A little over a year ago, the video world was taken by storm by RED ONE, a revolutionary professional grade camcorder that took better than film quality video for about a third the price of it’s Panavision and Arri cousins. It was rumored to have an 11.4 MP chip with no noise issues or artifacting, and could shoot up to 60fps. Some thought it was vaporware until director Peter Jackson shot “Crossing the Line,” a short film on World War I, with it with stunning results same or better quality as professional equivalents costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but for an $18,000 pricetag. And in that short period of time, everyone wants one. Then, a few months back, we reported on a rumored consumer version called RED SCARLET which would allow consumers to have RED quality HD at a consumer price. Today, Scarlet was introduced as reality.

The so-called “pocket professional” camera has a resolution higher than 1080 at 3,000 and is processsed using a new 2/3-inch Mysterium X chip, and can shoot from 1 to 120 FPS and record to dual CompactFlash cards for up to 100MB per second of REDCODE RAW HD video.

It also sports an 8x RED zoom lens and 4.5 inch LCD screen. In addition Scarlet has HMDI, HD-SDI, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 inputs and can use many of RED ONE’s accessories. What’s really sweet, however, is that it also comes with WiFi control.
Scarlet is skeined for a 2009 release (probably during CES) and should run around $3,000.

Start paying down those credit cards.

Hat Tip: Engadget