Which RED Camera to Buy in 2023? RED Digital Cinema Lineup Explained

Used RED Digital Cinema Cameras

RED product and term glossary

So, now you know the new RED camera lineup details and you’re ready to make a purchase or rent for your next project, but then you see that the RED Raven is actually cheaper than the Dragon-X kit. Then you start to wonder about used RED cameras, or the RED Weapon 8K. What about the Scarlet-W your film school buddy has, or the RED Epic?

Suddenly, you start to wonder who would win in a fight between a Dragon and an Epic but then you remember one is a mythical creature and the other is just a cool name for a really long poem.

How can you possibly know which RED camera is the best? Furthermore, how can you know which is a camera vs a sensor vs an integrated kit? Let’s quickly define some RED camera terminology:

RED One

The RED One is a camera body, brain, and sensor. It’s the entire camera system, and the first production camera introduced by RED in 2007. They later offered upgrades to a 14-megapixel sensor called the “M-X”.

The RED One is said to have effectively the same quality as 35mm film, though most filmmakers looking for a “film look” will prefer the image received from an ARRI camera like the Alexa. 

RED Epic

The RED Epic is a camera body/brain. It came after the RED One, and originally featured the M-X sensor, but then offered the Dragon sensor, and you can now upgrade your Epic to the Helium and Gemini sensors. The Epic was the higher-end version of the first DSMC body/brain, and it has higher frame rate capability when compared to the RED Scarlet. 

RED Scarlet

The RED Scarlet is a camera body/brain. It was built to compete with cameras like the Canon C300 and had fewer capabilities than the RED Epic. In 2015, RED made the Dragon 5K sensor available for the Scarlet as well, but that was a “downgrade” from the RED 6K Dragon from 2013. 

Confused yet?

RED Dragon Camera Sensor

The RED Dragon is a sensor. Originally it was 6K, but then RED took it all the way up to 8K, but since then decided to scale it back down to 5K, but not before improving and rebranding the Dragon 8K into the Monstro. That sentence sounds awful, but that’s because it’s an accurate layman summary of the RED Dragon camera sensor history over the past decade. 

RED Raven

The RED Raven is a discontinued camera kit that used the Raven brain (early DSMC2) and is the little brother of the RED Dragon-X. It has the original Dragon sensor but with 4.5K resolution, a fixed EF mount, and was the beginning of REDs move into the DSMC2 brain. 

RED Weapon

The RED Weapon 8K/6K was the original branding name of the new RED sensors paired with the DSMC2 brain. The RED Weapon term still exists, and you can cameras for rent that say “weapon”, but RED no longer sells the RED Weapons, they now only sell the DSMC2 body/brain with the Monstro and Helium 8K sensors, or Gemini and Dragon-X 5K sensors. 

REDCINE X Pro

Once you’ve captured footage, you’ll run it through REDCINE X Pro which is a free-of-charge post-processing software built for RED camera systems. It has an integrated timeline, coloring toolset, and post effects software that allows for non-destructive manipulation of raw .R3D files.

RED ROCKET

RED decided to build an internal PCI Express card that, regardless of resolution, was designed to accelerate the processing of R3D workflow, and called it the RED Rocket. Look… I know what you’re thinking.

Why would they name it “rocket”? It’s times like these when you realize RED is obsessed with repurposing any term or name with the word “Red” to somehow work with their camera lineup.

Soon filmmakers can decide if they want to use the grumpy but dependable RED Fox, and have their footage simulate the 1950’s film-look with a sepia tone integrated LUT known as the RED Scare.