’re gonna ship the cameras end 2006. That makes only 6 months to finalize the specs, release a working prototype, to test it, and to lunch production.
They also want to get in the same market as Zeiss and cooke! I really which them good luck. Lenses are extremely hard to make (especially zooms), it requires a really high level of enginering.
What about this “red ram” memory able to store one hour of 2k images? It sounds strange. Even Panasonic can’t store more than a few minutes of HD on it’s P2 cards.
A lot of things seems strange to me (should I say too good to be true?).

– They still need to finalise a lot of specs
– Why should we use 16mm lens on a 35mm aperture??
– What kind of controls for the picture will they have? (Sony has spent years in R&D to give loads of picture controls like the hyper gammas).
– Where does the viewfinder go? Will we need to by a 3rd party one? Where should we plug it?
– Real or electronic shutter? How do you set the angle?
– Any mark on the camera to show the back plate position?
– etc…

I really hope I’m just paranoid, but this sounds strange.

[John Jenkins]

Yep. Sounds like a dream!

[zinnia]

So, two months after the NAB presentation, is there anything new from red?
For those whos reserved the camera, did you subscribe some kind of mailing list or news-letter from red?

I’m looking on their website, and nothing in the news since the NAB.

I’ve also read the FAQ, but I have some problems to understand some points :

Quote:

Q: When will footage be available from the camera?
A: Public presentation of 4K resolution footage is targeted for Fall 2006.

Quote:

Q: When will prototypes of the camera be available?
A: Prototype camera assembly is targeted for December 2006

I dont understand this. They’ll be able to get pictures from the camera before they have a prototype?

Quote:

Q: What is the price of the camera?
A: The price for the RED-ONE camera is $17,500 plus shipping, sales taxes
and import duties if applicable.

How is it possible to know precisely the production’s price of a product that is not even at the prototype stage?

I want to belive…
Give us some good news!

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I want to belive…
Give us some good news!

Sure no problem.
The camera prototype was just shown in LA., at the CineGear show in Los Angeles, (it is black now) new physical models and images on the RED.com website soon. 4 K images are scheduled for Sept. Engineering is on track for cameras at the end of the year.
So far, – as i have been told. A lot of work is happening right now with the sensor, which sounds like it is going well.

Just to repeat i am not with RED or speak for them – this is what i know as a customer.

Mike

[zinnia]

Thanks! I’m now reassured to know that things keep going on!

[Anonymous]

FLGB wrote:

Thanks! I’m now reassured to know that things keep going on!

No one will know for sure until we see images – but I like to believe people are genuine and trying hard to succeed – especially having met the Red crowd. They seem like good people.

Mike

[zinnia]

Hello Mike!
So, after six month since the last message in this thread, is there anything new from Red?
I can’t wait to see this camera working.

[zinnia]

I found this article on my daily visit on engadget :
http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/28/first-pics-of-red-spike-camcorder-prototype-surface/

Looks good!

[Anonymous]

Well a lot has happened…

1. yes the first pictures of Spike have been released.

2. reduser.net goes live.

3. we have been speaking to RED – and thing are going well. They closed reservations at about 1000 after IBC – they are considering opening them again… Jim Jannard, Red founder, said on DVXuser.com:
We have thought about this often. It is possible that we will open up reservations for a few days early next year. The terms and pricing will be slightly different than the 1st round of reservations, but good just the same. We will absolutely open up for firm orders at NAB. My bet is that you would want to get in before that.

4. re dates , he had this to say:

The only timeline we have officially published is: 4k footage in the fall (2006)… we were two weeks early, our 1st camera together in December (that would be Spike- see above), and production early in 2007. What we do with test cameras until shipping we reserve the right to do in private, especially since our plans change daily. Test units will certainly be out before production, but I don’t want to commit to when, where, who and why. We’ll keep you posted as we go along, but we have enough pressure to ship early 2007. We will not be held accountable for any other milestones.

While we have said that shipping 1st production units around NAB is our goal, “early” can technically be May 31st.

5. the look of it… there is a great rendering on http://www.hdforindies.com

http://www.hdforindies.com/uploaded_images/REDONE8-709240.jpg

6. Footage
on the red site they have posted both stills and moving clips (as a bittorrent).

anything else I can help with?
We are really enthusiastic

Mike

[Author]

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