Big Screen Little Screen

“The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—’4K’ in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There’s also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn’t have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that’s what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it’s easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard’s creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.”

Wired Magazine on the development of the ultra-high res Red One camera that’s been called “a supercomputer with a lens on it,” designed from scratch by Oakley sunglasses founder, Jim Jannard. Besides the previously unheard of resolution, Red provides the selective focus, depth of field, color saturation and editing flexibility of 35-mm film - features that earlier HD cameras simply couldn’t mimic.

Over the next few years the Red One is expected to make a long lasting dent in film production costs, helping upstart indie directors in particular. The camera sells for $17,500 - close to 90 percent cheaper than competing HD cameras that don’t even come close to matching Red in performance. As Wired notes, the cost effectiveness of the Red One compared to traditional film cameras is even greater: “a Panavision New Zealand rental catalog quotes $25,296 for a four-week shoot—more than the cost of purchasing a Red.” Early adopting fans include Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh, who was one of the first to go feature length with Red, using it for both of his Che Guevara pieces, Guerilla and The Argentine. (via This Savage Art)

Related: Red demo footage shot in Paris, and slo-mo skateboarding - at 120 frames per second. (via Kottke)