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Reduser.com Bans the "word" 7D


Guest Trevor Swaim

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Absolutely! I've been on plenty of 35mm shoots where we mixed Arri and Mitchell cameras for different uses. Was any one dumb enough to say that one was 'better' than the other?

Not a terribly good analogy. They likely all used the same types of lenses, film stock and processing, which is where it really counts. A WWII vintage Mitchell is capable of just as good image quality as an Arricam, if you're just shooting 24/25fps MOS.

Not that I disagree with your main point; whatever gets the job done with the required standard of quality.

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In my humble opinion the technical differences are not at issue and not really germane to JJ's reaction. His failure to predict the world wide demand for such a middling tool as DSLR video is. Further, his own inability to cope with the inevitable uninformed attacks from DSLR lovers is somewhat tiresome. Every reasonable person out there understands that there is no comparison. Its like comparing a Lexus to a Toyota Prius. Other than the fact that they both have wheels and an engine they are not and never were intended to serve each other's drivers. This, of course is exactly what JJ is tired of telling people who don't have the capacity to listen. But what he may not get is that much of that irritating anti-RED monologue comes as payback for the endless delays RED has foisted on its followers. JJ is like the boy that cried "wolf"...or more contemporarily, "You can fool me once...".

 

Realistically, very, very few folks who buy 7Ds would have ever purchased a RED if the 7D or any other DSLR did not exist. They simply could not afford it...but they like to pretend they could. Maybe uninformed comparison is payback, but its what he reads every day on all the plethora of mal-intended opinion that use the blogosphere. Two way communication is a bitch. Its an unfortunate part of becoming a "public" figure with a forum. Rather than fight it (which only encourages more) the smart guy would either embrace it or ignore it. JJ is certainly a smart guy..so why???

 

No one could have predicted the stunning alignment of the visual storytelling planets that occurred when a reasonably priced HD production option (DSLR video) paired with a free worldwide distribution method (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) became available. 99.9%of what's being shot with a 7D will end up, at best, on the web or a DVD. Where, quite frankly, it looks quite satisfying to the teeming multitudes who can finally afford a DSLR and have actually figured out how to use it (and to a greater extent the hundreds of thousands of consumers who now own 42" or larger LCD screens thanks to Costco) How many RED users will be satisfied using their (seemingly endless) RED investment on imagery destined only for Youtube?

 

I think JJs displeasure with the 7D crowd is completely misinformed. He should be delighted at this turn of events because it means more interest in the tools that he is trying to sell. Many in the DSLR video crowd won't be stopping there. They will practice their skills, study, train and some day be ready to produce for bigger screens or 3D screens or whatever display we have in our homes in five years...and when they are, it might mean they will be looking at whatever RED is manufacturing..an immensely improved, high quality and reasonable priced professional toolset.

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Seems old Jannard has no problem rocking boats but cries like a baby if his boat gets rocked. If you type 7D on the reduser forums the forum software will change it to "betacam".

 

He must feel really threatened.

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I notice that "7D" and "Soccer Mom" have been reinstated as acceptable words. :lol:

 

Actually the other day I was trying to find some information on a stills camera sold by the Australian Company Dick Smith Electronics. One camera forum provided the useful information that the camera was sold by "Boy Thingy" Smith Electronics!

 

By far the most abusive forum I've ever visited was, believe it or not, a sewing forum! It seems that some embroidery enthusiasts have found that if you make photocopies of commercial embroidery templates onto overhead projector film, you can iron the copies onto fabric and hence avoid the outrageous expense of buying paper patterns.

Well! You've never seen such a ruckus over the potential theft of people's intellectual property! The conversation rapidly degenerated into a free-for-all slanging match. Homosexuality, abortion, gun control, Muslim extremism you-name-it, it was all in there.

I'd love to be able to provide a link, but the whole (ahem) thread was pulled after about 3,000 posts!

 

Meanwhile Jim's been busily punching holes in the Arri Alexa and Mysterium X threadthread by deleting rowdy posters, making it somewhat incomprehensible.

 

I wonder how long it'll be before "Alexa" becomes a banned word :rolleyes:

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"If it was the Angels story in particular a lot of stills where taken of the costumed folk so that they could make accurate 3d CGI models and have good textures."

Part 1 of the Angels story premiered here last night. Fantastic work!

The Doctor has sure come a long way in just under 50 years :rolleyes:

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I've never had an account on red user - if Jannard and co want to talk to me, they can come here, and they occasionally do, so I guess I'm probably doing something right!

 

The thing is, every time I do go there and peruse threads, my decision not to get involved is mitigated anew. You end up wondering what sort of service you can expect from people who behave like that on their own company forum, it's insane.

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Here's a little something shot on the 5D: HOUSE - Season Finale Teaser - airing MON 5/17

 

Between DSLRs, Arri's new cameras, and what looks to be a promising new offering from Sony ("...an APS C size sensor in a pocket camcorder. This is welcome news and probably conceived by engineers reading the REDuser forum.") RED have reason to be worried.

 

On the other hand... that Mysterium chip (boasting 12 stops latitude! :blink: ) looks amazing.

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I've never had an account on red user - if Jannard and co want to talk to me, they can come here, and they occasionally do, so I guess I'm probably doing something right!

 

The thing is, every time I do go there and peruse threads, my decision not to get involved is mitigated anew. You end up wondering what sort of service you can expect from people who behave like that on their own company forum, it's insane.

 

Reduser is not owned by Jim or Red, it is an offshoot of dvxuser. The moderators are not Red employees and sometimes, they do strange things. Jim and co are not all stuck up. There is a thread going on now where Jim has applauded Arri and the Alexa program and hopes that more companies will join in the digital cinema revolution. What Jim is tired of is all the pointless 5D vs. Red comparisons that turn into food fights. The other camera thread was eliminated not because Jim wants to silence discussion but because users could not act civil. There seems to be an awful lot of red-bashing on this sight. Very surprising.

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Reduser is not owned by Jim or Red, it is an offshoot of dvxuser. The moderators are not Red employees and sometimes, they do strange things.

Jim may not use the title "Moderator" on his posts but he can and does delete posts and threads.

The moderators there often contradict each other, and so people have learned to make screen grabs of particularly contentious posts before they disappear B)

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Jim may not use the title "Moderator" on his posts but he can and does delete posts and threads.

The moderators there often contradict each other, and so people have learned to make screen grabs of particularly contentious posts before they disappear B)

 

Jim does not delete posts or threads, that is the job of the moderators. It is the Red forum, we talk about red, plain and simple. There is a very productive thread going on now about the Alexa and there have also been discussions on the Aaton and Phantom cameras. Jim is not trying to silence discussion about other cameras. Yes the moderators are inconsistent, some let stuff go, some do not. Jim always acts professional as does the whole of the Red team. People go to reduser for red info, not to argue about whether or not a 5D is a suitable competitor to the Red (which it is not which is why the discussion is pointless). Would you ever say that the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera? Just wondering why there seems to be so many red haters on this site. One thing is for sure, reduser is a very active forum with passionate members. Questions are always answered (unlike this forum where it looks like many questions go unanswered).

 

And as far as customer service goes, Red has some of the best in the industry. Other companies will not give you the time of day if you are not a big budget production, I know many people who sent emails to Panavision and Arri without any response. Does the Arri alexa have a forum? nope.

Edited by Andrew Rieger
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And as far as customer service goes, Red has some of the best in the industry. Other companies will not give you the time of day if you are not a big budget production, I know many people who sent emails to Panavision and Arri without any response. Does the Arri alexa have a forum? nope.

 

You check things:

 

http://www.arridigital.com/forum/

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Ooh, yes, let's have another Red User. That'll really add to the wealth of humanity!

 

 

Digital cinema is the way of the future. Get on board or get left behind.

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That's one of the few times he personally deleted anything, and for a good reason.

 

Trouble here is that we don't have the traffic level of RedUser, so a few deletions of posts here become more obvious and disruptive. A few bad posts dropped out of some long 20-page thread on RedUser sometimes is hardly noticed, there is so much volume in general. So moderation here has to be done with a lighter hand just to keep the activity up.

 

I find that dedicated users forums, dedicated to certain pieces of technology, tend to be much more active, depending on the popularity of the technology. It's hardly surprising -- when you've actually got to use something, there are a lot of specific questions.

 

Forums that have a more general theme or philosophical bent, unless dwelling on hot-button issues like religion and politics, tend to be less trafficked. Of course, when film was more commonly used by the low-budget filmmaker, this site was busier because there aren't many forums dedicated to specific film technologies like Super-16. But if someone has to shoot on a Canon 5D, there are more likely to go to the biggest Canon 5D forum they can find. Same goes for if they are shooting on the Red camera. It doesn't help that as the industry has transitioned into more and more digital shooting, some people here in the past have been hostile to the video shooter (and it never helps when the video shooter returns fire by claiming film is dead and everyone here are dinosaurs.) That's too bad because what I like about this site is its lack of being tied to a specific product, it can have a more general perspective on the issues of cinematography beyond the equipment issue. But by nature of not embracing one technology, it's not just a matter of embracing the middle, the "right tool for the job" pragmatism, but tolerating the ends of the spectrum of opinion, the yin-yang of debate, the impractical types who turn this film-digital debate into a culture war. It's something that I don't necessarily like -- there is far too much partisanship these days -- but it's better to have two opposing ideas represented than have no ideas at all.

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That's one of the few times he personally deleted anything, and for a good reason.

Possibly so but, remember, we're basically responding to this assertion:

"Reduser is not owned by Jim or Red, it is an offshoot of dvxuser. The moderators are not Red employees and sometimes, they do strange things."

Don't know whether Jin Jammard technically counts as an "employee" but the point is, REDUSER is not quite the independent entity that was implied.

Trouble here is that we don't have the traffic level of RedUser, so a few deletions of posts here become more obvious and disruptive.

That's true. We have nowhere the level of sycophantic one-line or even one-word posts here. You have to realize we're forced to pretend to hate the RED to keep that sort of thing down to a reasonable level :P

Edited by Keith Walters
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Digital cinema is the way of the future. Get on board or get left behind.

Excuse me, but we HAVE been hearing that line since sometime before you were even born.

But whenever we go down to the dock, the ocean liner we were promised in the brochure always turns out to be a leaky fishing trawler with no lifeboats, an epileptic captain, and the engine only firing on half the cylinders. (And oh yeah, and that'll be another $500 for the diesel. Didn't they mention that wasn't included?)

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Would you ever say that the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera?

 

Sigh. I can you're going go a LONG way in this industry :rolleyes:

 

Here is rule No 1: If the Producer (or whoever) says the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera then the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera at least for that project

If you're working for him/her, your job is to do your best to get the best possible results from the medium that is being used.

 

This does not include:

1. Lecturing your employer on the deficiencies of his/her medium of choice/necessity

2. Suggesting that you really don't need to work quite so hard because the results are going to be crap anyway.

3. And especially!! Assuming that your employer is not using the RED (or whatever) simply because they don't know anything about it! (If you ask respectfully in a quiet moment, they may well fill you in in great detail...)

 

And if you think I'm being rude or discourteous, you wait until you spend some time on a real film set!

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Excuse me, but we HAVE been hearing that line since sometime before you were even born.

But whenever we go down to the dock, the ocean liner we were promised in the brochure always turns out to be a leaky fishing trawler with no lifeboats, an epileptic captain, and the engine only firing on half the cylinders. (And oh yeah, and that'll be another $500 for the diesel. Didn't they mention that wasn't included?)

 

Well, if you were keeping tabs on the progress that Red is making with the Scarlet and Epic, the advances that Arri is making with the Alexa and the potential to shoot both film and digital with the same camera (which Aaton is doing), then you would understand why people are so excited about these systems. Within a decade, film will be a luxury not because it is inferior to digital but because of the cost involved to shoot on it. I am not anti-film, I have been a film photographer for a number of years and will shoot film as long as I can. If the photography industry is any indication, the speed, ease of use and flexibility of digital will eventually win out even amongst picky professionals. Medium format digital backs that once cost upwards of $50,000 are now dropping into the sub $15,000 range with almost double the megapixels. Red is dropping 5K ready systems into the sub $10,000 market. In photography, film cameras fought off the digi cams for a while because the high quality scans of their negatives (in FF35) were around 24-30 megapixels while the best that the digital systems could muster were 5-10 MP. This is no longer the case. Yes, digital has its drawbacks but Red and others are producing systems capable of matching and in some cases surpassing film. Film is limited in its future development while digital has the potential for unlimited development as sensors get more sensitive, larger and more efficient. Most film cameras do not go above 75 FPS while the Epic system can shoot at 120 in 5K and 250 with lower resolutions. The Phantom cameras are even more remarkable. Speaking of the future, 3D is all the rage! What was the last live action 3D film shot on film? These are facts, not opinions. Film is the gold standard of image quality now but not for long. Add the reduced cost, relative ease of use (if you are willing to learn) and the smaller form factor. Digital cinema cameras like the SI2K and Scarlet are tiny and allow cinematographers to place cameras in places never before possible.

 

Here is a great example:

Try doing that with a film camera!

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Sigh. I can you're going go a LONG way in this industry :rolleyes:

 

I intend to. This industry needs creative individuals who are ready to push the envelope when it comes to what is possible with motion pictures.

 

Here is rule No 1: If the Producer (or whoever) says the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera then the 5D is a suitable replacement for an Arri film camera at least for that project

If you're working for him/her, your job is to do your best to get the best possible results from the medium that is being used.

 

I was speaking from a technical standpoint, yes the customer and their budget are always right. However, there is nothing wrong with offering suggestions. Producers an directors turn to DP's because they know this stuff inside and out. Look at the House season finale. Was the 5D really the best choice for the job?No, it was more a publicity stunt/experiment than anything else. I have heard from people involved with shooting the episode that the cameras were a real pain in the ass to work with. A post guy for house in an interview mentioned that working with the footage was not the most enjoyable experience of his life to put it mildly. It's not like their budget suddenly fell out from under them. They wanted to try something different and the publicity that came with that. I know a lot of people who watched just that episode just to see how the footage would look. Typical house viewers probably did not notice. It was a worthy experiment but to say the 5D was the best tool for the job is not the case.

 

This does not include:

1. Lecturing your employer on the deficiencies of his/her medium of choice/necessity

 

As I stated, nothing wrong with offering suggestions

 

And if you think I'm being rude or discourteous, you wait until you spend some time on a real film set!

 

I have spent time on real sets FYI. I am all about the best tool for the job. Yes, the 5D may be better suited for some situations but from a purely technical standpoint, you will not find anyone who can claim with a straight face that the 5D is equal to Red or film.

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...Yes, the 5D may be better suited for some situations but from a purely technical standpoint, you will not find anyone who can claim with a straight face that the 5D is equal to Red or film.

 

 

There is no such thing as "a purely technical standpoint".

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