In South Africa, a great deal of confusion exists regarding this mysterious thing called the Red One Digital Cinema Camera, or simply the Red Camera.Perhaps never before has a mere camera polarized the industry into such distinctly opposed sides, and above all generated such a tidal wave of utter misinformation.Even as some of America's top directors shoot feature after feature in 4k on the Red, I run into representatives of local camera houses who think the camera doesn't actually exist. To this day, they will argue that the Red is vaporware, a mere scheme cooked up by some crooked overseas corporation out to dupe the masses and make a quick buck. Then there are those that attempt to discredit Red based on the accessories that aren't included in the price of the camera. They're usually pretty sure that when you add all that up, it ends up being just as expensive as the alternatives. For this camp, manufacturing delays caused by improvements to camera design at no additional cost to the costumer have actually suggested that Red will never be able to deliver. First they could never build a camera like this, then they were called vaporware, and now they can't manufacture it.I must say, I've enjoyed witnessing Jim Jannard and Co. prove the naysayers wrong over the last two years. After all, the success of Red's garage full of mad scientists has allowed me to own what could only be considered a cinematographer's dream just a couple short years ago. But what has surprised me the most is, despite living in the globalized, hyper-connected world of the 21st century, how slowly news of the developments has spread across the great Atlantic to my home in Cape Town. And what has arrived on these shores is shrouded in confusion and misinformation. Maybe the CIA launched a covert propaganda machine to counter the Red revolution. I mean, they've done it before. The Red camera, like anything or anyone considered revolutionary, elicits a forceful reaction from the suddenly endangered status quo, so I find myself wondering if the people who speak out so adamantly against a camera that they don't really know, aren't actually some sort of film industry equivalent of the Contras of Nicaragua.All I want to do is set the record straight and put an end to the misinformation. Red is here, and it is not going away. Film is not dead and never will be, but the important thing is that now we have an affordable digital alternative with an image quality that rivals 35mm and is not HD. This last part is easily confused, and leads to what may become the most problematic point of confusion left after the less credible naysayers have fallen by the wayside.The Red Camera is revolutionary because it requires its own category. It's not film, and it's not HD. It is for both technical and an aesthetic separation that we must place the Red in a third category. First of all, HD includes 720x1280 and 1080x1920. Like other video formats, the terms 720p and 1080p come from their vertical resolution. Yet the formats that Red shoots are 4k and 2k, which come out of the film world where the height of the frame changes from one project to the next so the format is based on the horizontal resolution. Blockbuster films are often transferred to a digital intermediate at 2k resolution, not because that is ideal but because it is cheaper. But 4k has been the gold standard of DIs, as it is the point at which the inherent resolution loss when transferring from film to digital pixels becomes negligibly small. So what we have in Red is a camera that shoots natively and cheaply a format that is seen as a luxury even for 35mm productions, a format with over four times the resolution of full raster HD.The other key difference between Red and almost every professional HD camera is the size of the sensor. Red boasts a super 35mm-sized sensor that yields the exact depth of field viewers expect from 35mm film. So just in terms of resolution and depth of field, comparing Red to HD is akin to comparing 35mm to 16mm. Another way to say it is that having a 35mm-sized, 4k sensor allows for over four times the data as HD to be captured in such a way that mimics the production values we associate with the 35mm cinematic experience.There is one other crucial difference between Red and HD that is more difficult to pin down. It has to do with the way Red captures images aesthetically, and is therefore subjective. It has to do with the impressive latitude of Red, the lack of HD 'edge enhancement,' and the way in which Red renders naturalistic skin tones. There is little point in writing about these sorts of things, as they really have to be seen to be understood, and often to be believed. But these are the factors that will convince a Director of Photography that Red either is or is not a suitable alternative to film.Now that we have established the need to put Red in its own category as a 4k digital cinema camera that is not film and not HD, let us look briefly at some of the major advantages that this new alternative offers:1. Resolution and Depth of Field--This bears repeating, since this is what really makes this camera stand out from other digital options. 4k resolution is 12 megapixels per frame. It is arguably closer to 65mm film in terms of sharpness and clarity then 35mm, and is grain-free. A super 35mm sensor allows you to take advantage of the world's best optics, along with a selective focus that will allow the cinematographer to direct the viewer's attention.2. Portable and modular--Unlike the other digital cinema cameras, no fridgelike containers for hard drives or bulky tape decks. Red One is a streamlined 9 lb tank of a camera that allows the user to build the camera in whatever configuration works for the shooting style, be it run-and-gun EFP or heavy duty studio style. For lightweight, solid state record to Compact Flash, Recording to Compact Flash cards or for up to three hours of 4k recording use the on-board Red Drive.3. REDCode RAW: 4K would be extremely cumbersome to record and archive were it not for REDCode RAW, a wavelet-based compression that allows for 10 minutes of 4K or 40 minutes of 2K recording onto 16GB CF cards. Despite the compression, the files are RAW, meaning that the images can be drastically manipulated in Redcine, the 'digital film lab.'4. Workflow: The Final Cut Pro integration will benefit many editors, and the wavelet-based compression means that real time extraction of proxies embedded in the R3D files can occur without time wasted transcoding. Redcine is a powerful freeware grading system, and many third party tools are being developed to support Red productions.5. Price: The price points for Red equipment are generally 1/5 to 1/10 of digital cinema cameras. Again, that's one-fifth to one-tenth the price. For feature work, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be saved by using Red as an alternative to film.When you consider that we now have a camera that combines many of the advantages of digital and film, it is no surprise that no fewer than ten major studio productions have already been shot or are in the process of shooting on Red. And all this on a camera that is just now coming out of its beta testing phase. Yet what is most incredible is that this same camera and 4k workflow will be affordable to many independent and smaller scale productions who would otherwise be using 16mm or HD. In South Africa, the current wave of misinformation will eventually be replaced by fact, and as more and more of these major productions jump on board the Red wagon it will become increasingly difficult for the naysayers to doubt.So look for Red coming to a production near you and, as always, viva la revolucion!Article by Caleb Heymann