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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Dragon cost and speculation for Scarlet

Cid J Salcido Uyarra said:
@Jason your probably getting the Epic upgrade confused with Scarlet.

$6K would make me very happy

it's a guessing game til the day....so place your bet =)

but the way things are going given the economy, over $9k is a stretch for most Scarlet owners considering it's barley going on a year since it started shipping. Still a fairly new camera. I'd imagine after elections and the new year things should hopefully start springing up for most job-wise/financially.


dragon.jpg
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Ah, that's probably it. I was talking to a sales rep about the Scarlet forever, then debating buying a used R1MX for pennies... but then they brought up the $6K upgrade... but maybe they confused that also with the Epic.
 
For $8-$9K I'd be looking for the Scarlet Dragon to be:

6K 25
5K 50
4K 96
3K 120
2K 200

I'm not from Europe but I was trying to think of you in 6K and 5K for Hdrx :)

Thats probably alot to ask, but really I think that is what you'd want to get for that much money.
 
Do you mean $12,000?


brian leisring said:
Say RED announced a 12,000 upgrade to Dragon for Scarlets (Sensor 6,000 Boards 6) What would you expect at that cost as a return feature wise.

6K @ up to 30 7:1
5K @ up to 48 7:1 24 @ 3:1
4K @ up to 72 7:1
3K @ up to 120 7:1


These specs would certainly be the best case scenario.

At these completely hypothetical feature specs and price, would scarlet owners complain about that cost? would epic owners complain about the closing gap between the cameras? We have some time to wait until we know, just wondered what people would think if this or a similar scenario were to happen.
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I used to cut audio on a moviola. I can promise you there were no "files" of any kind.


Jason Honeycutt said:
For some reason, if I remember correctly, I thought it was going to be $6,000 for the upgrade... or maybe that was going to be the difference in price if you bought it with the Dragon vs. the current set-up. I should check my emails but I could have sworn someone at RED told me that.

And, I thought the framerates were more of the firmware upgrades and the sensor was going bumping up the latitude even more, I thought someone said to 16? I'm honestly in love with this camera as it is though but I know the MX was a huge upgrade when that came out (Fincher loved it enough for "Social Network", obviously shot on the R1). I wonder if they're going to wait a little to see about this new camera Panavision's having out next year, which is supposed to be another "gamechanger", and adjust what you get accordingly, like when that (garbage) C300 came out and they gave us a bunch of goodies in the Scarlet for a stupid cheap price.

At this point though, if we're not getting the cinematic look we want, it's our fault :) Now it's just icing on top of icing that keeps coming out. I would have killed for one of these back in film school instead of the 'wind-up' Bolexes, SVHS camcorders, or the way-to-much-for-film-stock Arri 35. They really should force film students to have to use real film to shoot, edit on a flatbed while syncing audio files, then conforming themselves... before they let them use a RED or Alexa, it's just too easy these days... darn kids ;)
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Jason Honeycutt said:
I won't say who on here but someone has a Scarlet and an Epic, and they opened them both up since they're the tinkerer type... he was shocked to find out, and he swears this to be true, that both boards are the same in the Epic and Scarlet. He's heard, as well as us all, that the Scarlet board was different. He's trying to work on a hack to 'unlock' his Scarlet to become an Epic. Eh, who knows.
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From the beginning of the Scarlet release, the word was that Scarlet ASICs were Epic ASICs that, in some way, weren't able to meet the spec of the Epic but which were perfectly capable of a lower level of performance. I am not a chip designer but, in my layman's terms, I understood that to mean the boards were "re-programmed" to meet Scarlet performance requirements and tested at that level. So, yes, the boards would probably look identical. I suppose it is even possible that someone could hack the board to boost the performance slightly, but at what cost? And, since RED presumably already determined that Epic-level performance wasn't possible with that individual chip, where does that leave the user? Certianly without a warranty. :smiley:
 
The Dragon sounds like a beast, I mean the stat's they go over are insane. It also makes me rethink my lenses, rethink my Disk, rethink my vfx, rethink my computing architecture ... I mean it will be awesome, but I personally don't think I'll be prepared for it till Oct/Nov 2013 . Around that time period, I'd prefer to get some type of deal to a Epic-S[carlet] (perhaps they could have a new category of resale called "WarTested" for my two scarlets).
 
There are 3 roads I can see Scarlet taking to Dragonland.

1. Based on the current model and relationship to Epic; 6k 12fps and 5k at standard speeds (24,25,30fps). - least expensive option

2. Moving Scarlet into the higher bracket by allowing 6K at standard speeds (24,25,30fps). - middle expensive option

3. Allowing a more costly upgrade to the specs of what the Epic Dragon upgrade will provide. - most expensive option


Now for Red there are many things to consider. By the time Scarlet Dragon lands there will likely not be any 5K camera on the market to compete other than Epic. There will be about 8 very competitively priced 4K cameras here or on there way and likely 3 that will offer raw 4K announced by NAB. The Epic Dragon combo will likely be the best digital cinema camera on the market for the next 3 years. There are two professional level 4K+ large sensor cameras in development at the moment that will compete, but will be much more expensive than Epic Dragon.

The big concern with the pricing of option 1 is that if it's not competitive towards other incoming 4K raw cameras there could be little demand even though Scarlet + Dragon would offer more "horsepower". I personally don't think Red will allow that and it will be competitively priced. The big concern of allowing 6K at speed recording in option 2 is that it will compete with Epic on productions, which may be a good or bad thing. Option 3 is really an unknown and I don't know if Red would go that path. It would likely be the cost of Epic + Dragon - approximately the Scarlet MSRP if they did it.

One reason I'm hoping that option 2 becomes available, other than the obvious 6K motion capability, is the access to higher frame rates at 5K and 4K which I believe will be important as I think the competition is gonna be hitting 120fps and 240fps in burst modes with upcoming models. Just a guess, but based on past history it seems to be very likely.

I think whatever happens the at speed compression ratio should be 5:1 if possible, but that might be tricky. 5:1-8:1 has proven to be the magic sauce for most productions.


Red's working on it. Hell, they could even offer upgrade paths for all 3 options.


I'm patient and there's a lot of heady work going on over at Red trying to make Dragon the king of sensors for some time to come. The nice thing is that whatever we get we do get that sensor.
 
I think at the end of the day I could live with the scarlet dragon still only being a 4k camera if we got higher frame rates at 4k and HDR etc... I would rather the upgrade price be more affordable as to be honest the scarlet as is I could shoot with for the next 10 years and churn out competitive imagery. The camera has hit so near film quality that we really can slow ourselves on needing the latest and greatest...other than just wanting it.
 
Jim and team like to lead the way. My best guess is that both Epic and Scarlet when upgraded to Dragon with new ASIK will still be out in front of the pack for affordable professional digital cinema cameras the next few years. Other than smaller and lighter, what other fantastic improvements are left to do with this product line to produce high quality images for delivery other than IMAX type shows (and maybe even those)? After Dragon upgrade, how much more will I need/want in a camera? Probably not much. Thanks Jim and Red Team. You guys have really upset the apple cart and changed the industry forever.
 
Guys,

Once you replace the ASICS in the scarlet isn't it an FULL EPIC? The ASICS were the bottleneck!?!?!
 
Well, you have to consider that in the scarlet's current setup in 4K, the image size is at least a basic academy 35mm frame. The dragon chip makes "5k" about the size of the current 4k. 4k takes a step down to near 3k frame size, etc...

To keep the "Cinema camera" classification, I expect at minimum the dragon scarlet will have 30p 5kHD, to maintain its use ability. Likely 12fps 6k. 5k @30fps, 4k @48, 3k @72, 2k 100fps
 
A 12,000 Scarlet upgrade is too much. For that money I will sell my Scarlet and get a (yet unannounced) Sony cam (that will - with the current fierce competition - obviously be available by then with large sensor, raw codec, 4k at around $12,000)...

An upgrade around 5000 ~ 7000 would be more interesting.

I expect nothing resolution wise, I don't care, 4K is nice. I do want less noise and new functions like quick startup time (like Apple's sleep function), in-camera ProRes recording, less power consumption, cache recording.
 
Phil Holland said:
There are 3 roads I can see Scarlet taking to Dragonland.

1. Based on the current model and relationship to Epic; 6k 12fps and 5k at standard speeds (24,25,30fps). - least expensive option

2. Moving Scarlet into the higher bracket by allowing 6K at standard speeds (24,25,30fps). - middle expensive option

3. Allowing a more costly upgrade to the specs of what the Epic Dragon upgrade will provide. - most expensive option
Click to expand...

Im pulling for option #2 of these, Since the 5K dragon frame is going to be roughly the same sensor area as what we have at 4K now. Using the full sensor at speed (6K 24) would be a upgrade that I would certainly be interested in.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
It has always been my belief/assumption, from everything I heard and read, that Dragon was Dragon. In other words, there wasn't going to be an Epic Dragon and a Scarlet Dragon. Which lead me to believe that, with the Epic upgrade at $6K, the upgrade to a Scarlet - which would bring it up to being exactly the same as an Epic Dragon - would be considerably more expensive.
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The Dragons to be the exact same, that doesn't make much sense to me Terry.

My thinking...Dragon for Scarlet will not be the same as Dragon for Epic... Scarlet Dragon will still be the cost point of entry to some of the capabilities of Dragon...Just like Scarlet is currently the point of entry for the MX. The product line still has to be separated...

A $12,000 tag for this seems pretty steep. It would make a scarlet cost more than half of a current Epic...If that is the cost than It would only be enticing if it included half of the current specs of Epic.

It would also be more than a a RED ONE...so I would only hope it would finally have a usable high speed fps resolution....something like 2k or 3k 120fps (FOV is now smaller since greater pixel density, so 2k now has less utility)

MY 2¢ :)

-Dane
 
BTW - there seems to be an underlying assumption here that 6K means a bigger sensor. Do we know that to be true? Of course, there was the talk about Monstro sensors much earlier but I don't think I have seen Monstro and Dragon discussed in the same context. Is it possible that the 6K Dragon sensor will be an APS-H size like the current MXs. Or, maybe only slightly bigger at full frame 35mm?
 
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I should also add that what Scarlet is today will be very competitive moving forward with the new cameras coming out. You still have 4K in reality.

This biggest concern about 4K cameras coming down the pipe is improved FPS and ISO performance which by NAB might be a reality.
 
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