The RED Komodo is undoubtedly one of the most highly anticipated cameras on the year and things were heating up over at reduser this past week, as RED boss Jarred Land unveiled some more key features and new teaser images of the upcoming RED Komodo 6K camera. One of the images showed a Hawk Anamorphic zoom lens mounted on the RED Komodo, while the other revealed the top menu screen.
Another important Komodo update that Jarred shared in a post, is that the RED Komodo 6K (or whatever the official full camera model name ends up being) will also support a global shutter mode! Anamorphic support is a big feature for sure, but a global shutter mode, that’s huge – normally this is something we’d see on the highest end cine cameras or niche specialized models.
…Pretty safe to say after beating on the stormtrooper all day today you can expect full sensor 6K/40fps, 6K WS @50fps. Which means 4K@60fps shouldn’t be a problem, but I have not actually tested that yet. And yes, that’s all in global shutter mode. – Jarred Land on reduser.
Images by Jarred Land/RED
And while, the particulars remain to be unveiled at a later date, as is the RED marketing drip, one can expect more details probably before year runs out. However, Jarred did mention that the official Komodo launch is months away, as the company has just entered the pre-production phase of the process. A week ago, Jarred said this on reduser:
Well, My Stormtrooper Komodo arrives on Friday.
Stormtrooper REDs usually signal pre-production. It’s impossible to predict how the next stage will go, because literally everything could go wrong, but if you look back historically and use Helium as a reference, We went from Stormtrooper Heliums to shipping to normal Heliums everyone 3-4 months later.
So if you need to make a guess.. that’s about as good as you can get. But… as we bang on them more.. that could go completely sideways.
We are Probably ready to start talking specs soon though… since those wont change that much now. Although most of you have figured it out anyways.
Jarred also revealed a photo showing the top display in full view:
Images by Jarred Land/RED
Despite the monochrome photo of the top screen above, Jarred confirmed the RED Komodo display is in full colour. The old-school tape measure, I think is a neat touch, giving the camera a bit of a retro vibe. Nevertheless, Jarred also clarified a few bits in relation to the top display of the Komodo:
…the UI ( at least the part showing in that image) is all pretty much monochrome minus some red outlines around the selections. It obviously gets really colorful when you get the exposure tools and general main screen etc, and of course when you have the actual viewing feed on there.
Images by RED/Jarred Land
RED Komodo 6K Features (we know so far):
- Fixed Canon RF mount
- RF to EF (and PL) adapters available
- many more adapter options
- Phase-detect Autofocus support
- There will be some sort of Global Shutter Mode
- 6K/40fps full-sensor; 6K WS at 50fps
- in Global Shutter Mode
- REDCODE Raw recording options
- Anamorphic support
- CFast 2.0 recording media
- first RED camera to use non-proprietary media
- Komodo is both the name of the new sensor and camera body
- Komodo is not DSMC2 or replacement for it
- Not DSMC3 either: it’s an auxiliary camera in the lineup
- 4K SDI output (can be 6G or 12G-SDI, that’s TBD)
- 3.5mm audio in, headphone jack
- 2 x Canon BP style battery slots, hot-swappable
- Top touchscreen menu and live-view display
- Wi-Fi for remote camera control and monitoring
- Cube-like form-factor, smallest RED camera to date
- Release sometime in 2020
- Price: $5K-6K or slightly more
- Hydrogen get’s you some sort of discount
While the sensor size is still not known, could end up somewhere in S35 territory but below full-frame, the global shutter mode on the Komodo is a nice surprise that many shooting fast moving objects, sports, industrial type stuff will find very useful.
Images by Jarred Land/RED
Due to its nature, there will probably be some sort of a dynamic range penalty compared to the regular Rolling shutter mode, but sensor technology and camera processing have come a long way in the past few years so, this shouldn’t really be a problem.
What do you guys think about the new top display view, anamorphic support, and the global shutter mode option on the Komodo? What feature of the RED Komodo 6K excites you the most? Let me know in the comments below.
To follow the updates relating to the Komodo, head over to reduser.net.
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