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I've followed the RED story from the beginning; I have a friend who bought one of the first run and basically launched his career with it, so I've stayed inform

I've followed the RED story from the beginning; I have a friend who bought one of the first run and basically launched his career with it, so I've stayed informed for personal and professional reasons. They've taken a lot of flak because they make big promises and only sort of keep them (or rather, they keep them with a few galling compromises, as I understand it). But the fact is they kicked the cinema industry right in the ass and made them work for it. RED leapfrogged them into the digital era and because of the industry panic we now have amazing cameras like the Arri Alexa and Sony F35. I don't know what RED has for a future, but despite all the weirdness, hype, and inside baseball, it has a pretty glorious past. Good work, Jim, and thanks from all of us.

lcrs 13y ago
I'm not sure the Alexa and F35 were panicked responses to the Red... the Arri D20 and Panavision Genesis predated the Red, and are very clearly the ancestors of the Alexa and F35 respectively - they use the same resolutions, sensor layouts and colourspaces, if not the exact same chips and recording formats. Not to mention the Dalsa Origin, a 4k camera out well before the Reds.
- stephen_g 13y ago
  It was a pretty incredible shift though - The more common cameras of the day, such as the 1080p Sony F950, was going for over $180,000 a package, and suddenly you could get a 4K camera package for $35,000. And it could record Raw footage to compact flash cards! The F900 and F950 recorded MPEG2 to HDCAM and HDCAM SR tape at that time. And they were pretty unprecedented (for the cinema industry) in the way they handled upgrades - dramatically improving many aspects in their cameras through free firmware upgrades and then offering a major sensor upgrade for the cameras, whereas their competitors would just release whole new camera models.

lcrs 13y ago

I'm not sure the Alexa and F35 were panicked responses to the Red... the Arri D20 and Panavision Genesis predated the Red, and are very clearly the ancestors of the Alexa and F35 respectively - they use the same resolutions, sensor layouts and colourspaces, if not the exact same chips and recording formats. Not to mention the Dalsa Origin, a 4k camera out well before the Reds.

stephen_g 13y ago
It was a pretty incredible shift though - The more common cameras of the day, such as the 1080p Sony F950, was going for over $180,000 a package, and suddenly you could get a 4K camera package for $35,000. And it could record Raw footage to compact flash cards! The F900 and F950 recorded MPEG2 to HDCAM and HDCAM SR tape at that time. And they were pretty unprecedented (for the cinema industry) in the way they handled upgrades - dramatically improving many aspects in their cameras through free firmware upgrades and then offering a major sensor upgrade for the cameras, whereas their competitors would just release whole new camera models.