The (real) Impact of RED cameras

[feppe]

Nonsense. That is such poor logic. Say I want to buy a video camera for professional work and my budget is only £3k, but if cameras at that level are crippled for pro work compared to those costing £20k. I have to buy the crippled product and put up with it. Which was exactly the situation a few years back.  This is why RED was founded in the first place as Jim Jannard was fed up with this behaviour and why film makers are buying 5D+7Ds and not video cameras these days.

So you want to pay 3k for a 20k camera? What else do you want; mermaids?

This kind of mentality is exactly the reason why unemployment in the western world is increasing.

[bcooter]

This is why RED was founded in the first place as Jim Jannard was fed up with this behaviour and why film makers are buying 5D+7Ds and not video cameras these days.

It's not just about costs.  It's about what you can shoot, how pretty you can shoot it and if you can turn a profit.

A $20,000 camera should be worth $20,000 and that includes a large enough chip to throw focus, a file you can correct and color grade, professional inputs, standard lens mounts and the ability to upgrade.

Whether RED succeeds or not is up them their accountants and engineers, but I wish them well, if only because they changed the status quo of the standard "prosumer" video camera that is $2,000 worth of in between.  Almost there with iso, almost there with lenses, almost there with usability, but in 12 months something that sits on the shelf when you buy  the next $4,000 camera that does shoot a progessive file and might have xlr inputs, but probably never, ever raw.

I know the electronic business model is to upgrade us every 18 months, heck we all know this, but with professional equipment you look for longer term use.

Regardless, there is a reason that many of us use a 5d2 that costs a 1/10th of  the gizmos we put on and around it.  They can change the camera in a year (probably will) but the investment in lenses, mounts, cradles, xlr jacks, lavs, heads etc. are still viable.  (in the case of the 5d2 this holds true for still or motion work).

I have a lot of cameras in every format and if I could bundle them all up and sell them for even 1/4 of what I paid retail I'd sell them and buy 4 more 5d2's because they cover so much territory.

IMO

BC

[pschefz]

So you want to pay 3k for a 20k camera? What else do you want; mermaids?

This kind of mentality is exactly the reason why unemployment in the western world is increasing.

part of the problem is that the difference between a 3 and 20k camera is really only the number of units sold....canon has ( over the years) put so much more r&d into the 5dii but can sell it for so much less....they can even sell it for cost and make money on lenses....red can't do that....

if someone would try to make a competitor for the iphone4 today, they would not come close and they would still have to charge 10x more and still loose money....

just because something is 5x more expensive does not mean it is even 2x better....

an example...after doing research and trying several solutions ( and after having owned broncolor and Hensel units) for portable flash power, I finally gave in and got (oh my god) Paul bluff vagabond iis for my profoto d1 s.....now profoto comes out with the bat pac....the difference? the profoto is all black and costs 4x as much....and has worse customer service and warranty.....seriously....I even heard from somebody who actually used them that the recycle is slower with the profoto....

i have heard a lot of dps mentioning that one of the reasons everybody jumped on the red was that it was the first affordable system....everything in the movie world is completely crazy priced.....go to B&H and look for monitors.....you can get the highest end 30" graphics screen for less then some dedicated 7" LCD camera screens....

the price of the camera really does not mean anything anymore.....does not mean you can't enjoy a more expensive camera or that there are certain features that simply aren't found on cheaper cameras.....and if you really want or need that, you have to pay the price no matter what it is....

[feppe]

if someone would try to make a competitor for the iphone4 today, they would not come close and they would still have to charge 10x more and still loose money....

Uhh what? iPhone has less than quarter of smart phone market share, and Android is closing in on that fast - and was launched after iPhone. Android phones with much better feature sets than any iPhone cost less, and I'm positive HTC et al don't lose money on them.

...

[Rob C]

the price of the camera really does not mean anything anymore.....does not mean you can't enjoy a more expensive camera or that there are certain features that simply aren't found on cheaper cameras.....and if you really want or need that, you have to pay the price no matter what it is....

I have a gut feeling that you are probably right.

Pricing in photography has always had a base that consists of part reality, part myth and all the chutzpah you can muster.

Rob C

[jjj]

So you want to pay 3k for a 20k camera? What else do you want; mermaids?

This kind of mentality is exactly the reason why unemployment in the western world is increasing.

More complete nonsense. Try reading all the words in a post before replying.
I wrote that if you can only afford a £3k camera, you won't be buying a £20k camera [that may be only very slightly better].
So you do not really have a free choice in what to buy, as people normally buy what they can afford. So you do not get to 'vote' with your wallet as voting implies a free choice.

As it happens, RED upset the apple cart and changed things, because you can buy a RED for the cost of renting the cameras it rivals in quality. The knock on effect is that £3k will now buy you a camera that is much better in many ways than 'professional' broadcast video cameras costing £20k.

[jjj]

A $20,000 camera should be worth $20,000.

They simply used to cost £20k, not be worth £20k. As there was no other option, not because they were vastly better.

[feppe]

More complete nonsense. Try reading all the words in a post before replying.
I wrote that if you can only afford a £3k camera, you won't be buying a £20k camera [that may be only very slightly better].
So you do not really have a free choice in what to buy, as people normally buy what they can afford. So you do not get to 'vote' with your wallet as voting implies a free choice.

My reading comprehension is fine, but the snippet above as well as your response to bcooter show that you and I have fundamental philosophical and political differences in how we view economic value and pricing, which is beyond the topics of this forum, so I'm done here.

[BJL]

Canon have used CMOS chips for a long time actually. Since 2000 IIRC.  So that argument doesn't work.

True; Canon as for some reason a bit slow to offer Live View/video mode, not doing so until Olympus and Panasonic launched Live View and also coming slightly after the Nikon D90 with video. I suppose that support for video output (including Live View) requires some modification of the sensor and/or support chips, and Canon did not bother with the cost of that until the competition did ... that competition coming from other brands of consumer level DSLRs, not RED cameras, with which DSLR video model do not really compete anyway ... special purpose usage of the 5DII notwithstanding in one episode of one TV show notwithstanding.

P. S. As an aside, DSLR sensors needed to get to about 12MP before even 720 line HD was viable, and to about 15MP before 1080 line HD has any significant advantage of 720 line, the way DSLR's do down-ressing.

[pschefz]

Uhh what? iPhone has less than quarter of smart phone market share, and Android is closing in on that fast - and was launched after iPhone. Android phones with much better feature sets than any iPhone cost less, and I'm positive HTC et al don't lose money on them.

...

not sure which MUCH better features you are talking about but regardless, either you missed the point or I failed to make my point....
both htc and google have put enourmous amounts of time and resources into their phones which is why they provide great competition ( or even a superior product in your opinion)... the are not newcomers by any means....
so they would be the nikon to canon or something similar......red comes out of nowhere and started with 0 which surely helped them in some aspects but still makes competing with companies like canon, Sony or panasonic very difficult.....

it seems to me the only reason red can compete and is in the position they are in, is that canon, Sony and all others simply did not realize the need for this kind of product.....the 5 dii is the perfect example....if canon would have dreamed about this camera being used to shoot entire tv episodes, they would have done things differently.....

but none of the big ones are sleeping and we are seeing so much stuff coming out right now that I am not sure red will be able to sustain the momentum.....

and of course price is a huge consideration these days ( always has been)....

I can tell you from talking to DPs that they have all used the red, nobody has anything bad to say ( other then the same thing still guys say about it that the raw image out of the camera looks like crap but can be tweaked much more then all others) but they are all using canons now (unless they are shooting film) because they feel that that is where things will be in the near future anyway....

[feppe]

it seems to me the only reason red can compete and is in the position they are in, is that canon, Sony and all others simply did not realize the need for this kind of product.....the 5 dii is the perfect example....if canon would have dreamed about this camera being used to shoot entire tv episodes, they would have done things differently.....

I'm convinced the bigger reason Canon or Sony didn't produce the product earlier is because they were protecting their high-margin pro motion camera lines. Red entering the scene forced them to start offering half-assed products in the form of 5D2, 7D and the Sony SXFZTZXQ-100* or whatever the NEX motion camera is.

Quite shockingly it seems that Panasonic is the one with the most serious offering in the pipeline with the MFT motion camera coming this fall. Shocking because they have the biggest stake in high-end motion cameras. Perhaps they hope the budding cinematographers will graduate later to the full-sized ones, or maybe they are out there to really disrupt the market place, and carve share in a market which really didn't exist just three years ago.

I'm very curious to see what Photokina brings. I'm sure Canon will answer with a proper motion camera or two positioned squarely against the Sony and Panny, or perhaps slightly upscale.

In any case, we the customers win.

* who comes up with these names?

[jjj]

My reading comprehension is fine,

No it isn't. You read my posts to mean something completely different to what I had actually written.

 

but the snippet above as well as your response to bcooter show that you and I have fundamental philosophical and political differences in how we view economic value and pricing, which is beyond the topics of this forum, so I'm done here.

How could you even tell if my philosophy is different when you misread my posts so fundamentally?

[jjj]

True; Canon as for some reason a bit slow to offer Live View/video mode, not doing so until Olympus and Panasonic launched Live View and also coming slightly after the Nikon D90 with video. I suppose that support for video output (including Live View) requires some modification of the sensor and/or support chips, and Canon did not bother with the cost of that until the competition did ... that competition coming from other brands of consumer level DSLRs, not RED cameras, with which DSLR video model do not really compete anyway ... special purpose usage of the 5DII notwithstanding in one episode of one TV show notwithstanding.

Canon got quite lazy as their cameras were so much better than the competition, in fact there wasn't any for many years if you wanted FF and god high ISO images. So it seemed like Canon coasted for a while until Nikon got their act together and then Olympus/Panasonic also started making inroads. And then there was RED as well.

DSLRs have been used on far more than just a single episode of House. I just watched a beautifully shot BBC Drama last week which was shot on REDs and 7Ds. The Canon kit and REDs are certainly in competition as they both produce amazing images, compared to traditional HD video, particularly in low lighting. RED being better as it shoots RAW, but RAW processing is still a puzzle to many film makers, who are used to a finished [JPEG equivalent] product, which cannot be tweaked as much as RAW files.

[jjj]

I'm convinced the bigger reason Canon or Sony didn't produce the product earlier is because they were protecting their high-margin pro motion camera lines. Red entering the scene forced them to start offering half-assed products in the form of 5D2, 7D and the Sony SXFZTZXQ-100* or whatever the NEX motion camera is.

Absolutely.

Quite shockingly it seems that Panasonic is the one with the most serious offering in the pipeline with the MFT motion camera coming this fall. Shocking because they have the biggest stake in high-end motion cameras. Perhaps they hope the budding cinematographers will graduate later to the full-sized ones, or maybe they are out there to really disrupt the market place, and carve share in a market which really didn't exist just three years ago.

There is potentially more money to be made by selling to the non-movie industry market as it is so much bigger and economies of scale make it cheaper to produce the goods. Particularly as the Pro film market don't buy cameras, they rent them, so not the biggest market if it's rental houses that are your main customers.
Also Panasonic don't make high end movie kit, broadcast or ENG kit yes. RED's rivals in the movie market are companies like Panavison, Arri, Dalsa and Silicon Imaging.

* who comes up with these names?

Idiots.
But at least they are equally awful in every market with little chance of it meaning something rude in Albanian or Hindi.

[pschefz]

I'm convinced the bigger reason Canon or Sony didn't produce the product earlier is because they were protecting their high-margin pro motion camera lines. Red entering the scene forced them to start offering half-assed products in the form of 5D2, 7D and the Sony SXFZTZXQ-100* or whatever the NEX motion camera is.

Quite shockingly it seems that Panasonic is the one with the most serious offering in the pipeline with the MFT motion camera coming this fall. Shocking because they have the biggest stake in high-end motion cameras. Perhaps they hope the budding cinematographers will graduate later to the full-sized ones, or maybe they are out there to really disrupt the market place, and carve share in a market which really didn't exist just three years ago.

I'm very curious to see what Photokina brings. I'm sure Canon will answer with a proper motion camera or two positioned squarely against the Sony and Panny, or perhaps slightly upscale.

In any case, we the customers win.

* who comes up with these names?

I think the 7d is much less half assed then the 5dii was when it came out.....and it comes down to the same....how many of units of the pro motion lines did they sell? I doubt the margins were that high....with the 7d they don't have to be high....and they still make way more money with them....and the borders are blurred anyway since the motion pros shoot with 7ds....

the Sony camera does not look half assed at all to me.....3 years ago people would have signed on for 10x as much for less features....

there won't be many more 20000$ cameras....

[ziocan]

the Sony camera does not look half assed at all to me.....3 years ago people would have signed on for 10x as much for less features....

there won't be many more 20000$ cameras....

It also shoot in Progressive mode. It saves it in interlaced mode, but on the editing software it will shows as progressive.

IMO at 1100$ (excluding the lens) is almost a disposable camera.

[Rob C]

But at least they are equally awful in every market with little chance of it meaning something rude in Albanian or Hindi.

Like the Pajero vehicle which raises amused smiles everywhere they speak Spanish.

I once used to dream of owning a yacht called Tumescent. The attraction was the name on the side of the tender.

Rob C

[rethmeier]

Pajero = little wanker?

Rob C I like your style,
maybe we have something in common after all.
Cheers,
Willem

[BJL]

Also Panasonic don't make high end movie kit, broadcast or ENG kit yes. RED's rivals in the movie market are companies like Panavison, Arri, Dalsa and Silicon Imaging.

Yes; those plus Sony stuff like the F35 (though some of the Sony stuff is joint with Panavision).

These cinematic class digital cameras are what RED is competing with, and the responses to that so far are less expensive professional gear announced at NAB 2010; the Sony S35 and the ARRI Alexa.


I will consider video DSLR's as significant competitive response to RED cameras only when one is adopted as the standard camera for a TV series or for a commercial movie production. And I will never consider the first video DSLR, the Nikon D90, as either capable of or intended to compete with RED!

P.S. The use of 7Ds along side the far more expensive and bulky RED's suggests that the 7D does not replace the RED, but complements it for some tasks. And that is not the greater extremes of shallow DOF as with Dr. House's 5DII, so I would guess compactness made the DSLR more convenient for some hand-help work in tight locations.

[BJL]

I'm convinced the bigger reason Canon or Sony didn't produce the product earlier is because they were protecting their high-margin pro motion camera lines. Red entering the scene forced them to start offering half-assed products in the form of 5D2, 7D and the Sony SXFZTZXQ-100* or whatever the NEX motion camera is.

I still do not see how video in DSLRs are a response to digital cine-cameras like the RED One and Epic; maybe the 2/3" RED Scarlet is more relevant.  When the RED cine-cameras arrived, the main DSLR maker that they were competing with was Sony, by competing with cameras like the Super 35mm format Sony CineAlta F35; maybe some high end 2/3" stuff from Panasonic too, but not Canon's 1/3" camcorders (for TV news, not movies) and certainly not Nikon. Yet Sony, most affected by RED, still does not offer video in any DSLR, and its design decisions make all NEX cameras including the VG100 camcorder very unsuited to compete against RED. So Sony's only effective response so far is the forthcoming CineAlta S35. Ironically it was Nikon, with no camcorder business at all, that was the first DSLR maker to add video, in the D90, and Canon was second, while being second least affected by RED competition.

The pattern of release of "more affordable large sensor digital video" suggests that if Sony, Canon and Panasonic have been protecting anything by previously omitting video from DSLR's, it was their consumer level camcorder product lines, not the professional gear that RED competes with. And it was perhaps Nikon and Panasonic (whose 4/3" format video intentions were probably signaled to the industry by its introduction of Live View in DSLRs) who forced a reaction from Canon and Sony.