Your fav late 2023 cams?

[IronFilm]

11 hours ago, kye said:

So the old RED cameras don't get any credibility anymore?

Have they ever???

Even when REDs were more popular on production, a few years back, it was still easy enough for producers (especially in big markets such as LA or NYC) to demand the latest. Because there was a big oversupply of RED shooters vs jobs suitable for a RED. 

11 hours ago, kye said:

Wow..  considering how great the image is, and considering RED was never perceived as a consumer brand, it's a pretty fickle attitude!

Their RED Raven and RED Komodo pushed them rather close to consumer territory 

RED even at the best of times never really gained heaps of traction. 

Their market segments were:

1) RED fanboys 

2) cutting edge experimenters, who would dabble with the the RED ecosystem when it was new. Probably got burnt by RED. And would move along to abandon RED as soon as something better was available. Be it a Sony PMW-F3 / Sony FS700 / ARRI ALEXA / or whatever. 

3) people who needed a compact cinema camera , be it for a drone / gimbal / crash cam / whatever

4) people who want "higher quality" but can't afford the best. (i.e. ARRI ALEXA cameras, or Super 35 film, or something similar-ish such as Sony F35 or F65)

#1 has been in decline for years. 

#2 has completely disappeared. 

#3 got very gradually chipped away at with the likes of better mirrorless cameras + BMD's BMCC & BMPCC. But the release of the ARRI Alexa Mini almost completely demolished this niche for RED. Then the P4K / VENICE / FX6 / etc killed whatever small teeny remaining niches RED might still have in this market. 

#4 initially this gap for RED to live in used to be very big. As when the RED ONE was released the ARRI ALEXA didn't exist at the high end, not even the Sony F35 existed yet. And the HDSLRs didn't exist on the low end. So RED had all to themselves a massive huge market between the likes of Panasonic DVX100 etc on the low end and shooting on Super 35mm (or perhaps the Sony PWM-F900R) on the high end (which is VERY expensive!). Maybe RED's most direct competition was Super 16? (it's a middle ground between DVX100 vs S35) So it was easy to make a strong case for RED. 

But within a couple of years things very quickly changed:

ARRI ALEXA & Sony F35 etc got released, which meant the very high end for digital was no longer RED's. 

HDSLRs & HD camcorders such as the Sony EX3 got released so that the low end HD was no longer RED's. 

But as each year went by, it became worse and worse for Sony. 

As quickly you got RED being squeezed and attacked from all directions:

1) HDSLRs / mirrorless got better with 4K and even 10bit, killing even more of the low end market for RED. A filmmaker that in the past might have been happy to financially overstretch themselves to the max to try and get Scarlet-X for their thesis film, is now happy to shoot it on a newly released Panasonic GH4 with an Atomos recorder. 

2) Mainly Blackmagic (but to a lesser extent ZCam/Kinefinity/AJA/etc as well) killed off a lot of appeal for RED in the low end raw/ProRes niche of the market. And even attacking them hard in the mid range once the URSA Mini came out. Plus once the likes of ALEXA XT etc got released, making older ALEXA Classics increasingly more affordable to rent, then that too killed away the mid range for RED> 

3) The low/mid end for slow motion got killed by Sony FS700, and once the Phantom cameras came out they killed the high end for RED. And with time this just got worse and worse for RED, as more and more cameras could do better and better slow motion. 

4) compact cameras (for gimbal / steadicam / crash / cranes / etc) on the high end got killed once the ALEXA Mini was released, and had already been chipped away at by the mirrorless and BMPCC on the lower end

5) the low/mid range for documentaries / corporate / advertising / etc got massively eaten away at with the release of the Canon C300mk1 & C100, and then full on demolished once the Sony FS7 came along, almost no point for using RED at all. 

What was once a big area for RED between S35 level vs DX100 level filmmaking when the RED ONE was released has shrunk now to almost nothing. 

Remember too, that the camera rental is a very small part of an overall budget for a production in many cases. The difference between renting a RED Gemini vs an ARRI Alexa Mini is a rounding error for them. So why choose the RED?? 

And if someone is super strapped for cash, will they want to splurge on renting a RED Gemini or will they be happy to settle for the likes of an URSA Mini Pro or a Sony FX6 or Canon C300mk2 etc? (and probably, these cameras will be even better suited to the nature of this type of filmmaking) 

 

 

11 hours ago, kye said:

However did you guess?!?!

❤️❤️❤️

Actually, after recent releases, the second hand market for them might have gone vertical!

Indeed, you might have missed the boat on getting your hands on your dream camera! They're unaffordable now. 

3 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

The RED naming has always confused me. But I am talking about the RED Epic Dragon vs the RED Scarlet X. 

Having used both the Epic Dragon has a lot more highlight latitude and the colors are more neutral. 

ah right, two totally different sensors

Would make more sense to compare a Epic-X vs Scarlet-X that are both using the same MX sensor. 

[IronFilm]

Heh, while on the topic of the early days of RED and then their decline, this was just posted on Movie Set Memes: 

Quote

> be a struggling cinematographer in the late 2000s/early 2010s

> find a paid gig on Mandy dot com for a low budget indie film in need of a cinematographer

> director insists that you absolutely need to shoot on the Red camera because it’s new and trendy

> explain to director that the Red camera records a flat image to preserve as much detail as possible so you’ll need to also hire a digital imaging technician and a colorist to manage the footage and do color correction

> director says they can’t afford that but it absolutely 100% needs to be shot on the Red or else his movie is going to suck balls so just make it work

> just out of film school and hungry for work so you say yes

> first day of filming director says the lighting looks flat

> explain to him that it’s the raw image and not the final product

> director doesn’t understand this and thinks you’re a hack

> complains about you the entire shoot even though you’re working 12+ hour days doing like 3 peoples’ jobs

> filming finally ends

> you get a call from the director 2 weeks later

> director still doesn’t understand why the footage looks bad

> explain again that he needs to hire a colorist to finalize the look of the film but you’d be happy to do it for a reasonable price

> director goes ballistic and accuses you of being a con artist and extorting him

> never get a copy of the finished film

> director tells everyone in your local film scene who will listen that you ruined his movie and to never hire you for anything ever