HD For Indies

Next up - Red accessories. Let's start off with the fun stuff and work our way down: the EVF, the LCD, the Super Grip, the Lens Motor, and other widgets.

I've got some pics of accessories here, open them in another window and refer to as we go. Regrettably, I got no closeups of the EVF, but you can find pics/renders at Red.com. EDIT - a-ha - 3rd from last pic shows it pretty well.

THE EVF

In case you hadn't heard, Red hired the sharp guy behind the AccuScene viewfinder. If you don't know what AccuScene is/was, it was the only 720p res viewfinder on the market, and when introduced, cost about $17,500...sound familiar? In a few years time, get the 4K camera for what the viewfinder used to cost. Amazing.

Anyway, down to the details:

-MUCH smaller than AccuScene, but still surprisingly chunky, but nicely textured grip to turn for focusing it (to focus the EVF, not the main lens)
-size understandable considering what it does - is 1280x720 pixel resolution
-color/black and white switchable, bright and sharp
-$2950 - amazing deal for what it does

The buttons on side of EVF - one knob and three buttons. Knob is for EVF controls (rotate to select, push in to "click" - functions like a clickable scroll wheel on a mouse, except can get to all of the "roundness" of the wheel and you push into the middle not down on the edge to click). The three other buttons are all user assignable, and arranged as a pair together over the single other button. You might choose to assign the pair to audio levels up/down, and the 3rd as a temp switch for focus or exposure assist (in that mode either when clicked or only while held down).

Just to cover it somewhere, on the back of the camera itself, set under the UI screen (which is not a video display) there's a multi-function control - is a joystick, but also a button and a twisty - so you can tilt it for up/down/left/right, as well as twist the stick to scroll through menus, as well as push it in to click - hmm - seems to replicate most of the functionality of an iPod clickwheel - an efficient UI control doable with a thumb and maybe one other finger. Sweet.

The much vaunted exposure control - here's my own notes from talking with David Macintosh, the designer:
exposure control through EVF and (eventually through LCD, not yet) - is like a monochrome image with a false color LUT (LookUp Table) - top 20% runs yellow to orange to red to show "hotter" exposures, yellow is about as hot as you'd like to shoot to have some headroom. At the bottom end, used cool colors, light green to dark blue. * Instead of seeing shades of grey, see shades of color to know how "hot" your exposures are. It also works as a night sight - otherwise tough to see if your exposure is focused or not. Graphical focus assistant not shown yet...durn.


Of course, all the menus show up in the LCD and EVF screens as well. Of course - how ELSE should it work? Nice.

The LCD

Not much new to report - it is 1024x600 (lower res than EVF), it is pretty bright, it has its own power button on top and some menu buttons. While the screen is decent sized, the electronics around it are surprisingly small - see the pics (link top of page). It is VERY flat, esp. compared to other high res LCDs that are little bricks - this thing is elegantly compact, just a slight bulge on the back and a single cable going in for power and video signal. While I originally kvetched about LCD and battery prices, the originals were going to be internal battery and foldout LCD - these are soooooo much better, and cost justify like a mofo, and are dirt cheap compared to the competition. $1700.

Super Grip & Lens Motor

OK, another fun/cool one - who doesn't want to say in their best manly voice "Why yes, of COURSE I have the optional Super Grip on mine. And yes, my name is Steve McQueen." (Maybe Jenn White or Jendra wouldn't, but lots of DPs I know would).

Kidding aside, check out the pics (again, link at top of page). The SuperGrip can be configured in one of two ways, with or without the bolt-on handle. Pictured without the handle here. What the SuperGrip is - a handle with a gob of user assignable buttons - 10 in all. Under the thumb looks like it might be a directional (has a squat rubber boot on it), two bigger ones immediately above/adjacent to that (one red colored in the brochure). Four more on the inner part, and three more at the top. ALL are user assignable. ENG/EFP folks are used to a rocker switch (and who's to say they won't have one of those in time), but Ted said cinema shooters accustommed to a Micro Force controller (sp?) will feel right at home with this controller. You can user assign the buttons to different functions, and from what I've heard about the open architecture of the Red, you should be able to assign all KINDS of goodies to that - more on that in the future. But one of the primary intended goals will be to partner it with a pair of Lens Motors. What's a Lens Motor for? Well...

Red Lens Motor is a motor to be controlled by a Super Grip to control either iris or focus. Ideally, get a SuperGrip and two Lens Motors, one on each side of the lens, one for iris, one for focus. Then you can start/stop, adjust iris, adjust focus, and other controls of the camera, without ever taking your hands off the grips. For non-shooters, think of this as the Xbox controller for your Red One (Hey, it already looks like a big black badass BFG 9000, why not control it like one. Yes, I'm having fun writing this.)

Other Widgets - on the brochure/price list that was handed out (and you can see some of the stuf in the online store at red.com), there's tons of little goodies - plates, handles, shoulder pads, rail mounts, 15mm rod adaptors,more handles, side handles, etc. - there are 39 items listed on the big exploded view diagram of Red One and its accessories, NOT including lenses. I'll leave it up to them to post more pics of it all.

One cool tidbit - the Red Arm ($175, comes with EVF & LCD) that is used to position the LCD and EVF is WAY cool bit o' engineering. If you think of a human arm, this thing has shoulder, upper arm, elbow, lower arm, and a wrist. That could be really complicated to adust, right? Nope, not at all - there's a single twisting lockdown control at the elbow - loosen it and the whole arm gradually goes from rigid to loosey-goosey - get the EVF or LCD where you want it, then tighten it again with a turn and it locks SOLIDLY and rigidly in place. A very nice little bit of engineering they've accomplished there, and a solid bit of kit. Other companies would point proudly to it, here it is just one of the dozens of cool details. Edit - a commenter just pointed out that these are not a Red invention, have been out for a couple of years. My mistake - as a non-shooter, I'd never seen them before. Anyway, it is still cool and still groovy that they are using them.

One Big Thing to get about the Red One - in all aspects - the codecs, the recording methodology, the sensor approach, the accessories, the controls, the readouts/displays, the user interface - much has been approached the way bright fresh tech companies do - discarding the "well that's just the way its been done" even if that goes back to the days when that was the ONLY way it could be done. In SO MANY ways, down to so many of the smallest details, fresh thinking has been applied. Zebra mode is nice, but the false color exposure thing has a forehead smacking "well of COURSE that's a better way!" sensibility to it once you Get It. I have heard of and seen some other unreleased details that are similarly clever. It's like cutting loose an iPod UI designer on some ancient Russian bit 'o gear - of course there are just TONS of ways to make it better than it has been done before. In terms of readouts, and color controls, and Redcine, and a lot of the image control stuff - it is as if they said, in broad strokes "Well, let's do it the way my brain works - like Photoshop does it, rather than in color matrices, which is only how DIT's brains work." So many things that are so non-intuitive to so many people the old way are now immediately obvious, because we've grown up with computers, more specifically often Macs and iPods and Adobe software, and we have expectations about how to control things and interpret understand things. On TOP of the fact that it shoots up to 4.5K, up to 120 fps, for under $20K, etc. etc. etc. Red just roxors, and HARD.

Other stuff from the pics - the battery charger is shown, with and without batteries on it. Nothing else to say about that. One extremely useful shot - has all the outputs LABELLED on the camera. Those far ones you can't make out? "Viewfinder", "Monitor" and "Aux232"

And What's up with the hat?

Quite a ways back, a prominent poster on CML (Cinematographer's Mailing List) said something along the lines of "If they have working cameras at NAB next year, I'll eat my hat." That isn't an exact quote, but that's the gist of it. Much notice was made of this statement. And since Red did indeed have working cameras, he brought a hat to eat...and it was a cake (much tastier than a bowler, almost as good as a Stetson). Kudos to all for having a good sense of humor and being a good sport about the whole thing. We loved it in the booth, but I don't know what happened to it or where it went - perhaps to the CML party where it was eaten and enjoyed (I hope so). If anybody knows what happened to the cake, please post in the comments, it is a fun story.

Slightly extra wide smile factor on that one as I took some substantial heat from CMLers when I was singing Red's praises early on. It's all good now, I had some great friendly, productive discussions with LOTS of them at Red's booth, around the show in other vendors' booths, etc. All cool now, and excellent to put names to faces and make new friends. Some of my most vociferous (but polite and professional) counter-arguers on the boards were a delight to meet and shake hands with and talk shop with - a great experience.

End accessory rant, moving on, workflow stuff next...

UPDATE:

On a related note, Evin Grant started a thread (including pics!) on Steadicam with Red: Flying a Red One... - Reduser.net

I also overheard that Tiffen is going to make some kind of a Red sled for steadicamming.

For those wanting more info, there's a whole thread on the Magic Focus - Reduser.net - it gets interesting starting on page 2...

Other accessory related tidbit questions answered by Stuart English:

Q: B4 adaptor timeline?

A: Immediate

Q: Canon/Nikon lens adaptor timelines?

A: Formal announcement soon

Q: SuperGrip & Motor timelines? Pricing was TBD as I understood it

A: Both pricing and delivery are TBD

Q: I overheard someone asks about the B4 mount, you said: "B4 mount spreads the image to 2K, [omitted] has a B4 to 35 adaptor, but I'm not sure that's going to be a good move" - more on that?

A: Yes. Spreading B4 to 35 mm is probably not a good move from an image quality point of view, especially when you have affordable 35 mm glass.

Mike addenda to that - why shoot 2K through a quality reducing adaptor when you can shoot 4K (or at least start and scale down from 4K) directly instead?

Stuart response: Shoot 2K RAW with B4 - because for applications that need a long zoom ratio, a high end B4 motorized lenses works very well, and some applications - sports, natural history - have taken to those lenses. And if you own that lens, how do you re-use that?

Q: Hey - isn't there supposed to be an SD card slot for moving Redcine etc. data around on camera? Where is it on prototypes?

A: Under the Record button on the left face of the camera body. You can also use USB for that...

Q: Single/dual link HD-SDI functionality still there, right? Possible to do 1080p60 4:2:2? Possible to do 2048x1080 10 bit like the SMPTE spec?

A: Short term implementation is focussed towards supporting dual link 1080p / 24 at RGB 4:4:4. Other formats to be added in due course.

Thanks Stuart! On that last point - sounds like it is possible to do, may just require firmware updates - that is encouraging - he didn't say it wasn't techically possible. Another cool thing about the camera - it was designed to be as upgradeable, including software/firmware upgradeable, as possible. None of this "Well, in 18 months we'll come out with a /A rev, you can buy that camera then to get that feature." - Red strives to be ever adaptable and upgradeable from the camera you've already GOT.

Along those lines, when I spoke with Grant Petty of Blackmagic Designs at NAB, it struck me he had a very similar attitude when it comes to firmware upgrades - if you sell the original hardware, but keep it upgradeable, you get money from those folks to add future features. You add them as you can develop them and just roll them out as firmware upgrades...which in turn encourages new sales based on the new features, as well as benefitting existing hardware owners. If you DIDN'T make your hardware upgradeable, you might not have the capital to develop new features from you early adopters as they may be waiting to buy until those features ship...once implemented, new features would attract the new customers for further sales...so why NOT make your products upgradeable and keep your clients happy and keep sales more consistent?

EDIT - and Apple sees the benefit of this too - AppleInsider | Apple to build new features into iPhone, Apple TV free of charge

I really like that approach. (AJA does it to, and so do a lot of other companies, Grant just framed it well for me last week.)

More stuff, updated 1am Wednesday (wait, must sleep sometime!):

Red Timelapse - Reduser.net - timelapse options in the menu structure already - that hint at all kinds of future coolness - benefit of tapeless workflow, is cake to implement.

Studio Daily's Coverage:

Studio Daily | First Look at RED (video)


Studio Daily | RED at NAB, Part 2


Studio Daily | RED at NAB

And, as always, if you need some help or recommendations on what Red gear or post gear to buy, or how all this stuff will work once you buy it, or how to make it all work together, that is exactly what I do for a living - I'm trying to position myself as the Go-To guy on all things Red related. Contact me at the link at top of page.

-mike

Labels: cameras, Red