Red Weapon Dragon 6K
Bryan Edwards
What does a Hollywood legend like James Cameron have in common with a bunch of scientists on the International Space Station? They all use Red cameras to capture otherworldly landscapes.
Ever since Jim Jannard created the Red One, the company’s first 4K cinema camera, in 2007, it has become a go-to shooter for serious filmmakers. Up until then, HD cameras couldn’t match the resolution, dynamic range, and color of film. But the Red One could, and at a price of $17,500, it could do it for far less than the $200,000 HD units from Sony, Arri, and Panavision.
Soon after its release, the One was used to film a multiplex of blockbusters, like Spider-Man and Lord of the Rings. In 2010, it became even better with a 5K sensor— the Mysterium-X—which was sold as an upgrade. Modularity became another selling point. The company added lenses, microphones, and tactical grips. Then it rolled out the Weapon Dragon 6K camera, which captures more than nine times the pixels of standard HD, and which NASA uses on the space station; high resolution and fast frame rates capture more detail when filming experiments on the space station.
Today Jannard is betting Red can outperform itself again. The company recently introduced an 8K-sensor upgrade to the Weapon Dragon, which will enable wider angles, truer colors, and easier editing. Through a process called “downsampling,” filmmakers can take an image captured at a higher resolution than monitors are even capable of displaying, and rescale it to fit lower-resolution screens—leaving cleaner, less-distorted video. Don’t be surprised if your favorite science-fiction movie of next year is shot with Red.
Specs
6K Sensor 19 megapixels
8K Sensor Upgrade 35 megapixels
Frame Rate 100 fps @ 6K
Frame Rate on Upgrade 60 fps @ 8K capture
Monitor Output HD-SDI and HDMI
Weight About 3.3 lb. (brain only)
Price Starts at $20,000
This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of Popular Science, under the title “A Camera That Shoots For The Stars.”
