10 Things that make RED Cameras so Special
By Adam Noyes
Red Digital Cinema’s entry into the cinema camera world is regarded by many in the industry as a revolution in professional film and video. In 2007 when Red was introduced major names like Panasonic and Sony dominated the market, and while they still certainly have their place, Red has also carved out a place for their excellent cameras.
What makes Red Cameras so special? 4KShooters.net has created an article to answer that question, detailing the 10 things they love most about Red Digital Cinema. We’re taking a look at some highlights from that article, below.
THE RESOLUTION
From the start, Red has always been a high-resolution company. Most new computers can’t even play 8K footage, but Red has been making 8K cameras for the last 5 years.
That added bump in quality comes with a lot of advantages.
- Low Light Capabilities
- With so many pixels, you’ll see an increase in low-light capability when you downsample the image to your final resolution for delivery.
- The added noise from shooting in low-light is hidden when downsampling.
- This is certainly true for downsampling, but an imager with fewer pixels and larger photosites can produce even better native resolution low-light images.
- Reframing in Post
- When you film in 8K, you’re filming at a resolution that is 16 times higher quality than HD which offers you the ability to zoom in and reframe in post.
- Though it is nice to have this ability, think about what you’re losing when you give up this level of control as a DP. Composition IS photography. If someone else is recomposing your shots afterward, you are no longer the Director of Photography. You are just a cameraperson.
- More Image Detail
- Filming in 8K means that each and every frame that you shoot is big enough to be printed and displayed on a billboard along the highway without scaling!
- Some professional photographers have used Red cameras to shoot high resolution still images for ad campaigns.
FILMING IN RAW
When filming with the Red, you can go back in post to adjust exposure and white balance meaning almost nothing is set in stone until you’ve rendered the locked master of your project.
Ok, lots of cameras can film in raw now but Red was the first camera to offer this ability for shooting video and that is actually kind of a negative. Red invented the compressed raw codec and has a very tightly held patent on the technology. This is why we don’t see a flood of cameras and phones that can shoot in ProRes Raw internally.
And although I’d love to see a camera with internal ProRes Raw recording, the lose of this patent would spell out a death rattle for Red and nobody wants that. They’ve been at this for 13 years, and their raw codec arguably offers the best file sizes, color, quality, and latitude.
VARIABLE FRAME RATES
Though other cameras that have caught your eye might have had the ability to shoot at high speeds, Red’s cameras offer fully adjustable frame rates. This means that you can film at any speed from 1 FPS to your camera’s max FPS and every possible speed in between.
As Nick explains it, this feature can be very useful in filming a music video. For performances, the song is often played at a slightly faster speed and the band pantomimes the performance to match the speed of the playback. When slowed down in post, this has an otherworldly effect that makes the group really stand out and look like they’re playing in slow motion.
Since most cameras vary to a fixed 24, 60, 120, 240 FPS setting, they’re too fast for the musicians to keep up and that makes the effect look a bit weird on top of that.