Making a great movie in B&W has certainly been done many times before, in fact, I just finished a project which was shot in color but ended up telling the story better in black and white. Hey, if it's good enough for Hitchcock and Ansel Adams...
yes, one could buy one of these for a mere $42000 and make a great B/W movie (with the correct skills). Or you could use any other pro colour camera and also make a great B/W movie. Just like John did with his project there (ie - in post). Or did something slip by me..
"Red claims the dedicated CMOS sensor means no color debayering, yielding a one-to-one pixel count and 15-20 percent bump in effective resolution compared to its chromatic cousin. It also touted a sensitivity gain as another advantage, asserting that the Monochrome will have a native ISO of 2,000, more than double that of the Epic-M or X."
All valid points if true. But still left wondering just how much difference this camera will 'look' compared to a post workflow equivalent by disregarding chroma. I guess someone will test it eventually. Not that it matters in my own case - its out of the question. But interesting.
Delivering a true B&W print is more expesnive than a colour one. Technically you cannot "print" B&W which is what bumps up the cost of release prints.
With digital RED's claim makes sense, with a Bayer pattern sensor lots of pixels are used to derive the colour information. With a luminance only sensor the number of photosites can be reduced to yield the same resolution hence the photosites could be larger to give more latitude.
Then again shooting digital colour you have the advantage of being able to emulate the subtly different look of the old B&W stocks in post.