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Canon finally realizing RED is a threat?

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shane savana

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canon playing catch up means that Red will always be at least two steps ahead.

"Word for Word Email
I have witnessed the testing of a new canon video DSLR here in Europe.
To keep it short: the prototype is far from being close to production. There are issues with moire (due to line skipping?). The chip itself is sealed, but the image results look very similar to a 7d. Its also the same type of moire (!) as with the 7d. Canon obviously is aware of that problem and wants to test another chip later this year (newly developed?). The body looks pretty similar to a XL 2 (with EF Mount) but maybe thats for camouflage reasons.
According to a statement from a Canon rep Canon wants to “achieve Red one 2K Quality for roughly half the price of a ready-to-use Red one” (clearly more expensive than a Red Scarlet). No AF. For now recording has been done via HDMI to a nanoflash recorder from convergent design since the new Canon codec (4:2:2) has not yet been implemented into this prototype."





From http://www.canonrumors.com/2010/03/...campaign=Feed:+canonrumors/rss+(Canon+Rumors)
 
Indeed (lol)
 
If they could pull it off for half the price of a red one, and it have interchangeable lenses it'd. Actually be cheaper than a Scarlet Cine setup. Of course if you're going to pay that kind of money for a camera I'd obviously go for Scarlet anyway, but still. Might be some good competition.
 
Red is not a threat to Canon's core consumer markets. Canon is just waking up to a market they have never played in before. Sounds like they have a long way to go and they are still taking shortcuts on image quality. I'll take the Scarlet Cinema any day.
 
David Rasberry said:
Red is not a threat to Canon's core consumer markets.
Click to expand...
Yet.

Red can increase its market size by an order of magnitude with the scarlet line, and could in the future do so again with a consumer line. This could enable them with economies of scale to compete at the consumer level with Canon. At the vary least at the prosumer (7d) level.
 
I don't know if it's a market they've never played in before, but clearly they are rethinking their prosumer line, trying to merge it with their DSLR line -- basically take their 7D/550D sensor and stick it into a handycam that allows video-style focusing and other controls. Which isn't necessarily a bad idea... except they still have all the problems of their DSLR's in terms of moire and resolution loss from line-skipping and/or pixel binning.

What they really need to do is that Red does, which is use the whole high-rez sensor and record compressed RAW, then convert that to HD. But that requires a lot more processing horsepower among other things and I don't see Canon doing that AND keeping the price point down to their DSLR range.

Red is not a threat to Canon's still camera market though, just its prosumer video camera market.

Basically it's the difference between a digital cine camera that can also take stills versus a still camera that can take video. Red is not really a threat to the market of still camera buyers who occasionally need to shoot a little video, not unless Red starts selling cameras at the same price as DSLR's. Let's face it, the 7D market is primarily made up of still shooters, not video shooters.
 
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Lacking innovation

Lacking innovation

By the time they figure out RAW 2k the Scarlet will be in 2nd or 3rd generation. I love RED and hated the wait for the Scarlet while being teased by spec lists and test footage, but the truth is for the price point it's the only game in town. I wish Canon or Nikon or Sony or Panasonic was looking to leapfrog what RED is trying to do rather than meet what RED was doing two years ago because innovation from any of the "big" players would really push the whole industry in terms of pricing and features. RED is small enough so that the big boys don't pay attention until they have to. And then it's too late.
 
Scarlet 2/3" can seriously impact the high end of the sub $10k prosumer video market for sure. However, outfitted as a practical field production camera it will be more in the Canon XH-Sony EX price class than the VDSLR price class. From the way the rumor reads above you would think that the Canon offering will be more in the $10k-$15k price range.
 
shane savana said:
canon playing catch up means that Red will always be at least two steps ahead.

"Word for Word Email
I have witnessed the testing of a new canon video DSLR here in Europe.
To keep it short: the prototype is far from being close to production. There are issues with moire (due to line skipping?). The chip itself is sealed, but the image results look very similar to a 7d. Its also the same type of moire (!) as with the 7d. Canon obviously is aware of that problem and wants to test another chip later this year (newly developed?). ...For now recording has been done via HDMI to a nanoflash recorder from convergent design since the new Canon codec (4:2:2) has not yet been implemented into this prototype."
Click to expand...

David Rasberry said:
Red is not a threat to Canon's core consumer markets. Canon is just waking up to a market they have never played in before. Sounds like they have a long way to go and they are still taking shortcuts on image quality. I'll take the Scarlet Cinema any day.
Click to expand...

Sounds like nobody knows anything for sure except Canon is playing with a prototype and is looking to a new chip to address the well known issues with their vDSLRs. And seems like nobody has much of a clue when this Canon or RED scarlet 2/3" might be out - much less an S35 Scarlet.

It is even getting hard to speculate on when Epic-X is going to be here - which is the promised upgrade to RED's flagship product and a natural progression in RED's core Digital Cinema business - so speculating on a comparison between a vaguely rumored Canon product and a RED S35 Scarlet that seems to be at least a year away seems a little silly.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I don't know if it's a market they've never played in before, but clearly they are rethinking their prosumer line, trying to merge it with their DSLR line -- basically take their 7D/550D sensor and stick it into a handycam that allows video-style focusing and other controls. Which isn't necessarily a bad idea... except they still have all the problems of their DSLR's in terms of moire and resolution loss from line-skipping and/or pixel binning.

What they really need to do is that Red does, which is use the whole high-rez sensor and record compressed RAW, then convert that to HD. But that requires a lot more processing horsepower among other things and I don't see Canon doing that AND keeping the price point down to their DSLR range.
Click to expand...

Not sure they are talking about simply taking their 7d sensor and sticking it in a handycam - sounds like they are aware they need a chip with a motion picture architecture to solve the moire/resolution problems and given some time it doesn't seem like there is any big reason why they can't produce one. And they already have pretty powerful ASICs. They are just about to introduce the already announced DIGIC V, which may have more video processing and scaling power (possibly similar to what RED seems to be doing on its upcoming cameras to get scaled HD) since it was still being developed after the great success of the 5D so may have been in time to incorporate some video capability (unllike the DigicIV which was already done. And who knows what they can do with the next gen Digic 6 or a dedicated video oriented ASIC since they already have a tremendous amount of experience in designing/making ASICs?

Besides sensors, the big thing that Canon brings to the table is a tremendous array of lenses already available for S35/FF35 chip sizes, plus massive knowledge and experience in video/motion picture zoom lenses.

Moving away from the DSLR body also opens up a lot of doors in terms of processing power because they have more size to handle more video oriented circuit boards, ASICs, connectors, batteries, heatsinks/cooling,etc. - without the limits of the familiar SLR body that most still photographers are going to prefer.

If they play their cards right, neither company is really a big "threat" to each other. But, as is often the case with startups, RED may end up altering its announced product mix based on evolving market conditions - which is one of the big advantages of being a relatively small, relatively new startup.
 
Michael Hastings said:
Sounds like nobody knows anything for sure except Canon is playing with a prototype and is looking to a new chip to address the well known issues with their vDSLRs. And seems like nobody has much of a clue when this Canon or RED scarlet 2/3" might be out - much less an S35 Scarlet.

It is even getting hard to speculate on when Epic-X is going to be here - which is the promised upgrade to RED's flagship product and a natural progression in RED's core Digital Cinema business - so speculating on a comparison between a vaguely rumored Canon product and a RED S35 Scarlet that seems to be at least a year away seems a little silly.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I don't know if it's a market they've never played in before, but clearly they are rethinking their prosumer line, trying to merge it with their DSLR line
Click to expand...
Yes, they are.
 
Looking at the Sony, it's the same issue as the Canon, Nikon, and all the others -- when you start putting in a typical 10MP, 12MP, etc. sensor into a still camera and want to also shoot HD video, either you do it the proper way, which is what Red is doing -- i.e. convert full-sensor RAW to RGB and then downscale to HD -- or you have to use tricks like line-skipping or pixel-binning to get a 2MP frame of HD from a 10MP or higher sensor.

So I don't really see why this Sony camera is any sort of answer to the Scarlet.
 
David Rasberry said:
From the way the rumor reads above you would think that the Canon offering will be more in the $10k-$15k price range.
Click to expand...
Never in any way other than as under $10k with a light version between $3k-$4k as same as Scarlet 2/3". Quite different than $10k-$15k, actually.
 
The science fiction writer Robert Heinlein used to say that engineering is the art of the practical and depends more on the total state of the art than the individual engineer - when it is time to railroad people railroad.

RED was the first to really put together the convergence of DSLR technology with Digital Cinema, but it was inevitable. A few months before RED's introduction at NAB 2006 I had been talking to a friend about the HVX200 and the obsession with 24P and pointed out that Nikon already had dslrs doing 8 fps so soon they would get to 24 and you would have a movie camera.

Canon 7D is doing 18mp at 8 FPS now for $1700 so it seems pretty obvious that technologically they could be doing a 6 megapixel chip at 24fps, and maybe 4.7megapixels (3K) at even higher frame rates WITHOUT line skipping if they wanted to - at a similar price point.

There is just a ton of stuff happening in the sensor world, like relatively low cost off the shelf 2/3" 2K global shutter 5.5micron pitch chips that do over 300 FPS in 10 bit plus HDR modes, etc.

So it is going to be VERY interesting in the next few years, with competition coming from unexpected places.
 
Emanuel A. said:
Canon is the closest RED competitor as of today.
Click to expand...

Closest RED competitors are Silicon Imaging and ARRI, unless you are only considering price, not functionality and image quality. Add Sony and Panasonic in the 2/3" market.
 
Emanuel A. said:
Never in any way other than as under $10k with a light version between $3k-$4k as same as Scarlet 2/3". Quite different than $10k-$15k, actually.
Click to expand...

Canon's current XH series 1/3" cams with interchangeable lenses push $10k. The rumor mentioned 2k resolution target for half the price of a Red 1 shooting package. That would be half of around $25-30k realistically if it is truly a video camera with all the implied functional and ergonomic requirements that carries, not a DSLR.

I am planning on a Scarlet 2/3" cinema package that fully configured for practical field production will run between $10k-15k and that is with used lenses. I think a lot of folks are very unrealistic in their estimates of what it takes for a camera to cover a typical day of production, not including support and lighting. Even a 7D needs $3-4k worth of lenses and accessories to be marginally practical as a motion camera.
 
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