[treflop]

Yo there were way more video cameras back then than just the Canon 5D and ARRI. News organizations, smaller productions and documentary makers were not just whipping around expensive ARRI’s. Sony and Panasonic made a ton of other professional video-focused cameras. I have an old Panasonic HVX200 right next to me.

But the Red One was definitely still extraordinary because they managed to make a relative-cheap production 4K camera in 2007.

That said, the impact was muted because people didn’t really care about 4K as much in 2007. I don’t think ARRI even released a 4K camera until years later.

[kkukshtel]

ENG cameras had sensors a fraction of the size of Red/5D [1] so the resultant crop factor and CCD sensors paired with not-great glass choices (mostly zoom lenses, fixed focal length rare, etc.) made nice DoF/Bokeh hard to come by, making the output of them not really look like what a lay person would say "cinema" looks like. If you want to talk real Cinema-DV options from around that time (and ignoring punk cinema stuff like Dogme 95/Harmony Korine), you're mostly talking about the Viper, which again is a six-figure camera.

> The impact was muted because people didn’t really care about 4K as much in 2007.

This is just not true. Look at the Wikipedia post here [2] and then also just look for movies shot on the One/MX/Epic. The camera was immediately adapted into hollywood feature productions.

[1] https://therobbcollections.blogspot.com/2019/09/digital-came... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema#Red_One

[johncalvinyoung]

The role of ENG video is not precisely the same thing as digital cinema, though there's some overlap. I remember a lot of indie filmmakers in that era struggling to shoot for cinema with ENG-focused cameras and gear, and often struggling to get what they wanted out of it.

[treflop]

They’re not but there were ENG-style cameras with interchangeable lenses and 422 output too. There were a lot of options between DSLR and an ARRI.

Still are.