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Nikon to acquire RED

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Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#171

Post by anigbrowl »

hef19898 wrote: post #38
atoav wrote: 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?

Yes, and it's worth every penny.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#172

Post by walrus01 »

Sony and Canon have well established and respected, widely used cinema camera product lines.

Nikon, presently, does not. You will not see Nikon cameras (video, not still image) being used for 'serious' film, tv or documentary production use right now.

Acquiring RED gives them this product line and capability.

I would also bet that if Jannard is a majority shareholder of RED, he's now 74 years old and wants to enjoy his retirement, so selling the company for a pile of money seems like a sensible move.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#174

Post by actionfromafar »

praisewhitey wrote: post #138
_fat_santa wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARRI also has their own "picture style", at least the ARRI Alexa. I remember seeing video on YT where the guy bought a really old ARRI Alexa that was used in Hollywood back in 05 or 06. When they showed some of the footage they took with it, it looked exactly like an mid-2000's big screen movie, I honestly didn't realize those movies even had a "look" until I saw his video.

Do you mean the D20? The Alexa wasn't released until 2010

Most movies in 2005 were film. So the style in 2005 was the film look. Collateral (2004) was the first major movie shot on video and it's got a very different look and the tech was so new, Tom Cruise had to wear a certain shade of gray suite so as to not blow the highlights in some of the scenes.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#175

Post by pvarangot »

esafak wrote: post #2

Red was a revolution when it came out in 2007, offering 4K for under $20K! When I heard the announcement of its development I wondered how a guy who made sunglasses was going to pull it off.

Yeah I thought it was a scam. To be fair some of the most ridiculous things they announced when they put up the website, like the IMAX camera with a sensor that would basically take a wafer end to end to cut, didn't come out.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#176

Post by porphyra »

cfr2023 wrote: post #103

I started following the RED story before those folks ever released a camera, and I liked their spirit and mission. Some time passed and ultimately it was Black Magic Design that accomplished what RED said they wanted to do. If you say you want to make high end cinema technology, or even just high quality imagery, accessible to the average person, a $17,500 price tag for just the camera body shows that you might have…

Z-Cam has full frame 8K cameras for $6000 and full frame 6K cameras for $3000 which is sort of affordable.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#177

Post by mafuyu »

strogonoff wrote: post #77
mmaunder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blackmagic sold their cameras with support for CinemaDNG advertised, and removed that support after the fact, leaving only BRAW that more or less locked you into Resolve. This is a deal breaker for anyone using OSS processing pipeline, since 1) BRAW isn’t lossless, AFAIK and 2) it was impossible and to this day is problematic to convert BRAW to something raw development tools understand (DNG). Luckily, I noticed that…

As a fellow fp enjoyer, I will point out that I believe the fp's CDNG support avoids patent issues by only supporting output to USB drive. RAW video to internal media is where Nikon ran into trouble. It's also a bit of a bummer how terrible the fp's h264 encoder is, but the CDNG makes up for it, I suppose.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#178

Post by kuschku »

Joeboy wrote: post #59
mmaunder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then I'll give you another one: ProRes RAW. Just the same as Braw, but even worse documentation.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#179

Post by sebben »

ensignavenger wrote: post #86
atoav wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When folks talk about reliability of these cameras, what are we talking about? Like, the camera longevity, or ruggedness? Or like they reliably produce a consistent output, versus producing different results under the same conditions where one would expect consistency?

I work as a director of photography and own an Alexa Mini.

Reliability in this context means that the camera will record and the footage will not be corrupted on the media.

Film sets are very rough on equipment and things break all the time. Sometimes one films in very harsh conditions that anre either very cold or very dusty and hot. Often you don’t have the luxury of being able to repeat a moment or you have travelled to very remote locations so having gear that will continue to work is worth paying a huge premium for.

The Arri sensors and imaging pipeline also offer the best overall image quality. This means it can handle very high dynamic range scenes better than all other cameras. For example the new Alexa35 sensor can record 11f stops of information above middle grey. Most prosumer video cameras can record above and below middle grey around 12 stops total with most of the information in the shadows.

It also means consistent image quality in different shooting environments. Arri has very sophisticated cooling to keep the camera sensor within a specified temperature for consistent noise performance.

Because Arri make more than just cameras it also means that the camera fits into the whole professional eco system and synergises with other pieces of filmmaking equipment like the Arri wireless focus systems, camera remote heads etc etc. Meaning you can focus on the hard bit which is creating amazing stories.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#180

Post by sebben »

MaxPengwing wrote: post #113
klodolph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the sensor? I though it was the processing.

Yes. But No. Red V-Raptor S35 XL has 16.5 stops of dynamic range with 250-12,800 ISO. ARRI Alexa 35 has 17 stops of range with 160-6400 ISO. Both use rolling shutters, both have native ISO of 800. Alexa has better low light noise reduction at higher ISO, but Alexa is sharper and has better dynamic range in low light since it uses 8K to 4K down sampling. The real difference is in the colour straight out of the chip an…

You can’t compare the spec sheets. You need to look at the over and under tests. There is no camera close to the Alexa35 in dynamic range
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