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Filed under: Cameras •Production •

RED Build 16: A Camera Whose Time Has Come

There were lots of other functions that Dane showed us, most of which were pretty cool. The camera now has a built in MacBeth chart, which is interesting—except that I know how to set up a monitor using SMPTE color bars, not a MacBeth chart. Still, I’m sure I can learn. There’s a false color exposure mode where dark tones are blue and transition to orange and red as the tones get brighter, culminating in pink in the clips. There’s a gray scale chip chart reference strip that can be called up to sit next to the image in the viewfinder. Somewhere in the menu there’s a command to steam milk and brew espresso, but we haven’t tracked it down yet. There are a LOT of changes to this build.

But it ain’t ready for prime time. Yet.

Chater Camera has three REDs in-house, and only one has Build 16 on it. They don’t let it leave the shop as it’s not stable enough to trust in the field yet, but also because they want people to come in and play with it to see what all the new features are. (For which we are extremely grateful.) My great hope is that, sooner than later, Build 16 will be finalized, because it makes a VAST improvement in the camera’s usability. It’s still not perfect, but it may finally be ready for the big time.

As a DP, I want information. Accurate, repeatable information. I can now get that out of the RED. I still have to play a few games to get at it, but at least it’s available. As soon as the “codec fault” and “codec error” bugs are fixed my comfort level with the RED ONE is going to go way up.

I still want to know why the histograms tell me the camera should (theoretically) be rated at EI 160. Perhaps the noise floor is finally low enough to allow that. I hope to find that out soon. Dane has kindly given me a collection of footage shot by himself, local camera assistant Jeremy Wong and DP John Chater. I hope to cull through it in the near future.

Meanwhile, I’m getting married next week so I won’t be wading through this footage for a little while yet. Keep an eye on Adam’s blog as he got a lot of juicy “RED Porn” pictures that I’m sure he’ll show off soon enough.

I like RED a bit more with every software build. I can’t say that about everything. I’m putting RED ahead of Microsoft on this round. Build 16 trumps Vista any day… because Build 16 looks like it may actually WORK.

Eventually.

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Thanks once again for such useful info. I hear you on the Macbeth chart—but I also think we (actually, SMPTE or somebody like them) need to come up with some sort of electornically generated color pattern that helps us set up the new monitors. The SMPTE Split Field bars miss a lot, while addressing things that aren’t really that much of an issue for digital, namely phase. Understandable since they were designed decades ago for the transmission of composite NTSC color, and nothing else!

And congrats on you guys finally being able to go forward with the wedding! The best news of a turnaround of a turnaround I’ve heard in a long time!

Posted by Steven Bradford  on  07/04  at  01:27 PM

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[That’s fine for a film stock, but I’ve not worked with many HD cameras that react to a meter the same way twice.]

that’s exactly how it is with a DALSA, which is why I try to work with camera that whenever possible

red’s build 16 is a mild improvement, complicated, and the camera is still a PITA. no thanks.

mXb

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/04  at  10:20 PM

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Thanks for the info and mucho congrats on getting married. One piece of advice. Don’t take a serious camera on your honeymoon unless your wife’s a DP too.

Posted by davhud  on  07/07  at  08:25 AM

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okay
has its time come?

is there anywhere i can go and see an actual movie done by this camera ( i saw zodiac, and it was sort of cool the way the viper did the digital look of the darkness)

any movies out i can see? even just on DVD….

Posted by billS  on  08/08  at  04:02 AM

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