Paul M Clements

Red classes their 2K windowed sensor (2048 x 1152 pixels) as being Super 16mm. It occured to me however to examine whether standard 16mm lenses would be useable with the RedOne given the difference in aspect ratios between the two formats. In a nutshell normal 16mm lenses may have no problem covering the 2K area of the sensor. And some may argue they are a better fit.

The following diagram illustrates the physical area of 16mm (10.26 by 7.49mm) as well as the physical area of S16mm (12.51 x 7.41mm). There are two circles of coverage of both formats. Finally the portion of Red’s sensor that is used when shooting 2K windowed can be seen to fit inside the 16mm’s circle of coverage.

If you click on the name of each item in the key you can hide them in the diagram so as to get a clearer understanding of what you are looking at.

The diagonal from corner to corner of 16mm is 12.70mm. So the minimum diameter of a 16mm lenses circle of coverage ought to be 12.70 or greater in order for the image to be useable. By comparison the diagonal of the 2K area of the red sensor is 12.65mm; 0.05mm less than the minimum 16mm circle of coverage’s diameter.

Finally, even if a standard 16mm lens should have issues covering the 2K area of the sensor they will still be more than capable of covering full HD, since the area of the sensor used for 1080p (1920 Pixels by 1080 Pixels) is easily smaller than standard 16mm (Footage would require batch cropping in RedCine from the 2K source although future options for Windowed 1080p may become available).

The result of the above means that standard 16mm lenses, such as the Cooke 9-50mm T2.5 or Zeiss 10-100mm T2.0, do not need to undergo modifications for use with S16mm which lessens the width of the lens as well as lowers the T-Stop and can on some lenses lower the general quality of the image. It also means that there are further lens options for shooters to choose from, and due to the popularity of S16mm or 35mm, these standard lenses may very well offer a better price perfomance ratio.

_______________________________________

Disclaimer: In the interest of being mathematically correct and fair I should illustrate how the size of the 2K sensor area was arrived at and whether any part of this might have an effect on the results:

Each pixel of the Red Mysterium sensor occupies 29sq. micron. This means the vertical and horizontal length of each pixel is 0.0053851648071345040312507104915403mm. It is from this number that 2048 pixels gives us 11.028817525011464256001455085568mm which was rounded up to 11.03. It is also how I have measured the vertical length which contains 1152 pixels. The 29sq. micron pixel size taken directly from Red.com could however already been a rounded number from 0.0054mm length X 0.0054mm height. In which case each pixel would be 29.16sq Micron. The resulting difference in size for the 2K area would be 11.0592mm length (Compared to 11.03 posted above) and 6.2208 (Compared to 6.20 posted above). The diagonal would be 12.68874529967403829911747653133 or rounded to 12.69mm. Still 0.01mm less than the 12.7mm circle of coverage of 16mm. So by my calculations it would make no difference to the result (I hope they are correct!).