RED announced a new firmware upgrade to the Dragon-X, making it a 6K camera. The upgrade is free for existing Dragon-X 5k owners. How’s that possible? What about DSMC1 and Raven owners? Read below.

The Dragon-X 5K was 6K from the start

It appears that all DSMC2 Dragon sensors, with the exception of the Raven, were already 6K from the start. That means the sensor inside the DSMC2 Dragons is a 6K sensor that utilizes only 5K part of it. However, with a month of software work focused on getting the IPP2 within the 6K sensor, the Dragon-X 5K can be transformed into 6K, and Dragon-X owners will “wake up with a better camera after hopefully just a new firmware.” As stated Jarred Land, RED president: “This is a free upgrade for Dragon-X owners to take advantage of the full sensor already inside their cameras.”

This is a free upgrade for Dragon-X owners to take advantage of the full sensor already inside their cameras

Jarrred Land – RED Digital Cinema president

Modifying an existing sensor: Strategy of design and development

As explained by RED, it was more economical for the company to utilize 5K resolution from the current 6K sensor than designing a completely new sensor that would cost more. According to RED, the Raven sensor was made from scratch, which ended up being more expensive than the 6K sensor. “Sometimes the logistics and software and all the other bits outweigh the cost of just using more parts to keep it unified,” RED claimed. It means that the Dragon-X would have been more expensive to the customer if RED has made a dedicated 5K sensor due to the high cost of the developing phase.

Sometimes the logistics and software and all the other bits outweigh the cost of just using more parts to keep it unified

RED Digital Cinema

Raven and DSMC1 are out of the game

Unfortunately, Raven owners will not benefit from that upgrade, nor DSMC1 owners. According to Jarred, the Raven sensor was designed and developed especially to meet the Raven needs and can’t be modified even with extensive firmware update: “This won’t work on Raven.. those sensors are hard 4.5k sensors. And some dragon sensors were software masked down to a smaller resolution that had defects down to a smaller resolution. And this won’t work on DSMC1 users because remember the unified internal boards didn’t happen until DSMC2… But I think most of you have an upgrade path to Dragon-X so you can just do that to get you to this” Jarred adds. 

This won’t work on Raven.. those sensors are hard 4.5k sensors

Jarred Land, RED president

Changing the brand from 5K to 6K

It might be a minor issue, but existing Dragon-X owners with 5K branded on their cameras that now shoot 6k have the option to choose a sort of body upgrade fee to swap out that front panel with a 6K brand. RED says that it requires a full camera rebuild to change that, but not supposed to cost more than $500 or $600. However, if you want to send your camera in to get the 5k changed to 6k logo it will cost $150 for the paint touchup version. 

RED Dragon-X 6K S35 highlights

• 19.4 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• 30.7mm X 15.8mm (diagonal: 34.5mm)
• 75 fps at 6K full format (6144 X 3160)
• 100 fps at 6K 2.4:1 (6144 X 2592)
• Price: $14,950

Download the firmware upgrade form here.

Final thoughts

Nice move by RED. It can be concluded that Dragon-X owners earned a new camera for free with a 20% increase in resolution. That’s cool. It will be interesting to explore more moves like this in other RED cameras, or even in other manufacturers.