A few new things...

[DAVID BARKAN]

the side handle looks a little bulky compared to the old school brands cameras, that have smooth lines... how does it feel in hand?
for cinema it look perfect though...

cheers.

[Brent J. Craig]

Aren't smaller chunks of CF cards good to prevent the off chance of something going wrong and we've got all our eggs in one basket?

Do you freak out when you shoot all 50 minutes on an HDcam tape?

Red must love this board. They finally make a really decent sized card and someone inevitably wonders if it is too big. :-)

[conrad gaunt]

Just got back from the Alexa debut and I was fairly pleased with the system so far. For me, I'm less jazzed about on-board ProRes recording to cards than I am harnessing ArriRaw information. But with that said, in all honesty, I'm equally excited or perhaps even a little more so to see what the Epic truly will offer. I think both cameras are going to be game changers, and I'm looking forward to working with both.

From what I've seen so far, from a design standpoint, I think nearly all of the Red One's snag points will be overcome in the Epic. If I had to rattle through them quickly off the top of my head, I'm so far hard pressed to see a true short coming, but let me try.

Many of you didn't like my criticisms in the AC mag article. Let's see if I can address them now with an eye toward the Epic.

In no particular order.... First off, the day-light balancing of the sensor. This issue has already largely been addressed with the Mysterium-X sensor, its low noise and better overall blue channel performance. That said, if I have the photons, I still opt to try to nail my color temperatures as much as possible.

Compression. The Red One is basically maxed out right now. I don't think we're going to see many more significant strides in decreasing Redcode compression. I'll take Redcode 42 any day over 28. But the Epic stands to blow this data rate out of the water. So that pleases me to no end.

Overheating. Even with the Mysterium-X chip in the Red One, its still got the same guts and cooling mechanisms; and therefore prone to the same sensitivity to heat. It's been intimated that the Epic runs significantly cooler and that its internal architecture has a role to play with that as well. So I'm hoping that this issue will also die with the Epic.

Battery mount issues and slow boot-up times. Yeah yeah yeah, there's umpteen different options for battery mounts, connections or blocks out there. Still I see this creep up, so it's ongoing and sometimes annoying. Epic is reputed to have much less power demands, so that's a good start. That V lock connector on the Red bricks are still iffy, so I'm going to wait and see how that plays out with the Epic, since there's still some drive to use old Red One accessories with the Epic. However, with that said, the much faster boot up time is definitely exciting news.

4K is not really 4K and Bayer pattern blah blah. Yea I get it. Alexa's got a Bayer sensor too. I don't have a problem with either. Red has clearly stated recently what they feel the resolution performance the Mysterium-X chip can effectively deliver. And that's much more accurate and dispels much of the misunderstood hype. Even in a Red One, the MX delivers an improvement in effective resolution over the original sensor. That said, with 5K in the Epic, I'm not going to raise issue with its resolution capabilities... just as long as you don't expect to call 5K true 5K, we're cool. 5K gives effective 4K? I'm totally willing to accept that... AND at some point we ain't going to need more pixels, it's what the pixels do and how they're processed is what matters. Redcolor is a step in that direction. So is the lesser compressions. Redcode 250? Now that I'd like to see and compare to Redcode 42 in a color correction suite... How about a DI for that matter!

These are exciting days. I'm sure many of you view me as a anti-Red, film purist blow-hard here... In all actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm excited by the new developments that these cameras stand to bring to my work. I simply wish to best understand how to use these tools and likewise, expect them to perform as promised when tasked on productions. Red has come a long way and I'm sure all the team has learned a lot in the process.

Perhaps beta testing in the market has to some degree tarnished the Red One's reputation. In talking with many people at the Arri function, the overall sentiment about the R1 was that all the previous versions (with the original sensor and all of the various builds) were ALL beta and that the M-X R1 with build 30 is the first TRUE representation of the camera... and I think I agree with that. Now with the Epic, I think the entire community stands to benefit from the growing pains and learning curve of that this extended Beta test has gleaned.

EPIC is where I'm going to put my faith in RDC as a force to reckon with.

Really.. I prefer rc28 in low light, the noise floor seems softer

[Sean Lee]

Do you freak out when you shoot all 50 minutes on an HDcam tape?

Do you 'freak out' when shooting on a roll of good ole film?

I've been waiting for decent-sized reliable flash cards to be produced as I'd much rather shoot on these cards than hard drives which are more prone to dropouts and other little things going wrong. As I clarified in an earlier post, I was asking about the reliability of the flash cards because I had had near misses with failed cards before. It was more a question about data management than anything else - how much would you film on any particular card before swapping it out for a fresh one and transferring the data to a more permanent storage medium. I wasn't sure how much you could store on a 64GB card relative to what settings/conditions you're filming with.

[Rick Darge]

It's been almost 4 months since this thread was created. When are we going to see some delicious 64GB CF cards? I need me some.

[Mark L. Pederson]

]



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I don't know about you guys - but I'm ready rock the hold hell out of this machine ...

[Rick Darge]

I don't know about you guys - but I'm ready rock the hold hell out of this machine ...

And I'm ready to be envious!

[KETCH ROSSi]

He he you have no idea how much Mark,

and as I test out the Hasselblad and Phase ONe 60MP 645 MF cameras, I not only wish for the Epic-X S35, bit so much so for the Epic 645 as well, but unfortunately I'll have to dump 50K on yet an other MF Still camera system for now.

Epic 645, is going top so change the world of MF photography when it finally comes out is not even a joke, and can't wait for that day to come!!

[Rick Darge]

which means a summer release.

Does this still stand?

[Peter Majtan]

Came out of the oven functional today.. can you spot them?



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I think the newest thing is that Jarred is finally using white BCKG and more then one light...
So maybe there are also RED LED lights out of the oven?

Peter