Red finally came out with details on their Digital Stills and Motion Camera (DSMC, as opposed to DSLR) cameras. How long has the “modular” Nikon body rumor been around? I’ve even seen reports from pro’s saying that the thing actually exists, but Nikon keeps it under wraps. What a shame we don’t see things like this coming out of the Nikon labs! Hopefully this will kick Nikon in the butt and we’ll get something like it- I would love to see a replaceable sensor instead of having to buy a new body every 2 years to get the best image quality.

Red Scarlet Modular Body- 1 possible configuration

This shot simply shows a possible configuration- 7 different sensor backs you can choose from depending on the mount, sensor size, FPS! There’ll even be (presumably, this won’t be vaporware) a 28kMP back that does 25fps in 2010.

Oh hey! Notice something else we don’t see in the camera companies- a F’ING CLUE about what they’re likely to bring out in the future- Red’s actually establishing a baseline roadmap for what they expect to achieve in 2 years!

Want to see the rest of the images that you can attach to this camera?

So- to get a minimal Nikon F-mount-based system, you’re looking at:

Scarlet 5k/39fps @ $7,000

Red Handle @ ?

Lens Mount @ ?

Battery @ ?

Electronic Viewfinder @ ?

Recording Module @ ?

Then what you still don’t have is autofocus, so I hope you’re good at that!

If you want a FF 35mm sensor, you’re going to shell out $12k.

Then because all of this dreamy tech wasn’t enough, they decided to cobble together a 3d setup:

3d Scarlet Setup

If I didn’t already have a ton of cash invested in Nikon- this would leave my wondering if investing in Red gear wasn’t the way to go- the fact that they’re able to come out of virtually nowhere a couple of years ago and even have the audacity products like this tells me they’re not going to sit on their asses while people keep begging to buy things like new AF-S primes, updated 70-200mm, Apheric 28 f/1.4, another Noct, etc.

If I was Nikon, I’d change my pants, then ask how much cash we had on hand and maybe make them an offer. Failing that, I’d be dusting off all those cool ideas we’ve been playing with but not actually seriously considering making into a product, and taking some risks!

After all of that was done, I’d have an extremely frank and open discussion with our customers explaining where we’re going over the next years, produce a truthful product roadmap, and set some audacious R&D goals.

If I was Red, I’d figure out how to get autofocus in there- but I’m not a motion guy, maybe it’s not as useful as I’d think. I’d also think about heavily targeting still photographers as soon as the motion guys are satiated.

RED corp, founded by the guy who started Oakley sunglasses, had a cool idea a couple of years- make a digital video recorder that can use interchangeable lenses (even Nikon and Canon lenses with adapters) with quality as good as 35mm film and sell it for ($17,000) a whole lot less than normal professional movie cameras ($100’s of thousands).

Surprisingly to me, and probably others, they delivered. It’s surprising because it’s not at all unusual for a company to come out of nowhere and promise of disruptive technologies and never hear from them again (hey, remember Silicon Film? They went from ~1997 announcement to 2008 bankrupcy?)

Well lately, they’ve been talking about coming out with an SLR, or video camera with SLR-like capabilities using their movie camera’s 25mp chip (presumedly).

This might be nothing for Nikon and Canon to worry about but it sure would be interesting to have a movie camera capable of good stills, that didn’t suffer from Jello-Shots, and could use just about whatever Nikon or Canon (and others with proper adapters) lenses you wanted to throw at it.

Unfortunately though, the RED cameras (so far) don’t have any sort of autofocus, so I wonder about these in fast-action situations.

If I was putting money on it, I’d think this’ll be interesting to watch but won’t give the Dynamic Duo (Nikon, Cannon) and sleepless nights, at least for a few different revisions of their new system.