Red Epic glimpse.

Adam Frisch FSF · February 1, 2011

Haven't contributed much to this forum lately. As I've become busier, it's hard to find the time. I'm also less and less technically interested and immersed with new formats and cameras etc - I don't really have the patience for it. But today I got a chance to play and get a demo over at Red Studios on Cahuenga Blvd of the new Epic.

I was impressed.

Firstly with the size. It's about the size of an old Mamiya medium format RZ67, which is pretty small. Then with the user friendly stills type control wheels (think Canon) but also that you could control the whole camera from the touch screen onboard monitor. Demo was done with Light Iron Digital and they had some nice software to accompany the new Epic. One was a system where you could wirelessly see the takes on your iPad. Very useful feature. And apparently, you can shoot 5K up to 120fps without it cropping the sensor. This is huge - always been the pain in the rear that.

They also showed they're new HDV or HDR feature (or whatever it was called). It basically captures a second image with a really skinny shutter to get the highlights. They showed a demo of some chap walking in from a blistering hot desert exterior into an unlit dark barn. And it was all there. 17 stops of latitude they claim with the HDR thingy switched on, and 13 without. I believe them - it looked fab. Cool thing about the HDR thing is that on fast moving shots with lots of motion blur it creates a sharp secondary image (due to the skinny shutter) that gets intermixed, and it looks more like what the eye sees. By mixing in some of that "sharpness", it looks more real as the eye doesn't really see motion blur the same as a camera does.

I stuck my anamorphic lens on and we played around with it. It can shoot anamorphic, it just can't display it yet on the monitor. But it will by the time they go out to customers. Even at 2500ASA and pretty much complete darkness, the image didn't show excessive grain. I forgot to ask what the sweet spot and "native" ASA of the camera was, but I would guess around 800ASA.

An informative day. And dare I say it? I want one.