A month or two ago we were lucky enough to get our hands on one of RED’s new Komodo Cameras. Now the Komodo has real potential to be a total game changer, specially when it comes to flying cinema cameras. It’s a very small package measuring about 100 millimetres cubed and it only weighs about 900 grams! The camera was conceived years ago as a way of putting a comparable camera in a place where larger cinema cameras couldn’t go, this will allow for shots that would usually be got on a GoPro or similar action cameras to be captured on a camera that matches the “A” camera and can be easily graded to match. If you’ve ever used a RED camera you’ll know that R3D files really are a delight to edit and grade.
From our point of view when looking at a camera to put in the air there are few things that come to mind. We obviously want the best possible quality we can get but we have to weigh that up with the weight of the camera, the weight of the drone, the environment we’re filming in and what the end output is going to be. As soon as we heard about the Komodo we knew this was something we wanted to get our hands on. About four weeks into lockdown a friend mentioned that the Komodo was very near to being ready for production so we cheekily sent an email to Jared Land, President of the Red Digital Cinema, to see if there was any chance we could get hold of one of the pre-production units. To our surprise we actually got a response and we were put on a list that would give us a chance to get hold of either one of the custom colour units or a white Stormtrooper unit. The custom colour units were in very very short supply but luckily the Stormtrooper units were not far behind and we managed to bag storm trooper number 00042.
Watch this space for an update on how we’ve found the camera in the first few weeks of having it and to see some of the first shots from the air!