I forgot....

[Nicholaus James]

I know Red's whole slogan: "rendering obsolescence obsolete."

So, when Red develops a better sensor (NOT saying Mysterium isn't already AMAZING), like "Mysterium II" or "Mysterium 2.0", are we going to have to completely buy a new cam, or do we just turn in ours and Red works in the new guts into our camera bodies?

I know this is FAR FAR stuff into the future, but I really am wondering if this will be the LAST camera system I have to buy, instead of buying a cam, using it until the next technological breakthrough, selling it on eBay, and putting that money and more to the next camera.

I'd rather just change out guts than "scrap" whole camera systems.

Just refresh me on this, if you can. Thanks guys. And keep up the miracle work you are doing!

[Jannard]

The goal has always been to have the RED ONE sensor upgradeable.

Jim

[Nicholaus James]

Your the man!!!!!!!

[Emanuel A.]

After this what is it possible to ask still more?

BTW, I have shut up some digital (not RED just film fanboys) skeptic voices with that... My suggestion: take that when raising funds for your RED investment! (it has been working with my efforts, so...)

[Christian Berg]

Jim, is the sensor specs set for production? Or can you make changes during the spring if you come up with some better ideas? Can you tell us how long it takes to make one sensor? I haven´t got a clue if it is hours or weeks, but very interested to understand the productiontimeline for digitalcameras.
Love the "upgrade" philosophy!
/Christian

[Steve Gibby]

From my April 2006 published interview with Jim Jannard:

Gibby – “What is the future of the RED Digital Cinema camera? What’s the next generation?”

Jannard – “Well, ideally this one camera will last somebody for decades. But in a world of fast-changing electronics, the more practical idea is to make this camera capable of accepting upgrades. Our goal is not to come out with a replacement model that has a completely new feature set, and that leaves the buyer of this first camera behind. The idea is that this camera is upgradeable as much as possible.

The design is fundamentally flexible, so that for example, if you record to REDFLASH and you have X gigabytes of capacity, and Flash capability grows in gigabytes and shrinks in dollars over the next couple of years, its easy to add those kind of capacity advantages to the existing cameras. As I said, the goal of RED is to not obsolete the camera, its to upgrade and update this camera.”

[samuel33]

i simply have to invent new adjectives to say WOAAAAAAAAAAA it's it's..........$!ù*$^=§§ !

[Finner]

Does anyone know if redflash is still removable cards from the camera or is it now imbeded memory fixed inside the camera? I have heard both these options talked about by different people and am confused on the one it is.

[Jannard]

It will be removable... embedded is difficult to upgrade.
Jim

[Corrado Silveri]

Great!
So the only things not upgradable are the electronics parts inside (and obviously the form factor).
Any kind of firmware?

(Nice new avatar, Jim).

[Shaun Au]

The goal has always been to have the RED ONE sensor upgradeable.

Jim


What more can I ask for??? I'm speechless...

[Andrew M]

It will be removable... embedded is difficult to upgrade.
Jim

Excuse my ignorance, but does that mean that perhaps we could pop a Canon DSLR sensor in there? I mean obviously there would be some work involved but? ...

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Andrew, put down the spleef and try to imagine the mechanics of what you just suggested. Not only that, you wouldn't want to ruin the Mystery-ium ;)

[Jannard]

I'm not sure why you would want to be constrained to 4fps... short answer is no. A RED only sensor.

Jim

[Andrew M]

Just curious.
Andrew

[Rick Darge]

Jim, you're a GOD

[Pete Horvath]

Perhaps in the future could you provide sensors of different sizes and pixel densities so the owner could tailor the effect of depth of field with their own lenses?

ie. A smaller yet denser (with the same pixel resolution) sensor to achieve greater depth of field? or larger sensor to get wider angles?

Why not break the mold wide open and allow cinematographers to change sensors the way they changes lenses today?

Cheers,
Pete

[Rob Lohman]

Sensor upgrades need to be done at the factory for a lot of reasons (dust, alignment, checking, dead pixel maps and so on)

[PaulClements]

I can't really understand why there would be a need to upgrade the sensor to be honest, any upgrade in the NEAR future would be an admition of the current sensor being inadequate in some form surely? And any upgrade after a number of years might just as well have a new body to go with it with all the benefits of other modern technology that will come into existence, Hi speed wireless out or whatever it might be. Asides from replacements for damaged/faulty sensors it seems like a modularity that is a little unecessary in some respects, unless it doesn't encroach on costs to include it however.

Don't get me wrong I love modularity and the approach of Red, I'm simply questioning the necessity of this particular aspect. I guess I hate the idea that people might not want to use my RedOne V1.0 because they've heard v1.1 is meant to be better and therefore enter the domain of upgrades to keep up with the neighbour, leaving a 4k sensor worth possibly a few thousand dollars lying on the side collecting dust, if the sensor costs 50% of the camera then one might as well just buy another camera no? Or would the new sensor only be a fraction of the price? Perhaps my idea of the value of the sensor is way off at 50% and if so then forget what I'm talking about heheh! I just always imagined it being a large portion of the cost of the camera.

[Emmanuel Cambier]

What about the processor ?

It seems to be the part wich keeps higher framerates from Redcode.
And we all know that a better processor could happen anytime.

[Gbabymogul]

I can't really understand why there would be a need to upgrade the sensor to be honest, any upgrade in the NEAR future would be an admition of the current sensor being inadequate in some form surely? And any upgrade after a number of years might just as well have a new body to go with it with all the benefits of other modern technology...Not really (IMO). If they do it right, it should be akin to a film camera. It should hold its value for a long time. Similarly, you could compare the improvement in film stocks (with film cameras) to improvement in sensor tech (with digital cinema). One of the reasons that film triumphed is that the emulsions improved exponentially while having an entire base paradigm that didn't have to with each iteration and improvement.

Sure, there'll be body redesigns and other changes , but they don't need to be complete redesigns, and the pace of change doesn't need to be concurrent with sensor technology to take advantage of the field. And in any case, I doubt sensor upgrades will be a yearly event.

BTW, every sensor can be improved. That's just science :)

If the next set of footage from Spike (high contrast, motion, deep DOF etc...) is as good as the current footy ; you'll see how modularity will entrench a technology, and not do the opposite.

[Roberto B]

these are what we'd call good news..

edit
ah.. your babes G.. your babes too.. because they are upgradeable..

[Brook Willard]

Processor upgrades are what I'm interested in. If I could pump 4.5K/S35 through a processor and get REDCODE RAW out the other end, I'd be in heaven. Even if there was some sort of external compression device that I could hook to the optical RAW port... matters not. It gives me the warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

[Chris Gearhart]

Call me dense, but I finally get the slogan. Your camera (i.e., my camera) never becomes obscelete. One of those things where you never connect two thoughts in your mind, I guess.

(Like, "Smarties give me painful gas," and "I think I'll eat 20 packs of Smarties". That was a bad day. . . .)