WHy REDs 4K is not 4K???

I think the Red One is a good camera for indie's. It's a big step forward however it is not the camera most people think it is. A friend who is a top DIT in hollywood was sent by a major studio to do some test on it. He met with Jim J. personally and shot the camera down in just a few minutes. His recomendation to the studio (largest one in the world) was not to buy the camera's.

Red is not a good camera for billion dollar studios but it is a great camera for indie's.
 
Chip, anyone who thinks they can shoot down an entire cinema system within a couple minutes of first seeing it is obviously not taking the proper time to evaluate it or its workflow.

Not someone I would want on my set.
 
what do i think? i think the last thing an audience is thinking is whether Che was really 4K or not.
 
Chip, anyone who thinks they can shoot down an entire cinema system within a couple minutes of first seeing it is obviously not taking the proper time to evaluate it or its workflow.

Not someone I would want on my set.

Ok, it was a couple hours but his first tests were done in 15 min that shot it down. He is one of the top DIT's in the world, every major studio wants him on thier sets for a reason. If you know what to look for and what you want out of a camera why waste time. He wasn't there to look at the workflow or write a review for a magazine.

Red's a great camera for indies, I want one but it's not everything it was made out to be. I will probably pick up one of the trade in's when they start coming in from Epic sales / trade in programs.
 
Red One seems like a great camera. The images I've seen from it are spectacular. Unfortunately I can't afford to buy a camera above $10,000.

I'll take a fixed lens Scarlet though. 3K and 2K should be plenty for me as well.

And for Che, I haven't seen it yet, although when I saw Benjamin Button on the big screen I never once thought about it not being film. I even saw an article that talked about the film using a Viper for the majority of the film and a Sony F23 for some scenes before I went to see it.

So if the Viper can make amazing images like that, I think the Red One shooting at 4K should work fine for those directors that want to use it (Steven Soderberg, Peter Jackson, Crank's Neveldine & Taylor, David Fincher [used on a commercial], etc...).
 
This is a very tired argument. Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull went out years ago when they were pretty much inventing digital motion pictures. They were confident that the human eye cannot perceive much beyond a 2K resolution under normal viewing conditions. They have pretty big friggin brains. So whether it's 4K, 3.25K or 6000K doesn't really make much of a difference if you aren't cropping or scaling.

4K is not now, nor has it ever been a major selling point for me. Latitude and Raw imagery are FAR more valuable. It delivers both without question. It's how they market the camera because they understand industry perceptions. (Meaning, people who don't know better think that it matters)

I know lots of people who have shot and edited RED (including me) Whatever minor challenges they have faced, no one has ever been unhappy with the images.
 
They were confident that the human eye cannot perceive much beyond a 2K resolution under normal viewing conditions. They have pretty big friggin brains.

Although I don't claim to have a big friggin brain, I'm thinking the same thing. Especially since most film prints are only 2K nowadays, 3K downconverted to a 2K master should work just fine. Heck, 1080p is not that far off from 2K either.
 
Although I don't claim to have a big friggin brain, I'm thinking the same thing. Especially since most film prints are only 2K nowadays, 3K downconverted to a 2K master should work just fine. Heck, 1080p is not that far off from 2K either.


Yep.

Resolution is like the penis. It's what makes ignorant people think they have something important. But it also affects decisions, sometimes adversely.

It's only part of the picture, and often not the most important part.

That being said, RED delivers more res than anyone :grin:
 
These are points I factored in when I bought the HPX 500. The camera for price simply cannot be beaten for dynamic range. Why? Well not only does it use 2/3" chips which you would expect improvement with anyway, but what people see as a fall down in this camera (number of pixels) translates to larger photosites on the chips. The result is better dynamic range. I challenge anyone using a sub 30k (full set up) to beat my HPX in this regard. This is the sole reason I purchased the HPX initially, especially when you work with the camera every day, you get to know it and can make it sing.

Oh and RED not true 4K? Who cares.... look at the image produced for price.
 
Last edited:
I still want one.

i think this about sums it up. I'm lucky enough to have one and honestly couldn't care less about how many "K" it is. Most people see my material in SD anyway :) And I haven't bothered to ever output more than 1080.

The people who argue that it isn't really a 4k camera do have a point, and just about everyone including staffers at RED seem to agree it's more like 3.2K, buy It's HD and beyond material looks insanely good, and that's all I care about.

And it is a 4k sensor, however you wanna slice it. 4520 active pixels wide.
 
I need your EXACT address, work schedule, and alarm code.

Or I'm releasing THE pictures.

i think this about sums it up. I'm lucky enough to have one and honestly couldn't care less about how many "K" it is. Most people see my material in SD anyway :) And I haven't bothered to ever output more than 1080.

The people who argue that it isn't really a 4k camera do have a point, and just about everyone including staffers at RED seem to agree it's more like 3.2K, buy It's HD and beyond material looks insanely good, and that's all I care about.

And it is a 4k sensor, however you wanna slice it. 4520 active pixels wide.
 
I just saw Benjamin Button, shot on the Viper, projected digitally, and it looked as good or better than any film ever made. Might be the first digitally shot feature to win the Academy Award for best cinematography. As for whether on not the brain can process 4k, I saw a 4k projection in the Sony tent at NAB one year, and it was the most mind bogglingly sharp footage I have ever seen.
 
I saw the trailer for Knowing yesterday right next to other trailers and if I didn't know it was shot on the RED I wouldn't have noticed. Alex was with me and he said wow that looks great on the big screen. Right after we saw The Wrestler which looked like it was shot on s16 and was really grainy compared to all the trailers shown. I didn't care what it was shot on because it was a great movie.
 
Back
Top