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RED screwing up the market even more in 20's?


Max Field

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I follow eBay prices a lot and there's somewhat of a 10 year mark flagship cameras hit where they can't retain a value above $4,500, dipping as low as $1,500.

Do you think very soon there will be a time where Red Dragons are floating around the market for $3,000? I can't see the resolution wars sustaining any higher than 6k-8k.
Also because they manufactured so damn many of them I doubt they'll retain any kind of collectors value buffer.

And if that happens, what the hell will it do to the camera departments of rental houses? They were lightweight 6k cameras, now getting in the hands of basically anyone. Why would someone rent the fancy new 6K camera when they can just get one for a couple thousand?

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This is the problem that rental houses have been facing almost since the beginning of the digital era. Owner/operators buying gear at used rates and then undercutting rental houses has gutted the rental market, and driven rates downwards.

its worth remembering, though, that while cameras might be very cheap to buy used, accessories tend to hold their value. That $3000 Red Dragon on eBay may well need another $30000 spent on it to make a professional package, and then you still need lenses.

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I don't think the rental business has been undercut by owner/operators at all. Professional productions do not rent from owner/operators. They must use rental houses for support and legal reasons. 

As Denny Clairmont told me, the problem is that with film cameras, they would last 15 - 20 years easily and with digital, you're lucky to get 3 - 5 years out of a camera. Very few rental houses could afford to buy Arricam's and even less could invest in 50 Alexa's when they first came out. Clairmont closed because Denny couldn't justify buying a new fleet of 4k and 8k cameras to stay current. This is the same problem other rental houses are facing with the sub 4k cameras, mainly Alexa's. 

The other thing is that Arri and Alexa charge exorbitant money for service and the digital cameras have their own host of failure issues; overheating and software/firmware are the most common. Then you have the imager dead pixel mapping failures, which is where many are the Red Dragons are headed. In a few years, the high hour imagers will have dead pixels that can't be remapped. The Dragon initially came out in 2013, so it's 5 years old and where the tech is great, we're seeing more and more cameras failing. We had 2 dead Dragons at our high school and Red refused to service them for less than $5k each. 

I personally don't think we will see 4k + professional cinema cameras anywhere near the 3k mark anytime soon; C200, C300MKII, C500, C700, FS5, FS7, F5, F55, F65, Venice, Red Dragon, Red Epic X, Arri Alexa XT Plus, Alexa Mini, Blackmagic Ursa mini, etc. These will all hold their values for a long ass time because 4k will become the 'lowest' acceptable quality and stay that way for a long time. I do see the 2.8k Alexa's going for a dime a dozen soon, but sadly most can't capture 2.8k internally without the proper firmware. They will dive to D21 prices eventually, but I think they will hover around $5k as complete packages because things like viewfinders, will hold value. 

In the end, yes the sub 4k cameras will dive bomb in price, but the 4k+ cameras will retain value. It's actually a buyers market for digital cinema cameras right now and the penglium has been swinging that way for the last few years thanks to companies like Blackmagic, Canon and Sony, releasing some decent lower-end cameras that have excellent quality. It's making the older cameras have less value just due to their age. 

At the same time, film camera pricing is increasing. Go figure lol ?

 

 

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2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I don't think the rental business has been undercut by owner/operators at all. Professional productions do not rent from owner/operators. They must use rental houses for support and legal reasons. 

Rental houses do not just cater to studio pictures and TV shows. They derive a substantial part of their income from independent film, shorts, and micro budgeted movies. This is precisely the area where owner/operators have driven rates downwards, sometimes offering complete packages for a few hundred dollars a day. In combination with other pressures facing the industry, this has caused a number of rental houses to go out of business, and others to endure some very tough times indeed. I have personal experience of three different films in the last 2 years where owner/operators had undercut the rental houses to put their own gear on the job, and left us to deal with a sub standard package that was not fit for purpose.

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I think the high end market will always find a reason to go for big-ticket items, and I don't think it's anything to do with performance. It's not been really necessary for them to do that for some years. The F900 set a low bar for what can actually be used to make a commercially releasable feature film. There are now very inexpensive cameras which outperform an F900 massively. It's not about performance, it's about politics and I don't think that improving performance is likely to change that. Improving performance certainly hasn't changed that for some time.

 

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9 hours ago, Stuart Brereton said:

Rental houses do not just cater to studio pictures and TV shows. They derive a substantial part of their income from independent film, shorts, and micro budgeted movies. This is precisely the area where owner/operators have driven rates downwards, sometimes offering complete packages for a few hundred dollars a day. In combination with other pressures facing the industry, this has caused a number of rental houses to go out of business, and others to endure some very tough times indeed. I have personal experience of three different films in the last 2 years where owner/operators had undercut the rental houses to put their own gear on the job, and left us to deal with a sub standard package that was not fit for purpose.

Most of the rental houses I deal with, supply cameras for big shows. The little weekend shows are pretty inconsequential. Yes, a 24 day narrative feature would benefit a rental house absolutely, but to me that isn't a small show, no matter what the budget. I'm more referring to the weekend shows, the "I need a camera for a day" sorta deal. That's where the rental houses don't care really. They want the longer term gigs. 

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14 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I personally don't think we will see 4k + professional cinema cameras anywhere near the 3k mark anytime soon

Complete RED One MX packages are already below $3000 in some places. Won't be surprised if the Epic MX is $3500 in a year or two. A lot of the URSA stuff took a huge hit after the Pocket 4K stuff came out too. 6K might be the thing that holds value, but a 4K camera isn't as special as it was 5 years ago.

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2 hours ago, Max Field said:

Complete RED One MX packages are already below $3000 in some places. Won't be surprised if the Epic MX is $3500 in a year or two. A lot of the URSA stuff took a huge hit after the Pocket 4K stuff came out too. 6K might be the thing that holds value, but a 4K camera isn't as special as it was 5 years ago.

Yea, but the Red one doesn't work, so you can just scratch that off the list. 

I have never seen a working Epic MX for anywhere near 3500 bux. GOBS of body-only parts cameras with issues, yes. But you can't use them without the accessories at all, they're not like the Red One which is self contained. You literally can't do anything with a Epic MX body but put it on a shelf. So once you add the parts you need, it's up around 12k, right near a complete Dragon. 

I'm so glad I didn't buy an URSA, the imager is no beuno. The URSA mini Pro G2 is better all the way around, but Blackmagic are lacking in the noise floor compared to the Pocket 4k, which is leaps and bounds better with it's noise floor. It's true the URSA Mini Pro G2 does quantifiably look more cinematic, thanks to its larger imager. However, no way in hell is it good over 800 ISO, which is a real problem for most people. So yes, I do see the pricing on those cameras dropping the moment Blackmagic releases their new camera, which should be next year sometime. 

I agree, 4k cameras aren't special anymore. However, the "good" one's, will retain value for a long time. 

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The landscape has just changed ..  30 years ago or more !  I bought a Sony Digibeta for about $65K.. 2 x zoom lenses about $35,000.. and I used it for 13 years .. and shot about 1000 days or more.. it was a money making machine.. young kids couldn't buy them.. directors hadn't a clue how to use them and wouldn't go near the camera ..as an owner op your day rate was with gear and was cheaper than a rental company, and without the hassle, so production managers loved it.. if it went wrong it was my problem not theirs .. you even make a mark up on tapes if you provided them.. now there is an fs7 ..17-9 4k for $8,000 I think it is.. a couple of Sigma cine zooms .. $8,000 .. some other bits from Wooden camera /Small rig.. all pretty cheap.. and your away.. in the UK a lot of productions companies have wised up and bought their own gear..unfortunately for freelance DP,s..  today there are cheap and good camera,s.. high end /multi cam ok still going to rent .. but its really not the difficult for a drama/commercial DP.. even mid level.. to buy a Venice / Alexa mini these days.. they are  cheaper than ENG camera,s  15 years ago... 

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On 8/4/2019 at 5:03 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

At the same time, film camera pricing is increasing. Go figure lol ?

We live in a very strange world! Just as digital started to get really, really good, film started to take off. I'm not complaining, I think it's great. But it is noteworthy that while digital was expensive and clumsy (some cameras still are, not naming names), people flocked to them, with promises of liberation from the shackles of 400' spools and the ~1000 ASA sensitivity limit. Weird.

On 8/7/2019 at 11:21 PM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

OP...sound great for the filmmaker! I wish this was the trend with film scanners. 

I concur on both points. You will find people adopting all this new tech, and then complaining that values have dropped (I'm not having a go at the OP, BTW). What did they think would happen, honestly?

As a photographer, I wish there was a film scanner that was fast, affordable, and had good image quality. No such scanner exists. Will Kodak make one? Leica? Anyone?

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