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I just hope Nikon pulls the reins in a bit on Red's tacticool/bro marketing. It's 2024, we don't need any more RAPTORKILLERXXXXTREME NOW WITH BOMB-MAGZ being put out there.

Not 100% of riders. No, you’re trying to prove your own point that 100% of riders were using. Floyd Landis’ TdF title in 2006 went to Oscar Periero just as Alberto Contador’s went to Andy Schleck in 2010 so that proves the point that they only had to go one place down to find a rider that they could give it to. I’d venture that the Armstrong “asterix” years are more to do with UCI/ASO complicity and/or legal issues that are still ongoing. Anyway, enough of cycling, I’ve derailed this thread enough so will politely withdraw from the sport vs spectacle conundrum.

I’m not sure as a hardcore fan of any sport how you could be lukewarm about systematic cheating as, well, it doesn’t seem very, erm, “sporting”. From my personal point of view as a pro sports photographer covering Tour de France in that era though I’m far from lukewarm about having sat in press conferences being lied to by him and watching him ridicule and soil the reputation of David Walsh and Paul Kimmage. Or Emma O’Reilly. I’m also sore that in Armstrong’s case, unlike all the other ones I’ve covered, that I get zero residuals from my “winner of stage x” or “winner of TdF x” images 🙂 I might be being old fashioned here but I’d give it to the highest placed cyclist that wasn’t using PEDs. I have some sympathy with the “well they were all at it” aspect so, fine, let everyone do it and have a special event. Just don’t call it sport when it’s only being used by some of the field.

RED's patent has stood up so many times in court, it is pretty much beyond doubt that it's valid for raw recording. Nikon will be pleased to get that, as they can now force Canon into paying them royalties or choose not to license it at all, meaning Canon RAW has to come out of the entire Cinema EOS line and EOS R cameras, as it is internal compressed RAW. Nikon also get their own Cinema EOS line now, a big presence in video and cinema with RED. So the purchase makes sense, but it remains to be seen whether they will gain long term sales due to the threat to real-life filmmaking posted by AI production and cinema. One day I think Sony will buy Nikon and ultimately control RED's product line.

Would be funny if the Z-mount Komodo gets launched as NIKOMODO.

I agree - the RED cinema cameras will keep the RED branding - it would be silly to dilute/erase the RED brand image. (pure speculation) From a branding point of view, maybe Nikon might add some subsidiary RED branding to few video-orientated hybids e.g. 'RED Cinema' or 'Video by RED', in the way Panasonic and Sony use the Leica and Zeiss branding on some products?

First finished piece using the FS7, first live band video. This was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it taught me 4 very valuable lessons for next time: 1. Get to the venue before the soundcheck. Set up and crucially... 2. Get the band to do a run-through of the song you're covering, ideally with the stage lighting as it will be later. 3. Get a second static view that you can just leave rolling. 4. During the gig, start rolling and don't stop until the end. You can probably guess from the above that my major problem wit this piece was lack of coverage, which is why some of the cutaways don't quite fit. Having said all that, it was a great experience and the band are happy; so on to the next one!

London Camera Exchange. I’m still kinda thinking they accidentally put it up at the wrong price! The ones on MPB at that price were a lot shabbier.

Or, indeed, the sport vs a certain brand of sunglasses debacle?

Likely none. The issue at hand is being lukewarm about when someone is caught. That just doesn’t chime with me personally in terms of being sport. Transparency? Armstrong colluded with the UCI to cover up his positive tests FFS.

What high profile professional sport does not have drug taking? The only reason cycling gets so much flack is because they're a hell of a lot more transparently open about it & the media actually talks about it. Which it would be good if other sports & the media did this too! Had more open transparency and discussion. (for instance, have you ever heard of Mohamed Katir? Or the Chinese female distance runners of the 1990s?) Which is what the sport of cycling is. (especially in that era) You're proving my point here. You can't give out all the wins to anybody else but Lance Armstrong, thus it is utterly farcical to remove it from him when you've got no remotely good options whatsoever to replace him with.

As a hard core fan of cycling racing for many years, I'm quite lukewarm over this, don't really care. If you somehow believe Lance Armstrong doesn't deserve the wins, then who does? 2nd place? No. 3rd place? No. 2nd place? No. 4th place? No. 5th place? No. 6th place? No. etc etc etc It indisputable that USA Postal during that era was the king at the sport of cycling (well, at least the #1 when it came to TdF wins, which to the casual external viewer is all that seems to matter. Even though the sport of cycling is so so so much more). Just like Red Bull is right now for F1.

No way is Nikon making a Burano type camera. Nothing will change at either company. A few years from now RED fold from stagnation or gets bought back by the owners and re-launches.

At least Nikon gets recognized as part of the "Canikon duopoly" (although in the mature mirrorless era, Sony has broken that duopoly). But I agree, it seems Nikon got seen as the forgotten poorer stepchild in that duopoly. Even though Nikon has produced so very many ground breaking / top tier stills cameras themselves, such as the Nikon D700 / D3 / D800 / D750 / D500 / etc Good point. Nikon has got a bit of an old fuddy duddy branding of stereotype cameraman photographers. So maybe a little bit of the bold brash youthful branding of RED mixed in could be "a good thing"?

...and photography, though most appreciate the latter. There's been quite a bit of negativity and still is out there in some quarters, re. Nikon as a brand. Fair enough, in the earlier days of mirrorless, they were not quite the co-leading player as they were with Canon in the former DSLR days. When I started shooting weddings 20+ years ago, it was Nikon or Canon with Canon taking around 2/3rds of the sales. Today it's; Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji and Panasonic with Sony being the biggest based on pure sales and probably also on image/marketing with the younger end of the market. Nikon along with Panasonic, seems to have developed a slightly fuddy duddy image which I think is a bit undeserved and I think it's because they haven't approached their marketing in quite the same way as say Sony or even Fuji. Fuji obviously went down the nostalgic route with some of their designs and film sim approach and Sony the 'YouTube Gen' and Canon seems to bob along based on legacy as does Leica. But not so old Panny Boy and Nikon have suffered I think by being less active than some others despite having some exceptional products. The S1H and S5ii, my own personal weapons of choice in the hybrid video arena are amongst the best available. Nikon produced the Z6ii which is right up there still in its class, the Z8, the Z9 and most recently the Zf, all exceptional top of their class acts. RED for me as a brand though, is a bit mixed... I think it is a bit of it's time... As someone said above, a few years back it was all RED MEGA GODZILLA XXX and had a certain appeal to a certain market, but that's not any kind of widespread appeal or dare I say, very mature. So I think a toned down, more youthful, more left field, side brand, could be good for Nikon on one side of this acquisition and on the other side, whatever the tech is that they can utilise. It should be interesting for sure. But if they are going to make any camera with a red body, they need to make sure it's a matte red, not a gloss one.

Yup, even just a cheap Panasonic GH4 shooting a wide angle can be better than nothing to cut to if you hit a technical hiccup for a couple of seconds / minutes with your main camera. (edit: or in this case, your A6600, which I just saw you mention) Another approach is just to shoot afterwards a bunch of random generic B Roll with your main camera, that you can throw into the edit to patch up any holes with. Good reason to get a cardellini and other such clamps. Ah, you got a Sony FS7 just as "a hobby camera"? Amazing, shows how cheap and affordable this older pro Sony camera is getting.

I believe the issue with RED was that many of their high end cameras weren't as reliable as their Sony and Arri counterparts. That's probably one reason for them not absolutely dominating the market despite their early entry. That along with exaggerated figures on dynamic range, shady proprietary hardware including storage which wasn't proprietary, and some other rubbish which made them almost seem shady to many. Nikon started early with video on a DSLR, and also 4K, but they didn't really pursue the cinema dream. Most of their video efforts seemed half hearted, and they didn't seem interested in creating some seriously competitive cinema cameras, unlike Canon which has explored it in many different ways. Also, Sony has been slowpy eating into almost everyone else markets, from consumer, to prosumer and then the high end cinema market. Nikon has probably wanting to be part of the cinema market (hybrids as well as true cinema cameras), and that's why they got Pico RAW video, among some other cinema features. Though they never really created anything that sedmed like a cinema camera. RED has provided it ammunition to harass all competition, based on RED's shady patent, and they can go on a kicking rampage while the patent lasts. By which time, hopefully Nikon does make a few worthy Hybrids, and some real cinema cameras. RED will have better supply chair, much better reliability, faster abd better customer care, superb autofocus, and improved hardware too. Plus they could get great mainstream sensors at much lesser. The only thing worth buying in RED is its Illegal right to prevent the competition from having compressed RAW. I wonder if that's enough for Nikon to buy it, unless it was sold at a throwaway price.

intoPix's web site lists Nikon Z8 and Z9's N-RAW as using TicoRAW for stills and video (Zf doesn't have N-RAW video but does have the corresponding stills compression options HE and HE* which are similar to Z8's and Z9's HE and HE* so we can safely guess it too is TicoRAW). Nikon's Z9, Z8, and Zf manuals state that they are "powered by intoPIX technology". Z8 and Zf were launched in 2023, so there you have mentions "after 2022". Since RED's earlier lawsuit against Jinni Tech was also withdrawn when the latter used the same argument as Nikon did with the same outcome, yet Jinni Tech didn't need to purchase RED the company to reach this outcome, so we can fairly safely assume Nikon's decision to purchase RED is unrelated to the lawsuit. Since Nikon's argument is that the patents are invalid they aren't likely to sue others for infringing those invalid patents. But RED may have other patents or aspects of patents that Nikon may want to use. And very likely they do want to enter the high-end video camera market since some customers won't purchase hybrids without system compatibility with higher-end video cameras.

Heh - yeah, not too sure I want to do it for money TBH. But your points about the actual shoot make sense. That's why I mentioned that a lesson learned was that I should have got there for the soundcheck and ensured that they ran through the chosen song at least once, with proper lighting (at this venue in particular the lighting was controlled by the sound guy, so would have been possible) in order to get some different angles. I had intended to set my A6600 up as a static long shot for the same reason, but when I got there I found a room where there was literally nothing I could secure either a tripod or monopod to, so I couldn't, unfortunately.

There has been no mention of n-raw being ticoRAW since 2022, so I couldn't say with any certainty if the current version of n-raw is the same as was announced before the Z9 or Z8 was released. As far as Red's patents... I'm not a patent attorney or a patent judge but I do know that many companies, including Apple, could not convince a court that their patent was invalid. We do know that in May of 2022, Red filed a lawsuit against Nikon for patent infringement and less than a year later, in April of 2023, the case was dismissed at the request of both Red and Nikon and less than a year after that, it's announced that Nikon purchased Red. So it may be possible that Nikon wants to enter the high end cinema market, but based on the timeline of events, one can ascertain that Nikon's purchase of Red is about Redcode Raw... maybe... but I haven't sat in on any of the meetings between Nikon and Red for a while...

Nikon use intoPIX's TicoRAW for high-efficiency encoding of raw stills and raw video. It's a different algorithm from what RED is using. RED's patent has been suggested to be invalid anyway, as RED demonstrated it in a camera more than one year before applying for the patent (which was Nikon's counter-argument when RED sued them and so the case was settled outside of court, which also happened with Jinni Tech who used a similar argument). I doubt very much Nikon bought RED for the patents but simply to get a foothold in the higher-end video camera market.

No it’s not well respected by post. Thats myth. I’m going to guess you aren’t in post at a high end facility. Nobody I’ve met likes or prefers REDCODE over other raw codecs. Owner operators who own red cameras are the only ones who talk like this. It’s a high bit depth raw codec and that’s all it has going for it. It’s actually not that efficient. ProRes plays back faster. ProRes RAW plays back faster. BRAW plays back faster. Why do you think they sold stupid things like RedRocket? Most high end post output of RED didn’t use REDs own cards for final render because the debayer looked better with the internal decodes of the native app. It was the first conceptually raw codec(maybe depends what you think of Cineform) but it’s not efficient at all in playback. Thats why they moved to DCT. As the resolution went up, playback gets harder and harder with Wavelet.

I want a Nikon Z6iii RED Phoenix now just because of the name! But probably too soon…?? The Z6iii must have been in development for a while now and should be appearing fairly soon… I suppose it’s not unrealistic for them to add another codec at this time, but unless something has been cooking behind the scenes for some time, it’s probably unrealistic? I am still very interested to see what the Z6iii might be, even if it’s the non RED Phoenix edition as part of my possible wholesale move back to Nikon for both my stills (current platform) and video needs, for 2025.

There is one thing in this acquisition of RED that I am sure of and that is all future Nikon cameras will remain black. Even if they have any kind of badging that reads RED. Joking aside, I could see a 2 tier camera here: Nikon Black (line) and Nikon Red (line) cameras. The same bodies, DSLR and box style, but with different levels of tech with Black being more stills/hybrid focused and Red being more video.

A loyal customer base and a foothold in Hollywood is a pretty significant reason to purchase RED if a company is looking break into that market. With this purchase Nikon leap frogs Canon when it comes to cinema cameras. Not a lot of Hollywood blockbusters filming on Canon cinema cameras, but some of the biggest ones are filmed on RED.

If it was any other company but RED I'd be pretty disappointed to see another company getting bought up. But in this case the only thing that upsets me is that the assholes running RED are all getting PAID. Nikon has clearly been trying to get their foot in the door when it comes to video users, so buying RED makes all the sense in the world. Now it just depends on what they do with it.

With today's news, I feel like I made the right choice going with the Z9s, not just for now, but for the future.

There is nothing special about REDCODE. It was sold for a long time as some special mojo. It not even wavelet anymore. It’s been DCT based since Komodo. Like ProRes and BRAW. They will keep N-RAW because it’s their own “brand” and now they own the IP. It’s not like REDCODE is better. It’s all the same. They don’t need REDCODE and they don’t need to licence it either.

Exactly. I don't even know what to think. I wasn't planning any upgrade anytime soon, so I can wait to see how things pan out, but how Canon responds will definitely sway me one way or the other. Hell, this was so out of left field, that for all I know, Canon could announce they bought Arriflex next week.

I really welcome a Red Powered Nikon FX3/FX30 competitor with Redcode, I would chuck out my FX3/FX30 in a beat!

Probably Nikon has wanted to acquire a cinema company for a while. When Nikon first announced Z mount, they mentioned cinema a lot, but never backed that up with a full feature set. There were little things, like the tripod locating pin (so critical for solid cinema rigs). And of course supporting Raw outputs. But Nikon didn't make the big jumps, like timecode, internal NDs, XLRs. Maybe they wanted to, but didn't quite have the tech, personnel, etc. and buying out a smaller company was the easiest option. So really there are three possible futures. 1. Red's tech moves to Nikon's mirrorless cameras. Redcode perhaps, accessory compatibility e.g. their new EVF, the global shutter sensors. 2. Nikon's tech moves to Red. Z mount, autofocus, or even simple things like LCD screens, mirrorless-size EVFs. And the other huge category: lenses. Perhaps some of Nikon's excellent optics will find their way into cinema housings, either in PL or Z mount. 3. Nothing changes, but Nikon owns a more diversified product line

Now nikon gets to be the patent troll. Red will probably get to pretend to remain a company for 2 years and then nikon will probably fire the entire workforce, and we get to hear about “the constantly changing landscape of media” in some press release justifying the gutting of the company.

We all know the camera and imaging industry is being disrupted heavily, first with the move to digital that sunk Kodak, then with smartphones slowly eating the whole industry from the bottom up, and now right at the start of generative AI. In situations like this market consolidation is an enormous game of 9-dimensional chess, so this move will be the result of more analysis than a person could read in a week, even if we had post-graduate qualifications in corporate law, economics, and accounting. It's not like Nikon was sitting on a huge pile of cash to begin with - in this phase of a market disruption where the manufacturers are literally fighting to stay alive if this wasn't a great match for the two companies across many/most factors then it will be a mistake that might cost them everything.

Its too soon for a collaborative work. But all they have to do, for now, is add REDCODE and active cooling to upcoming Z6III, and call it RED Phoenix or something, with $3k price. Having Nraw didn't prevent them to include ProresRAW in Z9. Unless REDCODE needs higher processing power Expeed 7 can't provide.

Right? This is such a wildcard change in the industry. I was planning to switch to an R5 and R5C combo this year for Canon's 28-70MM f/2 zoom. Now I'm going to wait and see what happens. I own no mirrorless glass so I have no bias, I'll choose whatever platform that suits me.

To add... this has been in the works for a while so I wouldn't be surprised if a cine camera pops up from Nikon/Red at this year's NAB, or if that new Nikon camera that's been rumored has RedCode built in.

Bigger than Apple? Although they didn't try hard.

I would hope so but possibly/probably too late for me as I don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out as I need to work this year, last year and the year before within the system. I’m not being in any way facetious John as I am sure you will appreciate, but it doesn’t help with most/any manufacturers in this industry who play their cards quite close to their chests before suddenly announcing, “ ta da, our latest lens”. Brand specific strategic planning isn’t always easy when you have such specific needs as I have! Did I make a mistake going L Mount? Kind of, but then there weren’t any other real viable alternatives at that time…but at the same time, any/all could provide what I needed, but it’s really only in the last couple of years that the really niche items that work for me, have come into existence. A long, relatively lightweight and compact at least APSC, but preferably FF fast zoom. Tamron E Mount. Only player on the planet! There’s workarounds of course, but it’s complicated and niggles with every system and combo, but E Mount adapted to Nikon Z is I think, a bit special. For my needs. I’m happy with all my kit for 2024. It is easily the best set up I have ever had. EASILY. Could it be better? On paper spec-wise maybe but not by much and for me going forward and making any changes for 2025 and onward, it would have to be because it is at least; smaller, lighter, even more ergo friendly and without sacrificing any performance…and possibly gaining some. Such as my interest in 60mp+ sensors and 6k 50p internal, because that opens up opportunities to carry less bodies, smaller and lighter lenses, compensating with cropping and pulling stills from video. Leica SL3? In my dreams… The simple reality is the maths doesn’t work even if I had the beans…and a crucial lens is still missing from that line up. S2H could change things, but the glass for me will always be the sticking point for me with L Mount in the future. Or rather the combo of bodies and lenses.

Maybe they should introduce Z-mount versions of their (low-end, for RED) RF-mount Komodo cameras, branded 'Nikon RED', 'Z-RED' or 'RED-Z', with maybe switchable color science compatible with either Nikon hybrids like the Z8/Z9 or other RED cameras. That might provide upward and downward paths between RED and Nikon cameras without diluting the RED brand.

Glad I stayed in the Nikon system 😂

I'm reminded of the pattern in automobile manufacturers where the fancy sportscar brand that isn't profitable is purchased by the mass-market manufacturer that is profitable, and then in exchange for the sports brand being propped up the high-powered engineers get sent on excursions to the parent company to talk about how to tune the suspension and tweak the engine for a new hot-hatch variant. But, in this case, I'm really not sure who is profitable and who isn't... Simultaneously I'm optimistic about the RED tech trickling down to Nikon, but also pessimistic about that because now Nikon has a cine line their first job will be to protect it with a cripple hammer.

Nikon owns The Bolt robot, and now RED. Next should be Aputure 🙂

My guess is that the core RED stuff will remain largely unchanged for a time. It'd be hard for any business not to love those margins. I think the writing's been on the wall for a little while now, though, that aside from patent IP, RED's time as a viable company is limited. Competition from cameras that cost 1/4 of their prices gets stiffer every year. Otherwise, as others have said, I'd guess that Nikon will now roll out compressed raw to a bunch of their bodies and as soon as they can, end Canon's ability to add compressed raw to any new bodies (is it too late for the R5 II?). Guess I'll start paying more attention to Nikon now...

All I know about overheating is this: Sony ZV1 on tripod, indoors, ambient around 25-30c = approx 20 minutes max and it's cooked. Lumix S1H on tripod, direct sun, 40+ in the shade = either the battery or the card will run out first. The obvious conclusion (in general) is if you need reliability in this department, a heat sink at least is a must and ideally, a fan. Or live above 66° 33'N.

Wow thanks@PannySVHS! Never thought my stuff would be brought up here. The S5IIX, to be honest I haven't been shooting much this year so not a ton of time with it yet, but a bit of a mixed bag so far. Love the new AF, the intraframe codecs are nice to have as my stuff has so much motion in it. Other than that it's mostly the same as my S1, which was/is great (other than the AF). On the negative side, my X has had a problem with looseness and glitching in the mic jack since I got it. Wasn't bad at first as I customized my cage to put a little bit of pressure on the plug, which worked for a while, but now it's gotten worse and I have it boxed up to go to Panasonic for repair. I'm not a fan of the new processing for the linear profiles, I shoot entirely in V-Log so it actually doesn't affect me, but... gross, looks like cellphone footage. I'm eagerly awaiting the S1Hii or S1X or whatever comes next, but they'd better fix that processing. The piece you posted was almost entirely Cine-D, a couple of V-Log L shots from when there was that "hack" to install it on the GH4 for free- and I'm glad I didn't just pony up for the official upgrade, because I couldn't get around banding in the sky (you can really see this in the shot at 0:17, and it's not just YouTube's compression), would have been a waste of money. For post I just used the Leeming Cine-D LUT, and then his "Rich Velvet" Quickie (look) LUT, pulled back a bit. I liked the density and saturation this gave me, reminded me of some HVX200/HPX170 stuff that I'd seen years ago. Past that just some selective Neat-ing and a bit of unsharp mask. I appreciate you noting the detailed/not oversharp look, that's what I've always gone for. Lenses, for fisheyes the GH4 had a cheap "manybrand" (Samyang/Bower/Rokinon etc) 8mm f3.5, on a 0.64x Metabones BMCC booster that the shutter would crash into if triggered so I had to remember to WB with a different lens. Then on the G85 I had the native-mount manybrand 7.5mm f3.5, much easier to work with, smaller/lighter/cheaper/sharper, but not as wide of a FOV. The booster/8mm shots are the ones with the slight vignetting in the corners. For regular lenses it was about half adapted Minolta MD/MC stuff, no booster as I couldn't find an affordable one that didn't flare/blue dot like crazy, and half Nikkors on a Metabones 0.71x booster. No Panasonic lenses as I couldn't get good results with manual focus or AF. Thanks @kye, the truth is that I really struggle with editing and rely heavily on beat/music/rhythm for structure and flow. So that means a lot. The B-roll shots are actually a bit sparser in this piece than usual, this is a reaction on my part to so many other video profiles of female rollerbladers often being padded out with too much slo-mo, B-roll, and second/third angles of tricks, usually to cover for a lack of clips of actual tricks. Chynna is arguably the best in the world at this style of skating so I wanted this to be a bit more "all killer no filler"- 35 tricks in 4 minutes- typically the better men in the sport will have about 25-35 tricks in this length, while the aforementioned female pieces have 15-20, plus plenty of slomo of them tying their hair up and putting their skates/helmets on 😄