Joseph Hutson over at RedUser.net asked 10 Questions about the Red Scarlet Digital Cinema Camera. If you know anything about the RED One and it’s buddies; Epic and Scarlet, you may wanner check out the answers. Perhaps you have already. However, here is what stood out for me, together with some of my own thoughts.
There were originally 10, but I am only gonna highlight a few, 5 in fact (my comments in italics):
- What is the focal length of Fixed 2/3″ Scarlet?
- What is the current weight of the Fixed Scarlet/lens?
- What kind of success have you had with firing up the Scarlet and taking motion/stills on the Scarlet? (image quality compared to the EPIC/boot up times)
- Will 120fps recording be possible on the CF-Modules or will another recording device be necessary?
- How much difference in dynamic range should the 2/3 have in comparison with epic?
FF35 Equivalent of 28mm-224mm. That is quite good, my current camera is 4.5mm – 45mm (Panasonic DVX100BE), so it is quite wide. I have to say that there are times that I wish for some more zoom. The Scarlet fixed lens appears to be starting out much closer almost at 5x zoom on my pany, except I would be able to go in closer even at only 8x zoom with the Scarlet.
Current weight of Fixed Scarlet is just over 4.5 pounds. My pany is 4.4 pounds, so not must difference there, except for all the accessories that may be added to the Scarlet.
Scarlet 8x is first to be brought up in the lab. It is still in engineering form, not “run around and take pictures form”. Think of a mini-Franky. There is alot of effort is going into the autofocus algorithms and lens optimization, and alot of waiting for bits of code to come down from it’s big brother. The ASIC, Sensor and Lens work have been complete ( the hard parts ), but there is still alot of firmware work to be done and some minor mechanical changes waiting on tooling.
The images coming off of it are incredible.. remember, the 2/3rds sensor is part of the Mysterium-X family, and you all know what that looks like.
Very cool, I am very keen to see how this will look – I will have to befriend some RED fan filmmakers in Cape Town that have the Scarlet on their list 
120fps is working on the CF-Module with 64GB cards at a reduced REDCODE rate. The highest REDCODE number you can use with the CF cards are still being determined as optimization work is progressing. 120fps is going to be awesome for those slow motion shots that I can barely force in my editing software.
Compared to the EPIC S35 they will be close. The actual delta changes every day, as both systems continue to independently improve.
Wow, can’t wait to see the tests. To think that RED is breaking the Film – Digital devide like this is amazing. Still some time to go, but alreay so good. Dynamic Range being one of those indicators that make Film so much better.
