wed 19 nov 2008 09:29:15 — witte de withstraat
preliminary thoughts on the new red stuff
a couple of people have written to me recently about the exciting news from the "red" camera people.
red decided they're going to release all their digital camera gear as modular bits, so users can build whatever camera functionality they want. how big a chip do you want, how fast do you wanna crank? do you want the vertical grip and the LCD screen and what kind of flash memory do you need?
so that in principle sounds like a good idea, right? right. it's a very good idea, and long overdue.
the thing i'm afraid of is that it might be considerably more overdue by the time anybody we know gets to physically try it out. supposedly starting sometime in late 2009, all this will start to be available for sale. but you're supposed to buy it now, cuz otherwise you'll be waiting for years to get it. red's universal disclaimer still applies: specs, prices and delivery dates are always subject to radical revision. and meanwhile if you look close, all those exciting product photos you're looking at are just photorealistic 3D renders.
red has a very good idea. they should build it, and *then* sell it to me. don't be asking me to pre-order a nice idea.
somehow i don't think there are going to be lots of pre-orders for the sensor that's 28,000 pixels wide, and can shoot 25 frames per second. that strikes me as pure posing. who has time to see so many pixels?
it reminds me of monday night, when a friend at the cave told me how many terabytes of mp3 music files he's got now. i'm like, "man you need some more lifetimes if you wanna hear all that."