How much are you willing to pay for Dragon update?

[John Wee]

Assuming you are planning to upgrade to the latest and greatest, How much are you willing to spend for the dragon sensor upgrade? I have a feelin that they would want to go the old RED ONE pricing of about $17,500 which mean a near $10k update. The Epic upgrade alone is $6000 and the Scarlet might have a more complicated procedure. How much are you willing to spend to go Dragon?

Disclaimer: This whole post is just a spculation without any concrete merit whatsoever.

 

[Fernando Tufiño]

the question is, will it be a better deal than an Epic without upgrade?

 

[Ryan De Franco]

2000 ASA, greater dynamic range and softer highlights is worth any amount of low-compression or high-framerates available in an MX-Epic.

John, may I suggest adding an option for "I'll pay anything if it gives the best color rendition / skintone since film." I would like to see how many people choose this... I certainly would.

 

[dennys bisogno]

This is a complicated question as it is not just upgrade to Dragon, but what limitation are counted for the Scarlet version. Would a Dragon upgrade get us to what Epic is today, assuming then Epic moves to 6K/24fps+ or whatever. I just bought a Scarlet which I hope to get in few weeks, so my wallet still sore

 

[Maik Müller]

Can't answer that question without knowing more details, specs and prices for new bodies with Dragon-sensor pre-installed. It's a bit hard to drop 8k or even more if the limits stay the way they're now, the gap has to get smaller to justify it. I tend to hope for a upgrade path to EPIC, it does make the most sense given the current pricing and the planned price-tag for the Dragon-upgrade.

7-8k for a Scarlet-specific upgrade is the absolute maximum i think, but as i said above, the gap between EPIC and Scarlet has to get smaller to make people happy with that.

I'm even thinking about getting a MX-EPIC instead of upgrading Scarlet to Dragon, well, thats based on the current known details, which aren't much, not enough to make final decisions.

 

[Roger Valdes]

4000$. I'd rather get a Epic instead.

 

[Jeffrey Loewe]

Given that they said it wouldn't cost more than a new body, I can't see them charging more than 7,000, since the body now costs 7950. I know things change, but that is a big thing to renege on.

In my gut I still feel that the Scarlet gets left where it's at, maybe improvements through firmware? If the ASIC board upgrade is happening for the Epic, It's going to cost alot for the Scarlet. Maybe charge a 7K upgrade to a Epic body? Although they said to us at one point that Dragon upgrade for Scarlet wouldn't cost more than a new body...so who knows.

 

[T.A. Franks]

I would need to know how much the Sensor itself cost and what will it bring.

 

[Moses Pan]

I emailed my rep about this a few days ago. He quoted me 6000 for the upgrade...i think im happy with my MX sensor. lol

 

[Arnold F.]

Kindly provide all Dragon specs so I may vote.

 

[Alonzo Von Threet]

$2,000

 

[Oje Unuigboje]

I do not see how RED will charge anything up to 6K for the Scarlet upgrade to Dragon for which I am sure there is one.

 

[Mike Kushner]

5K already chokes my computer.

 

[Jeffrey Loewe]

I emailed my rep about this a few days ago. He quoted me 6000 for the upgrade...i think im happy with my MX sensor. lol

This is for the Epic. There has been nothing announced for the Scarlet. They're re-doing the ASIC's and waiting for those to come out of the oven before they can even fully understand what the Epic upgrade will mean. We won't know anything until they know what the Epic will be with Dragon.

Nothing on price or specs, or if it's even possible to upgrade the Scarlet to Dragon within the body itself is even possible, has yet been announced.

Kindly provide all Dragon specs so I may vote.

The only Specs released at this point were what we knew from NAB, that 2000 ISO on Dragon looks clearner than 800 on the MX. 96fps at 6K if I remember right, and 120 at 5K. This costing 6,000 for Epic. Scarlet TBD.

$2,000

Your in the wrong place then...

I do not see how RED will charge anything up to 6K for the Scarlet upgrade to Dragon for which I am sure there is one.

All we know is that in someway, Scarlet owners will be offered a upgrade. We don't know if that is through Epic, or by getting a totally new camera, or replaced parts on the Scarlet.

It has been stated it would cost more than 6K though. It's been said more than once, and can be found in multiple threads, that the Scarlet upgrade will cost less than a new body, but cost more than what it will cost for Epic, due to the fact that the Scarlet is "apparently" built with ASIC's not capable of handling what the Dragon sensor will require. But at this point same can be said for the Epic, yet they saw no price increase. Given the internals they'd have to replace, compared to the Epic, which doesn't seem to be the case anymore we would've paid more than 6,000 for an upgrade.

Due to this I don't think we'll see the Scarlet's getting an internal upgrade. Jarred has even said at what point does it make sense with the cost it would take to get the Scarlet up to speed to handle the new sensor. Once your paying more than 8K for the upgrade it's completely killed there motto of Obsolescence. The whole idea behind buying a RED was to prevent having to buy a new body, or even have to pay for an upgrade at the cost of such, which doesn't seem to be possible for the Scarlet. I see an upgrade through Epic's. You can pay a certain price to upgrade to an Epic, and a higher price to get an Epic Dragon.

I'm a bit bummed on this because I bought the Scarlet with the idea in mind that it was upgradeable. It still may be. I just don't see it. RED does surprise us though. For me at the upgrade costing more than 6,000 though I'm not sure I want to spend that much on the Scarlet to just have it be 1/10 the camera of the Epic again though. When I can practically get a Epic MX at the same price, and pay an extra 6,000 for 10 times the performance, if the specs hold true.

With all this said. I wouldn't pay more than 7,000 unless they bring the Scarlet and Epic a little closer together. At the end of the day I think an Epic is what I want to be shooting on regardless.

 

[Casper Warnich]

This is all speculation of course, but I don't think RED will make the Epic MX a part of the upgrade path. It doesn't really serve a point. I think the Dragon will be the only sensor Epic will be sold with. So that might take the price of a new Epic X up to about $25,000.

So if RED decides that the Epic is the only upgrade path to Dragon from Scarlet, they might be generous enough to give a $7,950 discount (or less) - but that would still give an upgrade price of at least $17,000. This would be a great price for a great camera, but it is probably a bit out of most Scarlet user's budget.
I think this is a huge problem/decision for RED and that's why we haven't heard anything from them. I personally see 3 obvious choices for them:

1. RED announces that the Scarlet will cease to exist (or keep selling the MX for the time being like the RED One MX), and the upgrade price to Epic Dragon will be $17,000 - and a lot of Scarlet users will complain, because this is not the RED philosophy they feel they were promised and they can't afford it.

2. RED offers a sensor/board upgrade to the Scarlet for $8-10,000. To keep the distance from Epic, the Scarlet specs will be nowhere near those of the Epic Dragon, though the price won't be far from $17,000 difference - it would then be kind of pointless for RED to sell new Scarlet Dragon bodies, because they would cost 70% of a new Epic Dragon but with very inferior specs. (To compare, the Scarlet used to cost 27% of the Epic)

3. They announce that the Scarlet will cease to exist, and acknowledge that the camera was a great idea back when it was released (when the price gap to Epic was bigger) but now it serves much less purpose. So to keep Scarlet users happy they will come up with a very favourable price for an upgrade to Epic Dragon ($8-10,000 and maybe the gunmetal grey Scarlet body will be reused with new Epic guts) - this will probably anger Epic users who paid $35,000 for their camera plus $6,000 for the Dragon, but it will save Scarlet users from having their cameras go obsolete. Of course the Scarlet MX will still be a great camera no matter what.

I hope I got the numbers right

 

[Michel Rabe]

Red do know the numbers of Epics and Scarlets sold, now they can elaborate how the new Epic pricing changes those numbers - I wonder if that makes it easier or harder for them to decide on Scarlet's future.

 

[Marden Blake]

It's gonna have to be insane-stupidly-holy-crap awesome for me to even upgrade for $6000. Not gonna throw away that much money for some minor features. It better change the way I think about shooting film at that price.

 

[Brian Merlen]

The Red One M to MX was a trade in, so was the epic. who knows if this will be a trade in or a internal tweak? doesn't really matter

as for pricing, no clue... but i am willing to pay to play, though for the mean time i have no issue with my current camera. ive been shooting it a lot lately.

 

[Nick Wernham]

The Red One M to MX was a trade in, so was the epic. who knows if this will be a trade in or a internal tweak? doesn't really matter

as for pricing, no clue... but i am willing to pay to play, though for the mean time i have no issue with my current camera. ive been shooting it a lot lately.

2000 ASA is supposed to be cleaner than 800 on the MX sensor. If it's like what 500 looks like on the MX then that is incredible. I shoot most things at 4k with 6:1 compression at 500 these days. Somebody please correct me if I am wrong on this, but that effectively means that the sensor will be as effective in low light at T2.8 as it would be at T1.4. Obviously, there are other things that change like depth of field when you open up the aperture more, but that is just incredible. It also makes shooting slow motion in lower light conditions with the aperture further open a lot more viable.

Your mileage may vary, but that combined with higher dynamic range, more resolution and access to some higher frame rates at certain resolutions sounds incredible. Honestly, if the change were 6k resolution at 12fps, 5k at up to 30fps, 4k at 48, 3k at 60 and 2k at 120 that would be worth it to me. The added dynamic range and better low light performance are by themselves worth $6k to me.

If the frame rate options were even better than that like proper motion at 6k, some slow motion at 5k and pretty decent slow motion (60fps or higher) at 4k then that would probably merit a low five figure investment in my opinion.