Correct. When they first came out, they had some excellent promise. They were the first digital 4k movie camera. So if you wanted a digital end to end 4k workf

Correct. When they first came out, they had some excellent promise. They were the first digital 4k movie camera. So if you wanted a digital end to end 4k workflow, for about 4 years, RED was the only show in town. However, if you wanted to use normal lenses and dump direct to a normal plate format, the alexa was what you really wanted. A rundown: Firstly, you couldn't buy or hire one, you had to know someone. Secondly you had to get a bunch of adaptors for _everything_, which drove up the cost significantly Thirdly no global shutter meant that it wobbled horribly when you panned left and right. Fourthly its colour was off, and noisy as hell(visual noise) (some later generations are practically colourblind. cough hobbit cough) If they had actually produced and shipped the RED one, when they said they would, then my opinion would have been different. If they'd shipped the epic on price and spec, again, they could have transformed the film industry. But they didn't. By the time 4k digital workflows were practical for most people, RED had lost its shine. Why do I personally dislike them? Because, whilst there are some lovely people that work there, the level of cultism and secrecy is frustratingly annoying. I'm trying to do VFX on a shot, I've been given a couple of TB of .r3d files, it takes 30 second a frame to put into a useable format. Even then I have to fiddle with it, because the colour profiles are all messed up, or some other stupid issue. I talk to the RED team, they try and sell me a $5k card that only works in a mac (I was working at a linux shop at the time) Fortunately Nuke 5/6 had native .r3d handling, which meant that we could drop out to the farm and blast through all the footage at once, with decent conversion options. Why did people used them? Size They are much smaller than a film camera. Its practical to mount them on a moving rig, hand operate, etc, etc, etc, without loss of quality Mobility Because there is no film, you can bump them, wobble them, sit them next to explosions and not worry that the film is warping. 4K way more resolution to play with. This means that you could push the ISO more and just half the resolution and get usable footage. which you had to do, making it basically an Alexa competitor The key difference between the RED One and the Alexa, is that the Alexa couldn't record to an onboard device, the RED could. Also the resolution of the Alexa's sensor was lower, but the sensor size was correct. It also had a much greater usable dynamic range than the RED one. The concept was nice, the company, and the fanboys can get to fuck.