Analog vs. Digital

For my reading this week, I chose to do an article about an upstart young company that's trying to make a digital video camera that is as good as one with film. This camera is known as the red1 The founder of the company however, is the billionaire founder of Oakley. It manages to have "4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical" (1). This is the same as analog recordings, however digital cameras are much easier to use and operate with. One of the greatest successes of the Red1 was how it can also allow the camera operator to blur certain areas of the screen, and use various other techniques that usually only analog can do. The best part? The Red1 sells for $17,500, while most analog cameras rent for $25,000 a month.
I'm a pretty big novice to the area of high quality film-making. However this seems like a win-win situation. Everyone saves money, and ultimately has an easier job. Its just yet another example of an invention rendering another technology obsolete. One of the most of the revealing things, is that "Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings himself, bought four" (2). The Lord of the Rings series is one of my favorite of all time, so Peter Jackson endorsing these cameras pretty much signifies to me how good these are. If these cameras do not become the standard in the next ten years, I will be very surprised, as it seems inevitable from this article. The only negative thing mentioned about them is that they don't produce a tangible result like film. This complaint seems ridiculous, as film itself can't be exposed to light or scratches, making it much more likely to fail than a hard drive.

Behar, Michael. "Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema's Ultrahigh-Res Camera." Wired. 18 Sept. 2008. 23 Oct. 2008