Nikon buys Red?

[MrSMW]

4 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

The thing is Nikon really wanted to have a dedicated video camera in the line up, but I assume they figured removing EVF and adding couple of Fn buttons, as Sony tends to do, is not enough. 

I don't mind so much what they do as my requirements are primarily for hybrid kit.

I could make...and it would work very well, having a 'cinema' camera from Nikon to replace my 2x Lumix hybrids in that role as my 2x Nikon stills (purchased and used specifically for stills) are actually hybrid cameras (Zf and Z6ii) and could pick up some of the slack/act as B and C cameras to a principle video unit.

Currently my set up = 2x video + 2x stills, but 3x hybrid works equally as well and the only reason I have not continued with that set up for 2024 is finances.

Z6iii could potentially make that reality as could a Z9 (but I've ruled out the Z8 due to battery life, though any Z6iii would probably need a battery pack for my needs...)

I have zero idea though whether any RED tech would make any difference to my needs, but probably not...

6k 50p internal though, full frame and I'm in. That's really the only thing I am interested in right now that I do not have access to. Z9 has 8k of course but slightly overkill for my needs but future-proofing and all that, is a possibility...

 

[PPNS]

9 hours ago, mercer said:

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I could not care less about Red's patent.

you don't have to, your value judgement is irrelevant. the fact is that nikon now gets to control red's patent, and now gets to decide who gets to use "compressed raw" on their terms: 

• either we get more more cameras with internal raw from other companies, where nikon will be profiting from the income of licenses (imo unlikely)
• or nothing changes. instead of red going after other companies in court, it's going to be nikon, and thus having another source of income by claiming damages (imo more likely)

this was red's business model after all. nikon probably doesn't care all that much about making products or entering the cinema market. my prediction is that red as a brand, as well as their cameras will cease to exist in a few years. nikon will probably keep making hybrids with a focus on photography, and i doubt that any of the red tech will trickle down. why would it after all? Who's going to buy a nikon branded camcorder in a world where sony dominates the market? reds are kinda dead in the european high end rental market, why would nikon even start?
 

9 hours ago, mercer said:

It held up in court and I am a firm believer in intellectual property so whatever.

here's a value judgement from me: lol

[mercer]

2 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

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.

 

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...

[mercer]

52 minutes ago, PPNS said:

you don't have to, your value judgement is irrelevant. the fact is that nikon now gets to control red's patent, and now gets to decide who gets to use "compressed raw" on their terms: 

• either we get more more cameras with internal raw from other companies, where nikon will be profiting from the income of licenses (imo unlikely)
• or nothing changes. instead of red going after other companies in court, it's going to be nikon, and thus having another source of income by claiming damages (imo more likely)

this was red's business model after all. nikon probably doesn't care all that much about making products or entering the cinema market. my prediction is that red as a brand, as well as their cameras will cease to exist in a few years. nikon will probably keep making hybrids with a focus on photography, and i doubt that any of the red tech will trickle down. why would it after all? Who's going to buy a nikon branded camcorder in a world where sony dominates the market? reds are kinda dead in the european high end rental market, why would nikon even start?
 

here's a value judgement from me: lol

Haha "value judgement" 

[PPNS]

26 minutes ago, mercer said:

Haha "value judgement" 

what else would you call it?

[mercer]

7 minutes ago, PPNS said:

what else would you call it?

Most non-alien entities on planet Earth would probably call it an opinion. Regardless, since your reply was filled with your own irrelevant value judgement, I found it humorous that you deemed mine as such.

[Andrew Reid]

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.

[Ilkka Nissila]

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.

[Ilkka Nissila]

2 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

RED's patent has stood up so many times in court, it is pretty much beyond doubt that it's valid for raw recording.

There is no "one" patent, it's a series of patents, and patents or some of their claims can be invalidated if new evidence is discovered.

[sanveer]

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. 

[Al Dolega]

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.

[stavosf]

Nikon is mainly an optical company. Buying RED maybe they can enter a new market for their optics. Current Z lenses has less focus breathing that previous generations of Nikkors, and creating Film primes may benefit them.

 

[ghostwind]

The two Z9 bodies I got a few months ago have already gone up in price. 

[Mmmbeats]

On 3/7/2024 at 1:49 PM, Eric Calabros said:

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

Aputure are bigger than Nikon at this point 😜.

[Mmmbeats]

1 minute ago, ghostwind said:

The two Z9 bodies I got a few months ago have already gone up in price. 

Well, they are Reds now, so it makes sense.

[KnightsFan]

16 hours ago, mercer said:

Doesn't Nikon license their AF from Sony when they purchase their sensors? If that's the case, will future Red cameras have Sony sensors if they have AF?

I have no idea who licenses what anywhere in the industry lol.

 

 

Between Nikon buying Red, Blackmagic joining the L mount alliance, several global shutter cameras announced in quick succession, and AI video generation/editing taking off, I do think this might be the point at which I least recommend buying a brand new camera. 2024 might be a big year for market shifts.

[eatstoomuchjam]

It's also a great time to remember to focus on lens portability instead of buying the latest shiny mirrorless lenses.  If you use EF lenses, for example, they autofocus well (with PDAF even!) on Fuji, Canon, and Nikon cameras (with the right adapters) (and sort of on Sony, but there are a bunch of asterisks there).  Then if you value raw and Nikon decide to prevent everybody else from using it, you can just switch over to their system.  Shooting on Red and Nikon switch it to use Z mount?  Buy a new adapter and keep rolling.

Bonus: EF lenses are plentiful on the used market and you can put together a nice shooting set for a lot less than with the latest mirrorless versions (and almost nobody watching your film is going to care about the quality difference compared with the latest stuff).
"What the hell?  This film isn't perfectly sharp all the way to the corners?  What, did they shoot this on EF LENSES???  I want my money back!"

[IronFilm]

When I saw the news yesterday of Nikon buying RED I thought this was just some kind of early April Fool's Prank. But then as I saw more and more people reporting this I clicked that it is real! 

Wow. 

I initially got into photography (& thus later on into filmmaking too) via Nikon. So this is exciting news for me! It has been very underappreciated the massive contributions Nikon has made to filmmaking (such as the first ever HDSLR, the Nikon D90. Or the first ever non-cine DSLRs to do 4K, the Nikon D5 & D500. Or the first ever mirrorless to do raw output, the Nikon Z6), so I look forward to what Nikon can do now they've acquired RED. 

What will Nikon's answer to the Sony FX6 or Sony BURANO look like? 

[IronFilm]

On 3/7/2024 at 9:25 PM, BTM_Pix said:

And likely not good news for Canon extending their current arrangement for it with RED either.

I look forward to the next RED Komodo having a Nikon Z Mount

On 3/7/2024 at 10:32 PM, Snowfun said:

Will Nikon keep RED separate or will RED technology creep into the consumer offerings? 

I can see raw coming to all Nikon cameras now. (ok, maybe not the very low end stuff like the Nikon Z30)

On 3/7/2024 at 10:32 PM, Snowfun said:

Although hipsters have already moved onto Jim’s new venture…

https://m-experiment.com/pages/brand

Wow, even at the age of 74 he's still creating new businesses. 

On 3/8/2024 at 12:05 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Maybe they want to do with the Z8/9 what Canon did with the R5 and bring out a cine version of it like the R5C.

I could certainly see a Z8C turning a few heads.

If they ran those products through the RED brand (a Toyota/Lexus style) then I could see it turning even more heads.

PLEASE have the Nikon Z8C have built in NDs!

On 3/8/2024 at 12:05 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Its a bit of wild cultural disconnect between Nikon and RED though in terms of keeping RED going as is with that, erm, "style" of theirs so maybe it just is for the IP.

Can't really see Nikon releasing a new camera called the Nikon BASTARD or Nikon CRUSHER or some such.

😅🤣😝😎

 

On 3/8/2024 at 1:45 AM, Andrew Reid said:

Just don't mention a certain yellow jersey cyclist.

Why?

 

On 3/8/2024 at 1:53 AM, Video Hummus said:

Red fanboy panties will be twisted hard if Nikon is slapped on their camera. 

I'd imagine for at least the next few years they'll keep the RED branding on their cinema cameras while adding subtle Nikon / Nikkor references (such as the lens mount). 

On 3/8/2024 at 2:26 AM, eatstoomuchjam said:

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.

Agreed!

And RED was under a LOT of pressure from the high end and low end, I guess it made sense to the owners to exit and cash in on their profits

High End = RED is no longer unique when it comes to:

1) cameras suitable for gimbals or other small form factor needs, as the ARRI Mini exists (or even VENICE Rialto etc)

2) RED isn't unique with high resolution, 4K is the norm

3) RED isn't unique with slow motion, lots can do 120fps or even 240fps +

Low End = the Sony FX3 / FX6 / Blackmagic Cinema Camera / Panasonic S5mk2 / Fujifilm X-H2 / ZCam / Kinefinity / etc are all getting to be pretty damn good now and users will go for these when they need an affordable budget option. Unlike in the past when RED was "the budget option" (because shooting on a RED ONE / RED Epic was waaay cheaper than shooting on S35 film, or even an ARRI ALEXA) 

On 3/8/2024 at 2:53 AM, kye said:

But, in this case, I'm really not sure who is profitable and who isn't...

Nikon must be quite profitable if they can afford a purchase of the scale that RED is. 

On 3/8/2024 at 2:57 AM, FHDcrew said:

Glad I stayed in the Nikon system 😂 

Same! 

[IronFilm]

On 3/8/2024 at 4:35 AM, Video Hummus said:

I also wonder if this is a way for Nikon to break free from Sony Semi-conductor in a way with global sensor technology, which seems to be the direction the industry is going. 

Not really, RED never ever owned their own fabs after all. Nikon will still be going to Sony to make their sensors (or maybe one of the very few other options, such as Tower Semiconductor, or rather their sub brand "TowerJazz" that most of us are more commonly aware of) 

On 3/8/2024 at 5:53 AM, Snowfun said:

The wider implications… if Nikon do incorporate RED technology in their consumer offerings, where does that leave Blackmagic? Braw vs R3D (with the added “advantage” of Nikon’s AF, lens mount and lenses etc.) It’s going to be interesting to see how other players respond. Panasonic to buy Blackmagic? 

Blackmagic is so much more than just their cameras, they won't be selling to Panasonic. 

And BMD was always the lower cost competitor, I think they've still got their niche against RED/Nikon. 

On 3/8/2024 at 6:00 AM, ac6000cw said:

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.

This has been the BIGGEST issue with Nikon in the past for serious users. (ditto Panasonic & Fujifilm too I'm afraid) 

If I start out with say a Nikon D5200 (and amazing starter camera for its time!!) where do I go afterwards? Nikon D500, and then perhaps a D5?? But then what? There is nothing pro grade I can move onto as a videographer / DoP. 

Same was true later on with say the Nikon Z30 => Z6mk2 => Z8 pipeline. Nothing suitable for the professional user. 

Ditto Panasonic, you might go Panasonic G6 => GH5, but then what? Or S5 => S1H, then what??? 

Ditto Fujifilm, X-T30 II => X-2HS, then what??? 

While Sony had very clear progression lines, you could for instance go:

Sony a6000 => a7mk2 => a7Smk3 => FX6 => VENICE

Or Canon, with T2i => 70D => 5Dmk3 => C100mk2 => C300mk2 

The lack of this always made it very hard to seriously recommend Nikon/Panasonic/Fujifilm to newbies with lofty ambitious of rapid progression. 

On 3/8/2024 at 9:35 AM, mercer said:

This is crazy news. It'll be interesting to see what this means for both companies going forward... if anything. If Nikon were smart, their next generation of cameras should be utilizing RedCode... or is it ZedCode now?

I definitely think they'll keep the branding of "RedCode" and the decade plus of mind share that has been building up. 

 

On 3/8/2024 at 9:35 AM, mercer said:

Personally, I would love to see Red make a video centric DSLR using the F mount... even though that's never going to happen.

These days, if they do it (which I'm expecting now), it would definitely be Z Mount and not F Mount. 

On 3/8/2024 at 12:38 PM, kye said:

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.

Plus there is the collapse in traditional media, and the collapse in advertising dollars. 

Just in the past week or so there has been major developments in New Zealand with major TV shows being shut down (one has been running since 1977!!) and entire news operations being shut down. (Newshub is gone, which is TV3's news)