Chris Kenny

Well, my point, which I suppose I haven't been making very clearly, is that if these folks buy Red cameras, it's probably because they're hoping to take the model they're used to further up-market. And I think it'll probably work. Picture a little company that basically consists of a DP, but with some infrastructure behind him. That company can provide a camera package cheaper than a rental house could, provide post production services, and also maybe provide other people for the camera crew (a DIT, an operator). And the people at that company are absolute experts at working with the camera and the footage, because the company owns the equipment and they get to work with it all the time. Seems to me like a lot of producers could go for something like that. This sort of model is already pervasive in post -- for many aspects of post, you hire a facility, rather than assembling your own team and renting equipment.

I've been in it long enough to get a sense of the basic structure. This is how it works on higher end projects, yes. Not how it usually works on lower end projects, which make up the bulk of the industry. (Well, the bulk by volume, probably not by revenue.) I'm talking about the people down in the trenches doing weddings, graduations, low-end industrials, etc.

With features and other large and expensive productions, the typical pattern is to retain a producer who assembles a crew for the project and arranges for equipment. If this is the sort of project you usually DP on, you don' t have to worry about supplying the camera; that's the producer's job, and the camera will usually be rented. In the bulk of the video production world, though, it doesn't make sense to assemble a whole structure for each project; the projects aren't big enough to justify it. The typical pattern there is to go to a company which has a pre-existing team, or for small projects, to a freelancer who can handle everything. That company or freelancer is expected to have all the right equipment. If they don't, they often won't even be considered, both because they won't be taken seriously and because clients for projects like this don't want to pay rental house rates for equipment. (Rental house prices tend to be way out of whack for lower end equipment.)

Your question is, I suppose, if the guy with the PD150 has what it takes to move up-market, why hasn't he done so already with an existing camera? It's a little hard to answer that question given that the guy with a PD150 we're all talking about here is entirely hypothetical....

I'd suspect a lot of Red cameras won't be going to freelancers per se, they'll be going to small businesses. That makes a big difference in terms of flexibility, even if the small businesses are only two or three people. A business can expand into new market segments without leaving its old segments, hiring additional people (or subcontracting work) when the workload justifies it. This sort of structure is pretty common in the video production world, and some of these little companies are going to start taking on higher end projects as the technology makes that possible.

Anyone upgrading from a PD150 to a Red is going to be looking to upgrade their client base as well. Some will succeed, some will fail. I suspect most people buying the camera have thought this through pretty thoroughly, taken a look at their local markets, etc.

Another point about buying a Red vs. buying lesser equipment... let's say someone is interested in a camera to shoot ultra-low-budget (but not quite no-budget) features. What are these cheaper options they should be looking at? 1/3" camcorders with 35mm adaptors? You can spend $15K on a package like that, easily, even if you're just shooting with photo lenses. And it'll be out of date in two years. You're much better off spending two or three times as much on a Red package, which will almost certainly have a much longer useful life span. And, if the worst should happen, and business goes south, probably a much better resale value.

I don't think I buy the premise that a significant fraction of people interested in Red "have no use" for it. What does that mean? It obviously doesn't mean they literally have no use for the camera, because they will, in fact, use it for things. I doubt many people who own a Red will leave it sitting in a closet! It could mean that they could get by with lesser equipment. Well... yes, that's true. But there are very few cases where that isn't true. How many movies shot on 35mm could have been shot on 16mm instead, for instance? Pretty much all of them. They wouldn't have looked as good. Some of them might not have made as much money. But it would have, at the most basic level, worked. Yet few people claim that filmmakers "have to use" for 35mm acquisition. So I suppose what it really means is that, in the view of whoever says it, the extra costs of Red don't justify its benefits, for many of the people buying it. This is a very thorny issue. It's hard to judge benefit on behalf of others. In this case it's also complicated by the fact that Red doesn't cost more than competing cameras with inferior specs. If someone had a profitable video production business shooting mostly SD and occasionally shooting 720p, most people here probably wouldn't blink if that person bought a Varicam. But some might object that a Red was overkill for that use case. Well... yes. But if a Red package costs the same as a Varicam package (and there aren't workflow considerations, etc. that get in the way), you'd be nuts not to buy one.

Right, you're just saying that you thought the camera was a revolution, but you've changed your mind because some of the accessories cost a little more than you'd like. Jannard has said flat out that's not the panel Red is using. You just linked to the post. Are you accusing Red of lying again? I can barely even figure out what this means.

Nah. I'm talking about the people who have accused Red of lying or deliberately misleading people (about a large number of things), gone on about Red's participation in online forums as if it's something to be discouraged, repeatedly advanced cost arguments that anyone familiar with the industry knows are invalid, and insulted Red reservation holders as a group. I'm not sure a program that worked that way would have even been legal. I seriously doubt anyone buying the camera with the intention of making it pay for itself hasn't thought pretty hard about how to do that. Any business venture entails some risk; undoubtedly some people's plans won't pan out and they'll end up selling the gear.

Probably a good idea with heavier lenses, yes. The package I've laid out in this thread isn't intended to be a set of recommendations, nor does it represent what I'm planning to buy. It's merely an answer to the folks who thought it would be impossible to shoot 4K without spending $60,000. It is possible. You have to make some compromises, but it can be done.

That photo is from NAB 2006, where they first announced the price and started taking reservations. That was pretty early in the game. And it still is a "shoot anything" cam. It gained a pound and the battery went external. You can still get something probably 11 pounds with a light 16mm lens, shooting to flash. I don't know how you're supposed to hold the thing handycam style, given that it doesn't have the proper sort of grip... but it has never been shown with that sort of grip.

There are a couple of posters over here who are changing the tone, but this is practically the Official Forum for Anti-Red Rants. I wouldn't read too much into it. Over at Reduser the tone is still very positive. As far as the conversion rate for reservations... I'd expect better than 90% for reservation holders who regularly post over at Reduser. I wouldn't want to guess for the entire pool of reservation holders, because I've never had any contact with them. Though my guess is almost everyone who can come up with the cash at all will buy. Even people who've decided they don't want the camera will probably buy, because it's a pretty sure bet they'll be able to turn around and sell the thing (plus the $2500 worth of free accessories) for more than they paid.

Anyone who can afford to shoot to flash probably isn't that price sensitive. And previously, most people were assuming they'd be shooting to some proprietary Red flash system. The options Red has given us let us shoot to commodity flash storage. This is going to make shooting to flash cheaper than I, for one, expected it would be. We were talking about how the camera was being promoted. The lens they chose to show the camera with is certainly quite relevant to that subject. In terms of actual physical changes, the camera body was originally going to be seven pounds + battery & storage, and now it's apparently around eight pounds + battery & storage. Is this the big form factor change people are complaining about? I don't get it. The closest thing there has been to a form factor change is that the battery and drive have gotten bigger. But you can still shoot to on-board flash, and people who were planning to do a lot of handheld were probably planning that anyway, or should have been. So, we're left with... people complaining about a higher capacity battery? Color me confused.

Sure, everyone knows manufacturers exaggerate a bit, but I think it's reasonably safe to assume you can get away with 11-12 pounds on a tripod rated for 22. Isn't half the rated weight usually regarded as being about right? It's what I've always assumed.

I guess this is a matter of perception, but... I've been following Red since before the original NAB announcement and I never got the impression the camera was being promoted as having an HVX-type form factor. In the first photos we saw of the mockup, it had a Cooke S4 lens stuck to the front. That's a four pound lens. An entire HVX weighs five pounds. And none of the body designs have had the sort of hand grip that handheld prosumer cameras have, or controls laid out to be used with such.

Ideally, but ideally you'd also be buying a set of Master Primes. Something like this will probably be enough to get by. That head gets good reviews. See here, for instance, where the reviewer explains it's "as good or better than many top-notch heads costing three-to-four times more. In fact, the head on the Cartoni Focus is like a small version of the top-of-the-line head. It can pan and tilt about as well as anything I?ve used." If you have to, you can probably knock 3-4 pounds off the weight on the head if you tape (or whatever) the battery and drive to the tripod. Not having that weight on the back of the camera shouldn't be a big deal in terms of balance with photo lenses. At that point, you're looking at 11-12 pounds on a tripod rated for 22 pounds.

Really, I don't think the camera's form factor has changed as much as you say. See, for instance, this photo from NAB last year, where the first mockup was seen and where Red first started taking reservations. Scaling from the lens, the camera body is perhaps 10" long in that shot, which I believe is within a couple inches of what it is now. Maybe people who'd never seen a cine prime thought it was smaller? True, the battery and drive have gone external (they originally weren't), but they can still be mounted on top of the camera, as per various renders on Red's site. And the battery is a larger pro-level battery, while the drive has significantly better specs than people originally expected. (Red first announced the Red Drive would be 80 GB or larger and under $1000. Turns out it's a 320 GB mini-RAID for $900.) This was a misconception in some of the forums, but nobody from Red ever said it. I think it arose because some people misinterpreted what "on-board" meant. (That is, Red intended it to mean "physically on the camera body", but some people assumed it meant "included feature".) I'm still not sure I understand how talking to people about what you're doing on forums constitutes some sort of over-the-type hype.

The software definitely will be included with the camera. Jim Jannard has confirmed multiple times. What some people are wondering about is just how open the licensing will be. Will rental houses be able to give it to their customers, so their customers can process the footage themselves, for instance? That's not entirely clear yet. Well, not sure how much point there is in being too specific, since different people will want different things, but: Camera body ($17500) Power pack ($1450) LCD ($1700) Production pack ($1250) Red Drive ($900) Nikon mount ($500) That's $23,300 - $2500 reservation bonus = $20,800. As far as Nikon lenses go, there are a bunch of options, but you can get a couple of Nikon zooms or 3-4 primes for under $2700 combined. RedRock Micro has a follow focus designed for photo lenses for $650, and is introducing a mattebox (presumably also designed for use with photo lenses) for $500 around NAB. There are other options as well, if those don't work out for some reason So, let's say we're up to $24,650 at this point. Obviously this doesn't include a tripod, but this is a pretty lightweight setup, probably around 15 pounds, so you can get by with a fairly low-cost tripod. Many people in Red's market probably own something that would work.

Um... I rather doubt your premise here. You think they just make arbitrary prices up off the top of their heads? They need to talk to suppliers and manufacturing facilities. And they need to actually have the specs locked down first, which they didn't last April. I don't understand this. Is your objection that the camera costs 1/6 of what you'd expect the market price to be, so the EVF is outrageously priced because it costs 1/3 of what you'd expect the market price to be? This is fairly ludicrous. That's basically the Red Rail. (The more expensive production pack is the rail system + the cage.) I don't know what other people were assuming, but I had $1500 down in our budget for the rail system. So, Red actually came in under the price I had guessed. And you don't strictly need the rail system. You can attach the battery and drive to the top of the camera and shoot like that; there are some pictures on Red's site. Reservation holders can get the camera + power pack + LCD + production pack + Nikon mount for $20K, add some F-mount primes, and still have a bit of money for a cheap follow focus and mattebox while coming in under $25K. We've extensively discussed the compromises involved with such a setup, but nothing in Red's pricing announcement makes it impossible, and I bet some people will do it. And you should be able to handle everything in post with under $5K of equipment, particularly for a 1080p or 2K finish, but probably even for a 4K finish. Red's support for REDCODE in QuickTime allows the use of standard desktop tools for working with the footage. And there's no need for an expensive deck, etc. The only problem in low-cost workflows is likely to be the lack of a color-accurate monitor. But even that problem is likely to go away, as the desktop video editing world adopts the color management techniques of the desktop publishing world.

Not very good marketing. I'm pretty sure the Red guys are smarter than that. Incidentally, they just knocked $200 off the price of their battery charger (not reflected on the web site yet), citing a mistake in the web site price list. This means that with the $2500 credit for reservation holders, $17,700 now gets you the camera, LCD, charger, and one battery. Are you really going to complain about that extra $200? Realize that you're now getting a separate 5.6" LCD. The original design was for a smaller fold-out screen. For anyone who wants the EVF and doesn't want the LCD at all, the change is also a major plus, because instead of getting an LCD they don't want for free, they get money to put toward the EVF.

They're releasing a 4K camera. At a price I (or, rather, the little company I'm starting with a couple of other people) can afford. Soon. In comparison with that, the pricing and timing issues you mention above are frankly trivial. I suppose if one assumes Red was deliberately misleading people when they made their earlier statements, that might be a reason to get angry. But I see no reason to believe that. I certainly can't see how it would benefit them in any way.

Hmm... You know, it occurs to me some of the disagreement over how much can be said about the camera might stem from an information gap. There's a lot of information out there that isn't on the Red web site. It's in posts by Red employees on forums. Not, for the most part, this forum. People over at Reduser probably talk as if they know a lot more in part because, if they're regular readers, they actually do know a lot that isn't easy to come by in any other way. For instance, Red's answers to all the questions S. Whitehouse just asked.... You can shoot 1080p or 720p in-camera, scaled from the full sensor, to the RGB version of REDCODE. You can also shoot 4K to the RAW version of REDCODE, and then convert to any format you can encode from QuickTime using the REDCINE desktop software (free with camera). Red is also releasing a QuickTime component that supports REDCODE, so you'll be able to bring footage right into Final Cut Pro, Shake, etc. without converting. I think some people are under the impression Red is going to try to do their own complete end-to-end workflow that nobody knows anything about. They're not. They're going to take a fairly straightforward approach to getting the footage into existing workflows. 16:9 2K (2048x1152). As far as has been announced, the camera can only shoot using RGB and RAW variants of REDCODE (to on-board storage), or uncompressed RAW to an external RAID. If you need something else directly out of the camera (your workflow doesn't give you a chance to convert, etc.), you can always hook up the appropriate deck up the HD-SDI taps and record to that. I wouldn't expect support for other codecs on-camera, because there are probably licensing fees, etc. involved.

That's a fair point. But I think this forum could have been a useful resource for people who were moving up from 1/3" cameras or whatever, on all the matteboxes/filter/lens stuff you guys know, and they don't. Because I know some of you guys would be complaining if they all turned up in the 35mm forum here. And I think this forum probably will eventually get used to discuss post issues. Because of its price point, Red's user base is likely to skew toward indie do-it-yourself types. The line between cinematography and post has been breaking down anyway, with so much of the look of a film being done in DI, with some movies shot entirely in front of greenscreen, etc. Red's RAW shooting modes can shift even more of the decisions that cinematographers used to make on-set into post.

I don't need that much hand-holding. I have a tech background. If they tell me how their system stores and spits out footage (and they mostly have already), I can figure out what I'll need and what it'll cost me. I've seen some of the footage from the early prototype, projected at 4K. I expect they'll release a lot more, and more varied stuff, at NAB. Buying into a new camera system is a risk, but it's a calculated one. And buying into an existing camera system with something like this coming along would be a risk as well. Anyway, we've got reservation #404. People will probably be playing around with the cameras for 2-3 months before our turn comes up. Plus whatever shakedown the current prototypes are getting. What is your point? That because it's impossible to make absolute statements about the future, there's no point in discussing it?