CION: A Rocket Like RED?

By Tim Siglin, Chairman, Braintrust Digital

There’s a new camera in town that may have Arri seeing Red.

When it comes to digital cinema, every camera manufacturer in the past few years has been chasing Red’s rocket-like growth. As a one-time upstart, the company successfully upended market verticals from high-end cinema to mid-range industrial productions, challenging established rivals. 

Even the traditional digital single-lens reflex (D-SLR) camera manufacturers entered the digital cinema game, offering 1080P and 2K-capable D-SLR bodies geared towards cinema production, as did a few traditional film camera manufacturers like Arri.

Today, at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, an interface and convertor company called AJA threw its hat into the digital cinema ring, with the CION camera product that looks—from the specs, at least—like it may contend with Arri and Red at a fraction of the price.

Is Red about to have its stratospheric reign at the low-end of the digital cinema price point usurped? 

We’re not quite sure, but the signals are trending towards the positive. Here’s why.

New Design, New Price. The AJA-designed CION camera won’t be out until August, but already the design and price are setting tongues wagging in the AJA booth at NAB. 

One topic that show floor visitors are talking about is the fact that AJA designed the camera in-house. It’s a natural step in the process of digital cinema, though, with a crop of traditional media interconnect companies moving towards the acquisition side of the digital supply chain. 

“Bringing this sophisticated camera to market underscores our passion to support filmmakers, broadcasters and content creators,” said Nick Rashby, President, AJA Video Systems.

Pricing is the other thing that’s gotten everyone worked up, given the feature set. Rashby notes that the camera will start at $8995 when it is available later this summer.

“We are incredibly proud of CION,” said Rashby, “which represents a new direction for AJA. We believe that the thoughtfully considered design, along with a powerful feature set, will make it extremely useful and versatile for productions worldwide.”

What It Does. While viewing the camera in use in the AJA booth, one thing was clear: the camera appears capable of shooting in a variety of formats, possibly rivaling those of Arri’s Alexa and Red’s Epic cameras.

Media is record to an AJA Pak, which is SSD media available in capacities of 256GB and 512GB. The company offers direct connections on the AJA Pak via Thunderbolt or USB 3 (see the G-Dock modules we reviewed a few months back for the type of form factor) or these AJA Paks can be transferred using an optional AJA Pak Dock.

AJA went for a complete 10-bit and 12-bit workflow, from HD to 4K, so the CION is capable of recording content using Apple ProRes 4444, something that no other low-end digital cinema camera has done to date.

In addition, CION can record in Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), Apple ProRes 422, ProRes 422 (LT) and Apple ProRes (Proxy).

From a format perspective, the camera shoots in Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) 4K at 4096x2160 as well as the television 4K format, better known as Ultra HD, at 3840x2160.

DCI 2K and HD are also available, at 2048x1080 and 1920x1080, respectively, but with a nice twist: the entire 4K sensor is used, and then 2K and HD are scaled down—via hardware, according to AJA—to retain the highest possible acquisition quality. These over-sampled images also allow for field-of-view retention, according to the company.

Will Griffith, creative director with Creative Energy in Johnson City, TN, had this initial reaction.

“I have used the Red Epic and Arri Alexa extensively on shoots around the US,” said Griffith. The AJA CION seems to be a direct replacement for those cameras.”

"Like Arri, AJA is a trusted name,” said Griffith, noting that AJA is new in the camera space. “Yet CION is very similar in functionality to the Arri Alexa but $40,000 cheaper.”

“It shoots native 4k@120 frames per second, which bests the Alexa and puts it close to the Red,” said Griffith, “but the CION has actual professional audio connections, which the Red Epic does not unless you pay for extra module.”

Griffith also noted that the CION has a global shutter (“it’s a big deal!” he says) and also has the ability to use ProRes files in varying ranges of compression.

“The ProRes formats are the same as Alexa, and easier to deal with than Red Raw files, in my opinion,” says Griffith. 

We would agree that’s ProRes is easier to deal with than Red Raw, especially in Final Cut Pro X, based on our recent timeline transcoding tests for Streaming Media Producer.

Griffith did have one additional request, though.

“This could be the ideal camera for independent filmmakers and commercial productions,” he said. “It would be even better if you could swap the PL mount for an EOS mount for existing lenses, but still it looks like an amazing tool.”