VIDEO - Videographers Drool Over RED Camera
Beverly Hills (CA) - Sure the RED-ONE camera isn't new, but this didn't stop hundreds of videographers from drooling at last week's HD Expo in Beverly Hills. Capable of recording 4520 by 2540 pixels video at up to 60 frames-per-second, the camcorder has been highly sought after by feature film makers and well-funded amateur directors. We got an up close look at the RED and here's the video.
Video of the RED-ONE camcorder at HDEXPO 08 in Beverly Hills
The RED-ONE was being demoed by 4K Ninjas, a company that rents out the cams and also provides technical assistance. One of their ninjas told us the RED was basically a 12 megapixel digital SLR camera that can fire at a sustained 24 to 60 fps. Video is recorded onto a hard-drive pack, high-speed Compact Flash cards or a solid state drive pack. Since the RED records such an insane amount of data, the drive packs combine two drives for double the recording rate.
The RED-ONE camcorder body sells for $17500. Of course you can't do much with just the body and extra accessories like the lenses and viewfinders cost an arm and a leg. Heck the viewfinder itself is $3000, but oh it has a huge screen that displays 1280 by 720 progressive pixels.
The accessories attach via a rail and cage system and you basically "grow" the camera out. The end result looks like something from an alien planet.
We fired up our JVC HD-110 camcorder to shoot this video and the 4K Ninja guys basically laughed at us.... Oh the humanity.
UPDATE - In the video we said the RED-ONE accepts CF cards through an attachment. The camera body itself will accept CF cards, no attachment is needed.
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Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.