Yet another exciting week over at the RED HQ.

Already next week will see the first RED One cameras getting a sensoral facelift. The new sensor has better dynamic range, higher sensibilty (800 ISO as standard, usable even at 3200 ASA) and the new color science, named FLUT. The swap will also get your camera a new sensor board and a new (optical) low pass filter. A bit over USD 5.750 for the conversion ($1.250 will be refunded when you buy an Epic). Throw in an extra 3k, and you will get a RED Rocket for a bargain price.

Anamorphic, baby

Today RED announced that they will produce anamorphic lenses. Last year they rocked the glass world with their set of primes, where a set of lenses costs as much as you would previously have to pay for a single focal length. Now you have until the end of this year to save towards the 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 100mm lenses; all at T2.4. A 25mm is probably also in the pipeline.

Here comes a slightly updated overview of how much weigth your shoulder, your tripod or your rig is supposed to handle. Always keep in mind extra weight for mattebox, filters, cables, transmitters etc.

Thanks to Adrian T. for permission to reproduce his table.

Finally got some time to do a new showreel, featuring only shots done on the RED one camera.

Below you can see it in SD quality, or go to Vimeo for the HD version. Enjoy!

I came across this beautiful shortfilm by a young film maker named Jesse Rosten, shot on no budget on a RED one.

Watch it in full quality on his website – but try not to read the story before seeing the film.

At times the menu of the R1 can be a bit counter-intuitive, for example that phantom power is under System>Sound, while the recording level is placed at Video>Audio. Helpfully, Octamas from Switzerland has been publishing a visual guide of the Red 1 menu system, and they’ve just released their guide for still-warm Build 20.

Bits, pieces and links

And for inspiration, hop over to As the Dust settles, a documentary in progress about the amazing Burning Man Festival – all shot on RED. They have a lovely photo gallery.

If you ever need a manual for an old camera, check out IscanManuals. They charge a small fee.

Trying to hide in the open with your camera? LensCoats makes, well, lens coatings, for pretty much any make, including the Canon 1200mm beast:

A quick fix around the gamma problem in QT and OSX.

Since I did not get my Andy Lesniak (aka. Wicked Circuits) dumb Canon mount to work properly (see previous lens mount test), and Birger Engineering is offering their Canon mount in a dumb version, I have now ordered one of those. Shipped today, and should be with me next week. Am very much looking forward to testing out thier mount. Watch this space for more info.

I finally got around testing the various adapters I bought to adapt my Carl Zeiss Contax Yashica primes to our RED. The RED has the Wicked Circuit dumb mount. All adapters work fine up to about 20 meters, but after that there is a definite difference.

All tests were done on the Zeiss 50/1.4 lens, with the aperture set to 4 and 16. No filters were used, instead faster shutter speeds were employed.

Here is the frame I took in 4k, scaled down to 25% (Click on picture for full size), further down the test you will see 100% cropped images of just the chimney (compressed to jpg in Photoshop with high quality setting) .

El Cheapo

First in line is the £5 adapter off eBay from seller big_is. Very quick and efficient delivery from Hong Kong. Fits nicely. Fairly soft on infinity.

Holds fairly well at f16.

Bad at 4.

Conclusion: if you are on a budget, and either only shoot closer subjects or have plenty of light, this is an acceptable adapter.

DVD Technik

Next in line is the adapter from DVD Technik in the Ukraine at about $35. Has a very nice quality feel to it, and sist very tight on the lens. Best to be fitted once onto the lens, and left in place. Also quite tight once connected to the camera; downside is that it takes a bit longer to change lenses, but they do sit more tightly.

Disappointing at f16.

Appaling at f4.

Conclusion: Not really an option.

Confirm Adapter

Fianally the most expensive option at $85 from Happypage in Hongkong, an adapter with built-in autofocus confirm chip. Happypage offers the option of getting that chip programmed to your specific lens, which is a nice option when you want to use your lenses on a Canon EOS stills camera. Since the RED is thankfully a fully manual camera, I could not test this extra functionality.

At first the adapter would not fit. After an e-mail to happypage they immedeatly sent off a second adapter without any cost to me. The adapter arrived, but would not fit either. This suggests that the Wicked Circuit adapter might be slightly off, since happypage has only happy curstomers. Anyway, using my Dremel drill, I managed to get the adapter to fit into the RED – again, very tight, but not as tight as the DVD Technik one, and run the tests.

Happypage advertizes the fact that their adapters are a fraction of a millimitre thinner than their competitors, and claims that this helps with the focus on infinity. Let’s see how this holds up to reality.

Me likes at f16.

A Bit disappointing at f4.

Conclusion: Clearly the winner.

Conclusion

As so often, if you want quality, you have to pay for it. Interesting though that the by far cheapest option was not the by far worst one.

Also it seems that I still have problems with the back-focus on the Wicked Circuit adapter. My guess is that if that should ever get sorted out (or I might – gasp – order again a Birger Canon mount) the results will improve.

Yesterday the Andy Lesniak Canon mount for our RED One camera arrived. After struggling a bit with the back-focus adjustment, the mount is now installed, and I ran a quick lens breathing test. These were not lit or framed at all, just a speedy test on how the lenses perform under focussing. No follow focus yet either, thus not the cleanest pulls ever. No CC either.

All tests were done with the lenses set at their widest, also to test the focus at infinity.

Carl Zeiss Distagon 25mm/2.8 (Click to see the test at 1024×512)

Focus at infinity is not quite there. This might be because of the Contax/Canon adapter used. A new one is on order. If the lens is stepped down to 5.6, infinity is fine. Stepping down on the 25/2.8

Carl Zeiss Distagon 35mm/2.8 (Click to see the test at 1024×512)

Carl Zeiss Tessar 45mm/2.8 (Click to see the test at 1024×512) This lens is small, not thicker than a thumb.

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm/1.4 (Click to see the test at 1024×512) The flickering comes from the office fixtures.

Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm/1.4 (Click to see the test at 1024×512) This is one beauty of a lens.

Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135mm/2.8 (Click to see the test at 1024×512)

Carl Zeiss Tele-Tessar 200mm/3.5 (Click to see the test at 1024×512)

Tamron 500mm/8 (Click to see the test at 1024×512) This is just a lens I happend to have, and it was fun trying it as well. It has a fixed aperture of 8, and includes a macro function. Mirror lens, meaning it is relatively compact.

Generally I am happy with the performance of these lenses, their breathing is acceptable to me. The built quality of the Zeiss lenses is phenomenal, they have a very long focus throw.

RED’s boss, Jim Jannard, has pretty much revolutionized the camera business. Here’s a little thank-you-poster I made (after The Last Legion):

Jim Jannard, the ONE legion

I recently bought some 190Ah batteries from Globalmediapro for our RED One and was quite disappointed to see that the camera would not boot up with them, while older, weaker batteries both from Globalmediapro and other manufacturers worked flawlessly. After Globalmediapro did not reply to my e-mail, I set upon finding out what was wrong. more…