Operation Guide

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THEORY OF OPERATION

The RED family of Digital Still and Motion Cameras (DSMC) provide high performance digital imaging over

a wide range of frame rates and optical formats including Super 35mm / APS-H. The RED DSMC camera

is supplied as standard with a PL mount, and may be configured with mounts and 19 mm rods to

accommodate most cinematography lenses, matte boxes and follow focus systems. Adaptors for 15mm

offset studio and 15mm lightweight rods are also available.

In addition to compatibility with the majority of existing PL mount cinematography lenses; a select range

of Super 35mm PL mount prime and zoom lenses are available from RED.

Other lens mounts, including the DSMC Canon mount are available, permitting the use of Canon EF and

EF-S photographic lenses. The Canon mount can report lens iris, focus and zoom data when mated to an

appropriate lens. In addition, iris and manual or auto-focus settings may be controlled from the camera.

Lens mounts may be exchanged in the field, however it is highly recommended that this be performed in a

dust-free environment, as the optical path will be exposed to the elements during this process.

A B4 mount to PL mount adaptor is also available to permit use of 2/3” HD broadcast lenses on the RED

DSMC camera. The optical coverage it provides is approximately equivalent to 16mm, hence the

maximum recording resolution operating with a B4 mount 2/3” lens is 2K (2048 x 1152 pixels) progressive

scan.

MYSTERIUM X

SENSOR

The MYSTERIUM X sensor has been specifically designed for use with the RED DSMC camera, and

provides variable frame rate imaging at up to 120fps at 5K resolution, and up to 240 fps at 2K resolution.

Native color balance for the MYSTERIUM X sensor is 5,000 KELVIN, but it may be electronically

compensated for any color temperature in the range 1,700 to 10,000 KELVIN. White balance preset

values include Tungsten (3200K) and Daylight (5600K) light sources. The camera may also calculate a

color neutralizing White Balance value on demand by imaging on a standard white or 18% grey card.

The MYSTERIUM X sensor includes high precision analog to digital conversion, capable of delivering up

to 13.5 stops of dynamic range with daylight light sources over a camera sensitivity rating of 320-800 ISO.

In HDR mode, dynamic range can be extended to approximately 18 stops.

IMAGE PROCESSING

The digital image received from the sensor is formatted as a pixel defect corrected (but in all other

aspects unprocessed) 12-bit, 14-bit or 16-bit per pixel RAW data frame. When operating in STILLS mode,

each image received from the sensor is treated as a unique FRAME; however when operating in MOVIE

mode, successive images received from the sensor are collected together into a CLIP. In all other regards,

a frame of information gathered in STILLS mode or MOVIE mode is identical.

Each RAW frame or sequence of RAW frames in a clip is compressed using proprietary wavelet based

REDCODE

RAW compression, then stored to a digital media Magazine such as REDMAG™ 1.8” SSD.

When recorded, the RAW data is independent of any RGB domain color processing such as ISO, White

Balance or other RGB color space adjustments made by the camera operator. These parameters are

saved with the RAW data as reference METADATA; i.e. color is not burned into the recorded RAW data.