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Nikon to acquire RED

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Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#121

Post by Swizec »

tombert wrote: post #115

It would be kind of cool Nikon is able to bring the price of RED cameras down. I've wanted a truly professional-grade camera for awhile, but I cannot justify spending $10k-20k for something that would fundamentally be a glorified toy to me (since I don't do anything professional with camera). I was hoping that pro-grade 4k cameras would drop to the sub-$500 mark by now, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Even th…

> I guess the engineering for cameras that nice has fairly high "minimum cost" that can't easily be brought down by industrialization?

It may be a value thing. Why would you sell a $500 toy to the consumer market who are un-fun customers to deal with, if you could sell the same thing to a professional for $5000 and they won’t even blink because they can leverage that same tool into $500,000 of revenue?

Plus at the $5000 price you can afford to have proper customer support, good service department, and all the other stuff that professionals value. You can make an actually better product even if the tech itself is the same.

And you don’t need to play silly expensive consumer marketing games. Focus on making great cameras and the professionals will market among themselves.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#122

Post by atonse »

tombert wrote: post #119
atonse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't 10k already pretty budget price for a _professional_ video camera? Like film class. At least the film ones (like ARRI Alexa) approach 100k and can be rented as a result. I think the panavision ones were even more back in the day, but not 100% sure.

That's fair, but using computers as an analogy: a professional-grade computer from the 90's (e.g. a Silicon Graphics machine) used in professional films would cost like $40,000, but now you can buy something orders of magnitude more powerful than a 90's era SGI workstation for peanuts; virtually any modern gaming rig made in the last 15 years or will outperform even a top of the line SGI from 1995, because computer h…

Yeah the Reds are really nice, but I (a consumer) haven't been able to tell the difference between what a RED can do and what, say, a $7k SLR type camera could do, film-wise.

So honestly not sure if there is a market of people who can tell a difference between those AND people that are looking to cut costs on the camera because their film crew's time would be much more expensive.

(Mostly thinking out loud, doesn't intuitively add up to me.)

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#123

Post by tombert »

Swizec wrote: post #121
tombert wrote: post #115

It would be kind of cool Nikon is able to bring the price of RED cameras down. I've wanted a truly professional-grade camera for awhile, but I cannot justify spending $10k-20k for something that would fundamentally be a glorified toy to me (since I don't do anything professional with camera). I was hoping that pro-grade 4k cameras would drop to the sub-$500 mark by now, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Even th…

> I guess the engineering for cameras that nice has fairly high "minimum cost" that can't easily be brought down by industrialization? It may be a value thing. Why would you sell a $500 toy to the consumer market who are un-fun customers to deal with, if you could sell the same thing to a professional for $5000 and they won’t even blink because they can leverage that same tool into $500,000 of revenue? Plus at the $5…

Totally fair, I guess I was hoping it would be like servers.

New servers are also super expensive, and don't directly market to consumer, but their used value is basically nothing. You can buy a used server on eBay, even with relatively nice specs for a consumer, for less than a grand, often substantially less than a grand (mine was $150 for 128gb of RAM and 24 cores).

It doesn't appear that pro-grade cameras fall the same way though.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#124

Post by erichocean »

mtvkqn wrote: post #80
Joeboy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ARRI cameras have much better IR filters in front of the sensor. RED IR filters were horrible quality when we measured them, leading to worse image quality.

Yup, precisely why comparing "stops" doesn't tell the whole story.

The Bayer color array also makes an enormous difference (and is unique to each manufacturer). Good ones are NOT cheap to make.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#125

Post by Swizec »

tombert wrote: post #123
Swizec wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess the engineering for cameras that nice has fairly high "minimum cost" that can't easily be brought down by industrialization? It may be a value thing. Why would you sell a $500 toy to the consumer market who are un-fun customers to deal with, if you could sell the same thing to a professional for $5000 and they won’t even blink because they can leverage that same tool into $500,000 of revenue? Plus at the $5…

Totally fair, I guess I was hoping it would be like servers. New servers are also super expensive, and don't directly market to consumer, but their used value is basically nothing. You can buy a used server on eBay, even with relatively nice specs for a consumer, for less than a grand, often substantially less than a grand (mine was $150 for 128gb of RAM and 24 cores). It doesn't appear that pro-grade cameras fall th…

> It doesn't appear that pro-grade cameras fall the same way though

I wonder if cameras are just too durable and don’t need to be upgraded as often?

Even a consumer camera will last you roughly forever in my experience. I still use a DSLR from 2015 that works great and does everything I need.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#126

Post by ein0p »

This is great news. As a long time (decades) Nikon user, their video support has been lagging lately even though the cameras and lenses are now the best they’ve ever been. I hope this means an improved, more “professional” video mode on future cameras as well, perhaps even shutter angle, fingers crossed

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#127

Post by dboreham »

formerly_proven wrote: post #15

Hahahaha This means Nikon acquires a license to Canon’s mounts due to the prior RED patent trolling.

Depends on the terms of the license. It could be written to exclude this kind of successor rights acquisition, or to apply narrowly only to RED-like products.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#128

Post by Auracle »

staticautomatic wrote: post #106
mschuster91 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for lighting: all of it. ARRI stuff is expensive AF but worth every penny if you have the need for it.

Is this different in some way from the still photo world where you have like Broncolor that’s unreasonably expensive and no one can explain why?

Broncolor is expensive just because they're old and entrenched, and some people are always in the mindset that more expensive must equal better.

If reliability is a concern, you can easily buy multiple Godox units of approximately the same specifications (or better) for the same price as one Broncolor.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#129

Post by dfedbeef »

replwoacause wrote: post #84
justforasingle wrote: post #24

Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. Personally I think RED cameras are overhyped and are a major reason most netflix shows all look and feel the same. I don't think its the colour grading or lenses - its something about the camera itself that just feels shit and doesn't give me the same access to a scene the same way something like sony's HDVS from 30 years ag…

Has anyone done an analysis into what gives Netflix shows that strange look? It is uncanny valley like for me, so I avoid them altogether. I assumed it must be a blend of camera choice, lighting, and post-processing, and its just awful.

Netflix is the minor leagues. People who do well there don't tend to stay there.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#130

Post by kranke155 »

justforasingle wrote: post #24

Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. Personally I think RED cameras are overhyped and are a major reason most netflix shows all look and feel the same. I don't think its the colour grading or lenses - its something about the camera itself that just feels shit and doesn't give me the same access to a scene the same way something like sony's HDVS from 30 years ag…

The RED cameras are perfectly capable of delivering great picture quality and good color science. The "Netflix look" doesn't come from cameras, but from the fact that everything in their cheaper productions is rushed, including the color grading.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire for instance, was shot on RED cameras at 8K. And it's one of the most beautiful digital films ever made, IMO.

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