RED, Jelly Video and SanDisk CF cards

Funny that I mentioned RED the other day, because now comes news that they are completely redesigning Scarlet (the $3,000 video camera they had planned.)

the market has changed and we have discovered a lot of things in the process. We have a new vision

The news is on RED’s forum. Just to clarrify, RED has announced both Scarlet - a comparatively low-budget video camera - as well as the DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera) an SLR-type camera too.

The thread is an interesting read as the forum members take turns trashing the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D.


While I take what some of the fan boys say with a grain of salt, the references to the “Jelly video” problem of the D90 are worth noting. You can see an example linked from here. This frame capture shows the problem; the top part of the frame seems to lag behind the bottom as the camera is quickly panned left to right. Rather than capturing the whole frame at once, the image is being captured from top to bottom, and in that time the camera has moved (so the bottom part has moved relative to the top.)


Jelly Video from Nikon D-90


Ouch! Clearly a nasty effect, and something I wasn’t aware that the D90 suffered from.

Reading the posts, everyone seems to suspect that the Canon 5D MkII will have the same problem (it’s inferred because all the clips posted so far have no panning in them!!) Flimsy proof, but I must admit, it’s a bit troubling, and if the camera does suffer badly from this, then it does take away a bit of the excitement. On the other hand, I never thought that the 5D MkII would replace a video camera; but rather that it would make an interesting addition for special effects.

I’m going to wait to see what happens when real people get their hands on it, before I fly-off-the-handle...


In the mean time, SanDisk has announced a 16GB Extreme IV CompactFlash card. $399.99. The Extreme IV cards (already available in smaller sizes) are important because they support 45MB/s (the 5D MkII video is 40 MB/s.

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