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This statement was released online by RED founder Jim Jannard this week:

We took our time... (1 year and 9 months) to release our 1st camera. While we had Alpha prototypes shooting in April, "Crossing the Line", and Beta prototypes shooting this summer, nothing could really prepare us for production and real customers.

Our "shakedown" period, April to August, taught us a lot. Most of the RED team was on active "bug patrol" and did months of testing prior to delivery. We learned a ton on the "Wanted" set and in Spain shooting "Guerrilla". But we didn't get everything.

Since shipping the 1st 25 cameras, we have found that our cable supplier was "irregular". We have had good cables and we have had failures. Particularly with the LCD/EVF cables. We found out that our production battery chargers would trip off when the camera was powered AC through the charger. A fix is happening now. And as we enable features, we are finding that we create new bugs, even though we thought we had a bulletproof software foundation. But we continue to improve everyday.

Our 1st customers are proving not only to be early adopters but "test customers". It isn't what we wanted or what they signed up for. But I think our service is making up for any inconvenience they might be having.

The best news about all this is that our image quality is as good or better than anyone imagined. And that is the foundation for success of our program and the satisfaction of our customers.

We continue to improve the program daily. And we are keeping our early customers current with any upgrades and fixes.

We are happy to report the many new features will be added in September. And fully believe that all features will be done in October. I am sure we will have issues along the way. This is still a very difficult trick we are pulling off. But we will be good to our customers. I am one of them. And we won't stop until I am a satisfied customer.

Jim