KOMODO....

[Christoffer Glans]

I almost wanna change your little thing under your name here to that.

That's a bit tempting hehe :D

That approach may make you appear to be a lot less ad hominem

I might be a critic, but I rarely, if at all falls into ad hominem per its definition. If there's one thing I dislike, it's when people start criticizing someone on a personal level. I don't mind being a critic, as long as the critique or argument are on-topic and subject. I could fall back on my philosophy schoolings since its purpose is to reduce any kind of bias and fallacy, but that level of analytical rhetoric would drive people even madder :)

[paulcurtis]

Jarred, why are Hydrogen owners getting a discount on this camera? I agree it creates expectations and I struggle to understand what the rationale is when Komodo is a bad fit for most Hydrogen owners

I preordered the H1 on day one because of the camera side and also the suggestion it would control the Red as well. Neither of which really turned out - but it was my choice to pre-order and that's fine. But if that choice turns out that i can save on what i really thought i was going to end up with now then that's kudos to Red and a loyalty issue...

Also that tease of global shutter is major news... or just a very fast read out?

The jello in cameras has bugged me for years, even on screen, it's like an instability and certainly trying to work with that footage can be a nightmare.

This to me is a really really big deal...

cheers
Paul

[Mathias Erichsen]

...remember, Hydrogen until the news was a completely separate company operationally from RED Camera. Different engineers, different marketing , different Manufacturing , different sales , etc... everyone except for Jim. Even h4vuser I have nothing to do with. So I totally understand the confusion, as even internally it was confusing :)

Just checked, and besides from having the Hydrogen announcement here on reduser.net, I also got my order receipt from no-reply@red.com... I ordered my Hydrogen within a couple minutes after the announcement so this may have changed at some later point, but that surely made it a bit confusing.

Looking forward to Komodo is released and as far as what we have seen so far, I’ll most definitely buy it.
Really hope the Hydrogen-discount is good ;)

[Lauri Kettunen]

.... but making stuff is hard... specially when you are the first to do it.

Thank you Jarred. The whole thing around Hydrogen starts to make a lot of sense. It sounds you are effectively saying: the vision was to make a small and light "media machine" and employ in it the new sensor you had started to develop. That would have been the camera module for Hydrogen, and all this had fulfilled Jim's long term goal of a pocket size professional camera (at least since "the 3K for 3K$ camera" project).

Since something did not go as planned –I can truly appreciate the difficulty of making some embedded digital system for the first time– with Hydrogen, the goal was shifted to Komodo. It will not be a media machine –whatever that meant– but Komodo will realise the (or Jim's long term?) goal of as small and light professional quality camera as possible. And that's marvellous.

With hindsight, is it fair to say, there was a bit of wishful thinking behind marketing Hydrogen in a rather early stage when not all critical issues were solved? This is not criticism, as without such kind of thinking there would be far less new innovative things. Instead, I think, many would appreciate if Red truly recognises quite many old customers shared the risks of the Hydrogen project although very little of information were given of the risks beyond possible delays. I think that was a significant sign of trust on the Red developing team.

[Jarred Land]

Thank you Jarred. The whole thing around Hydrogen starts to make a lot of sense. It sounds you are effectively saying: the vision was to make a small and light "media machine" and employ in it the new sensor you had started to develop. That would have been the camera module for Hydrogen, and all this had fulfilled Jim's long term goal of a pocket size professional camera (at least since "the 3K for 3K$ camera" project).

Since something did not go as planned –I can truly appreciate the difficulty of making some embedded digital system for the first time– with Hydrogen, the goal was shifted to Komodo. It will not be a media machine –whatever that meant– but Komodo will realise the (or Jim's long term?) goal of as small and light professional quality camera as possible. And that's marvellous.

With hindsight, is it fair to say, there was a bit of wishful thinking behind marketing Hydrogen in a rather early stage when not all critical issues were solved? This is not criticism, as without such kind of thinking there would be far less new innovative things. Instead, I think, many would appreciate if Red truly recognises quite many old customers shared the risks of the Hydrogen project although very little of information were given of the risks beyond possible delays. I think that was a significant sign of trust on the Red developing team.

Yup... totally get it. Ambition and hope doesn't always lead to reality... I've learned that lesson a long time ago. It's why Komodo doesn't have a public spec sheet yet, because like I have with the last few years of RED camera releases, you hear them when they are ready. I hope that you all get that with Komodo.. I've been very upfront with what Komodo is not from the start.

[Rakesh Malik]

Much of this stemmed from days of Mysterium-X and it was a bit more of a littered minefield of variety of visual quality. Things like ND and IR Contamination, crappy LEDs, etc. All played a role. There's some absolutely stunning Mysterium-X work out there though.

My first experience with a Red was on some dufous' old Mysterium-X (Epic, IIRC) camera. Ht was "teaching" a class on using Red cameras which ended up taking around 4x as long as simply reading the manual and playing would have, but since it was less expensive than renting a Red for the same amount of time at least I got to try it. The footage was nothing great out of the box, which was as much due to the lighting as anything else (the dumbass didn't get me much time to light, and the classmates didn't know what the <bleep> they were doing, so they weren't much help).

When I started manipulating the footage in Resolve though, I was really surprised at first how much latitude there was, and second how nice I was able to make the fairly flat original look in spite of not having the lighting that I wanted.

Once we got to these advanced sensors with way more color and less of an issue under different color sources then following that with the tone mapping of IPP2 to help fix some of the out of gamut chaos life has been pretty good when it comes to what people get straight away.

Agreed. I've done a few shoots now where we delivered the footage without grading, and we'll be screening one such short tonight.

I can certainly enhance it a bit in grade, but even straight out of the camera it looks very good in Resolve. Even better in Mistika and Scratch though... Resolve doesn't seem to get the tone mapping right with the IPP2 settings, but Mistika and Scratch both do.

I shot something with spooky hard color earlier this year that pretty much was the worst stress test for any camera to capture due to the high gamut and saturation of the colors themselves as well as extremely broad dynamic range. A few times during that shoot I paused to consider that this was actually being captured in a single, well exposed image somehow with texture, detail, and stability. That shoot still blows my mind on just how filled up the scopes were.

I've been impressed by how well the Helium handles the crappy LEDs that cheapass concert venues use, though it also has the side effect of showing very starkly how bad those cheapass LEDs really are...

[Fahnon Bennett]

Yup... totally get it. Ambition and hope doesn't always lead to reality... I've learned that lesson a long time ago. It's why Komodo doesn't have a public spec sheet yet, because like I have with the last few years of RED camera releases, you hear them when they are ready. I hope that you all get that with Komodo.. I've been very upfront with what Komodo is not from the start.

I for one appreciate the transparency, and wish more companies would follow the example. It helped me decide not to wait for Komodo after all, and instead get a Scarlet W (which I havent bought yet). It was the max frame rate comment that made the decision for me as I cant have an A camera that doesn't overcrank.

[David Rasberry]

Will there be any inherent advantage to H1 integration with Komodo over other similar class smart phones?
I am weighing whether to buy one at the current discounted price.

[Bob Gundu]

Will there be any inherent advantage to H1 integration with Komodo over other similar class smart phones?
I am weighing whether to buy one at the current discounted price.

Just my guess but I doubt it will have any advantage.

[Chris McKechnie]

My guess is Komodo is meant for the run-n-gun low light doc guys who want the power of raw in their pocket (well maybe can't quite fit in the pocket). It's designed for a very specific market - the indie guys, since RED already has the pro guy cams. RED needed a piece of the "lower end" but bigger market, and this will be their attempt at it. Honestly, it could be the most successful RED ever if it's priced right.