As details continue to trickle in about RED's forthcoming 6K camera, fans have been waiting eagerly to find out about one spec in particular: Komodo's sensor size. Is going to follow current camera trends and go full-frame or will it buck them entirely and go classic with Super 35?

Well, RED President Jarred Land gave everyone a little clue a few days ago in the REDUSER forums, saying:

You don't need to fear the crop factor like you did with Raven or (black magic 6k or the Z2 6k ) and the other "smaller" s35 sensors... Komodo has a whole new pixel remember and the physical sensor is much wider than all of those, 27.03mm x 14.25mm. So if you do need to crop to get to where you need to go, you are starting with much more width to get there which will be kinder to your optics.

DP Phil Holland followed up with some more details about the sensor in the thread:

What you get with Komodo 6K is as Super 35mm Plus format size (wider) that is slightly larger than Dragon/Monstro at 5K FF format/resolution, slightly smaller than both of those in 5.5K FF. Interesting stuff. When I was filming mainly on Dragon 6K (all the stuff I shot for Absolut, BMW, Sharp, etc) I was using 5.5K FF as the main format as the general image circle for S35 lenses was/is designed around the typical spec for S35 4-perf. Komodo kinda lives in there. So glass-wise, you can use whatever you want on it when it comes to larger format coverage, but S35-wise and APS-C or whatever you can put some really small glass on there.​

Holland also shared three sensor size comparisons to help you get an idea of what you'll get with Komodo. You can check each of them out on his website.

So, what does all this boil down to? Is Komodo full-frame? No. Is it Super 35? Kinda.

According to Land and Holland, Komodo's sensor is somewhere in the middle: Super 35mm Plus with almost a 2:1 aspect ratio.

  • Format Size: 27.03mm x 14.25mm (30.56mm image circle)
  • Format Resolution: 6144 x 3240 (19.91 megapixels)
  • Format Aspect Ratio: 1.90:1

So, just in the last couple of weeks, we've learned some truly exciting things about Komodo, including its anamorphic support, global shutter mode, and now, it's sensor size. Here's hoping RED will give fans the Christmas present they all want and come out with an official list of specs before the end of the year.

Source: REDUSER

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