File under focal length for dummies. Nice compressed look at how changing the lens focal length (either with prime lenses or with a zoom) can effect the way a shot or scene look . A side effect with this animated GIF is that it is mesmerizing….mesmerizing…mesmerizing…mesmerizing..
Back in the Fall of 2011, fellow Orange County Red User Justin Nguyen initiated the idea of a Red User get together. The goal was simple – just to get as many of the OC Red owners of Red Ones, Epics, and Scarlets together to share experiences and tips. Well it finally happened last night and we were happy to host it at our Santa Ana facility.
About 20 folks showed up (see picture below of most of them) – most were Red Owners, but several were working DP’s and crew that just wanted to learn more about Red. We spent about 3 hours socializing, and then held a round table discussion about all thing from prep, to rigging, to workflow, to post. Everyone loved sharing all of our unique and common experiences with each other. It was especially helpful to see the various rigs, lenses and accessories that everyone has discovered and are using in the field.
POLLING: We even tossed in a few informal polls on favorite workflow tools. To my surprise, the majority were now using Adobe Premiere. At VR, we certainly own Premier, but are enjoying our upgraded Avid Media Composer Systems running 6.0 and still working with FCP 3 everyday. For backup in the field, most everyone is using finder drag and drop, and back at their facilities, it was 80/20 finder copy over R3D Manager. Everyone was making dual copies when possible for backup and safety, Red owners, were happy with the performance or the cameras in the various shooting conditions. For most projects, Epic shooters are shooting 10:1, but for web deliverables, a few were using 12 or 13:1. We generally shoot between 8:1 (green screen) and 10:1.
Contribute your own experience by completing the poll on the right —->
We will collect the results and share them on our site.
My favorite “hands on” were with the Wooden Camera bits and the 3rd party Canon mount still lenses. Also super cool to see half a dozen OC based Epics and a Scarlet in our studio.We plan to do it on a semi-regular basis, and Justin and I talked about scheduling another around NAB time. If anyone wants to join us, drop me a note here or on reduser.net
BTW: I received our Canon mount for one of our Epics today. It is way cool. I ordered a second one already and I expect to get a lot of use from them 
January Orange County Red User Meet-up
Both Canon and our Red Digital neighbors are holding press events tonight promising big announcements. What will they be? Both companies have been tight lipped and their is lots of industry speculation.
Will Red introduce Pro Res as a recording option? Will they deliver Scarlet? Will Jim buy Canon? Canon buy Red? Will Canon introduce the long awaited dedicated video camera based on the Canon 5D mark II large sensor? What is your guess? The clock is ticking.
Here is an article published in the Orange County Business Journal discussing a little Red innovations and the pending annoucements.
OCBJ Canon & Red announcements
Visit the Orange County Business Journal website to view the entire publication.
We received our Red Epic cameras and immediately put them into use. Shooting green screen and location interviews within the first week. We even had a chance to experiment with HDR. All in all a fun time so far.
Our first hands on with Red Epic at NAB 2011 (note the huge grin on our CEO's face). Ted Schilowitz looks on.
Red was cool enough to give us Serial Numbers 15 and 16 as a homage to our original Red One cameras. Pictures and a real report from the field coming soon. We are still waiting for our hand grip and Canon mounts which will be helpful in EFP (electronic field production) and ENG (electronic news gathering).