cam comparisons

[Jim Stamos]

i see alot of people shooting and raving over the red. which one is going for around 10K? my question is how does it compare to the fs700 on film look, performance, features etc?
and someone explain to me the deal with a cam being 4K. thats all i hear....its 4K!

[Matt Davis]

It would be most unfair to promote this:

Let me google that for you

But in short:

Scarlet
+ Dynamic range
+ Red 'feel good' factor
- Workflow
- Battery life
- Cost of the 'ecosystem'

FS700
+ Easy to live with
+ It's actually really good
+ Huge mega-choice of quality glass at budget prices
- Costs a lot to make it ergonomically pleasing
- Needs love and care in Picture Profiles and in Post to make it look like a Scarlet
- You need to nail exposure to do it right

The Scarlet still needs an AC 'Hand Maiden' and lots of exquisitely expensive add-ons to make it happy. The FS700 also likes accessorization, but is cheaper to keep happy.

If you have big budgets, deep pockets and need wriggle room, get a Scarlet - or an Epic or Alexa for that matter. FS700 is a multi-skilled pony with slomo, easy highlight handling, reasonable dynamic range and easy to live with idiosyncrasies. Don't worry about 4k yet. Also, look at Canon C100 if you want to bake your noodle.

[Will Thompson]

Originally Posted by Jim Stamos

someone explain to me the deal with a cam being 4K. thats all i hear....its 4K!

There is some controversy over what Red calls 4k or 5k. Like all large CMOS cameras (FS700 included), Red's CMOS captures a Bayer pattern, not RGB. Red outputs a RAW Bayer pattern image, which will have very distorted colors when viewed directly. To get from Bayer to RGB, the image must be "de-Bayered," which is why the RAW image is often referred to as the 'digital negative' - it's not truly negative like film, but it's analogous, and the debayer process is analogous to the development process.

In debayer, many algorithms are available to covert from RAW to RGB, providing different levels of sharpening, softening, noise reduction, etc. And finally, the debayer process reduces the output RGB resolution to about 80% of the original Bayered pixels. So what Red calls 4k refers to the 4k sensor, but any usable output will be around 3.2k. It's still an incredibly sharp image, but thus the controversy.

As Matt mentioned, RAW workflows are more cumbersome because of the large files, and all the other related expenses. However, the flipside is increased quality and flexibility of images: no "baked" ISO, no compression artifacts, very sharp images, increased dynamic range, and much greater color depth and detail.

The FS700 also has a 4k sensor, but it does not do a full debayer in-camera down to 1080p (no one knows exactly what it does - there are other threads here that speculate), so it can't be as sharp as Red's 1080p. Supposedly, a future RAW recorder will offer similar workflow to Red. For now, FS700's main limitations are its 8-bit codec (and IOs), limited color resolution, and a lower quality 4k-to-1080p scaling process. However, for the price it's an incredible camera, and with practice you can still get a near-Scarlet quality image (and super slow mo). Also, as Matt mentioned, it's much more convenient and probably preferable if you're not shooting for the big screen.

You will see a very diverse group of opinions on this as you do more research.

[Buba Kastorski]

Originally Posted by Will Thompson

increased quality and flexibility of images: no "baked" ISO, no compression artifacts, very sharp images, increased dynamic range, and much greater color depth and detail.

sums it pretty well, i can add no 'baked' WB, I wouldn't care too much about 4K, but scaled down to 1080 it gives you enormous level of details; If you want to compare red to any other camera, Blackmagic Cinema camera is probably better candidate than FS700, because you just can't compare AVCHD vs RAW, it's not fare;
Jim, download some R3Ds (raw files from red) and see what you can do with the footage. If you have any troubles finding it on the net let me know i'll post some