The first privately owned EPIC camera has already been stolen | Hacker News Reader

The first privately owned EPIC camera has already been stolen

reduser.net

58 pointsacangiano45 comments

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Compa...

"The Red Digital Cinema Camera Company manufactures digital cinematography cameras and accessories for professional and cinematic use. The company was created and financed by Oakley founder Jim Jannard with the publicly expressed intent to reinvent the camera industry. The company's main product is the Red One, which can record at resolutions up to 4,096 horizontal by 2,304 vertical pixels, directly to flash or hard disk storage. It features a single Super 35-sized CMOS sensor and a cinematography industry standard PL mount."

"Epic Brains will record a data rate of 225 MB/s. The sensor sizes will be Super 35, 135 film, 645 (medium format), and 617, equivalent to the Linhof Technorama camera (the 617 will record a data-rate of 500 MB/s). Horizontal resolutions will range from 5k to 28k (the latter is the equivalent of 261 megapixels) and could be printed onto 70 mm IMAX 15/70 without the need for the IMAX Digital Media Remastering (DMR). "

One additional thing to note is you can rent 4 of these for the cost of a single panavision film camera, excluding the now unnecessary cost of film stock. Tell a director he can have up to 4 cameras on a scene and keep them running all day with no additional cost and you have a very happy director.

Nice, that's only 18Tb of storage (I think) required to record 225Mb/sec literally all day.

And 6 of the WD 3TB drives at newegg would cost only $1374, which blows my mind when I think about it.

It looks like they compress the RAW recording down to 1GB per minute. http://www.4klondon.com/faq.html

RED is offering a 100k reward http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53561

Seeing as it's nearly one-of-a-kind, that's going to be really hard to fence.

If you have the kind of skills required to sell this stolen camera, you might as well have gone into enterprise sales or something, and avoided the whole "grand larceny" rap.

Yeah, right. Enterprises like to check ppl history before hiring them. One can have mad skills and still be unable to find a job or business opportunity.

For those who don't know, what is so special about this camera?

I second this, while I get that it is the only one, what makes it so special, was it a prototype, is it some sort of super collector version?

These are pre-production final versions of the camera.

Edit: http://fxguide.com/redcentre episode 77 describes it - best podcast show notes I have seen

This specific EPIC is special in that it's #6, the only one in the 'wild' right now.

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53099

(Numbers 1-5 were kept by Jim, the next few are going to the early, early owners of the RED ONE, so they are certainly exclusive).

It's the follow on improved version of the Red One. It is smaller, shoots 5k images, and dollar for dollar one of the best values in digital cameras. It is currently being used on multiple movies and its RAW files are very nice.

It also stamps all footage with its serial number.

This camera is the next evolution of the RED ONE camera, which shot 4K resolution... the EPIC-M shoots 5K resolution. 5K resolution is huge. Take your 1920x1080 monitor and multiply by 5.

Because of this resolution, it is compared (favorably) to film in many ways, something that digital hasn't been able to do yet.

Also, RED has a very passionate userbase, very similar to Apple.

5K refers to the width, not the height. So 2.5 times a 1920x1080 monitor.

Right... but when you're comparing it as a measure of area it's actually a greater then 5x difference... 5120x2700 (5K) = 13,824,000 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 Roughly a 6.5x larger resolution then your 1920x1080 monitor.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:28k_RED_CAMERA.svg)

http://epic.red.com/epic.html

That's one of the coolest pieces of equipment I've ever seen.

It looks like some weapon designers decided to make a camera.

The company was started by the guy who started Oakley.

It falls into a price range that doesn't exist outside of that company's products. Auxiliary products like lenses and stuff is pretty much the same price (since they aren't produced by that company).

Since it stamps all footage with the serial number, how is this device going to be useful to anyone?

perhaps it was stolen by someone who does not know its value?

Industrial espionage would not care about that. They are after something else.

This comment seems right on target. This was stolen so somebody can duplicate the technology and learn from it. This won't be fenced.

That's quite obviously the case. A normal burglar will always try his best to avoid breaking and entering in a house where people are at home.

Actually, I'd bet on just random theft from obviously absurdly rich people staying in the Alps over the holidays. If this were industrial theft, I would have gotten in/out faster (without going for wallets). Also I don't think the kind of professional thief you'd engage to do an industrial theft would want to risk robbing a house full of people unless there were no better options.

The question is what does the first level fence do once he receives this -- he'll search on google and see what it is, and it will be obviously impossible to sell. He could try to fence it to a competitor for industrial espionage, unless he had existing contacts at Red's competitors (who? Sony?), they'd probably refuse or contact the police.

The safest bet is probably to destroy it, unfortunately.

>The safest bet is probably to destroy it, unfortunately.

Or keep it for home movies. Hey honey, I'm shooting the birth of our son in 5k, I hope you don't mind...

Safest, yes, but probably not the economical thing to do. Pass it through five or six hands or so, and it could end up with someone who has a watertight alibi and 'found it in an alley', and returned it for the finder's fee.

So why not wait a few months and buy one?

The RED One has been out 3-4 years. The EPIC will likely not be the top-of-the-line camera for more than 3-4 years either. So a 6 month head-start is fairly large.

   I'm not so worried about a competitor getting hold of this 
   camera. If they did, I'm quite sure they would call us and 
   return it... right after they said "we can't believe you 
   actually did this!".

   http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=701458&postcount=30

How is this "hacker news" material? it was a production camera, not a prototype, stolen probably by thieves who had no idea what it was.

From the discussion in the link, it seems that the unfortunate victim had previously discussed his holiday plans. If this was anything other than a random attack, that information "leakage" could have been a contributing factor. Issues of privacy, openness, and information security are all long-standing HN themes.

ok but how is it different from the millions of people using Facebook or foursquare stating when they leave home or where they leave their precious gear? Lots of cases of people who got their ferrari or jaguar xkrs stolen because they bragged about holidays on facebook.

It seems a lot of noise for me for just one camera. The new PMW-F3s from Sony costs as much as one epic and are as formidable/game-chaning as the epic, but apparently everything about RED should be seen like big news...

The Sony's specs do not seem to measure up to this RED unit, at least from what's been posted in this thread and the spec sheet I just skimmed.

The RED also has a substantially higher "whoa" index.

See the comment about industrial espionage above.

The Epic is quite a bit more techy than the PMW-F3. For example, the Sony stops at 1080p, which is picture in picture compared to 5k.

Just curious, how much is it worth?

(update: I somehow read it wrong, it wasn't the car, it was their house)

Not that it's their fault they are a victim of a terrible crime, but seriously, who would leave that in a car overnight?

I don't even leave my factory radio in the car overnight. Thieves are stupid and will break a window just to find out later they got nothing, you cannot "out logic" them, as there is no logic.

May I point out the camera was not in a car. The perpetrators actually robbed a house full of adults and children, while everyone was sleeping. It's almost a miracle nobody was hurt/killed.

Wow you are 100% right, how the heck did I miss it was a house and not a car?

Sorry about that!

Very few burglars hurt or kill people. Hardly a miracle.

Very few burglars would bother to enter a house with people in it, the risk is too great for a few unknown things unless they knew something very valuable was there and worth the risk.

Not necessarily.

I have to dig up which car, and to whom it was originally given to, but when Audi RS's were still produced exclusively by Quattro GmbH, and not sold by Audi dealers, one particular Formula 1 (or Le Mans) driver had his stolen. People were home at the time.

No one saw anyone enter or leave. A kitchen or patio door was broken to disengage the lock, the keys taken, the car taken, and that's all she wrote.

Rumor was organized crime, since Audi RS*s were popular rides for high level mafia. Needless to say, the vehicle was never recovered, and this wasn't the first high profile incident in which an Audi RS was stolen. Even when not stolen from high-profile individuals, the keys were lifted with the owners on the premises, without anyone being the wiser to the car being gone.

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