By site editor Dan Chung:
The recently announced RED Raven is still several months from shipping but has just received a major upgrade. In a post on RED User Jarred Land announced that the Raven will now be a 4.5K camera instead of a 4K one. Apparently this is as a result of an all night session with Land and RED founder Jim Jannard. It will be at no extra cost to customers.
Details are scarce but it appears that the extra resolution comes from an expanded horizontal sensor area with the frame height remaining the same. The result will be a letterboxed image that is wider than either 4K standard (DCI or UHD). I assume that if you want to shoot in a regular 16×9 aspect the 4K resolution remains unchanged.
The sensor area is now 23.04mm x 10.8mm, and If my maths are right then this means the camera’s frame is now close to Super35 in width, but still quite a bit smaller in height. It does mean that that Super35 lenses should have no problem covering the sensor.
Once again RED are offering an enticing camera that has a unique feature set compared to the competition. Of course it will require quite a few accessories to make it work, but for around $10K you should be able to get a workable setup. We look forward to seeing what it can do.
