Cinematography: Cameras and Formats: RED: An Open Learning Guide

The Red One Digital Cinema Camera was unveiled at the NAB Exhibition 2006 in Las Vegas. An "Ultra-High-Definition" digital camera, it has a custom Bayer Pattern sensor array (the "Mysterium") with a resolution of 4900x2580 (4700x2540 active image area, 4520x2540 maximum recordable image area). It was designed as a replacement for traditional 35mm film cameras and has a number of recording resolutions including 2540p, 4k, 2k, 1080p, 1080i and 720p, though production models are limited to recording in 4k, 4k 16:9, QHD, 3k, and 2k, through sensor windowing. It is targeted specifically at the retail market and has a base price (without lenses or recorder) of $17,500. A number of RED accessories were simultaneously revealed, including two initial lenses, a 300mm prime and a 18-85mm zoom (though the camera will take standard PL and B4 mount lenses). Recording is done through a mirrored RAID-0 array of 160 GB hard drives, totalling 320 GB, through a 128 GB Solid-State Drive, or through a Compact Flash Module, which records to 8 or 16 GB cards produced to RED's specifications.

The RED One records in a compressed RAW Bayer format which the company claims to be visually lossless, though filmmakers have discovered certain reproducible artifacts of the encoding mechanism. While this allows the camera hardware to be produced at a reduced cost, comparable to other digital camcorders, which encode video onboard to an easily usable format, it also significantly complicates and extends post-production. Native support of Redcode in Non-linear Editors is not widespread, or mature, so RED's post-production workflow relies on company provided software for online editing, such as Redcine, and Red Alert, to encode to a digital intermediate format, such as ProRes, or DNxHD.

David Stump ASC has tested a "Red" lab prototype for exposure and on a greenscreen but as of January 2007 development is not complete, and no stand-alone Red cameras exist yet. Many dp's that have invested in this technology have yet to figure out how they are going to edit with camera.

The above information is outdated; the Red camera has since been released and several movies were shot using Red camera.

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Text adapted from Movie Making Manual/Cinematography/Cameras and Formats/RED by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.