Live data from Hacker News

Nikon to acquire RED

nikon.com

51–60 of 208 posts

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the patent is this one: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7830967B1/en Which looks like it's patenting debayering. However I'm not a patent lawyer so I don't know. I suspect that Nikon were using something like jpeg2000 to store raw frames, and thats why RED were getting all pissy.

Maybe, Redcode is based on JPEG2000 https://youtu.be/IJ_uo-x7Dc0

> Maybe, Redcode is based on JPEG2000

Oh it is JPEG2000, I _think_ it used to be stored in a tar-like wrapper, but I could be misremembering. however It is 100% JPEG2000.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#52
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red cameras are overhyped, but picture quality is not the issue. It is very likely that what you describe is more due stylistic differences in lighting, color grading and editing than due to the camera itself — coming from someone who professionally had to match colors on films shot on multiple different cameras on more than one occasion. Reliability is the main reason why Red cameras are overhyped, but you get good…

As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?

In terms of the image, I think a big advantage Arri cameras have is a patent on simultaneous dual gain sensors. Perhaps somebody will tell me I've misunderstood that though.

Aside from that, I think a lot of what you pay for is reliability, support and general non-sketchiness, which are not areas where RED have a particularly good reputation.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#53
Makes sense. Blackmagic Design is a serious competitor to RED and got around their raw patent through partial debayering. Also lower price. Canon has been wiping the floor with Nikon this century.

Now you have a legendary cinema brand with some solid fundamental technology to combine with Nikon lenses for a mid to upper market product play.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#54

Makes sense. Blackmagic Design is a serious competitor to RED and got around their raw patent through partial debayering. Also lower price. Canon has been wiping the floor with Nikon this century. Now you have a legendary cinema brand with some solid fundamental technology to combine with Nikon lenses for a mid to upper market product play.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm for BMD is muted by the extreme non-freeness of BRAW.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#55

Interesting that some time ago Red filed a lawsuit against Nikon for using a RAW video compression algorithm that Red claimed infringed its patents, but later dismissed it: https://dpreview.com/news/5338402238/red-is-suing-nikon-for-... https://dpreview.com/news/9301564383/nikon-denies-red-s-laws... https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-ag...

Am I reading this right in that Red has somehow managed to patent the idea of compressing 4K RAW footage on device which holds up the whole industry?

It must be a specific implementation because Black Magic has had their own brand of this for years and don’t seem to have been targeted by RED, though I may be out of the loop on something?

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#56
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any RAW image that comes out of a modern digital sensor can be made to look like anything else, as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated. They look the same because they are lit, edited and color graded the same

> as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated I'm interested in this, do you have a link?

Some Yedlin links. I found his process to be methodical, precise, thorough and definitive. The question as to whether there is any perceptible visual difference between film and video that has been post-produced by an expert was definitively answered for me.

Resolution Demos: https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html

On Color Science for Filmmakers: https://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#57
post #54

Makes sense. Blackmagic Design is a serious competitor to RED and got around their raw patent through partial debayering. Also lower price. Canon has been wiping the floor with Nikon this century. Now you have a legendary cinema brand with some solid fundamental technology to combine with Nikon lenses for a mid to upper market product play.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm for BMD is muted by the extreme non-freeness of BRAW.

What? It’s free. Perhaps you should read the history around Red as a patent troll, how they price gouge their media, etc.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?

The thing about ARRI is, yeah their gear is expensive, but it is just an incredible combination of good design and stellar engineering. Their cameras are surprisingly straightforward to use, definitely easier than a RED or Sony (with their "every-surface-needs-to-be-covered-in-buttons-but-few-are-where-you-would-expect-them"-mentality). Their light gear is just stellar. I have seen ARRI HMI lamps that took 40 years o…

Thanks! Totally get the point of price being relative. After all, if you use gear professionally, as in earning money with it, the calculation of cost is different.

Edit: Nikon is generally doing a decent job on those "pro" aspects if cameras, ergonomics, buttons, reliability and so on. Should be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#59
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm for BMD is muted by the extreme non-freeness of BRAW.

What? It’s free. Perhaps you should read the history around Red as a patent troll, how they price gouge their media, etc.

It's free as in beer (for regular consumers anyway), but (unless you know different?) only available via obfuscated binaries, with no documentation of the actual file format. Correspondingly, it's the only video format I know of that I can't use industry standard open source tools like ffmpeg with.

I'm very aware of the manifold ways in which RED suck.

Edit: There's a certain irony about it. RED took a bunch of free stuff and pretended it was proprietary. BM created a proprietary format and pretended it was free.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?

The thing about ARRI is, yeah their gear is expensive, but it is just an incredible combination of good design and stellar engineering. Their cameras are surprisingly straightforward to use, definitely easier than a RED or Sony (with their "every-surface-needs-to-be-covered-in-buttons-but-few-are-where-you-would-expect-them"-mentality). Their light gear is just stellar. I have seen ARRI HMI lamps that took 40 years o…

> The thing is, sure ARRI is expensive, but depending on your production losing a day might be more expensive than buying a whole new camera.

This is generally true when purchasing equipment for personnel. If you have to purchase three new €2500 family MacBooks because of a burst pipe, that’s mighty expensive. Even for a small IT company, that’s just half a month’s wage per developer.

I know that with expensive camera gear we’re talking about €250 000 per camera or whatever, but you rent those.

Post reply on HN