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RED camera rentals in 2007


Evan Winter

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There's a rental shop in L.A. that I went to for the first time called Indie Rentals (www.indierentals.com). They are a tiny shop in Hollywood that deal in prosumer to pro digital camera rentals and digital accessories (mini-sized digital dollies, smaller lights [biggest is a 5K I think] and some kino stuff). Anyhow, they think they'll have the RED camera on the shelves for rental in 2007. What's more they currently plan to rent the camera for $500/day.

 

Now, I'm not well versed on the whole RED camera thing but isn't this system supposed to be in the same league as the Panavision Genesis? And if so, doesn't a day rental rate of $500 seem like a steal?

 

Evan

 

p.s - IndieRentals guarantees the lowest price on their equipment so definitely check them out. I quoted them a rental price for a company that listed their prices on the web and the rental associate from Indie went online saw the price and offered (somewhat begrudgingly I'll admit) to beat their competitors price by $5 (not a big discount on their competitor's price but I did my research and I saved $80 on a $200 rental so I was happy).

 

p.p.s - I'm not heavily vouching for IndieRentals, I've used them only once but the gear was in perfect working order and considering the massive hoops any rental place in L.A wants you to jump through to take their equipment out the door Indie was pretty easy-going.

 

p.p.p.s - I just re-read my post and boy do I sound like a shill. I'm a little disgusted with myself for sounding so zealous but I was genuinely satisfied with the experience. :)

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Hi,

 

For a body only $500 seems very expensive. 1% of cost is normal so about $200 would be the most I would want to pay. Remember the body is only a small part of the package, often given away as a loss leader.

 

Stephen

 

 

I've noticed that the HDV cameras don't hold to these formulas. The daily rental rate on a JVC HD 100 seems to be around a 1/3 or 1/4 that of a Digibeta camera.

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Rental rates are all over the place. One factor is the lifespan of the camera -- an HDV camera will likely have a lot shorter span than something like a Varicam.

 

For $500 will you get a viewfinder, hard drive, lenses or any kind, rod mounts, etc.? I'd think a typical RED package will end up somewhere around $1200-$1500 per day, which sounds about right to me.

 

The big question for the future is not who will have a RED for rent (a lot of people will) but who will be able to support it, with accessories and the technical understanding of post to be able to service the client properly.

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I've noticed that the HDV cameras don't hold to these formulas. The daily rental rate on a JVC HD 100 seems to be around a 1/3 or 1/4 that of a Digibeta camera.

 

Hi Brian,

 

I take the view that Red is a digital Cinema Camera, that's upgradable. A useful life of 10 years can therefore be assumed. I believe that 1% per day is reasonable. Not really sure who will actually need to rent a camera. Many of the people who have reserved a camera intend to rent them to others at $500+ a day!

 

Hollywood managed for 30 years with about 364 Mitchell BNC's, Panavision has approximately 1000 35mm cameras and now there will be about 1500 Red's looking to be used!

 

Stephen

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Hi Brian,

 

I take the view that Red is a digital Cinema Camera, that's upgradable. A useful life of 10 years can therefore be assumed. I believe that 1% per day is reasonable. Not really sure who will actually need to rent a camera. Many of the people who have reserved a camera intend to rent them to others at $500+ a day!

 

 

Stephen

 

Yes, I'd imagine 10 years would be about right. Betacams have a similar life, becoming increasingly unreliable if they've had a full working life. Although 5 years old seems to be the longest I've seen rental companies having them in their fleet.

 

With the RED I'd expect you'd have replaced quite a few hard drives before the camera module itself would be running into reliability problems. I suspect technological advances will be the issue there and how upgradable that is.

 

How good value the $500 rental is will depend on what lenses etc you're getting as part of the package - I'd assume a RED zoom lens at least. The US rental prices I've seen for the similar priced XDCam HD vary from a lot lower to a bit higher.

 

I agree about the life expectancy of the HDV prosumer cameras and the knock on effect on rental coats. Even getting one fixed is a high percentage of the purchase price.

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How good value the $500 rental is will depend on what lenses etc

 

Hi Brian,

 

Any sort of package for $500 would be a good deal IMHO. From what I have read elsewhere people think the body only is worth $500 a day.

 

Stephen

 

Uhhhh, yeah, right.

 

Good luck with that.

 

Hi Mike,

 

Sounds like I should hang onto some of my film cameras then!

 

Stephen

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Any sort of package for $500 would be a good deal IMHO. From what I have read elsewhere people think the body only is worth $500 a day.

 

A lot will depend on the backup being provided by the rental company. At the very least, the kit should include 3 or 4 hard drives, a proper V/F option, 4 to 6 batteries, charger and number of other accessories. Although, given how much I can rent a DVW 790 with a ENG lens from a well known rental company for, $500 with the RED zoom would compare.

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Rental rates always tend to be higher as a fraction of the total on cheaper gear. This makes sense, as there are some fixed costs associated with running a rental operation which are the same whether you're renting an HDV camcorder or a Genesis.

 

$500/day seems like a reasonable rental price for a Red body. I'm not basing this on the purchase price... I'm basing it on what else is out there in the market. No rental house is going to deal out Reds for $200/day when you can easily pay $275/day for an HVX200, even if the Red does have a longer useful shelf life. And rental houses aren't going to heavily discount everything else they offer just because Red is crazy enough to offer what should be (by the pricing standards of its competitors) a $100K+ camera for $17.5K.

 

I also don't think a Red One will actually have a 10 year useful life. Not because I expect the camera to break (I don't think it has any moving parts except maybe a fan; it should hold up very well), but because I think we're reaching something of a tipping point in digital imaging. This is basically an information technology market now; the implications should be obvious. Many 10 year-old computers still work fine, but you literally can't give them away.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The camera at $500/day isn't bad. But once you add an HDCAM SR field deck (like found on Genesis and D20), Cooke S4's or Master Primes, follow focus, matte box, O'Connor 2575, batteries, sticks, etc.... it'll get much more expensive.

 

I've heard a Genesis package is around $11,000 with everything you could possibly need... lenses, monitors, waveform, sticks, head, deck, etc....

 

I'm sure you could put together a pretty cheap RED package with a red drive, zeiss standards, lightweight FF, etc... But it would still be much more expensive than $500/day.

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The camera at $500/day isn't bad. But once you add an HDCAM SR field deck (like found on Genesis and D20), Cooke S4's or Master Primes, follow focus, matte box, O'Connor 2575, batteries, sticks, etc.... it'll get much more expensive.

 

I've heard a Genesis package is around $11,000 with everything you could possibly need... lenses, monitors, waveform, sticks, head, deck, etc....

 

I'm sure you could put together a pretty cheap RED package with a red drive, zeiss standards, lightweight FF, etc... But it would still be much more expensive than $500/day.

 

You could probably do a cheap package for $1000.

 

Not sure why most people would want to use HDCAM SR with a RED. Why rent a $52,500 field recorder when you can record a better image to a ~$1000 RedDrive? I suppose there will be some established workflows where it's necessary to turn over an HDCAM SR tape at the end of the shooting day, but if these workflows require that today, the budget is obviously there to pay for it.

 

I bet even the RAID that RED plans to introduce for uncompressed 4K will be a lot cheaper than an HDCAM SR deck.

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To me this topic is the equivalent of asking how much it will cost to stay in the Hilton Hotel they will eventually put up on the moon. No one knows much about this camera yet already we are saying which method it records better to, and what it is worth as a rental. I'd say until someone actually has a working version to rent, who knows what it is really worth although I can see from the responses that like some of the prosumer cameras such as the HVX200 rental rates can go from $150-$400 a day depending on who you ask so it seems these cameras that are price pointed low with big expectations don't have any real standerd for rental. For what they are saying RED's price point is to be I'd say $250-500 would probably be an expected range for a rental but then again I never saw one or what it really does other than abstract tests that prove little.

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This is a topic based on specs and current footage available. I agree with you, Walter, for the most part, so this is just somewhat safe speculation on the soon-to-be (hopefully) Red camera.

 

In LA, I can see the body of the camera renting @ $395-$495. With add-on peripherals, add about $100 or so for a full-fledged Red with Prime lens, storage and possible 2nd battery ~ $400-$500/day. Software and digital capture presents another issue-- will a rental house allow for some type of Red footage-to-computer capture? That's my big question in regards to rental thus far. I think there's a possibility for some form of open source software system that will allow "Red renters" to capture or transfer Red footage to their computers.

 

Week rentals, for Red body (including battery, power-in, and basic storage) I would not be surprised if houses post deals for under $1200/week or $4000/month, which sounds phenomenal.

Edited by Matt Goldberg
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  • 3 weeks later...

Supply and Demand. Genesis are very expensive because there are so few of them.

 

Red supplies will also be very low at first - so I think for the first couple months if you are looking to rent a RED, you'll be looking at prices which compete with what it is competing against - The Genesis, the D20. As more and more cameras come into the market towards October I would imagine that the prices being discussed here (500 range) will emerge.

 

Does this assessment sound realistic?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest TJ Williams

"F900 in our market is about $1200 less typical 25% disc. so $900 net for the body. so the difference in body price should be about $400 add a couple of digital mags for say $50 each $100. They're not necessary at the HDcam body has an on-board recorder.

Add a computer with a raid to unload backup the mags est $300 so the price of the RED would be about the same as an equiv. equipped F900 if RED rented for a real net of $500

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The body alone may rent for $500 per day, but that's pretty useless talk since 99% of us won't get much done with the body alone.

 

So to put it bluntly, $500 per day - In our collective dreams.

 

Camera Body:

EVF:

Monitor

Battery

Drive

Rails (Premium set)

 

We're not talking about a $17,000 camera but more like a $30,000 - $40,000 camera and if you put on a decent piece of glass.. Youch!

 

I think the person that quoted $1,000 for a fair setup per day was pretty close to the mark.

 

I expect $800 per day on a deal, or around $1,000 per day.

 

I'm just having fun speculating here.. In truth I have no friggin idea.

 

Jay

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I've just been doing some quick costing based on a RED more or less going out at a Digibeta DVW 790 rate plus a Cooke 18 to 100 and 4 Zeiss Primes and the price comes out at roughly the same rental as a HDW 750 or a Varicam kit with the standard and W/A zoom lenses.

 

These are just ballpark figures I did for a curious local director - UK prices tend to be a bit higher than US.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I also don't think a Red One will actually have a 10 year useful life. Not because I expect the camera to break (I don't think it has any moving parts except maybe a fan; it should hold up very well), but because I think we're reaching something of a tipping point in digital imaging. This is basically an information technology market now; the implications should be obvious. Many 10 year-old computers still work fine, but you literally can't give them away.

 

I think this is an erroneous comparison. Why? Because computers are theoretically capable of doing anything. A camera is not.

 

What my 10 year old computer for VFX could do: Run windows 95 and an ancient version of Maya. It could only work with a few thousand untextured polys at a time without chugging. Real-time video editing was out of the question. The thing barely played back SD let alone HD. I can't imagine going back in time and having to work on that POS.

 

What a 10 year old 35mm cinema camera could do: 24 or 30fps image recording (and a wide selection of other frame rates) from a 35mm capture device.

 

What a modern 35mm cinema camera can do: 4 or 30fps image recording (and a wide selection of other frame rates) from a 35mm capture device.

 

 

With the RED camera you've hit a point where you can just about say "Fine, good enough" and move on with your life. We'll never hit that point with computers. I've hit that point with my keyboard. I used the same keyboard that came with that computer in 1996 until 2006 when it finally gave up the ghost. Best damn keyboard I've ever owned and I'm really picky about my keyboards.

 

It's hard for the RED to really go out of date unless you need 2540p recording. Everything else can be swapped out. More dynamic range (like a new film stock), no problem, new sensor. More storage? No problem, new raid. Faster storage? No problem pop in one of those new fangled holo-SD cards everyone is talking about. New sharper lens? No problem pop on the latest and greatest. Not happy with the debayer-algorith? No problem run the latest 3rd party super duper RED specific refined temporal fractal/motion flow debayering algorithm.

 

The only part of the RED camera which will become outdated within 10 years will be the DSP. And like I said unless there becomes some new strange demand for compressed 2540p recording at 60fps that won't be a problem.

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