RED Alert
We were giddy looking at RED’s countdown clock last week - when the curtain rose, I think I blacked out…
28K?! Was it a dream? Who on earth would dare shoot 28000 x9334 pixels? I’ll try anything twice, but 28K? We’re going to need some more storage!
I think that sensor is an exercise in ‘look what we can do’ more than in ‘look what you can do with what we’ve made’. If someone can tell me that it’s what they’ve been waiting for, then I’ll eat my words, but I don’t think anybody’s been waiting for a 261 MegaPixel video camera…
Apart from that chip however, I take my hat off to RED - I want one of (nearly!) everything they make [or plan to make] - with RED cherries on top.
From the new list of prospective products however, It’s the 24mp 6K epic that most tickles my fancy! 
We’d been struggling to get the right lens on a stills camera at 4K until very recently, and now every Christmas and Birthday has seemingly come to fruition in one glorious moment! - Soon we’ll be able to shoot in 180 degrees, at 4K square, at 100fps, with our first choice of lens! I really can’t think what could be better than this!
Obviously the RED mantra of “Prices, Specifications and Delivery Dates are subject to drastic changes. Count on it…!” mean that the path to 6K next autumn/winter won’t be a straight road from A to R.E.D.
Take the Canon doldrums that we’re floating in at the moment. We haven’t pre-ordered a 5D mkII because they couldn’t give us a delivery date - and we weren’t going to give them £2300 to sit on while RED were waiting to announce… And what an announcement!
“November” is fading fast, Canon… Get the 5D’s on the shelves soon so that people (like me) have enough time to get their monies worth - otherwise I might not bother and save my pennies for Epic.
Over 2 years ago, RED proclaimed that they were bringing an end to up-resing. And for most people, they have - in fact down converting, or RED-Cine is the most common path for the footage - people want the depth of field, quality of image etc - but 1080 is big enough for most!… Not us however, RED’s 4K (16:9) has still had us up-resing pretty much 100%. We want to shoot 6K to generate and capture true 4K fulldome content. We hope the spec’s don’t shift in the wrong direction and most of all, we really, REALLY hope that we’ll be allowed to know the true, actual, real calendar date that we too will be able to render obsolescence obsolete!