We're not the first people to be shooting movies on the RED One, but we were near the front of the line with camera #232--one of the first batch of production RED Ones. (The cameras with numbers below 100 are the beta-test units.) Everybody with a RED camera knows their number; it's a RED thing.

So now we got in the latest of the latest-and-greatest of the RED lineup, the RED Epic #419. We had to wait in line behind Peter Jackson, but I have to admit that the combined budgets for all our projects to date is well below what's being spent on "The Hobbit," so I can't complain too much about that. Up to 300fps frame rates, 5K resolution, and great quality images at any setting.

"Hellooo...anybody in there?"

RED Epic in a minimalist configuration

And it's little. Tiny, almost. Maybe not quite small enough to slip into your pocket, but that's okay. Even if the Epic did fit in a pocket, where would you put the focus puller? Unless you were wearing a pair of extra-large overalls, that could get awkward.

Of course you still need lenses and stuff. Once you include those, it gets a little heavier.

At least that box in the middle is so much smaller and lighter than its predecessor.

Like most things RED, it's still a bit of a work-in-progress. They have come out with some newer, high-tech batteries that'll cut down the size and weight significantly...as soon as they release the part that'll let me hook them up to the camera. But we do have the new batteries, so at least we can experience how much lighter and higher-tech they are than the old batteries, even if we can't actually connect them to anything.

And they just came out with a firmware update that will let the camera do video playback. That's a nice feature. Back in the days of film, you couldn't be entirely sure what your footage looked like until you got it back from the lab, but it's amazing fast you get spoiled in this digital age and get used to playing back the scene you just shot.

You could still copy the files onto a computer and play them back on that, just to make sure that the take really was as good as you thought, but even with one of Jon Firestone's Dragonfire "luggable" video workstations, that's still a significant extra bit of work. And lugging. Much lugging.

Mobile RED edit system. The case is watertight and vibration-resistant when closed, but it's better not to try to use it under water.

It's progress. And we still have the RED One with the Mysterium-X upgrade (hmmm...that sounds like something Marvin the Martian would get) which has essentially the same sensor chip, just not the ability to handle the amazing frame rates of the Epic. That gives us a suddenly-no-longer-state-of-the-art second camera that'll produce footage which can seamlessly intercut with what the Epic captures.

Now...what to shoot...?

(Hammer not included in the standard Epic package.)