3rd Party Mounts - Warning

[J.Burger]

Summing up, can't avoid thinking that the whole issue of Canon and Nikon adapters has been somewhat overlooked.

I can’t really tell, but this seems right to me.

Considering how long it took till the Nikon mount was produces and now the lack of communication between Erik and RED shows to me that RED had not really so much interested in supporting the CANON/NIKON way. Maybe there was a naturell conflict of interest considering the fact that RED produces CINE lenses and wants to sell those of cause. But like Lauri said, for many of us PL lenses are not really an option.

All has to do with the wonderful modular design – but this one causes also now some problems. Maybe RED needs really somehow a person - a coordinator - who just deals with third party developers – or at least should publish rules under what kind of circumstances the third party developers can go their way.
To make sure the right tone is catched - I totally trust you, you will work it out, I m sure… Thanks so much

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with Red having an devious plan to sell more of their PL lenses. They will sell plenty of lenses whether there is a Birger Mount or Nikon Mount. At $20K for their primes, those will fly off the shelf if they are of the quality they appear to be.

The issue with the Birger Mount has to do with implementation and ironing out some of the details. If this had been done behind closed doors, we may have never caught wind of it. But this whole process is an open book, so that's why we know.

Now, the issue of the mount taking longer than expected, that is a whole other issue. But what we are dealing with here I believe will get worked out and eventually this will be an accessory that will work with the camera. As Jim said, Erik is a smart guy and there's some smart people working behind the scenes at Red too, so they will probably find a good compromise. Time is the biggest challenge.

 

[A. Bastaki]

should i order a nikon mount today.. how long would it take for it to arrive?

 

[Francis Kenny]

I love a good sense of humor when there is a crisis.

We sent two dozen guys to the moon and back over thirty years ago. But we did manage to blow up several rockets beforehand. I'll bet there is a whole lot of smart people working this problem out. Have faith.

 

[Jarred Land]

So the warranty will be void for anything that goes wrong during the installation of a 3rd party device, then after the device is installed the warranty will cover everything that was not damaged during the installation. Sounds good.:shiftyph34r:

I want to make sure everyone knows you are joking.. because I am not sure if that is clear to people.

Just so everyone knows,.. the above statement is false.

 

[Anthony Gratl]

I love a good sense of humor when there is a crisis.

We sent two dozen guys to the moon and back over thirty years ago. But we did manage to blow up several rockets beforehand.

using the equivalent of a 486 no less!!!

 

[jimhare]

Does anyone know if the K-Muse FD mount voids the warranty?

 

[Damon Meledones]

I want to make sure everyone knows you are joking.. because I am not sure if that is clear to people.

So just to be absolutely clear, is RED's policy that:

(a) Damage caused by third party accessories and equipment will not be covered under warranty?

(b) Installation / use of (certain?) third party accessories will void all RED warranty coverage for the entire camera?

(c) Installation / use of (certain?) third party accessories will void RED warranty coverage of the parts of the camera which they interface with / could reasonably interfere with?

US law requires that new car warranties operate like (a), and not (b) or (c). However, while the RED may be priced like one, a car it is not.

 

[Stephen Williams]

US law requires that new car warranties operate like (a), and not (b) or (c). However, while the RED may be priced like one, a car it is not.

Hi,

I understand that under Californian law there is no requirement for any warranty.

Stephen

 

[Jannard]

This is not rocket science here, folks. We encourage 3rd party accessories for RED. But we would like to make sure our customers don't experience grief and we don't pay for other's incompatible engineering. Our camera works. You add something that blows it up, we don't want to cover the cost of repair. Pretty easy.

We think that with just a little bit of RED testing before release, we can aid 3rd parties to release products that work with RED and don't screw up the program. It is to everyone's advantage that 3rd party accessories work in harmony with the RED ONE.

Jim

 

[Damon Meledones]

I understand that under Californian law there is no requirement for any warranty.

I imagine that is correct; I think few, if any, US states require manufactures to provide a warranty. Clearly, IANAL, nor do I play one on the Internet :wink:.

 

[ATF]

Hello,

Have you guys thought about a formal RED Certification program? A program that would have third party developers for hardware and software provide their accessories or software to RED for internal testing and certification. If they passed, they would be provided with the "Certified for RED Cameras" seal of approval.

Obviously this would require additional personnel and investment, but it may go a long way towards heading off any future issues.

Best,

ATF

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

It is to everyone's advantage that 3rd party accessories work in harmony with the RED ONE.

Fully agree ...

The flange focal distance of EF lenses is 44mm. In case of Nikon F mount it's 46.5mm and in case of PL mount it's 52mm. This implies, if RED sticks on the policy that warranty is void if anything else than the PL mount is removed, then the EF-adapter had to be pretty, or perhaps better to say extremely thin. Or, if there's a way to design a kind of cup and the adapter sits there in the bottom, there will be another design and production cycle implying a long delay before the adapter is available.

The humble wish is, hopefully you'll find the solution not just a solution. In other words, it would generate a different kind of atmosphere if Jim said the Birger EF-adapter has a very high priority from Red's point of view.

 

[Joe Vinson]

This is not rocket science here, folks. We encourage 3rd party accessories for RED. But we would like to make sure our customers don't experience grief and we don't pay for other's incompatible engineering. Our camera works. You add something that blows it up, we don't want to cover the cost of repair. Pretty easy.

We think that with just a little bit of RED testing before release, we can aid 3rd parties to release products that work with RED and don't screw up the program. It is to everyone's advantage that 3rd party accessories work in harmony with the RED ONE.

Jim

This makes sense, of course. I think most of us are just surprised there wasn't more communication between Birger and RED before now.

Erik said the level of camera disassembly required for installation has remained the same since the early prototype. Is that incorrect?

 

[M Hsu]

It seems to be that with a minimal design change, RED could enable a canon mount to be used without removal of the back half of the PL mount. If the back half of the PL mount had a small amount machined away from the inside edges making the opening wider, perhaps it would be possible to fit a collar in there that would allow the EF lens to get back that extra milimeter it needs. (so the canon lens once mounted would flush to the back part of the PL mount, with the canon collar actually inside the PL mount) Under PL mount use if it was even necessary, you could merely fit a simple ring in there. I don't know if there's enough material in there to widen the hole a couple milimetres all the way around, but if there is, then the canon mount would simply consist of a collar that allowed the lens to sit flush on the PL mount and adding an EF dumb mount would be as easy as adding a Nikon dumb mount. I don't know enough about the construction of the PL mount to verify if this is as simple as it sounds and I don't know if that gets us back far enough, but if I understand what erik is saying about needing .6 more of a milimeter, you could get that .6 by allowing the mount to recess a bit, which as Lauri pointed out is sort of a cup. That doesn't help any of us now, but perhaps for future cameras it would open up some canon mount development.

 

[Mark B.]

I want to make sure everyone knows you are joking.. because I am not sure if that is clear to people.

Just so everyone knows,.. the above statement is false.

Yep, my humor can get extremely subtle at times.

Mostly I just wanted to know that if we use the Birger mount and everything runs fine after installation (hopefully because all the kinks were worked out), but then for example the RedOne fan stops working a month later or starts to make a squeaky squeaky sound, it would be nice to know that the fan would fall under warranty instead of being immediately dismissed as non-warranty collateral damage due to the presence of the Birger mount.

 

[Stephen Williams]

but then for example the RedOne fan stops working a month later or starts to make a squeaky squeaky sound, it would be nice to know that the fan would fall under warranty instead of being immediately dismissed as non-warranty collateral damage due to the presence of the Birger mount.

Hi,

You could just put the PL mount on & send the camera back.

The advantage of buying a second hand camera is you don't have to worry about such things!

Stephen

 

[Thor Wixom]

Just a thought for the EPIC (too late for the Red One),

It would be great to have the back focus adjustment be able to accept IMS, Canon, Nikon, Birger, etc.

Back focus ANY mount... ANY lens... NO VOIDED WARRANTY for removing that part of the camera.

Anyone want to second the motion?

-Thor

 

[Michael Hastings]

my 3 cents (I've already given the 2)

my 3 cents (I've already given the 2)

I used to make underwater housings for Panasonic (i.e. we oem manufactured them with the Panasonic name on them, and they were sold by Panasonic dealers) for some of their camcorders. It was SEVERAL WEEKS of back and forth with their lawyers to get the exact Warranty Terms, End User Assembly Instructions and disclaimers worked out.

Warranty issues can get complex because you want to be fair but you can't leave yourself big open ended liabiities either. I think in the end this will be sorted out where everyone can feel comfortable, but this issue cropped up kind of suddenly, so I think everyone should give them a few days to think about it and sort it out before panicking.

Originally Posted by Jarred Land:
This really sounds much worse than it is... I am sure Erik will fix the issues and everything will be back on track in no time.

Originally Posted by Erik:
Jarred, Stuart and I are sitting down together in OC on Tuesday to work through the issues. I just bought the ticket. I second Jarred's statement of confidence.
__________________
Erik Widding
www.birger.com

Mine was about post 47, but it seems like we are getting endless speculation anyway - with very little in the way of pictures or facts to go with it - so (with apologies for any inaccuracies I may put forth) I thought I would put some up.

First is a picture of the assembly of the birger mount (added note: picture is as I got it a week ago thursday - the plug to the 10 pin lens connector has now been changed to a 4 pin lemo on the mount with a cable to the 4 pin external dc output on the back of the camera). The second is the assembly of the Nikon mount.

While with birger you have to go to the "firewall" so to speak i.e where the PL mount is attached (and BTW I think this was the same as where you went to with the original RED pl mount but I could be mistaken as it has been a long time since I had my hands on gibby's #8. That is, the current and original birger mounts require removal to the same point as the RED PL mount did until the change in December) - but you do not have to remove the hard front of the camera - as was the case with the proposed P+S mount, up until P+S's recent announcement that they had figured out a way to avoid making a replacement hard front.

Doug Underdahl's video, and the second picture, and the following posts show that you still have to mess with the i/data cable even during the nikon mount installation - and if what I remember from briefly playing with Amund Lie's Nikon mount is correct - it might even be a little fussier of a process because there is less area to fit the cable and connector in there - I think there is actually more space behind the birger ef mount.

.....
Changing mounts is a little daunting .....
The wiring harness is a bitch to get flush in the channel and I had to reattach the PL mount twice to get it back to flush but over all it worked out well. .....enjoy

With birger you don't have or need that channel.

Hy ibloom -

You can see me put a Nikon mount on a RED on Youtube. Just go there and do a search on RED CAMERA LENS MOUNT, and make sure you watch both episodes.

You have to either A) stuff the connector into the camera's recess sideways, and carefully stuff/shove the excess wiring around it, or B) carefully shave the sides of the connector off, then push it back into the connector not sideways but lengthwise, and push the excess wire back into the camera at the point that it emerges. I did A and haven' tried B but I think B is probably bettery because this technique allows you to index the Nikon mount to any of 8 positions, putting the witness mark where you like it.

and from another post: Now as for swapping mounts, I think the "shave the connector and turn it sideways and stuff the cable at the other end back into the camera" is probably the best solution toward solving the problem of having the cable sticking out and making mount swapping more difficult. I'll check this out and if all goes well, I'll do an other video of this. I have to wait until my voice comes back though, as I have a nasty head cold. Kudos to whomever figured this out - I'll search and credit them in the video.

Just a thought for the EPIC (too late for the Red One),

It would be great to have the back focus adjustment be able to accept IMS, Canon, Nikon, Birger, etc. Back focus ANY mount... ANY lens... NO VOIDED WARRANTY for removing that part of the camera. Anyone want to second the motion? -Thor

Thor:

You really don't have room to make that possible. The reason dumb mounts for nikon, leica, etc. can only require removing the front portion of the RED adjustable mount is that they are basically just thin flanges to hold the lens mount.

The smart mount has to have the contacts for the canon lenses in the right place and then a circuit board for the electronics that mimic a Canon camera, then the three lemo connectors and (after numerous customer requests 3 buttons for on-mount setup plus adjustment of the iris up and down - rather than just through additional wired components or bluetooth.)

One of the reasons I have promoted being patient with Erik's delays is that having had both versions of his mount I realized how tough a challenge it was in terms of the electromechanics. While RED has done amazing things with the imaging hardware and software, electromechanically they could build the body anyway that wanted to fit around the circuit boards, imager, pl mount, connectors, etc. On the other hand, Erik has to build it to match the existing Canon connectors and hardware, as well as the RED hardware, all while jamming a computer, contacts, connectors, a backfocus adjustment mechanism, etc. into a small flange that fits within the 44mm from the RED sensor that Canon EF lenses require.

Anyway, as I have said before you have good engineers - and more importantly - fair minded people on both sides, that will work this out.

I am going to the Bahamas tomorrow to shoot underwater Monday on Ian Blooms movie
, and Tuesday to shoot the shark dive at Stuart Cove's.

Be back on Wednesday and expect all of you to have this worked out by then!! LOL :biggrin:

 

[Tico Llaurador]

I am going to the Bahamas tomorrow to shoot underwater Monday on Ian Blooms movie
, and Tuesday to shoot the shark dive at Stuart Cove's.

Mike, if this is the way you live your life, then "what- you worry?"

Godspeed, dude... and watch out for the "Tintoreras"!!!