Scarlet gets injured straddling two sides of the fence

[dieseljunkie]

Scarlet is not for those people. Of course the average consumer is not going to buy it for his home movies. Who ever said they would?

Didn't you just contradict yourself there? Or do you think there's a market of 100,000 filmmakers in between the consumer level and the Red One level? Could be.

People are talking about soccer moms here.

And yes, I think the market is big. Look at the RED ONE. Where are they? At unit 1,000 - 1,250. Probably 2,000 more are in pre-order. Now take a camera that is 10 times cheaper. It will probably sell at least 20x more. The Scarlet really is that affordable. So you are looking at like 50,000 units. How's that?
From what everyone is shouting here, the RED competes with everything from a HV-20 to a DVX-100 to a HVX-200 to a Sony EX1. That are a lot of potential customers you are targeting.

Anyway, discussions here are getting pointless.

 

[kmikami]

If anybody think this camera targets soccer moms they are clearly wrong. They want a camera that is $500 and can be hooked directly to their TV. Scarlet is obviously not made for them.

From what everyone is shouting here, the RED competes with everything from a HV-20 to a DVX-100 to a HVX-200 to a Sony EX1. That are a lot of potential customers you are targeting.

The thing is I think Scarlet would steal customers away from each of those cameras but not necessarily all of the users of those cameras. Scarlet is the perfect answer for a certain segment of users who have been settling for the HV-20 or are unhappy with the HVX or can't afford the EX1. But it doesn't necessarily replace all of those cameras for every possible application.

For example it's not going to take any of the lower end consumer users away from the HV20, just the broke indies who are currently strapping 35mm adapters to their HV20s. A college program or other institutional buyer may have an existing relationship with a Sony or Panasonic dealer and feel more secure paying more money for equipment from a bigger corporation with a service department that's a known quantity. Or maybe they're placing an order for cameras, monitors, decks, etc. and want to buy it all at once from a single vendor.

So I think it's a bit much to think that the current users of every camera from the HV20 to the EX1 are going to buy a Scarlet the first year it's released. And even if they did I would seriously question that it adds up to 100,000 buyers.

 

[REDneck]

100,000 is not going to happen... that is ridiculously huge, even in a worldwide market...

that said, it's going to be popular!

 

[Vincent Rice]

I can see 100,000 sales after two years with no problem whatsoever.

This whole thread is redundant.

 

[WesVasher]

I think they could sell at least 10,000 pretty quickly.

 

[antiquaeuropa]

the cheapest 2/3 sensor camera on the market right now is about 40k. so you're getting this , plus great glass, plus redcode raw , 120fps with 180 burst. wifi remote, brand new sensor with better DR and it records to cheap CF Cards for $3k. you must be nuts. attack of the clones was shot on a 2/3 sensor and that looked pretty damn good. pity bout the crap story but it did look great

Well a few days have passed since the big announcements allowing the dust to settle a bit. However, do you know what has not changed? The optics for a 2/3" image plane! :sarcasm:

Let me be clear, darkkelt! You are the nut if you think that you are going to buy a Scarlet and make a movie that looks like "Attack of the Clones." [Even though you will have more of the almighty resolution than Lucas had!] You would need tens of millions in CG work to hide the shallow depth of field, and your lighting budget will be nothing to sneeze at with a fixed 2.8 lens.

Sure Scarlet has super specs for the money and will be able to make beautiful footage (thinking of some scenes in "Planet Earth" that would have benefited from Scarlet). I sincerely wish good luck to all who buy them and to Red to sell and service them for its new customer base!

However, Red is supposed to be a digital cinema company. I think that Scarlet offers very little to the cinema crowd, and I, for one, in contrast to all of you fanboys hope that I spared much of that brand of cinema.

 

[wardovision]

However, Red is supposed to be a digital cinema company. I think that Scarlet offers very little to the cinema crowd, and I, for one, in contrast to all of you fanboys hope that I spared much of that brand of cinema.

wow, could you be more pretentious? So every single RED unit isn't going to be used solely for the intent of "digital cinema", so what. You didn't get the camera you were dreaming of, I did. It's time to get down off that high horse and get over it.

 

[WesVasher]

I intend on making very, very, very bad shorts with Scarlet. I can't wait.

Everyone needs to accept that Jim is making this camera and anyone that wants one for whatever can have one. If someone wants to make bad stories but with a cleaner image who cares?

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

However, Red is supposed to be a digital cinema company. I think that Scarlet offers very little to the cinema crowd, and I, for one, in contrast to all of you fanboys hope that I spared much of that brand of cinema.

Isn't Scarlet supposed to be a great camera for film students?
Most of 'em just don't have 10 grand to spend on glass.

Scarlet is great for who really want to start to seriously study filmmaking.

It'll give a shallower DOF out of the box better than any prosumer camera out there.
No heavily compressed images. Great for CC.
Ability to make decent slow motion.

I think Scarlet contributes tremendously for digital cinema...
After all every director/dop/whatever were young and broke at some point.

 

[billyray]

good points anitquaeuropa

good points anitquaeuropa

At under 3k it may compete well next year. Who knows until we see Scarlet and the competition that will be. However, it does not seem very well positioned to me...Wouldn't almost all of the people interested in this Scarlet for $3k be even more interested a better camera for $5k or more....If Jannard can do this Scarlet for 3k, then why not deliver a more robust camera for more money.

If the lens could not be absolutely super, then make a couple at different levels and sell them separately with interchangeability...72fps and 2k would more than suffice for most situations.

Right on, Antiguaeuropa. I'm all for the Red Revolution and excited about Scarlet, but my gut says they've taken a hot car with more power than most drivers need and welded on four temporary mini-spares that max out at 30 mph. The lens just doesn't match the potential the rest of the camera brings. Red, please consider an option for a lens upgrade or exchange, even if it triples (or more) the cost of the camera. 2K...3K....? None of it matters if the glass is limited.

 

[pietro jona]

I do understand that other people in poorer countries around the world would not see it this way, but these people have the advantage that their local population does not have such an high expectation of quality for their local cinema as Americans have.

well said Antiguaeuropa, us local population in poor italy no need quality. so me buy scarlet, you buy epic!!

 

[Buck Forester]

The lens just doesn't match the potential the rest of the camera brings.

What the...? What do you know about the lens? Why are you assuming it completely sucks? Do you think RED would have 3K resolution with a plastic lens? How can all these fixed lens high-def camcorders get airtime in National Geographic HD, and Discovery HD, and Travel Channel HD, sharp as a tack, if they're crappy fixed lenses? Do you guys even know what you're talking about? Are you at such a level in your film careers that you need detachable prime lenses, but don't want/can't afford a camera that uses them? Trust me, if you can't afford a RED One, or any detachable lens camera, then you can't afford the "real" glass that goes on it. Nor could you afford to get your project properly funded and distributed. The glass on this Scarlet will be better than anything you will ever need. Unless you think Jim is stupid and is putting a cheap low-def lens on an high-def+ camera.

 

[donatello b]

"Now, if I go to my company and say "Let's buy ten Red Ones at $25000" ($18000 plus extras) they'll laugh at me. If I say "Let's buy ten Red Scarlets at $3000" (with their lack of professional features) they'll laugh at me too. But if I go and say "Let's buy ten Red Scarlets with interchangeable lens and good manual controls at $5000" they would seriously consider the idea. This is true across the board for television production."


how does one explain all the TV production crews that also carry HVX/DVX type camera's without interchangeable lens?

 

[Buck Forester]

I think that Scarlet offers very little to the cinema crowd.

Okay, question. What are the cinema crowd (I sincerely don't know, cinema is not my route), who are looking at cameras in this price range, or even triple this price range, using now? Let's say sub-$10,000 cameras... what are the cinema people offered in camera choices now?

 

[KeithHill]

Man, please. There are definitely going to be movies done with Scarlet. I know when I bought my fixed lens DVX100A people were saying the same thing. And, there were/are plenty of independent films done that went to the Big Screen.

I remember one in particular 'November' starring Courtney Cox and shot by Nancy Schreiber (ASC) and the film was shot with a fixed lens only. If the camera exists someone somewhere will shoot a film with it.

Red's Ted even alluded to this in an NAB interview that a film would/is being done with Scarlet.

If the camera is created to be 3rd party friendly it will shake out.

 

[pablokorona]

i've already stowed away my money for scarlet.

 

[Nathan Troutman]

With 2/3" on the sensor what would be the cheap lens options you could use on Scarlet if it was interchangeable? As Jim said, "35mm lenses won't work on 2/3" That means much more expensive broadcast glass. You could actually get to a point where your Scarlet with broadcast 2/3" glass could cost almost as much as a Red One with a Nikon mount using Nikon primes.

I would've been happy with a 35mm sensor and 2k with a Nikon mount, but there is a huge segment of this market that in fact NEEDS a built in lens. That's why the VX-2000, VX-2100, PD-150, PD-170, FX1, FX7, V1, Z1, EX1, DVX100, HVX200, GL1, GL2, XH-A1 - you get the idea. I'm quite tired of 35mm film adapters. However, 2/3", 3k, & RAW is insane at this price. We're talking FX7 prices folks:blink:

If you're that pressed about interchangeable lenses and 35mm depth of field you can still use your 35mm film adapter with your 35mm lenses. My camera is at F2.4 when it's zoomed into the GG on my Redrock anyhow so T2.8 on Scarlet will be almost the same. What none of us know right now is how much better Scarlet's sensor is going to be in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range, and signal to noise compared to the other cameras in it's price range. I'd be willing to bet it's REVOLUTIONARILY better.

For those of you that "only need 1080P" ah, you get 1080P with Scarlet. The extra resolution allows you to create a better 1080P image. The fact is HDV is rarely a great 1080P image but does make a really nice SD image when it's scaled down allowing the noise to be reduced. How much better will 3k look when it's scaled down to 1080P. I'd bet WORLDS better than the crap coming out of the current drop of sub-$10,000 cameras:bleh:

Oh and did we mention RAW. Hello people no more HDV crap. No more inferior highly compressed codecs. Hey Panasonic guys - no more pixel-shifting to make your crappy sensor seem to be 1080P. 3k making beautifully scaled video at 1080P. Allowing cropping, image stabilization, & a better 1080P image. Complete image control on-set and in post. At $10,000 there's not a camera out there with the features of Scarlet.

My issues are going to be with the feature set of Scarlet. RED needs to get these right. Audio options, built in NDs, solid manual and auto lens control, image stabilization, focus assist, smart menus and options control, well located controls, ergonomics in general. This is all we don't know. These are the things that make a camera a good tool. However, image quality is already a lock to be dynamically better than anything else out there. People can gripe if they want - but they're all going to shut up and buy one anyhow because there's nothing else even close at $3000.

The best part is RED is going to hit the big boys right in balls - if they want to still sell cameras they better start delivering better ones. This is the best part about RED. We're going to get better offerings from Sony, Panasonic, & Canon because of Scarlet. But make no mistake. Scarlet is going to sell like CRAZY

 

[caunt]

a watcher/wisher

a watcher/wisher

The view from someone with a very limited budget:

Why do you all talk about an $8k computer? A quad-core penryn CPU is $275, a nice motherboard with lots of sata sockets is $150, a single 750gb hd is $115 so you can buy several. ram is very, very cheap (ddr2 is anyway, ddr3 doesn't add much at this time), I have a case, great power supply, fine video card. Where are you all tossing that much cash? For $8k I could build a bunch of these and run my own render farm!

I will only be able to buy one camera in about a 10 year spread, so for me it has to be able to stand time (tough for a digital camera I know). I think the resolotion, the Raw, and (especially) the price, are great. Interchangeable lens' ? I doubt I could afford them and certainly couldn't rent them where I will shoot. Tthe option sure would be nice, but not at an additional $2k. What I WILL wait for though, is good manual control and good audio input.

Regardless of whether they decide to/can include the really good manual control in this first generation scarlet, I find this current camera exciting because I think it will do for the video world what the Canon digital rebel did for the DSLR world - force all of the pricing way down and put better features into a price range I can reach. It won't happen all this year, but everyone else is just going to have to pony up. And I am very patient (on my budget...I have to be)

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

What the...? What do you know about the lens? Why are you assuming it completely sucks? Do you think RED would have 3K resolution with a plastic lens? How can all these fixed lens high-def camcorders get airtime in National Geographic HD, and Discovery HD, and Travel Channel HD, sharp as a tack, if they're crappy fixed lenses? Do you guys even know what you're talking about? Are you at such a level in your film careers that you need detachable prime lenses, but don't want/can't afford a camera that uses them? Trust me, if you can't afford a RED One, or any detachable lens camera, then you can't afford the "real" glass that goes on it. Nor could you afford to get your project properly funded and distributed. The glass on this Scarlet will be better than anything you will ever need. Unless you think Jim is stupid and is putting a cheap low-def lens on an high-def+ camera.

QFT...

 

[dvazp]

"Now, if I go to my company and say "Let's buy ten Red Ones at $25000" ($18000 plus extras) they'll laugh at me. If I say "Let's buy ten Red Scarlets at $3000" (with their lack of professional features) they'll laugh at me too. But if I go and say "Let's buy ten Red Scarlets with interchangeable lens and good manual controls at $5000" they would seriously consider the idea. This is true across the board for television production."


how does one explain all the TV production crews that also carry HVX/DVX type camera's without interchangeable lens?

I did say later that interchangeable lens was not necessary, just good manual controls on the barrel like the Z1 and the HVX200. That would be enough for a lot of companies to take note. Also, shoulder mounted would probably be an advantage for people involved in production, but I personally prefer compact cameras (much easier for filming on location).