First actual pictures from the RED Dragon Sensor

Dragon Sensor - first pics

Actual photos emerge from the new RED Dragon sensor. RedShark contributor Freya reports

 As another cinematographer poster on twitter recently “We camera people are dedicated, focused, and not so easily distract....LIZARD!!!” It’s very true. I even had a photograph of a lizard to hand to prove it. Seems like RED must have done some analysis on the psychology of camera types because they have just released the first pictures from the 6k dragon sensor and they feature a lizard!

  The images were shot on on a Prototype Dragon 6K 2:1 @ 86FPS 180° Shutter with just a Canon 100mm Macro @ F11. It was apparently shot at a setting of 2000 ASA to help cope with the high frame rate and F11 stop.

10x 1080p

6K has over 10x the number of pixels compared to 1080P High Definition. Here is an image that shows the relative size of a 1080p high definition frame (the area in the dotted line) compared with the full 6k frame.


 6K is also 2.2x 4K in number of pixels and is 45% more pixels than the 5K that the RED Epic currently maxes out at.

Click on the following links to see the actual compressed, unsharpened, JPG frames of our lizard friend direct from RED:

http://www.redgrabs.com/up/1360380054.jpg

http://www.redgrabs.com/up/1360355646.jpg

RED are claiming that the new Dragon sensor has less than half the noise of the Mysterium-X sensor presently used in the EPIC, Scarlet and RED One MX cameras.

RED also seem keen to compare their new sensor with the Canon 5D MK III, presumably with the idea that you could shoot stills at a similar resolution on a Dragon enabled camera to the stills that the Canon 5D MK III produces. RED are keen to promote their cameras as digital stills and motion cameras.

New at NAB?

It looks like there will be a big Dragon announcement at NAB in Las Vegas this year. RED Epic owners are understandably very excited about the idea of updating their cameras to the new sensor. It looks like there might also also be some kind of Scarlet trade in program in relation to the release of the RED Dragon sensor:

“We are however.. going to be offering a trade-in program much like we did with the R1 for Scarlet customers to get into an Epic Dragon. “ Jarred Land @ RED

 I guess the RED One trade in program was deemed to be enough of a success that they might do something similar with Scarlet cameras, details are presently vague though.

21 stops

RED are claiming the new sensor will have a dynamic range of 21 stops which has led to comments ranging from extreme scepticism to jokes about the amount of cooling the camera will need to achieve that. It seems that many people think that the claim is in the realms of science fiction. I guess we won’t have to wait long now to find out! In practice this will depend on what level of noise is deemed acceptable or useful at a given level of illumination.