Lens Adapter on the SCARLET?

Davis Tyler · July 30, 2008

Sorry if this question has been answered somewhere already.

Will the Scarlet have a 35mm adapter built in like the Red One, or will I have to buy a Letus or something else? Does Red plan to release their own version of a 35mm adapter?

Thanks for any feedback,

D

Brian Drysdale · July 30, 2008

The Scarlet has a built in T2.8, 8 to 1 zoom lens. From what I gather RED regard it purely as a 2/3" camera and have no plans for RED 35mm adapter. However, they appear to be planning W/A & Tele converters for the Scarlet zoom.

Jaron Berman · July 31, 2008

First-off, RED 1 does not have a 35mm adapter built-in. The whole concept of the RED 1 was to make a camera that did not need an adapter, a camera who's chip is the same size as s35 film. All a "35mm adapter" does is create a virtual film-plane that the lens images onto. This film plane is usually about the same size as s35 film... then your camera with a small chip photographs that "virtual" image, giving the same field of view and depth of field characteristics as the lens would on a native s35 camera. The excitement about RED 1 has a lot to do with the fact that there's no adapter in the optical path to degrade picture quality.

When it comes to Scarlet, that camera appears to be designed for a different purpose entirely. The whole idea appears to be a small and light camera with RED's workflow. Adding an adapter to Scarlett would make it large and unwieldy, and probably about the same size if not larger than RED 1. Plus it would degrade the optical quality and make reliability even more of an issue than on current RED cameras.

Now nobody can speak to RED's plan or goals... they change constantly. But I would assume it's a safe bet that they have no plans to produce a "35mm adapter" ever for any camera, especially scarlet. They already produce a product (soon 2) that fulfill the "35mm look". Scarlett looks to be a small pocketable camera, not a replacement for their s35mm offerings. Sure, you could bolt an adapter to it - and I'm sure a lot of people will - but even now before it's released, there are better alternatives to that end goal. And an adapter would certainly kill the biggest selling point of RED - image quality. Right now, RED's image quality is excellent, even if the cameras are riddled with bugs and design flaws. Putting an adapter on the market would certainly hurt their publicity more that it would help. The man-hours spent on making such an adapter would definitely be better spent on finishing the products they have already released or announced.

Edited July 31, 2008 by Jaron Berman

Adrian Sierkowski · July 31, 2008

Agreed to the problems of the adapter. Also with a 2/3" chip you can get roughly the same DoF of S16mm film, so if you need to control that, use less light or a more telephoto lens or the like, and bypass the middle man.