That brings me to the topic of my current post. The Lord recently provided an awesome new camera, a Canon SX10 IS, through a special technology scholarship at my school. I’ve since been enjoying shooting photos of our campus, reputed to be among the prettiest in the United States.

Last Sunday night I was busy on a Music History paper due the next morning at 9 and was up most of the night–in fact, I had only 1.5 hours of sleep when I walked into class that morning. The upside to this really long night was that I got to see a spectacular sunrise the next morning at a quarter to seven–the photos below were just taken off my dorm steps twenty feet from my room.

R.E. Lee Episcopal silhouetted against the sunrise.

A little wider shot with the Lee House and Davis Hall in the picture, taken across the BDG Quad.

I’m home for the moment for Thanksgiving and greatly enjoying finally getting enough sleep, despite having a major political philosophy paper to write over break. Sleep, politics paper, food and more sleep cover most of my priorities for this week. And then back to school for one more week of class, then finals and Christmas break! Lord willing I should be able to post some more pictures soon, especially over the Christmas holidays. And now to bed, for it is plenty late already…

Says it all, doesn’t it–except the $3,000 price tag. Yes, that’s right–3K for $3K. RED, the maker of the groundbreaking RED ONE digital cinema (read film camera w/o the film–this is WAY better than the camera the Star Wars prequels were shot on) has announced a pair of new cameras at this year’s NAB trade show. RED EPIC is a similarly awesome camera, supposedly not to replace RED ONE, which will push the absolute bleeding-edge limits of digital cinematography.

SCARLET, on the other hand, is a lower-end (but still very, very awesome) camera meant to compete in the market currently served by the Canon XH and XL-H lines, Sony’s EX-1 and –3, and others. As announced, it is supposed to be able to shoot 3k frames on a 2/3″ sensor (Canon XL-H1s is 1/3″), has an integrated lens, shoot to solid-state media, plus goodies like Wi-Fi control and HDMI-out (HDMI-to-DVI-to-1080p LCD can be done easily for $500, while a good HD-SDI monitor starts in the multi-thousands.) All for under $3000, if we are to believe RED. Of course, “SPECIFICATIONS, DELIVERY DATES AND DESIGN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE… COUNT ON IT”–from the RED site, but if we look at RED ONE, they over-delivered, for the most part, albeit a bit late.

This will probably shake up the market, as cameras like the Canon XH-A1 will have little to recommend them over SCARLET, coming as they do with lower resolution and fewer connections, except a more familiar form factor, cheaper media and an established name. (Oh, and the XH-A1 is $3999, not $3,000.) Sony’s EX-1 doesn’t even have all that. If RED ONE didn’t establish RED as a player, I don’t know what will…except maybe SCARLET. It’s not quite the revolution in quality that RED ONE was, with its integrated lens and 2/3″ sensor, but it would be quite enough for a lot of us. I can actually see myself possibly getting my hands on one in the near future, while with a RED I figured it would be rental for a long, long time. Cameras like this may change the economics of many film projects. Time to get back to work and start saving–spring 2009 isn’t that far away!

(The full information is here. For those that want to absorb every bit of the speculation, possibilities, predictions, and rumors out there–I did–there is a fascinating SCARLET prerelease forum on Reduser.net.)

John Calvin Young