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Nikon to acquire RED

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Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#151

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#152

Post by flipthefrog »

Swizec wrote: post #125
tombert wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nikon d850, their top model and one of the best slr's ever made came out in 2017. My most used digital camera is a Canon 5d from 2005, I prefer it over my much newer Fuji XT3 most of the time because of its colors. (And one of my most used analog cameras is a 1939 Leica)

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#153

Post by KaiserPro »

RED were the future, in 2012.

However, now, not so much.

They promised excellent resolution for a supposedly cheap price. At the time there was an explosion of "HD" cameras, a lot of them coming from modern DSLRs lead by the canon 5D suddenly opened up the world of good enough resolution and colour to the world.

However at the time RED footage was a massive pain to deal with. redraw was JPEG2000, which from memory is wavelet based. In a world when GPUs were for graphics, CPUs couldn't decode rthe frames in anywhere near realtime.

you could buy a $4k super fragile ASIC card that would allow decoding in real time, but it was a dick to use. It might have got better, but GPUs took over.

However, the big problem with RED is that they over promised and under delivered. They had devoted fans who would foam at the mouth for any company or person that dared to be critical.

THey didn't have a global shutter, they were quite noisy, and they were nowhere near as cheap to run as they made out.

THey kept on making new products, but never managed to really execute them properly. For example they were going to make a 4k laser project that would blow cristie or barco out of the water. Turned out that it didn't work, and at IBC/NAB they were using an overdriven barco.

The tech support people were very nice, however part of the cache of working there was "being in the know" so as soon as it came to getting techincal details you needed to make a decision (liek the redray) things went back to vague marketing terms.

Arrl and Sony all make much better cameras, the might have less pixels, but much better dynamic range and optical resolution. moreover the workflow isn't shite and they are reliable.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#154

Post by _fat_santa »

tivert wrote: post #141
_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.

> 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. Is this the video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hahBgDUESjE

that's the one!

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#155

Post by sangnoir »

stephen_g wrote: post #104
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…

No, why “everything looks the same” is 100% down to lens, lighting and grading choices. Part of it is that modern lenses are incredibly accurate and much better technically than they used to be - a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts, since they have “visual character” instead of being so clean.

> a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts

Isn't this confounded by who chooses to buck the trend? IMO, it's the very skilled DPs who are not only skilled, have earned enough social capital to experiment and have excellent reasons for using old soviet lenses, or lenses designed for use on the moon or some other exotic origin story. This self-selecting bunch are likely to produce outstanding work regardless of the equipment.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#156

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

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…

Color grading always changes the colors in post anyway. Film movies often looks better than digital to my eyes but i think that is at least partly because color grading did not exist like it does now and there was no push to make every object "pop" by being oversaturated. To me, Film is more likely to give you a single scene in each frame while color graded digital movies often seem to be made of several disparate scenes cobbled together. Movies from the past used less greenscreening in favor of matte paintings which were often included in the scene they were used itself rather than edited in or they were the only shot in the scene. You can make digital film look however you want, even to look like film, but most Netflix shows apparently do not opt for that.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#157

Post by julik »

atoav wrote: post #32
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…

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…

This. RED cameras are overhyped for a few reasons:

- They were once the "hot startup" promising acceptable resolution (filmic 4K when nobody needed it, everything was 2K at most). But they oversold resolution at the cost of bizarrely slow-to-decompress proprietary RAW format and some loss to image quality, and stayed true to that. Arri came to market later and they did the right thing - picked convenience and stability over super-duper-extra-super-high-res. - Their cameras would routinely overheat - Cameras would have severe reliability issues with software updates - Some haptics/controls felt wanky at times - They wanted hard to sell you "just the body", for "cheap cheap cheap", but it meant that to have something usable you would need the whole loadout - which would ship in pieces, with periods of delay for availability, and the quality of some components would be meh. Want an EVF? Wait 2 years for one to ship. Want functioning grip? Separate. Want etc. etc.? Separate. I.e. they were very inviting to "now you, as a DOP, can finally own a camera", but owning "the camera and the kit required for it - sans lenses" would be a painful proposition.

This was certainly the case in 2006-2010s, dunno if it has gotten much better lately. It does seem that RED kept to the theme of severely overselling their users extreme picture resolutions, at the cost of having the files super-painful to process, proprietary codecs, and lackings in other areas such as dynamic range.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#158

Post by julik »

atoav wrote: post #49
hef19898 wrote: post #38

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…

FWIW "every surface needs to be covered in buttons" is exactly how a Canon person™ once explained to me why they are not a Nikon person. So that checks out wrt this acquisition, at least.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#159

Post by com2kid »

audunw wrote: post #34
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…

Maybe that's nostalgia.. I personally think the clips you shared look awful compared to any modern camera. I seriously doubt the average person notices any difference between RED cameras and any other modern camera with roughly the same properties.

For the 1990s, that Sony demo video looks amazing. The colors pop, skin pores are visible, brush strokes are visible! The colors and styles are very 90s, but it was the 90s so things are expected to look that way.

Re: Nikon to acquire RED

#160

Post by hef19898 »

julik wrote: post #158
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…

FWIW "every surface needs to be covered in buttons" is exactly how a Canon person™ once explained to me why they are not a Nikon person. So that checks out wrt this acquisition, at least.

The only thing more hilarious than the pointless Canon vs. Nikon quabble are when you throw in Leica shooters into the mix.
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