i sign this comment from bernard.
its my opinion as well.
i see heavily over-saturated colors and a kind of look i would try to avoid with any camera i use ....
but its interesting how many stunnings and bravos this gets here in the forum
and of courses the red is not THE future. at best it will be a part of it, and this most likely in the film world. there will be more and more overlap between the two worlds but i dont think they will merge.
in photography i think there will also appear stunning new things which have much more to do with photographic versatility than with the possibility to compete with real professional video systems. the gap from the way cheaper and smaller competition to this hi end gear will become smaller, till a point where "normal" professional needs will be full-filled by the smaller and cheaper systems for both: pictures and vidos. maybe not in terms of the absolute quality, means 4k or 60 or 80mp images are very nice to archive, but the reality does not play on 4k screens and not on 2 or 3meter prints.
its more and more about displaying images on screens with a max. of 2000 pixels and with video with 1080pixel, if much. dynamic range, hi iso, colors, versatility and good handling are what is needed to work in our times. not a van full of gear. maybe all is different in fashion, but i believe if i would be a fashion shooter, i would be very happy about the increasing isos and the chances which this opens, i wouldnt care about red systems and about everything which makes the set big, expensive and unspontaneous. i would explore the new chances our technic is opening for me, and there is much more to explore than just hybrid video/photo cams of the higher end.
i just bought an oktokopter, to shoot with my canon from rc directed plane. this tool weights complete 5 kilo and seems to delivers such stunning and unseen possibilities ... and i am sure in 2 years i will have the same with 2,5 kilo. i have to learn to fly this drones now, not easy at all! but thats photographic future as well. technic merges and runs very fast forward. no time to stay behind and to invest huge amounts of money in systems which , maybe , will be obsolete in 3 or 4 years. i am not convinced that this will not happen with the praised red ( in photographer hands ).
maybe all this big systems are dinosaurs. its not such important if 8x10" has better resolution than a 80mp back. its about possibilities you loose if you use this big and complicate systems.
i dont see the red here as an exception.
all this might be different in studio work and - of course in the hand of movie makers.
lets see where 35mm cameras will be in 2 or 3 years. they are very close to fulfill nearly all professional needs, if there someone will ad some raw or semi raw for footage i cent see much future for red in photographers hands. at least not in mine ....
Rainer, the argumentation you developped is good IMO, and I join your views in many of them.
It is true that DSLR's, still camera industry, have been able to produce video capabilities usable professionaly, and so far, video manufacturers haven't been able to produce stills usable professionaly, except Red.
So obviously, still manufacturers have their word to say and they will (and they are).
But when talking about video, it seems to me that a crucial factor is missed so far by the competition: Raw Video.
Canon is fine, but the other day we had a motion with 3 Canons, 2 5D2 and 1 60 or 600D don't remember, one of those recent entry-level. Anyway. Despite all the cares we took on set, there are not 2 cameras that shoot with the same wb and there are always differences that have to be treated in post. With Raw that would be much easier to fix.
Then, those are cameras designed 50 or more (I don't remember I wasn't born) years ago. Their usability in video remain very poor unless you zacuto. This design is obsolete IMO. The Red Epic is more advanced in that aspect, it's a box like a MF better implemented in its design for convergence than a proper film still camera designed when our cosmic dust started to collapse into itself, where they just added a sensor and some video capabilities.
As I edit R3D, I can see the huge differences with the canons. Not when conditions are fine, but when conditions are not ideal. And generally, conditions are not ideal.
Then, Red Cine X is a great software. Really. It's like Capture One. If they implement in the future a proper timeline with serious editing capabilities and a bunch of advanced functions that are missing, I would not even need any other software than this one. I wish all video softwares where built that way. It's a breeze in use.
Think that you got a footage and you can, for free, at least do a rough cut and send it to the client, extract stills...Does Canon or Sony, with their new video capabilities offer a free simplify Vegas, so we can start to work ? Red does.
Then, DR is amazing, the look is filmic, the resolution is impressive and when downsampled it's visible.
Maybe I'll exagerate, but I think that Jim is a sort of Steve Jobs in this industry. They think different, they have great team, they design really well, and they are currently the only one who are doing Raw video at this prices. Red of course will not be the only player, I don't beleive that, but I do think they will be a major player, a reference. I can be wrong of course.