Professional...

[Eric Lange]

... it is not what you have but what you do with it.

That’s the most sensible thing anyone has said through this entire thread.

 

[fALk Gärtner]

Professional is to deliver on time

sorry had to say it - just a joke don´t take it personally

and I totally agree with:
"... it is not what you have but what you do with it." by Michael McVicar
its an attitude more then anything but I think sometimes good gear can help you deliver on what you imagine you need to do to serve that attitude.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael McVicar View Post
... it is not what you have but what you do with it.

That’s the most sensible thing anyone has said through this entire thread.

and cinema, being usually made with SVHS cameras, can confirm this eternal girly romantic commonplace and bullshit.

the bullshit may only apply to personal videos, so called videoart, grandparents.
for holydays and birthday parties, common people is allready past that, and wants no less than fullhd, next generation autofocus, most powerfull possible zoom, smart storage, low light sensitivity... and that's so normal and obvious and enough to answer the false myth of blabla, the famous un-demostrated and girly romantic commonplace.
Thirld world pornography certainly is past the bullshit also. Maybe amateur thirld world pornography is happy with lower than that. (But there isn't really such a big divide between first and thirld world when it comes to uglyness of videos; to be honest, i think that, while they may have a little bit more crappy amateur cameras than here, but not much really, they seem to have slightly more taste. They may have more sense of colour and composition, not to mention a lot less vulgarity, than the average western amateur with a camera.
And I'm sure they would LOVE to have a better camera in their hands, while the spoiled blabblers of the west like to spit their useless and snob blabla in hitech forums like reduser, posing with thir shous on the desk in front of their 24" monitors, saying the most idiot and useless fucking shit.

Small circuit things can be made with anything, you can make a hundred movies with your cellphone hanged from your nack and your hands in the pockets (or putting a lot of effort in them, for that matter). As long as people don't really have to watch it.

if I want to drive a screw in a hole, why should i even grab a half decent screwdriver if I can have a good one?


anyway, this holyday of the mind, every now and then, make me laugh and gives me the opportunity of thiking about different angles from which to laugh at it.
thank you.


ultimately, while obvious to the point of being useless, you are absolutely right: it is not what you have but what you do with it: exaclty. to make a shit, you need a shit as a tool. You can't go wrong.
bye.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

wait a minute... thirld world pornography is actually made by someone from the first world, using thirld world girls, if not shot entirely in the first world. I don't know.
There so much shit around that the thirld wolrd can't produce on it's own. Also, poor countries usually have more decency than the richest. A lot of things that are not accepted there, are accepted here. That's about decency and good taste.
Here, anything is accepted. Shit is welcome, no problem here. The shittier, the better. More exotic, more snobby, more money.
While in the exotic cultures, such would be revolting.
haha!

They look for better, you look for worst.
They would like better cameras. you, with your hd camera on the desk or the money that you certainly have to buy a good second hand Canon A1 with no problem in comparison to them, and your ass on the layers of cotton (which is synthetic made in china because after all, probably, money is money, also), say "it's not what you have, it's what you do with it".
smoke...
It would be interesting to compare results.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

professional camera:
-------------------
0 (most basic condition) - good quality and performance vs price, and compatible with professional standard and tools
1 - easy, ergonomic, light, perfectly usable also by 1 person crew
2 - reliable
3 - durable
4 - versatile, modular, third party...
5 - depending on model and target, but always potentially a critical feature (it can certainly be an essential feature on so many occasions): unobtrusive and low profile.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

choices, choices, choices!

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

I think sometimes good gear can help you deliver

really?
come on, why are you all so creepy scientific today...

 

[Eric Lange]

It’s not such an inflammatory statement,

But as we all know, it’s the person behind the camera and associated processes that make the difference. You can put the best equipment in the world into the hands of someone who does not really know what they are doing and the results are substandard. Conversely you can put seemingly sub standard equipment into the hands of a trained professional with good skills, technique and a good eye and they can get the maximum out of a seemingly limited situation.

A “professional” can always make the best of what he or she has, an amateur may not be able to.

We don’t always get the opportunity to work with the equipment we would prefer to use. Some professionals have budgets that an uncompromising attitude can support. Many other professionals find that they have to work within strict limitations.

The professional seeks to deliver on time and within budget. People who have a good track record for that get hired time and time again. That type of experience can take years to hone and to spot where savings in time and money can be made.

In terms of equipment and camera design, some companies have a very uncompromising attitude. I believe good design boils down to finding the best compromise otherwise you end up with systems that are very functional but monumentally expensive, and therefore risk being ignored by the marketplace. The price performance point of RED systems in general is very hard to beat. Unfortunately for a lot of production companies RED is still off limits. Hopefully for not much longer

 

[Eric Lange]

...ultimately, while obvious to the point of being useless, you are absolutely right: it is not what you have but what you do with it: exaclty. to make a shit, you need a shit as a tool. You can't go wrong.
bye.

That’s very funny (good rant).

Of course of if you really want to make shit, a high budget and excellent equipment and crews have never been barrier to shit attainment.

If you really want to make some serious shit check this out.

www.neatorama.com/2008/09/15/wim-delvoye-worlds-most-badass-artist/

Nowadays there have never been more ways to make expensive shit!

Cheers,

Eric

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

But as we all know, it’s the person behind the camera and associated processes that make the difference

yes but it's so obvious (and yet so incomplete) that saying it doesn't make any difference, nor it helps anyone. We don't need a philopher saying that if you do good, the result is better than if you don't.
Are we subumans? underdeveloped squirrels? or what?

Of course effort is put if and only the person behind the camera wants and feels to put it. Of course ability depends on one's ability.
Are we discussing such things?
If you are discussing such things, just let me know and be clear, because i realize that maybe i haven't all this time to waste.
How can people be so childish to come and break every fucking constructive discussion with useless balls like that is a mystery to me. Listen, this tread is quite important, Jim is given us once more the oportunity to express our expectation on future products, and again there is some GENIUS who waste everybodies' time, and with a simple final sentance is able to hijack the discussion. It happened hundreds of time on the forum and I'm sick about it. Of course after all I can have my n° piggy laugh because everytime it's more and more umbelievable how people repeat themsemves. They think what?.. think they are original or something, with their megawise child-basic quotes from nowhere? they think they can still surprise? Cloning cartoon-like glamorous sentences about technologies
Everytime it seems like a sleepy worm has just woke up and put his buckhead out of the hole, piss a sentence like a kithc special effects completely out of context, good for every situation common place that even a turkey would laugh at (but some other sheeps soon put themselves in a queue to pay their intellectual tribute to it, then the worm ritire itself and the forum stands still like a pear on the table.
what a bunch of stupid people. what have you got in your head guys? an underclocked zxspectrum (a fucking rocket by the way) crashed on a vocal screensaver?
will you please be back on topin now?
I'm getting embarassed even to write about this slow down that shouldn't be, jannard invest millions and on top of that he ask a question, and a fucking idiot (no offence please, there's no time and we are gentlemen, yeah, 5 years old idiots discussing about nothing, but still gentlemen) i hope that, at least, me getting embarassed in your place for this whole waste of patience would be enough to compensate for it.
It was more than enough yers ago when some other genius (are you all relatives?) was fighting to hell declaring such arbitrary useless crap, begging for NOT building cameras with higher resolution than 2k, and countless others interrupting every sort of thread just for their strolling pleasure of blabbling on with kitchen-philosophy with various and deep degrees of nothingness in the middle of every decision-related feedback, just like a lobby. Are you a lobby? Are you blabblers payed for ridiculous attempts at slowing down feedback and Red decision? If you are - otherwise i'll believe you simply have a brain the size of a fly, in this case just please be quite and let the adults talk about Epic, future cameras and other adult tecno tools without interrupting again.

You can put the best equipment in the world into the hands of someone who does not really know what they are doing and the results are substandard

oh dear. You just don't understand. You just don't.
Yeah, you don't at all. You fall off again.
The obvious will eat us all.

are we really drowning in a glass of water?

Of course an idiot with great tools will make a shit anyway. He doesn't need to have shitty tools at all.
Just look at a lot of movies.
If an idiot makes movie with great tools, the shit may only be more spectacular, but there's not guarantee.
But what's this got to do with the development of a professional camera?

Someone should open a thread with a fake title.. something that would attract moskitos, a catching title for blabblers, meking them believe they are actually contributing to some important discussion, but truly a thread of no importance at all.
So the pollute genuine thrreads would be too polluted.
"general discussion" doesn't work as a tittle. It may ends up being sometimes constructive, against most expectations perhaps. Blabblers don't go there to pollute. They come into the most fervent thread to deliver their load of nonsense.

Conversely you can put seemingly sub standard equipment into the hands of a trained professional with good skills, technique and a good eye and they can get the maximum out of a seemingly limited situation.

that's obvious too, but it's not a good thing anyway:
why giving him inadequate tools? the movie will look bad, it will make the public complain for the unprofessional production, and this - unless it's intentional, such as a parody and funny - will possibly ruin the reputation of the movie, the director, the actors and the production.
Of course I'll prefer a great director and clever man with a decent equipment - but not inadequate - than an idiot with great equipement, but this is a sterile discussion anyway, because, either I have little choice, nonetheless I will never put a project into the hands of someone I know is an idiot, or I'll have access to great equipment, so that's not a problem.
Idiots are out anyway.
(Hey, we are all idiots, sometimes. Even the best directors make stupid errors. It should be enough, no need to push particularly idiot ones)

do you realize you are (and now I am, involutarily) talking about everything but the subject of the thread? Talk about technology and features, here! Be creative. Don't pose like professor, or i'll do it straight into your throat every minute, using my spare time to compensate for yours.
be serious.. Not too serius, you'll make watchers laugh. Act like if you where moderately afraid of saying something stupid. It works for everyone.
Be creative if you can. Maybe you are implicitly asked to be creative, because if you express some really clever and innovative expectation, Red may take note and decide to implement it one day, and certainly they need and like to hear something useful.

A “professional” can always make the best of what he or she has, an amateur may not be able to.

Well, amateur is a vague term. Basically it means someone doing something not as a profesion. This still means very little or nothing, it certainly cannot tell how a visual work will be.
Amateur dosn't mean someone is doing everything by himself.
An amateur with a good story, renting or owning the equipment, directing actors well, with a good director of photography and some money, will surely make a better film than an idiot, with the same conditions and tools, wich happens to be a professional film maker. The only difference being that one is paying, the other one is not, just like as a good professor who, for any reason, like wearing a miniskirt or punishing idiot baby bulls, may loose work while in another school an idiot useless uncapable professor goes on teaching the bla to the future idiots for the glory and pleasure of the ass-licking system. Nothing special, nothing new.

If you consider the no-budget, no-tools, no-organization of so called amateur, and compare it with people who make a living with it, it's so obvious that too often are the so called professionals who deserve a water in their face. While amateurs can be idiot, they can be forgiven, because they don't ask or get money.
A professional idiot is really someone to blame, he's a parasite, makes nothing good, takes money, and this happens only because some one at a higher level, even more idiot and with money to invest or recycle, gives him money to act his own part.

I know professionals who are nothing but a bunch of well trained idiots, thinking with their feet because they are too lazy to put much energy into the project, and the only plus factor about them is that they usually use more professional equipment, because they have easier access to it.
On the other side, there are some artists and thinkers who know little about film making, but make much better visuals, because nothing can beat an idiot in an upside down war.

I still got the impression that some feel that professionals in visuals are some sort of better people than average, or better professionals in their job than, say, gardeners in theirs, but i don't believe this at all.

A professional camera has to be used both a professional, in professional or non necessarily professional jobs, and by amateurs who seek a professional camera.
It has to handle professional use, no matter who uses it, barabbas or my cousin or spielberg, as long as the user know what he's doing and knows how to operate the camera.

a professional camera should be focued on shooting with the best possible results, hassle free and snob free.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/15/...badass-artist/

hahaha, hey I know this guy, my brother and I talked to him about shit making in an art exibition where he was showing his shit-making machine.
but I's to a mechanical process to me. Emotions may modify the shit in real life. A machine cannot the same way. Consumers will surely taste the difference.

Consumers are not dumb.

Many other professionals find that they have to work within strict limitations.

everyone in life must face limitations. wealth only pushes thi limit further away but at the same time the wealthy can reach his limit as easily.
Of course he can do more.
talking about this is useless, and paradoxically the more the money is a concern, the less time should be wasted in talking about that.

The professional seeks to deliver on time and within budget.

this is a terrible limit to any work. very stressing for people and bad for the result.
let's try to stay on topic: a professional camera should help the director/operator/assistants instead of needing constant help. It should be intelligent to some extent.
BUT this is very dangeous. It should allow the most basic approach as well as offer a more advanced set of features that boost the production rather than limiting and slowin it down.

People who have a good track record for that get hired time and time again

very appreciable but still not enough to garantee good quality results.
This is defence: the ability to solve problems, to deliver on time
I dream of a camera that plays attack: it delivers BEFORE time. it pushes production, it invites me to shoot and helps me doing my best. I don't know what this means, but someone may invent something more and more marvellous.

some companies have a very uncompromising attitude.

which one? attitude may be uncompromiing, but i've never seen an uncompromised gadget.

for a lot of production companies RED is still off limits

well, it comes down to priorities, then. millions of people have cars that are more expensive that a red one with basic funcionally configuration. If they don't feel like spending that money on a professional camera and don't want to renounce to such cars, the problem is mostly in their heads. But who am I to judge them?
Anyway this consideration reduces the amount of people who cannot afford a red one.

 

[Peter Moretti]

...a professional camera should be focued on shooting with the best possible results...

Could we be more obvious? LOL! :tongue: :biggrinjester: :chillpill:

 

[Samual Murman]

Calma, Alberto. Forse fai una pausa. Non e una guara.

 

[Eric Lange]

Dude how many Espressos/day are you on?
Alberto your post was very funny, I particularly like this part…

yes but it's so obvious (and yet so incomplete) that saying it doesn't make any difference, nor it helps anyone. We don't need a philopher saying that if you do good, the result is better than if you don't.

Are we subumans? underdeveloped squirrels? or what?

There is an element of truth to what you say. You can’t have it both ways, sometimes the bleeding obvious does have to be stated as a “friendly” handle to bring a “discussion” vaguely on track or draw out useful insights from perhaps folks that would normally be a bit too shy to post in such an environment [as you know]; [no doubt that will give you endless ammunition for at least three more diatribes].

Clearly this is a total waste of time, but you do seem to provide some entertainment value that is probably not to everybody’s taste; but obviously you could care less (no big deal).

However Alberto, trying to turn this thread into performance art really is a waste of your talent.

It’s very clear that you are an undisputed master at taking the piss, shall we say a “professional” (at least).

I’m sure RED Team ARE hanging on your every word, poised to jot down these amazing insights.

Why don’t you send Jim an e-mail, I’m sure he’d love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Eric

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alberto Caprioglio View Post
...a professional camera should be focued on shooting with the best possible results...
Could we be more obvious? LOL!

you'r right
eye for eye
we are all idiots and useless

Calma, Alberto. Forse fai una pausa. Non e una guara.

cos'è una guara?
perchè pensi sia una gara? non ci avevo pensato.
quando smetto di divertirmi o il tempo è scaduto, scappo. in effetti sta scemando. (dall'idiozia si passa alla scemenza)
scrivo molto di rado, di solito concentro tutto in un paio di giorni.
scrivo quando non posso farne a meno, quando ridere non è piu sufficiente.
ho solo interrotto un'interruzione.
sono due giorni che ripeto: torniamo all'argomento iniziale.
ciao freak.

 

[Eric Lange]

Alberto you are good guy, and very funny. I have worked with several Italian crews on different projects and always had an amazing amount fun (I hope to do it again some time).

If for example we were both and others at a bar in Torino, we would find your banter very entertaining; without question. Your English is excellent BTW.

To say that you have just “interrupted an interruption” is sort of an excuse.
The thing that’s a little frustrating is that in amongst the quick witted rather verbose stream of consciousness are indeed some interesting points or perspectives; almost an ironic roller coaster if you will.

The reality (for what it’s worth, as you know) is RED team/Jim are not looking for a “spec list” to inform their design work. They are not going to say, wow “Alberto, Eric, what amazing ideas you have let’s hire these two as chief designers”. What they are fishing for in a rather oblique way is to gauge how people perceive a piece of equipment as being “professional” or not. It’s much more about PERCIEVED VALUE. It’s much more about price points and marketing than using our spec list to inform their designs.

Your main complaint is to rail against plodding and pedantic posts. This medium of posts in a thread is a retarded form of communication that is plodding and pedantic that does limit things somewhat to the level of “brain damaged squirrels”, this is unavoidable. However these rather obvious statements are certainly useful from a market research perspective.

Ironically you posted: the following,

///////////////
professional camera:
-------------------
0 (most basic condition) - good quality and performance vs price, and compatible with professional standard and tools
1 - easy, ergonomic, light, perfectly usable also by 1 person crew
2 - reliable
3 - durable
4 - versatile, modular, third party...
5 - depending on model and target, but always potentially a critical feature (it can certainly be an essential feature on so many occasions): unobtrusive and low profile.

///////////////

The sentiments contained within this list have in essence been posted many thousands of times over since the inception of RED.

The fact that what is written is very obvious, but does it make it any less valid? You talk about drowning in a glass of water (also very funny).

Also rather ironically you speculate about creating a “decoy” thread to draw away the useless mosquito’s (that is funny too), but have you ever stopped to consider that maybe this thread IS designed to lure the mosquitos???

From my perspective I am trying to get back to this idea of PROFESSIONAL = HIGH VALUE and more importantly PERCIEVED high value.

Take for example a simple case, LEICA. They make superb lenses, they are almost too good but cost way more than their benefit (I believe in most cases). [This to me embodies the rather uncompromising “Germanic”/Swiss attitude to industrial design]. However their digital M series camera bodies are very expensive. If you take one apart you will find that they are not (this is only my opinion) as well engineered for example as a Nikon. However their whole business is based on the belief that you are buying the best in Swiss/German/Austrian camera engineering and therefore charge accordingly, to this imagined or “perceived iconic value”, and inefficient manufacturing processes. (Sanjin don’t take offense).

In rather an opposite fashion, RED has designed systems that have amazing capability but their price is very low compared to the capability of the various systems. In the US in particular, people judge VALUE = $$$$$$$, I,e, the more expensive it is the better it must be. If EPIC was four times more expensive than the projected price, nobody would question this, but to get their products into a new market (that they have practically created themselves), they have had to basically set a low price point. It’s a fine line to tread, and Scarlet will confuse price VS perceived value and capability even more. This may also explain why it was necessary (in part) to raise the projected price of Scarlet.

Effectively the REDs accessible price points might in part compromise in some people’s mind the notion of how “professional” the equipment really is. I don’t think that way but others do.

Cheers,

Eric

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Your main complaint is to rail against plodding and pedantic posts.

yes.

Ironically you posted: the following,

///////////////
professional camera:
-------------------
0 (most basic condition) - good quality and performance vs price, and compatible with professional standard and tools
1 - easy, ergonomic, light, perfectly usable also by 1 person crew
2 - reliable
3 - durable
4 - versatile, modular, third party...
5 - depending on model and target, but always potentially a critical feature (it can certainly be an essential feature on so many occasions): unobtrusive and low profile.

///////////////

The sentiments contained within this list have in essence been posted many thousands of times over since the inception of RED.

The fact that what is written is very obvious, but does it make it any less valid? You talk about drowning in a glass of water (also very funny).

but the order makes a difference. for example, while my point #1 would be
- easy, ergonomic, light, perfectly usable also by 1 person crew
for someone else, modularity would be point #1, and easy layout and operation could be the last of list.
Since we are asked an ideal definition of "professional", while I may change my mind in the future, today my list would be in that precise order. I don't think a preferred order could e defined obvios. It's a preference. A preference in the ideal definition of a proper profesional camera. This don't necessarily has to do with what is, as average, considered - by who? by the manufacturers? that's almost as arbitrary, and surely on the limiting side for a given price... and we all know how frustrating the story until very recently used to be, there was basical a huge hole in the market, digital shooting was simply not there while at the same time the demand was high and the 10000+ red ones sold in such a short time clearly showed - a professional camera.

Also rather ironically you speculate about creating a “decoy” thread to draw away the useless mosquito’s (that is funny too), but have you ever stopped to consider that maybe this thread IS designed to lure the mosquitos???

mmm... I admit I did'nt think at all about this possibility. I really don't know.
It's an interesting thread nontheless.

From my perspective I am trying to get back to this idea of PROFESSIONAL = HIGH VALUE and more importantly PERCIEVED high value.

yes, definitely. But that's doen't say anything on the technical and technological aspect of "professional". this definition is almost impossible to rereject, since it's extremely vague.
I think that's ok but, but it's also very interesting to know how important are to people each of the the various technical and technological features wirth considering in the definition (or their idea) of "professional". For example, how much a low profile, light weight, small form factor, are important factor in a professional camera for you, me, the red army. Whatever the results would be, I don't find such matter to be too obvious. In fact, I'b be curious to know such things. It could be a honest indication of the uses of cameras around the world, both actual and ideal.

Take for example a simple case, LEICA. They make superb lenses

i'd say extraordinary glass and mechanics, but most of pre-war lenses have more natural bokeh. Is it so expensive or technically complicated to put a damned couple of extra flanges in the iris?

they are almost too good but cost way more than their benefit

The benefits may vary a lot.
If you spend 2000 for a lens and take only 1 picture and are able to sell it to an art gallery for as low as 2500, you may not have made the best business of your life but it would still have been worthwhile. If you bought it second hand for average price and re-sell it after the job for same price, it gave you a gain of 2500.
Of course, you may have taken the same picture with a very decent lens costing only 200, or maybe not. Who knows?

i don't think leica lenses are extremely expensive, for being among the best performing photographic glass and such precise piece of metal. Just more expensive than average Nikon and Canon and a good bit more expensive than the excellent pentax; so what?
Modern cine lenses are fucking expensive, Leicas are cheap. Still, cine lenses prices are considered fine by the companies who are able to justify owning them.

Which "most cases" are you referring to?
In the crude world, most casy means all cases, with a large majority of point&shoters who don't know what a lens has a given maximum aperture or that it has one at all. They think a lens is a rod with glass inside (at best), or a flat hole made of transparent plastic so the image can go tru the camera and reach the sensor. So far.
At least this is the imaginary user that you can imagine just at looking at so many consumer cameras descriptions in their websites. I don't know why camera companies have so little respect of themselves, to the point of looking stupid to the eyes of a half-intelligent amateur. The desperate attempt to appealing to the most insecure and ignorant range of the users, regardless how large it is, makes those companies look not honest to the eyes of anyone above this imaginary land of all-accepting idiots.
being non-expert user doen't automatically imply being a total idiot with a brain of a 5 years old child that get impressed by a colorful bubble of nothing a useless bullshit of description of advertising.
I don't trust a company that promises miracles to un-expert consumers. Why would they be honest about their high end products, if they make any? They may just change the level of the description/advertising a little bit, but still be driven by the same lust for profit. Also, the marketing of large product differentiation plays a bad role against the genuinity of the higher end range of the same company, that's why Canon semi-pro or pro (call them what you like) videocameras are not bad at all, while sony sometimes deliver less for the same price, while their higher range is indeed good, but at a suspect and much much much higher prices. They can't have everything, but they seem to try.
Fucking-huge corporatons...

However their digital M series camera bodies are very expensive. If you take one apart you will find that they are not (this is only my opinion) as well engineered for example as a Nikon.

Leica has one through some financial troubles some years ago, just when the digital race became incredibly tight, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll be making incredible cameras again not too far in the future. Well I hope.
Nikon makes good cameras and optics, no doubt. But no digital range finder cameras, so it's good there is Leica, even if they seem to be marketed to paralytic collectors or wannabe brokers who think cameras are investments instead of machines. If a M-model works well, it can be a great photographic weapon for anyone.
Who cares if it's more expensive than a Nikon. If you want it, if you need a range finder camera, you can buy it and be perfectly happy. People do buy things that are more expensive than competitors. I doesn't necessarily have to be a stupid thing. Every case is different. Every model has strenght and weakness.

However their whole business is based on the belief that you are buying the best in Swiss/German/Austrian camera engineering and therefore charge accordingly, to this imagined or “perceived iconic value”, and inefficient manufacturing processes. (Sanjin don’t take offense).

well, Nikon is not exactly doing the opposite. Nikon do not say "hey, we are second best but still convenient". Nikon also says its own cameras are high value, well engeneering, superior technology...
So, maybe if, when you think of Leica, yor can't help thinking of good engeneering and craftmanship, maybe it's because you really think it is so, regardless the accent of marketing. Leica never shouts promises, I think they are quite frank and down to heart when they advertise their produtcs.
Those you most often brutally lie and promise perfect and incredibly beautiful pictures are the manufacturers of low, consumer, never-enough-idiot-prof cameras.
Nikon, Canon, Leicas and a few others are, on the opposite, quite serious and respectable.. i would say, with an inverse proportionality to the extent of their product ranges.

when you say, referring to Leica, that "

their whole business is based on the belief that you are buying the best in Swiss/German/Austrian camera engineering

, I quite disagree. Their business is based on actually making products which are usually very good, often excellent, sometimes less than desirable, usually quite expensive, AND marketed, more or less, accordingly.
I don't know if there really is that imbearable hype about Leicas that you talk about, in comparison to, say Nikon and Canon heavy publicized wonders, but I never saw any vulgar and unrealistic campaign shouted by the company itself. She basically says her products are excellent, like everyone does, and she shows and describes them technically, of course explains their strenghts, put a (high) price, and that's it.
That's not too bad!

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

In rather an opposite fashion, RED has designed systems that have amazing capability but their price is very low compared to the capability of the various systems.

that's a differnt story. No doubt Red is a miracle.

In the US in particular, people judge VALUE = $$$$$$$, I,e, the more expensive it is the better it must be. If EPIC was four times more expensive than the projected price, nobody would question this, but to get their products into a new market (that they have practically created themselves), they have had to basically set a low price point.

And I thank them very much. The policy worked under every aspect.

It’s a fine line to tread, and Scarlet will confuse price VS perceived value and capability even more.

This is very good, because it will give the opportunity to many guys to have good value without spending a fortune, and at the same time it will push the big budget companies to the top over the top of a new absolute and untouchable peak with Epic. Since big budget companies will buy the very very best, they will have no problem in buying tons of Epics, and everyone will be happy like I am.

Effectively the REDs accessible price points might in part compromise in some people’s mind the notion of how “professional” the equipment really is

I'm fine.
A nice weekend to everyone!

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

You can’t have it both ways, sometimes the bleeding obvious does have to be stated as a “friendly” handle to bring a “discussion” vaguely on track or draw out useful insights from perhaps folks that would normally be a bit too shy to post in such an environment [as you know]; [no doubt that will give you endless ammunition for at least three more diatribes].

run! the tongue is all over the place now. Ican't resist macaco dance
i sleep jumpy at all this, you are dust
feel like an external disturb trying to nail things down.
fire everything please.
i die if so slow. at the same moment, i'be barack next year, gonzo
can't you focus on the matter at all eh?
don't make me eat your head, let's go back to super-now.
put an instantayour constant hijacking neous videocassette like those of spaceballs or i'll melt please

 

[Jason Sinclair]

I consider myself a professional artist:

I want tools that are versatile.
I want tools that give exceptional quality.
I want tools that are adaptable in the most simplistic, least expensive manner.
I want tools that are rugged.

That is all.