Red Scarlet X

On November 3 (and coinciding with Canon and Avid‘s presentations of new products) Red presented its new camera between photography and cinema, Red Scarlet X.

It is no longer surprising that filmmakers are using DSLRs for their video projects, detractors aside, the Canon 5d and 7d (and others) have earned a well-deserved place in the professional video world thanks to their performance and image quality in relation to their price (obviously we will not compare them with the Sony F65).

However, curiously in this case it has happened the other way around, the American company Red has decided to bring to the market a hybrid between its video cameras and a DSLR. Scarlet is not exactly a DSLR (for starters because it does not have a reflex viewfinder but a video screen) but it is very similar in form and performance. Why do this? Well, in my humble opinion, rather than trying to capture the market of photographers (who have much better options to choose from), Red has designed the Scarlet to be able to use many of the film accessories currently available for DSLRs and also to be used in a stereoscopic rig due to its small size.

You can see the full features on the official website. But it’s worth saying some of them: sensor size s35mm 16:9, Canon lens mount (or optional PL), video mode recording up to 4K (although the sensor allows up to 5K in stills, which is not much nowadays for stills either), Redcode Raw 16b recording with configurable compression, on solid state disks called Redmag (it seems that Red have copied Panavision and put the prefix “Red” to the names of all their products), HDRx for taking PHOTOGRAPHS (or up to 12fps) in high dynamic range mode (of course, if you do it in video at 25fps who buys an Epic) and HD-SDI or HDMI output.

Now as always we will have to wait to see real tests to see if all this data translates into a camera that really occupies a new place in today’s already saturated camera market.