Cory Cone

Hey guys, I was just looking at some pictures and reading a bit about the Scarlet. It appears and sounds like it will have a fixed lens on it. I know this is still amazing, I'm not hating or anything but, wouldn't it be nice to be able to use the same lenses as the RED One.

Now I know these lenses are really expensive and the Scarlet is I guess shooting for the prosumer prices but still blowing the technology of other prosumer cams out of the water, be it with a fixed lens or interchangeable.

I mean I understand that yes, I'm sure it's more money to add a mount for lenses onto the camera and to make the lenses themselves. But, you have to make the fixed lens anyways, so why not just add mounts. ;) You can package it with a stock lens and sell it like that but the ability to have interchangeable lenses would be mind blowing.

I know I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to costs of production and what makes sense and what doesn't for mass production, but just throwing some thoughts out there.

The way I understand that the RED came about was that Jim was an avid Camera enthusiast and had tried many cameras from prosumer all the way to high end ones in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range. But none of the cameras had all the options he wanted, so he decided to make his own product. Really Jim, you have made the best with pretty much all the options in the RED One but now you're already working on better. That's amazing, and not only is the technology amazing but you've managed to keep the costs insanely low for the people. Even though I'll probably never own a RED it's amazing what your doing.

Anyways, this is getting ridiculously long. I really just want to know why the Scarlet would go with a fixed lens instead of multiple lenses. Thanks!

Matt Martin

Hi,
I agree that it would be great to have interchangeable lenses, but we also have to realize that we wouldn't be able to use any Nikon lenses or any Red lenses with Scarlet anyway because the sensor size is different. Scarlet's sensor size is 2/3", while Red's and 35mm film is more like an inch and a half.
I was really disappointed at first to see that Scarlet didn't have interchangeable lenses, but when you step back and look at what you get:
- 3K resolution
- Beautiful latitude due to the RedRaw recording codec
- The ability to record to relatively low price flash cards
all for $3000, that is revolutionary.

I am planning on buying a Scarlet and a 35mm adapter from a company like P+S Technik, Letus, or Red Rock and using it with Nikon lenses to get some beautiful shallow depth of field footage. When you add up the total cost for these items it still is more than ten thousand dollars cheaper than any other option that even gets you close to this resolution and color latitude.

I am really excited about Scarlet - thanks to the Red team for making new things possible and for giving all the other manufacturers motivation to adapt.

Bob Hart

As much as I am a groundglass relay enthusiast, I think you may find you would waste your power sticking one on front of a "Scarlet" or SI2K.

People will try of course but I think the better resolution and contrast offered by the Scarlet and SI2k will not be seen in the final result. There will be sharper rendition of the various flavours of groundglass grain artifact

Eric Stemen

I really don't know why everyone says a 35mm lens won't work for Scarlet. A 35mm lens would work just find for a camera with a 2/3's sized sensor. It would just have a multiplier type effect...or smaller field of view than on a 35mm camera, however you want to look at it.

I have an olympus 4/3d's style dslr. This is a smaller sensor than a 35mm camera uses. Legacy glass still works fine with it. For people who use the canon xl-2, they can still use slr lenses with that. Most all lenses will just act as telephoto lenses when you use a smaller sensor size than what a lens was originally designed for. There should be no vignetting and the sharpest part of a lens is usually in the center.


I really don't have any desire for Scarlet to have changeable lenses. That will introduce the opportunity for dust to collect on the sensor. Plus I assume I'll just be able to put an adapter on the end of the lens anyway.
2/3 inch chip
Raw
Yeah, it has everything I want.
I just wonder if the lens is F2.8 throughout.

John DeLuca

We will have to wait and see what the images look like, but I would love to buy a bunch of these as B cams for the SI-2K. Im thinking the extra bump in resolution will make up for the soft built in zoom.

-John

Ben Winter

35mm lenses on a 2/3" chip have a 4.0 multiplier. To get something as commonplace as a 35mm wide angle on a 2/3" chip, you'd need a 9mm lens (!!!) Similarly, 12mm to get 50mm focal length, and so on. A 35mm lens with a focal length of 50mm (a normal lens) gives you some serious telephoto on the 2/3" chip (200mm)!

Adapting 35mm lenses straight to the camera is basically useless unless you want to zoom in more than the advertised 8x, but really...? Not to mention you're looking at a serious resolution loss...if the 35mm lenses were manufactured to deliver 2k resolution (I'm being completely hypothetical here) you'd be seeing a resolution of about 500 (yuck!) when slapped on the front of the Scarlet. Thus you'd need top quality lenses that deliver a resolution of around 12k (again, !!!) to use the full capability of Scarlet's sensor.

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Eric Stemen

Yes, you pretty much said what I said just in more detail.

I still don't think this would be a problem.
Like I also said, I will be more than happy to have an attached lens.

Ben Winter

Right but that's a 2.0 multiplier which keeps the 35mm equivalents within a resonable range of lenses that *actually exist*.

But I think the details point out pretty clearly that this is a fruitless enterprise...? At least not for most shooting situations. It would work great though if you typically shoot telephoto :)

If you know where to get 9mm and 12mm glass in 35mm format...point me to it! And I'm not sure how much you could get away with a ground glass relay system at 3k resolution. That said I'm in agreement with you if your inclination is that 2/3" DOF and such is suitable for most purposes, which I think it is.

Dust collecting on the sensor is the same issue many pros face with DSLRs, nothing new there. Not to mention that if RED carries over the same design from Red One, you'd be wiping dust off the OLPF--not the sensor itself--which is much easier.

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