Thoughts on the Red Announcement from a Red One User

The following is a guest blog post by Jerome Thelia, a partner at multi-media production company Merge. We wrote about Merge -- which also includes photographer David McLain -- in the October issue of PDN. That article discussed Thelia's and McLain's experiences shooting with the Red One ultra high definition camcorder. In the below post, Thelia offers his impressions on today's announcement of a new hybrid camcorder/DSLR from Red.

Thelia's article first appeared on Merge's blog.

Get Ready to Be Blown Away
by Jerome Thelia

Red's announcement today is the media technology equivalent of Barack Obama saying that not only is he going to deliver on his campaign promises, he's going to offer every American a lifetime of high-quality universal health care, a top-notch education through college, and balance the budget and grow the economy... in the first year. And by the way, we're pulling out of Iraq which is going to stay peaceful and democratic. But any of this is subject to change - count on it. So it's a lot to swallow from a credible source.  What separates this announcement from vaporware hype is Red's proven track record in already delivering a revolutionary motion picture camera and post-production workflow.

It's important to Merge and so many other for several reasons, mostly revolving around one important concept: convergence. When you start with the assumption that photography and cinematography are only variations on a single art form, it opens incredible possibilities for the convergence of processes: motion, from web to theater converge with print, from web to large format printing -- a single vision across multiple delivery channels. If motion pictures and photography are already renaissance mediums, they just got a lot "renaissancer."

Sex and Substance

Resolution: 28K to the cinematographer and 261MP to the still photographer is really hard to wrap your brain around... but placing Sony's highest resolution motion picture image (1080HD) or Canon/Nikon's highest resolution RAW image on top of it would be like putting a playing card on your dining room table. But resolution doesn't mean much in and of itself: sensor size and dynamic range are arguably much more important and Red is making huge promises in those areas too.

Sensor size: There are two new sensors, Mysterium X and Mysterium Monstro that range in size from huge to mind-bogglingly huge. That means less noise and shallower DOF, something that (unlike resolution) photographers and cinematographers can never get enough of.

Dynamic Range: This may be the most important and least understood/appreciated aspect to all of this. Even though greater dynamic range has a more profound impact on the quality and flexibility of digital imaging, we've been distracted by a resolution race between camera manufacturers, and Red is no exception. Current digital RAW formats haven't matched the dynamic range of color neg.

A 13 stop dynamic range would make a Scarlet or Epic the first digital HDRI camera -- a single click and that blown out window has detail you thought was gone. Right now HDR is only really possible either by combining multiple exposures (motion being a deal breaker) or scanning color negative film to a floating point digital image format -- a process only really accessible or at least understood by visual effects artists. 13+ stops is a game changer.

Lenses: Nikon and Canon lens support with full motor control, and a new line of fast prime and zoom lenses from Red, and support of any existing motion picture lens system.

Extremely modular setup: the same system would allow for something a little bigger than a large DSLR Canon or Nikon sized setup (new handle has built in battery, small viewfinders and/or LCD), and can also be outfitted with matte box, large batteries and hard drive for a no-compromise motion picture setup.

Post-production: Assimilate is the brains behind Redcine, Red's free and very powerful RAW motion picture processing software and Scratch, the not free at all, but extremely powerful datacentric pipeline/color grading tool that is Merge's main grading/finishing tool.  Scratch already works in 32-bit floating point color space, so for the high to medium end of the motion picture side of Red's new cameras it's likely these tools will expand their capabilities along with a newer, higher dynamic range, higher bandwidth workflow.

At 2K/1080 HD output, Scratch, with a powerful Nvidia GPU and fast CPUs already runs circles around any other platform's ability to process Redcode RAW images.  But what about 6K... or 24K images?   The big bottle neck will be current CPU technology's (Intel/AMD) ability to decode Red's footage in realtime.  Scratch also has a head-start in the 3D world, being the first system to really support stereoscoping workflow for motion. 

Adobe: Jim Jannard has hinted elsewhere that Red is working very closely with Adobe now, which has obvious implications for a more accessible post-production workflow for both stills and motion. Presumably Lightroom and Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects will have direct access to Redcode RAW media in all it's new incarnations, which undoubtedly will include camera metadata in the very near future and eventually 3D metadata, which is crucial for 3D post.