Some very interesting RED announcements are up on their site. They mainly concern upcoming, hopefully shortly upcoming, EPIC specs and pricing. There are some other images of Tatoo beta units, production renders, a carbon fiber matte box, and other goodies down through the postings, as well.

Some are particularly elegant.

Others, such as this sensor comparison chart, are pretty informative and useful.

Finally, one of the most interesting things for me is the active Nikon (and other) lens mounts.

If anyone wants to front the money for a beta unit, I would gladly put it through a grueling round of testing and use!

Amsterdam is a great place to visit, and since I learned that last year, I was a bit sad when I missed traveling there this year. IBC was in Amsterdam per usual and recently ended.
There was some neat new stuff out from Red. Their showreel is always fun and impressive. (I recommend right-clicking to download). Also, visit RGM Camera Network’s site for some updates on the Epic that include some nice photos and videos. I enjoyed seeing the comparisons to the Red One body.  It looks like it will be a lot of fun to use.

Just got back from NAB 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.  One of the main highlights for me was the Red User event on Wednesday at the Rio. It was fun to meet and talk with other Red One users as well as see all the new stuff and even meet Jim Jannard. He’s a really neat guy — fun, down-to-earth, and inspiring.

The new Red primes were demonstrated with resolution charts projected and compared against Cooke and Zeiss primes.  The Red primes looked great!  No question that they were actually better on the edges — so sharp.  Very impressive optics.  They covered the full-frame 35mm range and were sharp, clear, and crisp throughout.

There were prototypes, with a very nice machined-metal look, on display for the Scarlet and Epic.  They were very dramatically lit, of course.  The flexibility, new accessories, size, etc. looked very promising.  It will be exciting to continue to see demo stills and footage from these cameras as they are nearing their release.

The Red demo reel for the past year was projected at 4K, and despite weaknesses of the environment, the reel looked magnificent!  The latitude, contrast, color, and resolution looked as good or better than anything I’ve seen projected, yet.  By the way, it’s online now, so here’s a link to the Red Reel. (Right click to save).

Also, there’s no doubt that seeing last year’s demo reel streamed in 4k resolution via 10 Mbps (yes, mega-bits) to 4k projection via Red Ray was also very impressive.  The compression technology and decoding has obviously been well engineered.

One of my other favorite’s from the week was definitely the CMOCOS motion control rig.  The movement was very impressive — controlled via inverse kinematics.  Movements could be made in a variety of very complex motions with smooth and accurate movement, and the rig could also be operator-posed.  For their demo at the Red User event, they had a Red One attached, of course — doing some pretty cool moves.

Those were some of the things I deemed most revolutionary There were a lot of other interesting and fun things to checkout at the rest of NAB, too, of course.  I enjoyed getting to see the Steadicam/Segway combo Transporter in person as well as a great Red One underwater rig good to 400′ and a swanky 3-D Red One rig. Along with all of that, there was plenty of great new post software, grip and lighting gear, and cameras as well. (Barry Green managed to find a Panasonic GH1 apparently, but I didn’t — the rep had not a clue). There was also some neat 3D stuff projected by Pixar and others, talks on Digital Cinema, changes in all things film and video, etc.  It’s always inspiring to see all the new stuff and think of the hard work and creative thought that goes into it!