The RED Komodo Stormtrooper (ST) has arrived at B&H. This is the first time you can buy a RED ST white product (beta) via a dealer. Furthermore, the specs list presented on B&H reveals 16 stops of DR. Also, Firmware 1.2 Beta released with a lot of new goodies. Let’s have a look.

Update: B&H has removed the ST Komodo link from the website.

RED Komodo ST is available to preorder

Till now, in order to purchase the beta version of the RED Komodo you needed to email the company’s president, Jarred Land himself. In fact, every RED ST product has not been available to purchase via a dealer. For those who are not familiar with RED’s jargon, the ST means ֿ’Stormtrooper’ which are the first production models purchased by testers. These are white cameras that are considered as beta products. However, regarding the Komodo, there were pre-beta (alpha?) colored cameras. Read this article to learn more about the beta models of the Komodos – “Stormtrooper Komodo Is A Go. The Blacks Will be Shipped in September”. Anyway, this the first time when a RED beta product is being sold by a dealer. As stated by Jarred: There are still some of you that have emailed already that we will get to in the next few days and our factory will assemble the remaining white beta Komodos to take care of that backorder list. The remaining limited number of white Komodos we assemble will go to our premier RED dealers”.

The remaining limited number of white Komodos we assemble will go to our premier RED dealers. 

Jarred Land – RED Digital Cinema president

So there you go. You can preorder the Komodo ST directly from the B&H website. If you’re eager to get this beta product, which is also a $1,000 more expensive than the production (black) model, you should hurry as this is a very limited quantity. Also, you can wait for a month or so and order the production model which supposed to be more stable and more affordable as well.

Komodo DR revealed: 16 stops

Thanks to B&H, we can explore for the first time the formal specs of the RED Komodo. Although the list was pretty clear, there is one interesting parameter that wasn’t defined, and I’m talking about the DR (Dynamic Range). Now we know (according to B&H spec list) that the number is 16 stops which is slightly lower than the other REDs (16.5 stops). However, this is an advertised value and we need to see more tests confirming that. Other than that there is no news under the sun. In fact, the list lacks the Komodo’s compression rates and more capabilities. For the informal list explore the slide below.

Firmware 1.2 beta release: R3D LQ

The 1.2 beta firmware update has just been released to colored models. The ST users will get it in the next two days. The 1.2 beta includes major improvement and features like SDI overlay, presets, magnifier, and more. However, the most important one is the new REDCODE RAW LQ (Low Quality – higher compression rate) which allows us to double the recording time. In the next firmware updates, RED is going to focus more on autofocus. Although users are reporting that the AF capabilities of the Komodo are pretty decent, RED wants to make it even sharper and better, and we expect it to be the main dish being served in the next releases.