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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 :)

DSMC2. Unified.

I am making the upgrade-on two Epic W to DSMC2 Helium, very happy as mentioned. One question I had was concerning warranty, although will accept whatever it is. Red Armor, Red Armor-W, and even Upgrade Armor are mentioned as options, not sure what would be the available or best option here? Does the upgrade include any warranty protection like a new purchase or do we need to immediately take advantage of one of the extended warranties? I assume when our cameras come in for the upgrade they will be checked out including the existing Helium sensor? Respectfully, Jon.
 
they will def be checked out during upgrades for fuctionality. as for the warranty specific details i am not sure and best to ask brent. red armor w is nice in that it gives you swap potential and it gives you full sensor replacements...its by far the best coverage you can get yourself. but normal warranty works too, its just not as robust is my understanding. between equipment insurance and warranties you are covered on everything so honestly its probably worth it to buy the best warranty for your red if you can justify the costs. a laser beam killing your sensor can happen so full sensor replacements is a good thing to have handy i think
 
This is crazy.
Not Red's move, but the reaction. If you didn't see this coming you weren't paying attention. Everyone i knew that are mostly in the high end rental game all were saying it's all going to be narrowed down soon, especially when the sensor swap program was announced, and for them the only viable camera to rent will be the top tier Monstro.

This is smart.
When this was announced my immediate reaction was, its about time. Have an entry level (4k for all) a standard model and a top tier, why anything else. why would a company deal with so many models and so many different firmware issues, bodies, hardware issues, etc. it was so obvious red was stretched thin and it was so obvious when it was being gradually done to get low cost cameras into the public after the raven especially with scarlet-w, and then epic-w, which at that point i was like, really?

anyway, this is all going to make things better in the end for everyone. if you are invested in a high end weapon or monstro then you've had it for a while and hopefully you made some money back right now and if you haven't you are in the wrong business. if you just got it, well then those things happen and someone is always going to suffer when a mass deal is made to customers. but, but if you bought that high end of a camera, like most rental companies, you didn't loose value, because you weren't looking to sell for a profit, you were looking to rent it, as a tool, or with you and that price is not going to change. just keep on keeping on.

lastly, and i just have to say, i have no interest in upgrading or selling my raven right now, its ll i need as a personal basic camera i can shoot 4k at 100fps, but...Brent, Jarred, i know in the later stages as you were getting back ordered you started to lay it down that they were being left out of upgrade paths, BUT, when it was 4k for ALL, it was completely being pushed as a way into the red ecosystem and if you buy into the red ecosystem you will ALWAYS be taken care of, ALWAYS. so i don't think its right that you just leave them out. i think you have to offer some path even if it's little step by little step instead of a big jump up price. how about some prenowned certified scarlet-w's that come in? or a discount towards certified used anything? I personally think you do owe that to all that jumped in at that level when taking their first leap into RED 4k for ALL.

good luck with the transition! Thank you!
and this has been a great diversion from Hydrogen :)
 
The DSMC2 Helium is 5K more than the DSMC2 Gemini. It's going to cost 5K to move to the DSMC2 unified body. If we move to the Helium DSMC2 is that considered a step above the Gemini DSMC2 making it an easier (possibly less expensive) move to Monstro?

Ah I see what you mean. Brent and Jarred can give you the official word (and maybe Phil can give you what his take-away is because he's always on it!), but from my understanding, the price discrepancy you're seeing now is just the cost of sensors + boards. Somewhere in there is the math for getting the cost of just the boards vs. sensors.

It seems you already have the 8K Helium sensor already, so $5k more to get your guts/boards replaced and full capabilities of the Helium 8K sensor.

If you want to move sideways to Gemini for $5k, think of it as paying for the boards, and RED is kind of giving you a freebie sensor to make up for the "side-grade" I suppose? That's one way to look at it, at least.

We have isolated our camera businesses completely on its own so it's costs are transparent and only burdened by itself.

And the results have been immediate.


Some things will become more expensive, some will become more affordable through this transparency.

Manufacturing just one body with all the same insides (as weapon) it gets the qty up to take advantage of volume pricing.

Monstro moves the other way… its an expensive sensor to make so it’s price will go dramatically up as it stands alone in paying for itself through this transparency. There is a window though that we can help with that… Since we do have an inventory of Monstro Sensors in hand, we can put them into the new unified body and it becomes actually cheaper ( for the moment )



The math wont make sense right now. Don’t try and make sense of it. You can goto a dealer right now and buy a Scarlet-W from them and pay the upgrade to DSMC2 Gemini but buying a DSMC2 Gemini new outright is cheaper. There are some other examples that won't make sense.. but 99% of them are in your favor so don't ask questions :)
 
I have a question. How does this all effect the idea of a sensor swap program. Do weapon owners with red armor get in this program or is there something we have to do. Also does this program just live on for the life of this body type? Or does the swapping have to happen with in a certain time?
Thank you.
 
This is crazy.
Not Red's move, but the reaction. If you didn't see this coming you weren't paying attention. Everyone i knew that are mostly in the high end rental game all were saying it's all going to be narrowed down soon, especially when the sensor swap program was announced, and for them the only viable camera to rent will be the top tier Monstro.

This is smart.
When this was announced my immediate reaction was, its about time. Have an entry level (4k for all) a standard model and a top tier, why anything else. why would a company deal with so many models and so many different firmware issues, bodies, hardware issues, etc. it was so obvious red was stretched thin and it was so obvious when it was being gradually done to get low cost cameras into the public after the raven especially with scarlet-w, and then epic-w, which at that point i was like, really?

anyway, this is all going to make things better in the end for everyone. if you are invested in a high end weapon or monstro then you've had it for a while and hopefully you made some money back right now and if you haven't you are in the wrong business. if you just got it, well then those things happen and someone is always going to suffer when a mass deal is made to customers. but, but if you bought that high end of a camera, like most rental companies, you didn't loose value, because you weren't looking to sell for a profit, you were looking to rent it, as a tool, or with you and that price is not going to change. just keep on keeping on.

lastly, and i just have to say, i have no interest in upgrading or selling my raven right now, its ll i need as a personal basic camera i can shoot 4k at 100fps, but...Brent, Jarred, i know in the later stages as you were getting back ordered you started to lay it down that they were being left out of upgrade paths, BUT, when it was 4k for ALL, it was completely being pushed as a way into the red ecosystem and if you buy into the red ecosystem you will ALWAYS be taken care of, ALWAYS. so i don't think its right that you just leave them out. i think you have to offer some path even if it's little step by little step instead of a big jump up price. how about some prenowned certified scarlet-w's that come in? or a discount towards certified used anything? I personally think you do owe that to all that jumped in at that level when taking their first leap into RED 4k for ALL.

good luck with the transition! Thank you!
and this has been a great diversion from Hydrogen :)

Or smart long term move is to get raven owners into the same unified body but with the raven sensor.
 
8K@60 FPS is amazing. I mean yeah the lowlight stuff is cool too, but I can't do without 8K anymore...

I'm thinking that it's time to sell off my A7r and go the DSMC2 route for my stills now, too... :)
 
This is crazy.
Not Red's move, but the reaction. If you didn't see this coming you weren't paying attention. )

Our first Arri Alexa Plus we paid near $70,000 for back in around 2012. in 2013 ARRI dropped the price suddenly to $44,000 without notice. I saw my value go away by almost half. It hurt but it's normal and expected. They have done that a few times since with other cameras. Right now you can buy a Alexa Plus directly from ARRI for $11k. Just 5 years laters. less than 20% of it's value. How long has weapon been out? 4 years?

And Arri do not have an upgrade program.

So I do not understand why people being so hard on RED when they are the only ones that actually take care of their customers with upgrades.
 
Our first Arri Alexa Plus we paid near $70,000 for back in around 2012. in 2013 ARRI dropped the price suddenly to $44,000 without notice. I saw my value go away by almost half. It hurt but it's normal and expected. They have done that a few times since with other cameras. Right now you can buy a Alexa Plus directly from ARRI for $11k. Just 5 years laters. less than 20% of it's value. How long has weapon been out? 4 years?

And Arri do not have an upgrade program.

So I do not understand why people being so hard on RED when they are the only ones that actually take care of their customers with upgrades.

They also don’t have an online community where people can voice concerns, and actully get real time responses from the CEO. And yes I did see arri is selling refurbished cameras for really cheap now
 
I woke up this morning and turned my Weapon CF on for a shoot. Good news. It still works.
 
I'm thinking that it's time to sell off my A7r and go the DSMC2 route for my stills now, too... :)

The Epic-W stills are pretty awesome in a lot of situations. It a few other I wouldn’t be as confident it can beat my D810. Overall I have been pulling more and more stills from the 8K files. To me this is the biggest reason i’ll Stay with 8K.
 
The Epic-W stills are pretty awesome in a lot of situations. It a few other I wouldn’t be as confident it can beat my D810. Overall I have been pulling more and more stills from the 8K files. To me this is the biggest reason i’ll Stay with 8K.

This is the primary reason I am going from Epic-W Helium to DSMC2 Helium via the $4,950 offer(sick). Stills, baby. Gemini is great and all(I think, still haven't tested it) but at half the resolution I would no longer have my Red as a stills option, for me it just doesn't work.
 
Can we all just jump 30k feet into the air and look at the big picture?

If Jarred and team did not do this, I'm not so sure MANY of us would be able to afford DSMC3 in 2-3 years. This is absolutely a strategy for Red to remain a financially viable camera company and keep Red shooters in the game. I'm wiping my brow right now. What a necessary fucking move by Red.

BTW, a lot of you are seeing this for what it is, and you are my people, level headed - especially you Weapon owners who are swallowing big. Big ups to you.
 
I honestly can't decide between going from Epic-W to Gemini or Weapon. If I didn't f do so many corporate shoots where I fake multi camera shoots by cropping down to 4K from 8K, I'd be Gemini all the way. First world problem. Anyhow, unified is going to eliminate a lot of headaches from future upgrade deals. Great long term move guys.
 
but, but if you bought that high end of a camera, like most rental companies, you didn't loose value, because you weren't looking to sell for a profit, you were looking to rent it, as a tool, or with you and that price is not going to change. just keep on keeping on.

Aside from the Monster sensor, rental houses that dropped $50k+ on the Weapon Helium are now going to be competing with owner operators renting out the same camera based on its $25k price. If you're matching market rates then I have to imagine those will get lower for the Weapon Helium.
 
These upgrades start next month. Of course, depends where you are in queue (going in order of upgrade request received to schedule).

Any update regarding receiving some sort of email comformation that our name was added to the queue?
 
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