Birger Lens Mount Reservations

[Martin Weiss]

No, if anything he should shut up less, but refrain from fingerpointing in public. That' what pubs are for

 

[Eddie]

I think we need to cut eric some slack... he was just getting emotional in that email. I mean for christ sake, apart from engineering he had too deal with changing PL mounts, failing power outputs and a wedding all at the same time.
Imagine how you would feel sitting in your office thinking you are home safe, casting your unconditional love for amy into words, when all of a sudden the shit hits the fan.

And a second poweroutput which was already a work-around also fails and shorts the whole camera...

Anyway since I am sure Jim is now digging around for the complete email, here it is:

"Dear Reservation Holder,



I want to thank you with your patience to date on this development program. From this point forward, we will be communicating progress to all current reservation holders directly by email.



By now, all of you are probably aware of the announcement by RED last Thursday (26 June) regarding the warranty implications of using our mount on their camera. After fifteen months in development, Jarred’s post on REDuser is the first indication RED had ever made even suggesting that this would be the case. Yesterday (1 July), I sat down with Stuart, Jarred and a number of others, at RED to discuss the warranty issues.



We are waiting on RED to determine the warranty policy, as it applies to the removal and installation of the mounts. I am unable to comment on the delivery schedule, until we understand the implications of this policy. From the conversation, it appears RED will require the mount be installed by Birger, for the warranty to remain intact. This solution does not make me happy. It is going to add a good deal of cost to the end customer, in terms of shipping charges and labor that we will have to charge. And it seems to be in direct contradiction to the “swiss-army camera” that you all have been promised by RED.



I am committed to delivering what we have promised to the more than 200 customers that have placed reservations with us. I welcome any comments, and will do my best to keep you posted as things evolve. I would also suggest, that if the policy regarding the mounts is not what you, a RED camera owner, wants, you should communicate thatdirectly to RED.



We have made some very minor electrical changes to the RED camera adapter, to account for powering from the AUX12V on the back of the camera, rather than the AUX232 on the front - specifically limiting the surge currents, and protecting in the event of a reversed power input. Right now we are waiting on RED.



If you do not wish to wait for the warranty issues to be resolved, please let Amy (asb@birger.com ) know and we can start shipping in a few days.



Amy and I will be on vacation from 4 July until 8 July. Phone coverage will be sparse at best during that period. Please try to communicate via email.





Regards,
Erik."

 

[ericyoung]

We all made the mistake of "assuming"... I'm sure we can work this all out, but in the end, every accessory needs to be compatible with our camera, for our customer's sake. We do not take kindly to "we'll ship no matter what". Only because it is a potential problem for our customers ... Jim

I can see both points of view. Red's concern is entirely justified, yet I appreciate why Erik may have made the offer to ship some mounts at owner's own informed risk. I really don't think Erik fully thought out the possible implications for Red of doing so, as he is under so much pressure to deliver YESTERDAY! (And yes, Erik needs to try and make time to communicate better).

The emotions on this thread are a rollercoaster - one minute posters are at odds with each other fuelled by half understandings, incomplete information out of context, and pure speculation - the next things seem to be coming together and people are getting along. Then a bit of secondhand information comes along (out of context and chronological order by the way) and it all heats up again!

Remember how bad written communication alone can be at conveying intents, without constant and ongoing verification and contextualisation by other means, whether that be by phone or in person!

Can we just let Red and Birger sort it out - they know everyone wants a solution now, but putting more pressure on them will only result in bad decisions made in haste which have to be revisited! Less haste, more speed.

 

[Jannard]

Thanks for posting the email... I wish we had seen this. As I have said before, we are trying to work this out... with our customers best interests in mind. We are confident that we can find a resolution, but we absolutely do not think that "shipping before a warranty issue is resolved" is in the best interests of our customers.

This email will not stop our efforts to work with Birger. But we want to be very clear that we have had a major issue the way it stands now. RED paid for the repairs on the 1st problem... but we will not going forward unless a change is made to the mount.

What we had "assumed" last year did not turn out to be the case. We all just need to get together and solve this issue... which we are more than willing to do. But what we are not willing to do is fix problems with the current mount at our cost, and we do not recommend that customers accept delivery until the issues are fixed.

I can't believe it is 3am and I am dealing with this kind of stuff...

Jim

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

... but we will not going forward unless a change is made to the mount.

This is fair. The best outcome of all this discussion is that the Canon mount is now on the table and a solution will be available at some point. Good to hear there's support to Erik as well.

 

[Adam Levins]

Did someone say the mount from ET is going to be $4800?

I take it this is not a confirmed price as they have not even officially announced it yet?

 

[Karl H]

I dont think Erik was being as shady as you think he was. I'm assuming he thought the damage to the Red camera came because it was taking power from the AUX232 port. Erik says in his e-mail that he switched this to the rear power port, fixing the problem. So he thought that the mount was now in no danger of damaging the camera; maybe he didn't think there was any more needed to be done to make the mount 'safe'. So offered to ship it if the customer was willing to take the risk of taking the PL mount off.

I'm not defending him here, but just saying I'm sure he had no intentions of shipping mounts that might cause a potential problem with the Red One.

For what it's worth, I'd rather stick with Birger over ET, because I think we're getting a good deal. As early reservation holders we get the mount, FF knob, leads and a bluetooth remote unit, all for $1400 (ish). I dont see ET being able to match that based on their current pricing for Red accessories. I have faith in Birger to get this right, and early reports are that it works smooth as butter.

So I hope Red and Birger can sort this out, but I wouldn't hold your breath for a quick turnaround - if Red are saying anything that removes the front part of the mount voids the warranty, then Erik may be forced into a redesign. From his point of view, I can see it's frustrating if he wasnt told this piece of information before he designed the thing (and then had 200 production units made!)

Who knows where the lack of communcation came from, but all I care about is that it seems to be going in the right direction now.

 

[Adam Levins]

For what it's worth, I'd rather stick with Birger over ET, because I think we're getting a good deal. As early reservation holders we get the mount, FF knob, leads and a bluetooth remote unit, all for $1400 (ish). I dont see ET being able to match that based on their current pricing for Red accessories. I have faith in Birger to get this right, and early reports are that it works smooth as butter.

This is my thinking as well at the moment... hope something works out.

 

[Joe Vinson]

Just out of curiosity, Jim and Jarred, whose court is the ball in now? Is Erik waiting on you to finalize a warranty policy, or are you guys waiting on Erik to modify the mount before making a decision?

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Guys,

You know from my previous post that I have a lot of support for Erik on this issue.. But Jim and Co. make an excellent point about shipping a product known to void the warranty.

I was a little emotional, and said something I should not have. While I completely support Erik, the product does need to keep RED's warrenty support in tact. RED seems committed to doing this, so all should be fine.

Jay

 

[Eddie]

I think everybody should be very patient regarding the birger mount. It is not just an accesorie but a gamechanger, reducing equipment costs on a scale comparable to the redone itself!
In fact I would prefer a thourough redesign even though it might delay shipment for a month or two. A unit with knobs, remote control and all issues resolved including the undesirable cabling from the back of the camera(The camera has enough things dangling around as it is!) is more important than a premature release, with all kinds of hazzles and workarounds. I think Red can tell you about the stress involved with "public alpha testing", and birger does not have the funds to fly around the world fixing things in an instant

an optional installation of the mount at birgers place and a thorough list of lenses approved and tested, from the relevant manufacturers including tokina and sigma would be good to have aswell. :whistling:

I would urge the impatient to stop wynin´ about delays and just get a dumb nikon mount and some used manual primes off ebay. The resale value on nikkors is excellent!

eddie

 

[Erik Widding]

Whoa... I just re-read that email and think it has to be taken in it's proper context. I believe he gave people the option to take delivery of the mount knowing the consequences of a voided warranty.

I highly doubt his intent was to do a full product roll out in spite of a warranty decision by RED. He did state he was waiting on a decision from RED.

Correct. My responsibility is to my customer. I must offer him to decide what is in his best interest. I was pursuing a solution with RED, but also felt that my customer had a right to understand his options.

I can see both points of view. Red's concern is entirely justified, yet I appreciate why Erik may have made the offer to ship some mounts at owner's own informed risk.

This is correct.

Thanks for posting the email... I wish we had seen this. As I have said before, we are trying to work this out... with our customers best interests in mind. We are confident that we can find a resolution, but we absolutely do not think that "shipping before a warranty issue is resolved" is in the best interests of our customers.

This email will not stop our efforts to work with Birger. But we want to be very clear that we have had a major issue the way it stands now.

This makes me happy.

I dont think Erik was being as shady as you think he was. I'm assuming he thought the damage to the Red camera came because it was taking power from the AUX232 port. Erik says in his e-mail that he switched this to the rear power port, fixing the problem. So he thought that the mount was now in no danger of damaging the camera; maybe he didn't think there was any more needed to be done to make the mount 'safe'. So offered to ship it if the customer was willing to take the risk of taking the PL mount off.

I'm not defending him here, but just saying I'm sure he had no intentions of shipping mounts that might cause a potential problem with the Red One.

Nothing was ever going to be shipped until the electrical problem was fixed. PERIOD. The fix is in testing.

Respectfully, I would suggest that people let Jim, Jarred, Stuart and me work this out. I am pleased with the public statements that have been made by Jim in the past day, and take it as a sign that this is going to be resolved in a manner that is best for the customer. All sides now completely understand the customer's opinion.

 

[Paul Leeming]

Apparently there's a big lens hidden somewhere in this picture....

 

[ericyoung]

...Nothing was ever going to be shipped until the electrical problem was fixed. PERIOD. The fix is in testing.

Respectfully, I would suggest that people let Jim, Jarred, Stuart and me work this out. I am pleased with the public statements that have been made by Jim in the past day, and take it as a sign that this is going to be resolved in a manner that is best for the customer. All sides now completely understand the customer's opinion.

Fantastic - let's all try to give Red and Birger a respite from all the pressure and refrain from repeatedly posting the same old questions and demands - they already know what we want.

And don't plan shoots around it until they come up with and announce the solution!

 

[Eddie]

Paul, it´s a sigma 200-500mm f/2.8 all the way somewhere in the background. It costs around 8000$... Question: what would cooke demand for a lens like that?

 

[Michael Hastings]

I came over here to copy a post I made on the other thread which I think has some relevance. Obviously a hell of a lot has gone on since I went to sleep last night. Since I've got a lot of work today getting ready for a rental, I don't have time to think as carefully about another of my usual long winded posts so I'll start with just copying it and add to it in the following post. The quote from Jim is a partial - he also said something along the lines of paying more attention to the EF mount situation.


From other thread:

It is in everyone's best interests that accessories come out as quickly as possible, as inexpensively as possible and don't blow up the camera!
Jim

Jim:

I have to take some responsibility for that. It was an unlikely confluence of circumstances. Erik had a problem, but it wasn't clear at the time that one source was the mount instantaneously overdrawing the power circuit, because he had been running it fine for a couple days..

Ldill (one of my customers) had a Thursday deadline on a $150K cost production trip to Africa, and I had a less important deadline for the same weekend - while Erik's test camera was in transit back from RED. We were in line to be beta testers anyway, so I/we pushed Erik to get a couple mounts out. In hindsight if he had even another day or two the problem would have been discovered before ANY mounts had been sent out.

So, along the lines of Jay's post, I would feel very badly if OUR rushing Birger created a permanent issue with either RED or Birger's customers.

I have been telling everyone that will listen that RED represents the biggest thing in underwater photography since the Nikonos back in the sixties. Since then U/W still photographers have always had reasonable cost access to totally professional high level imaging. Yet the motion picture guys were stuck with inferior methods: 8mm, 16mm, standard def video, because 35mm film was just too expensive except for Hollywood budget films. Even High def wasn't quite there.

RED gets us into the 35mm quality range but it is the combination with modern still lenses (both Canon and Nikon) that makes it accessible also to semi pro U/W shooters, documentary types, and even high level amateurs because the internal motorized focus and iris eliminates the need for expensive gearing, and more importantly, means you can instantly change lenses (say from a superwide to a 180 macro) with no change in controls.

Thanks for putting more focus on this - AquaVideo is committed to supporting ALL lens types - but the sooner we get smart mounts, the sooner it helps some of our high level customers AND becomes feasible for the much larger number of second tier customers.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Okay, so now we get to this thread. Again, I don't have much time so I apologize if it steps on anyone's toes.

...Thanks for posting the email... I wish we had seen this. As I have said before, we are trying to work this out... with our customers best interests in mind. We are confident that we can find a resolution, but we absolutely do not think that "shipping before a warranty issue is resolved" is in the best interests of our customers.

This email will not stop our efforts to work with Birger. But we want to be very clear that we have had a major issue the way it stands now. RED paid for the repairs on the 1st problem... but we will not going forward unless a change is made to the mount....

Jim

Jim: I have publicly and privately thanked RED for taking care of that repair; publicly apologized to this thread for using up the freebie:biggrin:, publicly described that I had previous significant experience with warranty issues with Panasonic and explained that it was complicated and time consuming and urged patience, and publicly made VERY clear that I didn't think damage from improper installation should be covered by RED.

But for the people in this thread there a couple of big issues that have never been addressed:

A smart mount for modern Canon/Nikon lenses is important for a variety of reasons, but for many here (not me) it is quite literally the difference between REDONE as a doorstop and REDONE as a viable camera for their situation. The fact that RED had not seen that email, (which was published here in the thread within hours, over a week ago) as you mention, points to one source of frustration for us because even though this is the largest thread on REDUSER in both posts and views, and has been for months, the first post from a RED principal AFTER 7 MONTHS AND OVER 1800 OTHER POSTS, is Jarred's alluding to some other possible future manufacturer.

The other biggie is that just a week or so ago RED announced the somewhat arbitrary delineation of the adjuster as the no man's land for warranty purposes - which was a BOMBSHELL - and apparently never communicated before to Erik - or KH or the RED community at large.

It MAY be possible to create a mount that fits both the actual mount AND the required contacts in front of the adjuster, but anybody that adds up the simple FFD numbers knows that it would be VERY tight and the most logical design is to simply remove the whole mount since there isn't really any more dangerous exposure of the cable or the sensor. I and others have asked repeatedly for reasoning on this, since there are several easy solutions to taking care of the i/cable, if that is the concern. And it seems like it needs to be more than just "we're not comfortable with it" as it also has implications for KH FD mount, IMS, etc. as well as there might be good reasons to pull the mount occasionally even if you are not switching mounts. Aside from some mounts with stuck screws it is really pretty easy to remove either just the pl or the whole mount. Because we had the stuck screws we have had it apart in multiple ways and there is even an easy procedure for getting the "stuck screw" pl's off safely.

I quickly read Jay's posts and he makes a bunch of good points, but the warranty thing may need some clarification. I don't think Birger or anyone really wants to void the warranty, nor does anyone with good sense think RED should pay for install or electronic design mistakes. If electronic plug in to the REDONE is the concern it is fully understandable that RED needs to really evaluate that more over time before they can sign off on it. For those that can't wait that could be easily overcome in the interim by powering the mount with a separate battery. But it seems like the kicker is the mount removal issue and I think all of us - smart EF/Nikon, IMS, and just regular RED owners would like some focus on that issue because it would clear up a lot.

It is obvious that there is some tension between Erik and Red, and as a RED customer, I think that that is a shame. ...

.... But Erik (like Red) sort of did some forging through unchartered waters, and, like RED deserves a little love. Would anyone else be trying it if they didn't see the intense desire for this product through the work that Erik is doing? I give him alot of credit, and I'll buy his product if it stands up.

Doc makes some good points.

Jim: If there is a problem between Birger and RED, I don't want it to destroy my relationship with Jarred and you. I just want fairness for all and a working smart mount soon. After I loaned Birger my camera for 3 weeks back in January I began following this closely. In the absence of any REDUSER moderator I became sort of the de facto moderator of this thread and have tried to voice the thoughts and concerns of a number of people that have communicated with me both on the board and off, and tried to clarify the issues for all.

As Jarred said to me "I dont mean to call you out man... you know we love you, ..." and I might add we love your camera. Hundreds of us have been waiting many months for this, and for some of us time is running out to do projects that REQUIRE the smart mount. I know you've been busy (and a little worn out) with build 16. And I have had a LOT more time to think about this mount so I hope as things settle down over there you will consider my/our proposals regarding removing the WHOLE mount and either agree or give us your always insightful reasons as to why not.

 

[Roberto B]

Apparently there's a big lens hidden somewhere in this picture....

yes.. this sort of manga thing is what me most likes..

 

[Thor Wixom]

It sounds like everyone will be happy with the outcome...

One, the Birger won't blow up cameras. Two, it seems that the warranty will remain intact once everything is finalized. Three, the customers will get the functionality that was promised with the Birger mount.

I don't know what there is to rehash. Add all these ingredients and sprinkle with patience.

-Thor

 

[Jason Sinclair]

Group Hug