Professional...

[Rob Ruffo]

To me professional means to be paid via contract.

The contract is important because a professional agrees to give a certain outcome for a certain price on a certain deadline. And has a reputation of not breaking that contract.

What makes someone perceived as a professional is their ability to meet the quality outcome the price outcome and the deadline outcome. Meeting the quality without cost and schedule is more in the world of art.

Some think that the ability and willingness to pay makes them professional.
I am able to pay and probably willing and I am the least professional camera guy on this site (I promise).

But Red and Red fans need to keep in mind that professional cuts both ways.

It may turn out that telling the customers what you intend to do but find yourself unable to do when circumstances change may not be perceived as the most professional course of action.

I think Red can be a professional camera company where only movie professionals buy their cameras and make money. Thats what the red one is. Thats what the epic family is.

But the scarlet was intended by price and placement to be below that level of camera. This was the camera for the wedding videographer, the student filmmaker, etc. I think Red has a real reputation issue in delivering a product to this segment. To a segment that doesn't necessarily consider itself professional.

The artist is free to do what he wants. The professional isn't free to do what he wants. The professional is bound by what he has agreed to do and will try and make good by that to whatever degree is reasonable.

That's a truly odd definition - we hardly ever paper anything.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

To me professional gear means that during the course of any given day, it will get the sh*t beaten out of it. It will be trampled, beaten, tweaked, stomped, thrown roughly into storm cases, cursed at, run far past it's breaking point, tossed from a truck into a pile of metal at the end of day.

If it's a 'professional' piece of gear, it will survive to live and work again.

Remind me never to rent you our Red.

 

[Trevor Meier]

For my $0.02... you're a professional when someone else who's a professional calls you a professional. It's a fluid definition, but you'll know one when you see one by the respect he or she demands because of the quality of their work. Professionals want the best tools, but fit the tools to the job, and will always find a way to "make it work" by rising to the situation at hand (regardless of the tools).

As for those slagging Scarlet... What about a small, high-quality camera is unprofessional? Just because it's cheap? The price point just means that I'll have a Scarlet (or two) to go with my Epic, and I'll put them in harm's way first. I think it's great that Red's going to have a couple levels of RAW-shooting cameras for us to choose from. Each one will serve its own purpose.

I truly hope the 2/3" Scarlet & zoom see the light of day. That way I don't have to resort to using a video (bleh) camera for the small, tight, and/or risky spaces.

 

[Greg Voevodsky]

Pros still get paid for their mistakes.?! wtf?! but true?!

Pros still get paid for their mistakes.?! wtf?! but true?!

The difference between an amateur and a professional is: The professional corrects his mistakes. The amateur doesn't know he made one.

Or like a USC Professor once said at a screening of student films - "the only difference between a pro and an amateur is that a pro gets paid for his mistakes."

With all fun intended, I found that inspiring. When I ripped a 4x4 silk in half, and was still paid my $100 bucks for the day as a PA, I knew it was true. ;-)

In film school, the college woulda paid. Sad but True.

 

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

We profess to make professional cameras.

Professional cameras offer both power and flexibility with as elegant and simple a operating design as possible. This usually means an increase in complexity which requires training and support for the people using the cameras, specially when they are pushing them to their limits or using them in unique ways. Ofcourse, as users, we want this learning curve and operational envelope to be as easy and predictable as possible.

Its the difference between flying a hang glider and a Boeing 747. Both fly, but offer fundamentally different capabilities and require different levels of skills to be operated/used.

Price is not the determinant. Nor does the tool being used by "established professionals" make the tool itself "professional" IMHO.

EDIT: RED is beyond professional in the sense it has leapfrogged the traditional companies in this space who have so far shaped the definition of "professional".

 

[Peter Franzen]

As for those slagging Scarlet... What about a small, high-quality camera is unprofessional? Just because it's cheap?

Always a good point. Nobody in their right mind would accuse the cameramen on The Deadliest Catch of not being professionals because they're using small or relatively inexpensive cameras.

 

[David Stewart]

I guess a professional is someone who does something as his "profession". That is, he makes a living at it. Since I don't do this for a living, I have to come up with something that fits me, yet still can define me as a professional. I enjoy the creativity and all the nuts and bolts that go into creativity - software, hardware, study, experimentation, learning, successes, failures, passion. Passion being the most important.

 

[Justin Coleman]

Professional means the audience may love my work because of what it means to them. Amateur means the audience will love my work because of what I mean to them.

 

[JPSendall]

Pixel Vision was freakin awsome, where is it now?

By far the most impressive dynamic image acquisition and storage system ever devised by man….

Ah sarcasm, my old friend the second cousin twice removed of comedy

 

[Eric Lange]

Ah sarcasm, my old friend the second cousin twice removed of comedy

Are you kidding, I wasn’t being sarcastic.
It was a brilliant piece of industrial design. Totally out of the box type thinking. In 1987 the idea of putting a CCD sensor into the hands of a child, and using audio tape as the recording medium was truly brilliant.
Check this out about how essentially the function of audio tape was repurposed to video. It basic design was better than the image processing systems used on the Mariner space craft.

This is cut from
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL-2000

The PXL-2000 consists of a simple aspherical lens, an infrared filter, a CCD image sensor, a custom ASIC (the Sanyo LA 7306M), and an audio cassette mechanism. This is mounted in a plastic housing with a bay for consumable batteries and a simple RF video modulator. A plastic viewfinder and some control buttons complete the device.

The fixed-focus, aspherical lens is of reasonable quality, and does not significantly differ from that found on many modern low-end digital cameras.[citation needed] With some minor modification the focus can be adjusted.
An ordinary cassette transport is used for storage of both audio and video. The PXL-2000 holds 11 minutes of shooting by moving the tape at a high speed, roughly 16 7/8 in/s (429 mm/s) as opposed to cassette's standard speed of 1 7/8 in/s (48 mm/s) on a C90 CrO2 (chromium dioxide) cassette. The high speed is necessary because video requires a wider bandwidth than standard audio recording (In magnetic tape recording, the faster the tape speed, the more bandwidth can be recorded on the tape). The PXL-2000 records the video information on the left audio channel of the cassette, and the audio on the right.[3]

In order to reduce the amount of information recorded to fit within the narrow bandwidth of the sped-up audio cassette, it uses an ASIC to generate slower video timings than conventional TVs use. It scans the 90 by 120 pixel CCD fifteen times a second, feeding the results through a filtering network, and then to both a frequency modulation circuit driving the left channel of the cassette head and to an ADC, which fed the framestore.
The ASIC connects the digital output of the ADC to a block containing a digital framestore capable of storing two frames of video at the resolution of the image sensor. While one frame is read out of the CCD into the first framestore section, the previous frame is scanned out of the second framestore section at full TV frequency. The ASIC is also responsible for generating control signals for the CCD image sensor, and for generating automatic gain control (AGC) signals.

The PXL scans its 120 by 90 CCD fifteen times a second, meaning that it processes 162000 pixels per second (ignoring recovery time). The CCD clocks run at approximately 180 kHz. The tape runs nine times faster than an audio cassette, giving approximately 160 kHz of useful bandwidth. This meant that, assuming the tape behaves at specification, it can record only half of the information scanned out of the CCD. With this in mind, the PXL ASIC applies fairly heavy analogue filtering to the video signal to smooth it on exit from the CCD, then pre-emphasizes it, offsetting the disproportionate loss of higher frequencies.[citation needed]

For playback and view-through purposes, circuitry is included that takes image data from either the cassette or the CCD and uses it to fill the framestore at the PXL reduced rate, while scanning other half of the framestore at NTSC rates. Since each frame in the ping-pong framestore includes only 10800 pixels in its 120 by 90 array, the same as the CCD, the results were deemed to be marginal, and black borders were added around the picture, squashing the framestore image content into the middle of the frame, preserving pixels which would otherwise be lost in overscan. An anti-aliasing low-pass filter is included in the final video output circuit.

Truly brilliant!

I dare say that the same type of left field “thinking” brought REDONE into existence

 

[Eric Lange]

Using "professional" to describe inanimate objects' worth is an etymological leap and a relatively recent one. In the early 15th century, professional was used to describe religious orders (or "professions" from "profess," to affirm belief). Around 1747, it expanded to careers in general, since religious orders were occupations which required specific knowledge, much like any career.

The evolution of "profession" from an affirmation of belief to an occupation is reasonable, considering the religious orders were considered professions. You profess belief, you join the order, you make your living serving the order, etc. But ignoring the original meaning, professional has essentially referred to making a living from a craft for over 250 years. Thus, any tool that someone uses for his / her career can be considered professional (of or related to the profession). That includes gaffer tape to clothespins to 12k HMIs.

I realize that many other companies have labeled their products as "professional." I also realize that language evolves and changes. But consider this: Canon could accurately call the 5dMII a professional filmmaking tool since it has been used on pro shoots. But that would be somewhat deceptive, wouldn't it? Given a RED and a 5d, we know which one your average DP would use more often.

Marketers are trying to use "professional" to indicate top-level quality. After all, if skilled people use them for their very livelihood, they have to be good. But the word has been diluted by trying to only describe the high-value tools that professionals use. A paramedic could use both a $50k semi-auto defibrillator and a $.50 pair of gloves in the course of saving a cardiac arrest victim. Or perhaps that paramedic is off-duty, witnesses a heart attack, and uses a public $2k AED to save the life. The professional is the person who defines the tools he / she uses. The tools a professional uses can vary greatly in price and purpose. Further, just because someone makes a living doing something doesn't mean that he / she is necessarily better than an amateur. Intriguing thought, isn't it?

Ultimately, RED is already a professional tool. The RED One has been used on many paid shoots. Consequently, you can't make a "more professional" Epic or Scarlet. It's not (yet) a synonym for good or better. It either is, or is not, related to the profession. RED definitely is.

This was really interesting.

It made me think that if you have to put a badge on a piece of equipment that says “pro” or “professional” then it’s probably not. I.e. it’s a wannabe, and is descended from a line of more amateurish equipment.

If you have to put a badge on a REDONE that says, “Professional” then you know you are in trouble…

And by extension going “yeah, but no, but yeah,… RED One is a professional camera you know!!..” probably doesn’t help either. Either you understand its use or capability or you don’t, quibbling about weather its professional or not is pretty meaningless (perhaps), other than issues of support.

In a rather opposite fashion, for software if it says “professional” on the tin, then you know it’s going to be really expensive and you have to pay major $$$$$$$$ for just the one tiny feature that you really need that’s missing from the base product; and then you have to pay through the nose for a mandatory maintenance contract for the one tech support call you might need to make once every two years. In this case “professional” is a real headache and they have you over a barrel. As a “professional”, definitely go “amateur” if you can, if you can achieve the same result; perhaps this is the idea behind Scarlet; decent capability, fewer headaches (perhaps)…?

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Reliability, durability, not getting obsolete within a few years ...

YES!
OF COURSE, THIS IS ASBOLUTELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR A PROFESSIONAL PRODUCT!
Ths is what everyone wants, but so often never finds and is forced to give up and manage with worse and less convenient solutions.
I don't want less and different from what i need. I want what is right for me, and what is right for me (and for everyone else, i'm sure), is exactly what he just said: Reliability, durability, not getting obsolete within a few years.
We can't be wrong about this.

thank you

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

MAKE THEM ETERNAL


so that they will always be used, even if/when something more performing will come.

eventually, one day the pixel count and gamma rush will stop improving, but the most reliable, durable and obsolete-free systems will always be used.

after the "MORE" crazyness (when/if specs will ever be good enough, but ANYWAY, really), "BETTER MADE" will definitely be the thing i'll look for.

the camera with better ergonomics, expandability, rudgeness, reliability, longevity.
the closest to perfection.

continuing to be the best of the best, while getting better and better.

 

[Liam Hall]

if you have to put a badge on a piece of equipment that says “pro” or “professional” then it’s probably not. I.e. it’s a wannabe, and is descended from a line of more amateurish equipment.

Careful...

...Remember who's house you're in...

http://www.red.com/products/lenses

One thing I know for sure; when Scarlet finally hits the streets, lots of amateurs and wannabes will be buying it in the hope it will launch them to Hollywood. Good luck to them all I say, bring it on

 

[Aric F.]

Professional to me means you make money doing something. If you just do it for fun and spend your own money it's a hobby. Hopefully you have fun doing it either way but the difference between professional or not seems to be whether it's a career or a hobby.

That's a professional person.

Regarding a camera I'd say non-consumer features, like XLR audio inputs with phantom power instead mini-jacks for would be a difference between a professional camera and a consumer camera. I'd also expect a higher level of support in a professional product, such as a bug reporting facility where you actually get back to the user with bug fixes.

 

[Eryc Tramonn]

One thing I know for sure; when Scarlet finally hits the streets, lots of amateurs and wannabes will be buying it in the hope it will launch them to Hollywood. Good luck to them all I say, bring it on

Just remember, you asked for it.

Eryc Tramonn

 

[Eric Lange]

Careful...

...Remember who's house you're in...

http://www.red.com/products/lenses

One thing I know for sure; when Scarlet finally hits the streets, lots of amateurs and wannabes will be buying it in the hope it will launch them to Hollywood. Good luck to them all I say, bring it on

Thanks Liam,

I haven’t seen one in the flesh yet, it doesn’t actually have a badge on it that says “professional” on the lens does it???

Saying something is pro but having a happy badge on the item declaring itself to be pro are different? Right?

 

[Thomas Mark Schaefer]

One thing I know for sure; when Scarlet finally hits the streets, lots of amateurs and wannabes will be buying it in the hope it will launch them to Hollywood. Good luck to them all I say, bring it on

I think you may overestimate the number who have Hollywood 90028 dreams. Many of us think our families and dear friends are our most important audience. If Hollywood California becomes interested in our work, so much the better. It would probably be impossible for many to imagine how much we treasure our video memories. Since when did professionals deserve more respect than people who pursue activities with love and passion for each other (if you know what I mean)?

Tom Schaefer
Hollywood, MD 20636

 

[Josh C]

I think you may overestimate the number who have Hollywood 90028 dreams. Many of us think our families and dear friends are our most important audience. If Hollywood California becomes interested in our work, so much the better. It would probably be impossible for many to imagine how much we treasure our video memories. Since when did professionals deserve more respect than people who pursue activities with love and passion for each other (if you know what I mean)?

Tom Schaefer
Hollywood, MD 20636

Absolutely, the only reason I might wish for any kind of industry success is so that people would give me money to make better quality pictures and stories. If that process becomes cheap enough for me to afford without studio backing then I'll be happy if I never see LA again (at least not the places I visited last time I went... I've been assured there are nice parts).

 

[Michael McVicar]

Its the difference between flying a hang glider and a Boeing 747. Both fly, but offer fundamentally different capabilities and require different levels of skills to be operated/used.

Professional hang glider pilots often find airline pilots the hardest to teach. It is not the different level of skills but the difference between them. Sometimes, it is not what you have but what you do with it.