Red Scarlet X Review

The Red Scarlet X has recently made a splash in the indie filmmaking scene. The Red Scarlet X is really just a scaled back version of the more expensive Red Epic. (price tag: roughly $35,000). The Red Scarlet X camera is part of a growing group of cameras with super 35 sensors that shoot RAW footage at 4K (4096 x 2160).

The Red Scarlet is often compared to the Canon C300. This is no surprise seeing as they were released on the same day and fall within roughly the same price point. However, they are two totally different machines and will appeal to different types of filmmakers. The Red Scarlet performs well across the board. It shoots 16bit, 440 mb/s  Redcode RAW and it has an 18 stop dynamic range (with HDRx on). That being said, shooting 4K doesn’t come without a cost.

The Red Scarlet will require a computing heavy workflow. The high quality footage will require computers that can handle the footage at reasonable speeds. Not only that, but if you’re using a 64Gb memory card you’ll be able to shoot around 25 minutes of footage. However, you need to take into consideration the time that it takes to offload such a large amount of data. Of course you can have someone doing this off to the side for you, but you’ll still require multiple cards to ensure your shooting day doesn’t get stalled due to data transfer times. Or you can buy multiple cards even though it will mean a further investment in your camera package. Of course batteries are another concern. You’ll likely want to have at least a few of them as well as a few chargers running all of the time as each battery only runs for about 30 minutes.

However, if you have the budget and computing power to run the Red Scarlet X then it’s a great camera with powerful features. Many who have worked with 4K footage have said that once they start working with RAW 4K footage they can’t go back to anything else.

Take a look at a short film shot on the Red Scarlet below.