Ask top-ranking Canadian directors of photography what’s new, and they’ll talk about the Red One.

Some are skeptical. Some think it is the future. But no one dismisses the hottest prototype camera that many believe will someday replace celluloid, even though the camera is still in the experimental stage.

Developed over the past three years by a California firm owned by Jim Jannard – whose famed sunglass company, Oakley, was recently sold for US$2.1 billion – the RED Digital Camera Company appears to be well capitalized.

‘Yes, we are well financed; there’s no stopping us,’ says Ted Schilowitz, part of the Red One’s development team and the company’s first employee, on the phone from L.A.

Typical of the fiercely independent spirit behind the Red One, Schilowitz signs his e-mails with the self-appointed title, ‘the leader of the rebellion’.

Red Ted, as Schilowitz also calls himself, is quick to point out that: ‘Jim is not just the financing. He’s not just the money behind it. He has a daily job running the ship at Red. He’s very focused on the industrial design, just like we all are.’

After much hype at last year’s National Association of Broadcasters conference, the Red One stumbled out of the gate in 2008 with a number of technical problems and an informal recall.

‘The first 100 cameras had a normal PL [positive locking] mount,’ explains Schilowitz. ‘That was fine, but we kept engineering our product as we had promised we would. So what we did was create a different kind of PL mount that’s a shimless mount. This is the sophisticated film version of a sugar bag under the restaurant table leg.’

Yet instead of simply replacing the rocky mounts, the well-healed company ‘decided instead to take the first 100 cameras back, and we gave them new cameras at no extra cost,’ says Schilowitz. ‘We swapped them out when the cameras were free so there was no down time.’

Despite the initial setbacks, this avant-garde camera has attracted some heavy-hitter advocates in the international film milieu.

Steven Soderbergh shot his upcoming two features, The Argentine and Guerrilla, with the Red One, and he’s an advocate of the new 4K digital camera, quoted on the Red website: ‘For me, this is Year Zero; I feel I should call up Film on the phone and say, ‘I’ve met someone.”

Lord of the Rings visionary Peter Jackson shot Red’s promotional film, Crossing the Line, but chose a World War One story, which left many who have screened it scratching their heads as to why one would want a promo film in a thousand shades of mud, as opposed to shooting more high-contrast images.

The main attraction of Red is its optical range, which compares favorably with 35mm film. Jannard’s company has created what it calls the ‘Mysterium Super 35mm cine size sensor, which provides 4K (up to 30 fps).’

Vancouver-based Steadicam and camera operator Jim Van Dijk (Fantastic Four), a Red One advocate, missed meeting Mel Gibson by a day when he visited Red’s facilities last month.

‘There were race cars and 100,000 Oakleys hanging on the walls,’ enthuses Van Dijk. ‘It was a cool environment…The place was filled with computer and camera geeks. Two engineers spent an hour with me, chatting about QuickTime and coding and post-workflow. I asked, ‘Why are you spending so much time with me?’ And they said, ‘If we hear about a problem, we’ll fix it. We want to know what we’re facing so we can be proactive and work ahead.”

That attitude, although admirable, indicates Red’s problem – many industry professionals are cautious and refuse to rush into endorsing a new, relatively untested product. There’s a feeling that the Red One may have moved too quickly into the marketplace.

Cinematographer Gerald Packer (Little Mosque on the Prairie) has the impression that ‘Red may not have the strength to be the camera for major productions.’

Other camera operators report tales of Red cameras unable to work in freezing environments – or having substandard viewfinders or being too bulky (once loaded) to carry around on a shoot.

Some of those problems have already been fixed, but DOP Kim Derko (I, Claudia, Show Me Yours) points out that, although she’s ‘very impressed with its beautiful images…the main downside [for Red] is the workflow, which is not a part of the current system of production. I believe this format will go far, but at the moment it’s still expensive and time consuming to download in the field at 4K! Ask any production manager if they have a line on their budgets for a bunch of storage drives and another camera technician on the crew.’

Lenser Derek Rogers (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) begs to differ. He is a big Red One supporter, though he admits that the manufacturer ‘sent out a prototype’ instead of thoroughly field-testing the technology.

‘They’ve taken the concept of 35mm still digital cameras and applied it to the motion picture medium,’ says Rogers. ‘It’s the ultimate indie camera. I think it will replace film.’

Peter Mettler (Manufactured Landscapes) takes a more philosophical approach to cinematography, preferring, when he can, to shoot with his old Aaton film camera.

‘Digital cameras [including Red] never seem to be designed with seeing in mind,’ observes Mettler. ‘They seem to be focused more on technical issues – getting crisp images, but the ergonomics of the cameras are not good.’

That kind of hands-on critiquing is precisely what the Red One development people want to hear.

‘We’re sort of in a never-ending state of developing this camera, and we like it that way,’ says Schilowitz, defending the company’s bleeding-edge philosophy. ‘When you buy another camera, you’ve already essentially bought an obsolete product.’

Obsolete is not a word that currently applies to the Red One. ‘In eight months, we’ve upgraded the camera 15 times with software,’ Schilowitz continues. ‘Eventually things will slow down a bit as we get happy with the features set, but taking it in expected and unexpected directions is, I think, what our customers have really embraced.’

And since it is rare that Red One developers grant interview requests, Playback had to ask if they believe the camera will some day replace celluloid.

‘We’re on the road of creating a revolutionary acquisition tool which matches or exceeds 35mm film,’ Schilowitz cautions. ‘But I wouldn’t be so bold as to say we’re going to replace film. But we’re the first viable contender. ‘

Cinematographers may be embracing the future, but they are still romantics.

Stephen McNutt (Battlestar Galactica), a great believer in the new storage device ‘flash drive’ and other technological advances, still waxes poetic about the ‘texture and quality’ of 35mm film. So does Van Dijk: ‘I love the smell of film. I love the whirr, the way it’s projected on the screen. Red is not the only way. But it is a really great alternative.’

– With files from Suzan Ayscough