Camcorderinfo has released their initial analysis of the Red images (the insanely high ISO framegrabs that Red Digital Cinema has been sharing over the past few days at Reduser Forums). They have tested the images using specialized software called Imatest, and reported some issues with color rendition. I would caution you to take the color test charts with a grain of salt however, here are a few items that I feel are worth clearly clarifying.

The images that the Red crew have shared to date are in a colorspace which Imatest unfortunately cannot properly accomodate. This would explain the discrepancies and odd desaturation they noted in the color charts. They also mentioned that the images looked underexposed. Which they were, as clearly noted in the Reduser threads…for instance, the 8000 ISO image was intentionally underexposed by 5 stops! (This is a good time to remind people that in photography each successive f/stop represents a doubling (or halving) of light. So 5 full stops under is quite a bit of underexposure.) One area that CCI did test effectively were noise levels, and they were duly impressed, stating “…at the low resolution they were posted at, we found the red camera’s noise levels were literally off our charts for quality.” Which is a finding that is in line with what many others are reporting. And that smooth image quality is even more surprising when you consider that those Red frames were shot with gain turned up. Revolution indeed.