Red announces the scarlet

Here RED announces the long awaited new lineup. They seem to be pushing through some pretty serious designs. They have the ability to really take over the professional market. The 35mm Full frame, 645 medium format and 6x17 medium format bodies are all 16 bit, AND shoot pretty amazing raw video.



The prices seem pretty reasonable for the bodies, especially when you consider the versatility of the bodies. Using the same rig to shoot video and stills is fantastic. Right now, there's nothing that quite reaches this level of versatility.

The 5d MarkII gets close and undoubtably will have great image quality for an amazing price (~$2700), but multiple lens mounts, and the insane amount of accessories for the RED cameras makes it a direct shot at the 1dsmarkIII, the 22-50 megapixel medium format backs and presents the photographer with the ability to work with video at any point during a shoot. This will only help usher on the new media changes that are starting to slowly creep in. Stronger online presence of magazines and other content providers, including advertising outlets, is pushing most still shooters to consider shooting some video. For me that's exciting. For my bank account however it isn't. That means more initial investment (lots of hard drive space, a machine that can handle real time video editing-that means a $1100 video card vs a $200 dollar one, and all kinds of expensive lighting) but a bigger payout in the end. We'll see later on what this all means. Right now with the global economy on the fritz and people being scared about the future, less is certain.

What is certain is that quality is rising of new equipment (look at this review of the Canon g10 point and shoot) while prices remain the same or drop. There will always be equipment that is the price equivalent of a luxury vehicle for top tier shooters, but its becoming even more apparent how easy it is to get by on a smaller investment, but it quickly rises for incremental increases in quality.