Freyburg

Canon HV20/ Letus Extreme mini test HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Wow. I have this camera, but not the lens adapter. Still amazing to see what tis little $1000 wonder is capable of. Check out Philip Bloom’s other stuff on his blog and his Vimeo page (he normally shoots with an EX1 or more recently, an EX3).

RED, the company created by Oakley founder Jim Hannard, has sent the SCARLET back to the woodshed. Why? Apparently the emergence of DSLR cameras like the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D MkII that can shoot in HD (though in the case of the 5D, at the indie-unfriendly frame rate of 30p) has forced RED to rethink what they’re trying to accomplish in the prosumer video space.

Honestly, it’s about time all camera manufacturers took a step back and figured out how to merge SLR and HD video in a package that serves both filmmakers and photographers. There’s no reason, with the emergence of fast and plentiful hard drive space, huge memory cards for on-camera storage, and lens adapters that already graft SLR lenses onto HD camcorders, that a new class of camera shouldn’t emerge that doesn’t follow the old paradigms of tape-based shooting. The 5D and D90 are an important first step, and RED’s backtracking looks to be the next step in a saga that I’ll be very interested to see come to fruition.