re: How will the Red One handle the cold?

[tallsided]

I'm curious about the Red One and how it might handle cold temperatures because:
a.) I'd like to take advantage of the winter scenery in Canada.
b.) These days, current dv and 16mm cameras are pretty tough and robust in the cold.

Will Red One be tested in below freezing temperatures before shipping? I know in the broad spectrum of things, Canada and winter shooting will be a fairly niche market overall for Red One. Any info would be appreciated. Thank you.

Curtis

[Michael Schrengohst]

or the heat??
Black cameras get awful hot in the 100 degree
Texas sun.

[Don Woods]

all this info will be avalible when the camera is all put together and they start doing real world testing. I would imagine that both of these things have ben considered. DSLR's tend to work fine if you take care of them at both extremes. So I think we should feel fine. That being said I have had to dry ice camera CCU's on a live broadcast truck and cameras once when shooting football in 110 +

[jbeale]

No one knows until the units are assembled and tested. If you're looking for speculation, I'd guess the electronics in Red is similar to the combination of a digital SLR with a high-end laptop. So I would guess Red might be ok in environments where both a DSLR and laptop are known to work ok.

While its actually running, the rumour is that Red dissipates significant heat, meaning continuous operation in the cold is probably not an issue (except for the batteries!) Startup from cold might be though.

[Chris Gearhart]

If you are using the flash drive, cold should be not an issue at all--no moving parts. The HVX recording to P2 performed fantastically in antarctica.

[RobRoySyd]

I've tested electronics down to -20deg C. All worked fine, I can see no reason why the electronics in RED would be any different. You'll pickup a small advantage in lower dark current in the sensor.
Get the temperature low enough and any electronic device will stop working however this is pretty hard to achieve due to self heating. The issue can cause devices to fail to startup but once they're running you need extreme cold to make them stop and even then a simple thermal blankent will keep the heat in. And the good news is you will not any damage, unlike getting things too hot.
Batteries could be different, I've read that at low temperature the freezing of the electrolyte can do permanent damage. Before that point capacity seems to deminish.
Actually using a camera at low temperature though can pose a whole lot of challenges. The lubricants in lenses and tripod heads might start to gum up. Also during my low temperature tests we found all cables go stiff as a board and can even snap. You might need to look for specialised cables that don't use PVC.
The most obvious problem is working in the necessary attire, thick gloves etc make controls very difficult to use, contact between exposed skin and metal can be painfull. Carbon fibre or wood seems a better material for low temperatures.
Rapid thermal cycling of electronics isn't good for it. The expansion and contraction can cause fatigue fractures in soldered joints etc and condensation is a real problem.
None of this is unique to RED of course, they may be able to incorporate things into their design that improve very low temperature performance but once you understand the issues that apply to all electronic and mechanical devices it's then easy enough to take your own steps to deal with them.