BBC White Paper considers the Red One

An addendum to the BBC’s R&D white paper “Colorimetric and Resolution requirements of cameras” by Alan Roberts assesses the Red One camera. Although slightly outdated already (not Alan ‘s fault, that’s just the way things go with Red) Alan’s observations make for fascinating reading.

In short he confirms that images shot in 4K mode resolve somewhere around 3K and that images shot in 3K mode produce perfectly acceptable results for 1920×1080 HD. He also finds that the dynamic range of the camera is around 11-12 stops (Red claim 11.3 stops) but that it’s not necessarily where the normal videographer would expect to find it, instead being hidden in the shadows above the very low noise floor. Interestingly this tallies with the video I linked to earlier where Ted Schilowitz explains how to expose properly for the Red One (this issue of good exposure is something that we try to stress to all our clients when renting out our Red One Camera).

Alan also touches on the rolling shutter issue, which he states should not cause a problem under normal operation, as well as examining where acceptable noise levels fall and the low visibility of fixed pattern noise at extreme high gain (2000asa). Some of his comments, including the possibility of improving performance through more complex Bayer decoding, may well have been addressed with more recent builds of the camera firmware (he was testing Build 14).

Although clearly only a brief test, and not intended to examine the camera in detail and for all purposes, this is an excellent document in helping to understand some of the aspects of shooting with the Red One.