RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk With Jarred Land

It’s been a few weeks since pre-orders have started and yesterday the accompanying RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk has been streamed on RED’s Youtube channel. RED CEO Jarred Land, as well as Cleigh Reed, Jonathan Petts, and James Lucarelli gave an interesting overview about RED’s latest camera system, suited for studio configurations and high end productions. Let’s dive in.

The RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk started impressively with a reel, some introductory notes and then, most importantly, a short on-set visit with director Zack Snyder, using the camera on his new new movie. That was then followed by the RED team, giving an overview over the cameras general capabilities, a deep dive into the built-in ND system and accessories and then finally, a Q&A answering user questions.

Built-in NDs

The cameras specs have been out for some time, so there was nothing particularly new to be found here. However the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk gave some interesting insights into the workings of the built-in electronic ND system. RED’s founder Jarred Land highlighted that RED had been working on this system for a long time (and he admitted before publicly that they’ve been late to the party with this). The clear filter is switched for the ND filter mechanically. On the camera body, there are three buttons to control it: “UP”, “DOWN” and “ND/CLR”. You can set the increments for the “UP” and “DOWN” buttons even via the RED Control app, in either 1/3 stop, 1/4 stop or 1 stop. Turning the ND on or off, will return you to the previously used increment. Using the app you can also just dial in the precise increment you want. Coming back to the mentioned Zack Snyder on-set visit, the director mentioned, that in his current movie, which is being shot, the NDs are used extensively:

We are wide open all the time! It is a constant ND shuffle.

Accessories

Moving on to the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk’s accessories portion, the team discussed the camera’s dual and high voltage capabilities, using the specifically developed batteries. The camera seems to be just as adaptable as this kind of studio-focussed camera is expected to be, with loads of power distributions and mounting options on the body as well as wrap-around-grips.

RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk – Q&A

The largest portion of the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk was however taken up by the Q&A section. Let’s look into some of the more interesting questions that were answered.

Autofocus: Of course we already new that the camera had contrast and phase detection autofocus. The interesting portion of this section of the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk however, had Jarred Land go into where he sees this going. He clearly stated that he would like to expand the camera’s autofocus capabilities into areas like intelligent object detection and tracking, comparing it to Sony and Canon. But it’s not there yet.

EF-Mount and RF-Mount: Jarred Land also went into some detail in the latter portion of the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk’s Q&A section, stating that an EF-Mount is already in development. On the topic of an RF-Mount however the team had to explain that due to the ND system taking up too much room, that would not be happening.

S35 version of the V-RAPTOR: The S35 version of the V-Raptor XL 8k VV was again confirmed and said to be in development and testing right now. The team present in the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk also tried to position that camera in the lineup as being a smaller version of the XL, that could be particularly useful for product shoots, due to its higher DOF.

If you’d like to go into more detail regarding the camera, or consider yourself a RED fan, then particularly the Q&A section of the RED V-RAPTOR XL Tech Talk (embedded above) is highly recommended. Otherwise you can also visit RED’s website here.

What do you think about the Tech Talk? Did you find the answers provided here interesting? Do you look forward to using the camera in a shoot? Let us know in the comments!