After more than a year of hyping its Scarlet as a low-end, ENG-level, hybrid video/still camera, RED has now rechristened the product as the EPIC-S and raised the price.
The name shift reflects a change from the cheaper original body to the same body used for the higher-end EPIC-M and will include the upgrade to HDRx (high dynamic range) recording. EPIC-S is focused on “pro, not prosumer,” company founder Jim Jannard said.
Most of the cost-cutting will come through the amount of bandwidth available to the camera, which should be about half that of the larger and more expensive EPIC-M and EPIC-X models. The cut in bandwidth will lower the price but also drop the maximum available frame rate. RED has dropped the fixed-lens version of the camera that it had previously announced.
The new EPIC-S represents a significant upgrade over the originally promised 3K Scarlet camera and will shoot at 5K resolution with RAW, SSD recording and many of the other features reserved for larger cameras.
The EPIC-S could be in production as soon as May, but there are no guarantees. Jannard warned that the production would hinge on how many orders are taken for the fully professional EPIC-X, whose manufacturing starts in late February and could cut into available resources at the United States-based factory. The EPIC-M is already in production and manufacturing will step up slightly this month.
