Epic-X-S35 and Epic S35

[Ghandi El-Chamaa]

And it makes no sense to offer a "superior" product in the Epic-X vs. S35. Back in the day when RED One trade-ins for future Epic models seemed to be a perpetual thing, this made more sense. But now, if I buy an Epic-X as a RED One owner and then down the road I need another one, I'd be mad as hell if I couldn't buy another matching camera and had to settle for an inferior model.

A fatal error would be to make two technically identical products that are not as reliable as one another. As you say it would put off return customers and damage Red's credability with the newcomers aswell.

If you're going to make a high end product and top the market with it you're not going to mess around with standards and Red are well aware of this.

It's nice to do well by loyal customers but no one likes a hierarchy with too large a divide. Marx you know.

A definitive answer would be nice though.

 

[Milan Spasic]

I think that the only difference will be in the name and possibly the color of the camera body, just to say thank you to the early Red adopters and make their cameras somewhat special.

Any tech spec difference would not make sense at all.

 

[Stephen Williams]

The difference is $21k.

But seriously, I've been asking myself this same question.
It just doesn't make sense to have two cameras so close by spec and so far apart in price.
I know that high frame rates demand more processing power... but still, we are talking 3x the price difference.

The difference in price is very small to existing RED One owners who take stage 3.

 

[Milan Spasic]

The difference in price is very small to existing RED One owners who take stage 3.

Correct. I was thinking more about the advantages of owning an Epic over owning a Scarlet if you are a freelancer like myself.

The advantages to ME are obvious. I just doubt that the producers will pay 3x more for an Epic S35 package. Essentially the price point of Scarlet will dampen the Epic market.

Again, I don't quite understand what the strategy is here. To bring great cameras to the masses is GREAT, Scarlet 2/3" would take care of that.
But Scarlet S35 vs Epic S35? Furthermore, Scarlet 5k?

 

[Danno Anderson]

<<<< Has anyone recently checked red.com/press? >>>

What happened to the Epic FF35, that's the one I have been watching and waiting for ? Guess I missed something.

 

[Stephen Williams]

<<<< Has anyone recently checked red.com/press? >>>

What happened to the Epic FF35, that's the one I have been watching and waiting for ? Guess I missed something.

Monstro is future generation after the Epic MX which not yet shipping.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Correct. I was thinking more about the advantages of owning an Epic over owning a Scarlet if you are a freelancer like myself.
:

Hi,

Unless you own a RED One already, probably very little. Rent an Epic those few times you need one, it will probably only cost a small premium over Scarlet.

Imagine what rental rates will be when there are 7,000 Red Ones, 7,000 Epics & 75,000 Scarlets available. People will dream of a 1% return on investment.

Stephen

 

[C.H.Haskell]

No more dual tone titanium finishes on the EPIC-X? I missed that one, was looking for to that rig.

 

[Peter Matthes]

Imagine what rental rates will be when there are 7,000 Red Ones, 7,000 Epics & 75,000 available. People will dream of a 1% return on investment.

Stephen

That is a nice thought for those of us that depend on rentals.

Right now, there are too many Canon 5Ds, 7Ds and 1Ds out there to count. Plus, they make more sense to buy if you will rent them a half dozen times. Yet, people are still renting them to shoot lightweight handheld stuff.

I believe that the innovative modularity that allows for a stripped down Epic or Scarlet will severely damage, if not destroy, the Canon VDSLR rental market.

 

[Milan Spasic]

Unless you own a RED One already, probably very little. Rent an Epic those few times you need one, it will probably only cost a small premium over Scarlet.

See, that's my problem right there, I do own Red One and hope to trade it up to Epic....

Though I can't really call it a "problem".
R1 is still giving me much happiness.

Cheers,

Milan

 

[Chris Kenny]

As far as the rental market once there are (even more) silly numbers of cameras kicking around... this is certainly something people need to consider when planning future business models. It is sort of a concern that, based on the info we have so far anyway, the S35 Scarlet can shoot projects that don't require anamorphic or high speed (which is most of them) just as well as the S35 Epic. Meanwhile, if no-frills Red One packages (body, LCD, EVF, batteries, a couple of Red drives and CF cards, maybe a Red 18-50 zoom) rent in the $700-1000 range (seems to be the going rate in NYC), people are going to want more for an Epic.

So we might end up with a situation where people want $1200 or $1400 for an Epic, and meanwhile there's the S35 Scarlet, which is 90% of the way there in terms of functionality for a lot of productions, and people are willing to let a package go out for $400 or $500.

A lot of how this settles out is going to depend on how realistic clients are. Clients with money might well insist on the Epic over the Scarlet even on projects where it provides no real advantage; that sort of thing is hardly unheard of in this industry. If that's the case, then I think Epic owners, at least those who have higher end contacts, will do just fine.

But if clients really only choose the Epic over the S35 Scarlet for projects that actually require high speed 5K or anamorphic, the Epic could end up being treated as a specialty camera. The modular nature of the system actually exacerbates this too. One could see indie filmmakers owning their own S35 Scarlet packages, and doing 18 day shoots where they use their Scarlet for 17 days and rent an Epic (brain only, to use with the modules they usually use with the Scarlet) for one day for some high speed stuff.

Of course in the long run -- another five or ten years -- the cameras are going to get so cheap and powerful that a camera rental market basically no longer exists. Prepare accordingly.

 

[Peter Matthes]

IMHO ... The added cost is often in the accessories that make the camera package what it is ... and what it can do for your client.

A fully loaded, tricked out, Scarlet S35 (7" LCD, Bomb EVF, Matte Box - Red or Arri, Pro Redmote, Pro I/O, Battery Module, 1.8" SSD Module, etc) could easily cost $25,000+

A similar Epic will clock in at $46,000

I have found that a camera's daily rate usually starts off in the range of 1/20th to 1/35th* of the total cost to buy the package. As the camera ages, those rates inevitably go down.

*Obviously lenses, tripod/support and grip/electric have a much lower percentage rate of rental since they often have longer life spans.

When you think about it, the Epic will offer higher resolution (essential for some effects work), higher frame rates (table top, action, ramping, Steve Gibby's surf footage, and the list goes on).
Don't even make me mention the applications in pornography. (LA RED users ... you know what I'm talking about)

:w00t:

In all seriousness ... Beyond that, there remains this very important resolution question:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39773

 

[Chris Kenny]

S35 Epic and Scarlet are, as of right now, the same resolution. As far as we know, Epic additionally gets you:

- Anamorphic de-squeze for live monitoring.
- Higher frame rates at full resolution.
- Speed ramping.
- Higher REDCODE bitrates.

These things are, realistically, not needed by the majority of productions.

Another thing to consider is that it's not just this upgrade. The Monstro cameras are probably coming 12 months later or whatever. So if you have an S35 Mysterium X Epic, the FF35 Scarlet that comes out in 2011 is going to have a larger sensor and offer more resolution and dynamic range. It's going to be for most purposes a better camera, for a third of the price or something. Of course you can go buy an FF35 Epic.... but I doubt Red will offer these absurdly generous trade-ins forever, so you might have to actually fork over $30K+ out of pocket.

Meanwhile, there are going to be thousands (eventually probably tens of thousands) of people running around with 2/3" Scarlets that will probably produce 1080p and 2K images (which, let's face it, is still 99% of deliverables) as good as the images produced by the Red One (smaller sensor, but less noise, and still more than enough resolution).

The collapse of the camera rental market is, in fact, part of the democratization of filmmaking that people get so excited about. But it's important for people basing businesses around this gear to understand exactly what the implications are. I think there are some people who sort of approached the Red One and said "Hey, there's a good business buying $100K cameras and renting them out for $3K/day. Now there's this cool new $30K camera; I'll buy one and rent it out for $1K/day", and they didn't think ahead to the next logical step; the $10K camera that rents for $400/day, or the $5K camera that there's not much rental market for because everyone who uses one commonly just owns their own.

Red is building amazing tools for people who use cameras, and they're improving them on an extremely aggressive schedule. But there's a reason other camera vendors haven't historically done this: it's extremely disruptive to existing business models, industry partnerships, and the structure of the industry itself. When Red shipped their first-generation camera, they were disrupting things for other companies' customers; when they ship their second-generation cameras, they'll be disrupting things for their own customers as well. And they're going to keep on doing this. It's what they do. I wouldn't have it any other way, personally. But to build a business around this stuff you're going to have to move as fast as Red does, reevaluating your approach to the market every time Red changes what's possible at a given price point. That's not easy.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

S35 Epic and Scarlet are, as of right now, the same resolution. As far as we know, Epic additionally gets you:

- Anamorphic de-squeze for live monitoring.
- Higher frame rates at full resolution.
- Speed ramping.
- Higher REDCODE bitrates.

These things are, realistically, not needed by the majority of productions.

Another thing to consider is that it's not just this upgrade. The Monstro cameras are probably coming 12 months later or whatever. So if you have an S35 Mysterium X Epic, the FF35 Scarlet that comes out in 2011 is going to have a larger sensor and offer more resolution and dynamic range. It's going to be for most purposes a better camera, for a third of the price or something. Of course you can go buy an FF35 Epic.... but I doubt Red will offer these absurdly generous trade-ins forever, so you might have to actually fork over $30K+ out of pocket.

Meanwhile, there are going to be thousands (eventually probably tens of thousands) of people running around with 2/3" Scarlets that will probably produce 1080p and 2K images (which, let's face it, is still 99% of deliverables) as good as the images produced by the Red One (smaller sensor, but less noise, and still more than enough resolution).

The collapse of the camera rental market is, in fact, part of the democratization of filmmaking that people get so excited about. But it's important for people basing businesses around this gear to understand exactly what the implications are. I think there are some people who sort of approached the Red One and said "Hey, there's a good business buying $100K cameras and renting them out for $3K/day. Now there's this cool new $30K camera; I'll buy one and rent it out for $1K/day", and they didn't think ahead to the next logical step; the $10K camera that rents for $400/day, or the $5K camera that there's not much rental market for because everyone who uses one commonly just owns their own.

Red is building amazing tools for people who use cameras, and they're improving them on an extremely aggressive schedule. But there's a reason other camera vendors haven't historically done this: it's extremely disruptive to existing business models, industry partnerships, and the structure of the industry itself. When Red shipped their first-generation camera, they were disrupting things for other companies' customers; when they ship their second-generation cameras, they'll be disrupting things for their own customers as well. And they're going to keep on doing this. It's what they do. I wouldn't have it any other way, personally. But to build a business around this stuff you're going to have to move as fast as Red does, reevaluating your approach to the market every time Red changes what's possible at a given price point. That's not easy.

S35 scarlet should be with all the modules at 13-14 k, add extra batteries, back up cables, storage and you will be in the 18 000 usd range. with scarlet FF35 you are in the 22k-25k usd Ballpark...

but still, your thoughts have something true in it.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The camera rental market is not going to collapse. If anything, all the new camera developments have only proven the wisdom of avoiding ownership unless you are constantly shooting with the gear -- for one-time-only productions, especially short-term ones, it's too much trouble to take time to do the proper research and then buy an entire equipment package and then sell it all when you are finished.

Not to mention optics, what if one show you want to use anamorphics, the next show you want to use Master Primes, the next show you want to use Cooke S4's??? People are still going to want to rent special lenses that they don't feel the need to always own. Same goes for support gear like remote heads, specialty heads, etc.

And what about specialty cameras themselves, like ones that goes over 1,000 fps? Silly to have to buy a special camera like that for one shot in one movie.

Some studios, like Warners, won't even allow rental of private gear belonging to crew members unless unavoidable, they'd rather make deals with big rental houses. I've had Key Grips who couldn't bring their own grip equipment to a production, camera assistants who couldn't rent out any of their gear to the production, etc.

Not everyone wants to deal with all the issues of ownership. Many productions are short-term limited-liability productions that close shop as soon as possible -- do you really think some assistant to a line producer wants to have a ton of bought camera gear sitting in his office two days after wrap that he has to take the time to sell on the market?

 

[constantine Tirintzis]

David has a point here. However things are very different in many European countries and US reality doesnt apply. For instance there are a lot of directors red owners, camera op red owners, even grp red owners here in Greece that they do rent their cameras for commercials and other jobs,being there themselves for support, and since a lot of production houses looking at the new reality bad economy and close down, there is a good chance you can rent out your own gear.And still have your own camera for your own projects. What happens in the world lately has a great effect to this business and the way production thinks and the last year it shows more and more each day.
However a lot of indi -filmakers will purchase their own cameras and since they can compromise to their needs they will do their own films with out using production houses gear and bring their budget down having more to invest to their next project.

 

[Chris Kenny]

The camera rental market is not going to collapse. If anything, all the new camera developments have only proven the wisdom of avoiding ownership unless you are constantly shooting with the gear -- for one-time-only productions, especially short-term ones, it's too much trouble to take time to do the proper research and then buy an entire equipment package and then sell it all when you are finished.

Not to mention optics, what if one show you want to use anamorphics, the next show you want to use Master Primes, the next show you want to use Cooke S4's??? People are still going to want to rent special lenses that they don't feel the need to always own. Same goes for support gear like remote heads, specialty heads, etc.

Well, I'd like to clarify that I was specifically speaking about actual cameras, not everything in the camera department (e.g. lenses). And I'm not saying the camera rental market is going to completely go away.

But, well, consider how often digital SLRs and lenses are rented rather than purchased. Not very.

The price of digital motion imaging cameras is on a sharp downward trajectory, and this will create a larger market for things like lenses that will result in the introduction of high-quality low-cost options there as well. I mean, let's face it; Ultra Primes are built to higher standards than Nikors (and building cine lenses is inherently harder), but if they were actually produced in decent quantities, there's a fair chance they'd only cost a few times as much, not the current ~20x as much. We've already started to see this with, for instance, the Red Primes, which are by most accounts not that far from Ultra Prime quality, and are less than half the price... almost certainly because Red is pricing them based on an assumption of higher sales volume, enabled by their comparatively low-cost cameras.

It's also worth noting that in the still photo market, where there are lots of really cheap (by cine standards) "pretty good" options available, there is virtually no market for expensive "best possible" options. Yet the cine market is almost entirely dominated by expensive "best possible" options. The reason for this is pretty clear: historically, if you were shooting on 35mm film, you were spending so much money anyway that renting expensive lenses wasn't a big deal. So the whole industry is currently oriented around relatively price-insensitive customers. It can be expected to re-orient itself substantially as large-sensor cameras become more available to people who don't consider $10M to be "low budget".

Some studios, like Warners, won't even allow rental of private gear belonging to crew members unless unavoidable, they'd rather make deals with big rental houses. I've had Key Grips who couldn't bring their own grip equipment to a production, camera assistants who couldn't rent out any of their gear to the production, etc.

Not everyone wants to deal with all the issues of ownership. Many productions are short-term limited-liability productions that close shop as soon as possible -- do you really think some assistant to a line producer wants to have a ton of bought camera gear sitting in his office two days after wrap that he has to take the time to sell on the market?

What you're telling me is, current business practices are oriented around renting rather than owning gear. But my whole point here is that there are reasons we can expect these practices to be disrupted in the future.

Once equipment gets cheap enough, rental just stops making sense. I mean, do photo photographers even charge separate rental fees for the gear they show up with? My impression is they usually don't, at least if they're just bringing a body and some lenses. And this makes sense. I mean, a pro photographer has to spend, what? Maybe $5K every two years to maintain a reasonable package? Much simpler for everyone to just build that overhead into the day rate. There are already a lot of cases even within the traditional video production world where this is true.

We're not quite there yet for motion imaging with Red's second generation, but we might be with their fourth or fifth. (And actually we are there with Red's second generation, for projects for which a 2/3" fixed-lens Scarlet is suitable. Keeping in mind that, as I said above, it's not impossible the 2/3" Scarlet will produce better looking 1080p that the Red One does under some conditions.)

It's not as if the industry has any real objection to this model. It's already common in traditional video production, with cheaper gear. For instance, Red camera techs don't normally charge productions rental fees for the laptops they bring on-set, DPs don't charge for their light meters. It even seems relatively common (though not quite as universal) for sound guys on moderately sized productions to own all of their own gear and include it in their day rate.

 

[Chris Kenny]

David has a point here. However things are very different in many European countries and US reality doesnt apply. For instance there are a lot of directors red owners, camera op red owners, even grp red owners here in Greece that they do rent their cameras for commercials and other jobs,being there themselves for support, and since a lot of production houses looking at the new reality bad economy and close down, there is a good chance you can rent out your own gear.And still have your own camera for your own projects. What happens in the world lately has a great effect to this business and the way production thinks and the last year it shows more and more each day.

David, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most of your work is fairly high-end. What Constantine is describing above is a lot more like what I see in the low-end and mid-range (sub-$15K music videos, sub-$200K features, sub-$100K commercials) in the New York City market. These sorts of productions are extremely willing to rent gear from owner/operators. Everyone benefits. The production pays a rental fee that's less than what they'd pay if they were renting from a rental house, and the owner/op makes more money than they could with just a day rate.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

But who is buying and owning the camera equipment? The production or the cinematographer? If you are talking about the production, I already explained the problems with that for one-time-only short-term limited-liability productions. Production offices don't want to be stuck trying to selling thousands of dollars worth of equipment after the last day of production. I mean, what would a 2-camera EPIC S35 package cost with full support gear, a set of Master Primes, and two Angenieux zooms? $200,000? And if hundreds of independent features had to buy complete camera packages and then sell them after wrap, the market would be flooded with used equipment in a years time. Soon no private owner who paid for a new camera could compete against the private owner who bought it third or fourth or fifth hand.

So if not the production, then every cinematographer has to own all the camera gear? What if one production wanted to shoot on an ARRI instead of a EPIC? What if they wanted to use Cooke S4's instead of Master Primes? What if they didn't like your monitors?

Sure, I can see an impact on the rental houses that cater to small video productions, but for major feature and television production, I don't see the rental model disappearing.

For one thing, it's a cash-flow issue. Some guy making an independent feature maybe has budgeted $40,000 total for camera equipment rental. He could probably get a deal on renting a 2-camera EPIC package for that amount, but he couldn't buy a 2-camera EPIC package with lenses for that amount. But let's say it would cost him "only" $100,000 to create a complete 2-camera package. You could say "hey, sell it all when you're wrapped and even if you lose 20% on your investment, you would have only spent $20,000 to shoot instead of $40,000." Yeah, he'd say, "but I don't have the $100,000 up front to buy all of that gear, but I do have the $40,000 up front to rent all of that gear."

You can take all of those numbers and make them even smaller -- maybe he's got $10,000 total saved to rent for a one-time production, but what he needs to rent would cost him $30,000 total to buy. Even if he could sell everything back at 100% and essentially have spent zero money, it's all pointless if he doesn't have the original $30,000.

Now you could say that for a TV series, since they shoot for 6 months, it would be better to just buy the camera package instead of renting for that long. But what if the TV show was cancelled after the first two episodes were shot? What if the network only wanted to shoot a pilot? Are they really going to buy a complete camera package for only a 11-day shoot for a series that they might not pick up?

Remember that as far as the studios go, there was a time when they all had a camera department and their own equipment, but they all dropped that idea -- not because of the cost of the equipment purchase, but because of the cost of the people, the overhead, the maintenance, the upgrading, etc.

The rental business is not going anywhere except in the smallest of productions.

And I wouldn't call a sub-$200,000 feature "midrange".

But sure, if you want to say that the rental model will disappear for those small productions, that may happen -- in fact, it's already happening. But what you said was ""The collapse of the camera rental market is, in fact, part of the democratization of filmmaking", suggesting that there would be a collapse of the entire camera rental market. That's a much broader statement than saying that the rental model for small-budget projects will disappear, leaving the rental houses to cater only to major feature and TV productions.

 

[Peter Matthes]

What Constantine is describing above is a lot more like what I see in the low-end and mid-range (sub-$15K music videos, sub-$200K features, sub-$100K commercials) in the New York City market. These sorts of productions are extremely willing to rent gear from owner/operators. Everyone benefits. The production pays a rental fee that's less than what they'd pay if they were renting from a rental house, and the owner/op makes more money than they could with just a day rate.

Chris,

I can tell you that the owner/operator rental market in NYC is alive an well. At least for the time being.

Your caps of sub-15K, sub 200K and sub-100K are too low in my humble opinion. Commercial productions, for example, will rent from owner/operators right up to the half million dollar mark. Anything over that tends to go to rental houses, if only because the blame can be externalized if something goes wrong. Furthermore, back up equipment can often be flown in very quickly.

When RED cameras are on set here in NYC for large shoots, a back-up body is often found on set. It doesn't speak to the reliability of the camera, as much as the paranoia of the producer.