Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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 vs MX rate increase

yes bit its because sony/canon/everyone besides red likes to replace their models every year causing the rapid depreciation...vs red hasn't depreciated hardly at all (besides when they initiate it lol) so i think that kind of penny on the dollar thing won't happen to red cameras, at least not immediately like the other brands... look how long red one maintained value!

anyway i think the important thing is just focus on making the return on investment + profit no matter what brand it is...camera bodies are hard these days, its not like in film where you could rent it for quite some time, other brands are constantly repackaging sensors, releasing incremental spec boosts via whole new purchases, bs like that. cameras are tough these days...glass seems to still be a good long term game, provided the format stays popular (see 16mm for details on if it doesn't).


I am not sure whether all brands will go bigger then S35 or if this is a red only and phantom 65mm kind of a deal...but assuming S35 stays the standard glass will be gold still
 
In NYC, Dragons about 3 months ago, were going for $1800 a day body only.

Today im sure its less....

Also,

My dragon will be in soon. Im planning on keeping at roughly the same price as it currently is. Maybe 10% more. They aren't very rare anymore, and the main body and accessories are paid off. the benefit to producers is better image quality, and a slightly smaller G/E package, for studio work, 1600 ISO clean, means a 4K is now a 2K, 2k is a 1k etc... far smaller package, less power, location power can work wonders when you have all that highlight lattitude, and improved color means less time in the colorists room making it perfect. ITs looks far better out of the box.
 
We have yet to secure any rental from our upgrade a month ago unfortunately...but there are some real budget mongers in town right now...I was told a feature is shooting Red MX with the original CF cards and were shooting RC28 because they wanted to conserve space! I told them at least shoot RC42 in order to minimize noise...really wanting to see someone jump on Dragon on the prairies!
 
Brett Harrison said:
There was a f900 Cinealta going for 9K on eBay recently.
Click to expand...

And?

That's a very, very old camera that has flaws well beneath the diminishing returns category (really crap dynamic range, 2/3rds sensor), including no viable on-board recording methods (try buying an HDCam SR tape…).

Red one MX is close to the edge of the diminishing returns arena already, let alone a Dragon Epic For stills, my 5D Mark II is so good that I don;t even really care what else comes out. Has it lost value? Yes, but I don't care because I will be using it until it breaks. 5 years ago I was still buying a new stills body every year, because they all had truly meaningful deficiencies in one way or another, and to not upgrade felt like letting my clients down because it meant it put a cap on how good images could look, or how expensive it would be to light for those noisy sensors that were the norm in 2008 DSLRs of any brand. I would curse those cameras. I knew I wanted better. WIth my 5D (for STILLS)? No issues. No problem. No cursing. When the images are crap it's my fault. There is no nagging voice that ever says "If only I had a better camera."

Dragon is more than I need to make essentially perfect images (in terms of the camera), cheaply and reliably, under any lighting challenge one finds in the real world, with even more resolution than I would prefer. It's going to be my video version of my 5D for stills - so no matter what it may cost to buy one (or something else) in 5 years, I'll likely still be using it, with no desire for anything better because it simply meets my all of my needs - it meets all of any reasonable person's needs in a video camera, for 99% of the gigs out there.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I won't be raising prices (I only ever raised prices when I went EPIC even then I give a lot of indies Epic @ the old Scarlet rates. .) Even after I add more and more accessories to the package I just do it for the same price. I usually buy odds and ends that people need not because I will charge more but because I want more frequent rentals. I imagine rental houses who are booked might raise their rates a bit since they might already have a fully booked camera that they can play the supply/demand curve on a bit. For me the challenge is keeping the camera working when I'm not using it so Dragon offers all the more persuasive argument for people to rent from me vs an Alexa or "cheaping" out on a 5D.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top