KOMODO....

[emil_h]

My thoughts.

I hope sensor and image vice that red does not hold back on this one. To me the only logical option would be to put a sensor with same density as gemini but 6k and give it fully fledged r3d capability. Sure that would compete with all the 6k and less dsmc2 cameras but yes think that's needed to meet the competition.

This would be literally the dumbest thing that RED could do, if they chose to make a camera at 1/4 the price with even better specs then their professional models that sell for 20K plus.

Anyways I can't even keep up with this thread because of all of the outlandish and totally unrealistic predictions. If people think that the specs of this camera will compete with the DSMC2 models they will be highly disappointed.

 

[emil_h]

Red is in a bit if a pinch here where they might be afraid to kill thier own product line but as I think it they need to. Better to sell a shitload of komodo than protecting dragon and gemini as I see it. Having the best product at best price all ways beat product differentiation, but yes it takes guts to do so.

Ummm they had this exact opportunity with the RAVEN at $6,000 selling like hotcakes and it wasn't alluring enough.

 

[emil_h]

If red does not provide a “for free” monitoring solution then its more than a few grand more to get started. Even a low cost sdi screen cost quite a bit. BM lure in the low end by selling a full solution including battery in a box. Sure its not a complete setup but I think the 2,5k usd is something most can make back on a single project. 6k + usd is a totally different thing.

Nope. Not going to happen.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

LOL cuz a 5k Komodo is "mid-range" while the Mini LF at 80k is "high-end." You sound delusional.

First off, the Komodo is 6K, not 5K. Second, there's more to a camera than just sensor specs.

Those iphone movies looked like doo doo and had to be overly lit just to compensate for that tiny ittybitty sensor.

You missed the point entirely.

 

[Sabyasachi Patra]

But Hydrogen failed to "revolutionize" mobiles and no one really buys this phone unless they are super fans of it, so that's a fail in premium. If Komodo doesn't meet what BlackMagic Pocket 6K delivers for its price, then that will be a fail as well.
Premium prices works when talking about cameras like Monstro, Helium, Ranger and DXL2, but if we're going to talk about cameras in the range of the Pocket 6K, then the competition is pretty harsh.

Komodo needs to be better for it's price. If ZCam delivers 8K full frame for the same amount and BlackMagic delivers a Pocket 6K at s35mm, then Komodo needs to have a special juice to compete with that. Doesn't matter what we say on this forum, it matters how it actually perform both in specs and practical application. If it fails, it's gonna die. The mid-range priced cameras like these live or die through what they deliver at their prices. If you can afford a Red DSMC2 at any range, with all the side-gear needed plus lenses, then you would probably not care about $10K differences and some small spec changes between cameras or brands because all would be enough for most kinds of projects. But at the Komodo, Pocket 6K and ZCam price range, the competition either kills or gets killed, there's no in-betweens as there is at higher ranges.

I agree with you. For me the Blackmagic 6K will be useful for certain shooting scenarios. Nevertheless I am planning to buy it because of the lower cost. If Komodo is priced way too high, which looks likely, then it would be tough to get mass adoption.

 

[Gregory Karydis]

I feel that it has escaped the attention of most everyone here that is drawing comparisons between the BMPCC 6K and the Komodo.
Yes, they may both be 6K.
They may both have a way to use EF mount lenses.
And they may both weigh under 2lb...

But that's where the similarities end.

Komodo shoots R3D.
Has the sought after Colour Science powered by Graeme's Magic.
Has a very short flange depth so you can use virtually any lens with an adaptor.
Can be powered any which way with batteries that will last you all day.
You can go for an ultra rugged and compact setup without a monitor on a drone and just add a lens and power, or go all out and rig it like any other A-Cam.
Has 4K SDI
Has the usual RED bulletproof build quality.

In short, Komodo is a totally different beast, in a class of it's own.

Not knowing any more specs, the closest competing product we can guess is the upcoming Z-cam models, but I am confident these won't even come close.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I agree with you. For me the Blackmagic 6K will be useful for certain shooting scenarios. Nevertheless I am planning to buy it because of the lower cost. If Komodo is priced way too high, which looks likely, then it would be tough to get mass adoption.

Without knowing the specs of Komodo, I don't think it's priced too high. If it delivers on previously mentioned areas that professionals need out of a camera; Footage acquisition quality, acquisition color science, compatibility with industry-standard equipment/cables/wireless, built quality, reliability and ease of use. And it does so with improvements over ZCam BM, Sigma, etc. then it is well worth its price point. However, if it performs equally I don't know how it would survive the market.

I've played around with some of the 8K full-frame ZCam clips and there sure are a lot of bad things about it. Mainly, it clips too fast both in shadows and highlights, but also manage to have lots of stuck pixels. But actually, stuck pixels seem to creep into Red productions as well. I've seen it quite noticeable in UHD HDR (2000 nits) it in Stranger Things and there are whole threads about problems with some Gemini sensors having these stuck pixel issues to the extent that Redcine-X now has a "stuck pixel remover" feature. That a cheap 8K FF camera like the ZCam E2-F8 has it is understandable for its price, part of the reason professionals choose Red, Arri, Sony or whatever high-end is because of the reliability in picture quality. But if issues related to cheaper cameras pop up in higher-end systems, then it's not that strange to question the price points.

We are talking about a $6000 8K FF camera compared to the Monstro 8K. Any experienced colorist or filmmaking pixel-peeper will spot that these two are like night and day, there's not even any competition in quality, the Monstro wins straight up. However, looking back at the last ten years of cameras released; is the Monstro really winning at that price point difference? We are talking about a $48500 price difference for the same sensor size and resolution. If we start at $6000, at the quality of the ZCam E2-F8‬ and then add the things that make the Monstro light-years better we have: R3D compressed RAW, 16,5 stops of DR (over ZCam's 14, but this needs to be calculated to roll-off vs actual stops, like Arri having 14, but actually having around the same as Red), higher frame rates, better color science and more reliable etc. The question is; how do you calculate the increase in price along the line of these improvements? Adding more processing to have more FPS together with a faster read sensor will add a lot, but how much? Is it $10000 more? $20000? How do we calculate R&D around R3D? It's been around for ages now, like ProRes or DNxHD/HR. I doubt there's the same amount of R&D implementing R3D into "the next camera" as there was developing it in the first place. How about color science? R&D is ongoing there, but IPP2 is also getting aged. Of course, I'm over-simplifying this and there are lots of gears moving to beef up the price point, but $48500 more? The only thing it comes down to really, is how disruptive a new cheaper camera from Red would be to their own lineup.‬ ZCam 6K and 8K, Pocket 6K, Sigma's new FF are all the first real high-resolution options in the mid-range cameras. What about their follow-ups? When does the Monstro, Helium, the Gemini and Dragon 5K go from their current price, down to almost nothing due to the competition of these mid-range options?

There is a drawback to having lots of cameras and sensors in Red's shop and that is; they will very fast be outpaced by new Red cameras and every new camera might render the previous one irrelevant. In order not to disrupt Red's own lineup of cameras, there cannot be a self-disrupting one coming out. It needs to be compatible with what already exists. If other companies release something disruptive, then Red gets put between a rock and hard place. Either push out a new camera that is disrupting to their own lineup, or try to squeeze enough out of the current lineup in order to maximize profits before eventually needing to face the competition. Just look at the Intel and AMD battle over the years. Intel owned the place, but then AMD launched the Ryzen processors and Intel over the course of just a couple of months released the i9 multicore processors. They had the ability, they had the R&D, they had everything ready, but they owned the market, so they could squeeze enough out of that lineup as possible before the competition rose up and faced them... well, the competition is now rising up on the camera market and while big productions will still pay premium for the high-end lineups, we are now in shifting gears.
Red needs to either mount up to the competition and release Komodo with capabilities that destroy ZCam and BM's lineup, disrupting their offerings and doing it at just a slightly higher price. And to do so, Red might need to risk disrupting their own lineup.

Maybe doing so might be good in the long run. Disrupt their own cameras to get all the ZCam, BM users out of their comfort zone into Red's infrastructure so that by the time DSMC3 releases, those people might have gained their business into a position able to do that kind of upgrade. Disrupting their current lineup would make people sell used cameras, spreading more Red's into the field, while not really affecting current Red large scale productions planned up until DSMC3 release.

It's the perfect time for Red to be disruptive, scale back prices, return to the democratizing philosophy of affordable high-end cinema cameras. Build up a new customer base while keeping the old, keeping larger productions and then when the negative effects of the disruption of Red's own lineup settle down, they release DSMC3.
Otherwise, Red will try to push the current prices of their high-end gear to a point where it hits a ceiling and people look at other cameras asking "why Red?" and such a question will echo over the release of DSMC3. Thinking like a business; how would Red gain profits? When the market is so saturated with cameras now, what can they do that increase Red users and sales? Just doing high-end systems? That's not gonna cut it anymore, the market has flooded and some even use low-cost alternatives for large scale productions. The answer should be pretty obvious; go to a lower price point, democratize by disrupting the market again, like with the Red One, and fuel the Red hype with a product that has the same hype as the original Red One.

There's not much else to it.

 

[Tuomas Hakala]

Red needs to either mount up to the competition and release Komodo with capabilities that destroy ZCam and BM's lineup, disrupting their offerings and doing it at just a slightly higher price. And to do so, Red might need to risk disrupting their own lineup.

Agree fully with this. Red should be bold and be disruptive, even if it ended up affecting their higher-end cameras a bit in the long run.. on the other hand, in the long run, the higher-end can always go higher specs wise with new models and price of existing models usually drop. I think the success of C300 in mid-range was the result of the unexpected success of something that was surely meant to be a niche feature, the video mode on 5DmkII. I bet if Canon knew how well 5D video would take off, they wouldn't have released that function in order to protect their camcorder market. But in the end, it worked pretty well for them since so many people moved to video through 5D and then upgraded to C300 or other Canon cameras, they just messed up thing badly later by trying to protect higher-end cameras which weren't so feature-rich to begin with, by releasing cheaper cameras that were even less feature-rich. Now of course even the new low-end cameras (not talking about Canon but the new market disruptors) are pretty damn amazing compared to before.

 

[RJ_Ortiz]

Garbage? Really?

I own the 4k pocket, but haven't used it much but appears similar to my G2. The G2 has lovely footage and easy to grade IMO. I think BM has done a good job of their colour.

I personally don't think the P4K holds up to the G2 image. We own 2 of them and they're just okay. Color is fine.

 

[Björn Benckert]

6k not so disruptive any more...
The officially Panasonic unveiled specs are:

6K 3:2 capture at 24p
16:9 5.9K capture at up to 30p
‘Multi aspect’ recording including anamorphic 4:3 capture
10-bit DCI and UHD 4K capture at up to 60p
Unlimited recording times
14+ stop V-Log/V-Gamut capture LR
Color reproduction to match Cinema VariCam series

Seams like everyone and his skateboarding friends will shoot 6 in a very near future.

To be disruptive, as I see it, Red would need to make this release a monstro8k comodo for 5kusd anything less in the square form factor / no screen excetra I think a lot of people will pass on and instead get a ready to shoot 6k option for less.

Im a bit surprised I thought all little cameras would shoot uhd raw before moving to more pixels but apparently not.

 

[Mendes Nabil]

Call me crazy all, but i have the feeling that this Komodo has a Mysterium X sensor..
I remember Jarred offering an ultimate upgrade path about 2 years ago for DSMC1 and Red One Mx owners, and i was wondering what will they do with all these old cameras..

Look at the statement made by Jarred in his first post :
" - It is not a Dragon or a Helium or a Gemini or a Monstro Sensor "

That can only be Mx or a brand new sensor, but i don't see them making a whole new sensor for a 6.000$ camera..

Komodo might be a 6k for 6k$ Red epic Mx on a tiny body..

Or maybe a crash cam? He also said in his first post : " talented people banging on it to try and break it ".
But 6.000$ is a bit expensive for a crash cam, something is missing in the equation..

 

[Brandon Veen]

Call me crazy all, but i have the feeling that this Komodo has a Mysterium X sensor..
I remember Jarred offering an ultimate upgrade path about 2 years ago for DSMC1 and Red One Mx owners, and i was wondering what will they do with all these old cameras..

Look at the statement made by Jarred in his first post :
" - It is not a Dragon or a Helium or a Gemini or a Monstro Sensor "

That can only be Mx or a brand new sensor, but i don't see them making a whole new sensor for a 6.000$ camera..

Komodo might be a 6k for 6k$ Red epic Mx on a tiny body..

In an h4vuser update thread before thisone was made, Jim had said this about KOMODO:

We have completed the new and extraordinary sensor and redesigned the package.

So it's a new sensor of some variety. Which exactly is yet to be known.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I have no idea what the lead time was for developing Komodo, whether or not the design is locked down, etc. That said, from the cheap seats, it sure feels like the value proposition of the Komodo in the market of today is facing some serious headwinds. I would imagine Jarred and the RedTeam have had some interesting meetings lately... What options might they have?

1) Pricing. It's an easy fix and would allow them to keep their release schedule. That said, would a ready to shoot kit bundle for $7K (vs an guesstimated $9K) move significantly more units? What about margin? RED is a business, not a charity.

2) Redesign. Hard to imagine a beefed up version could be made quickly enough to get in the race.

3) Punt. Focus on DSMC3 and bail on the Komodo altogether. If RED is as close to the finish line as they appear to be, this might be a non-starter.

4) Stick to the game plan. Komodo, within the broad strokes of capabilities and pricing currently known, will be the Goldilocks camera for some shooters. Just revise sales projections in light of market conditions and focus on DSMC3.

If I had to bet, I'd pick 4. Why? I can't see RED winning a price war. Redesign would take too long and killing it would leave a lot of dev costs unrecovered.

Like many people already in the RED ecosystem, the Komodo is very attractive to me as a "B" camera. It should also be a great personal camera. Taking my Monstro on a family vacation went pretty well, but smaller would have made it easier.

Cheers - #19

 

[David Collard]

Hey Guys,
Just want to thank everyone who is contributing to this thread. I don't have much to say of any intellectual value but you have my gratitude just the same.

 

[Mendes Nabil]

In an h4vuser update thread before thisone was made, Jim had said this about KOMODO:


So it's a new sensor of some variety. Which exactly is yet to be known.

I didn't see that post, really interesting as it unveils the origin of Komodo to me. It was supposed to be the Red Hydrogen camera module i guess, but seeing its capabilities, they decided to make it a camera on its own..
Jim talks about it as a "module", and Jarred said the inverse in his first post:
It is not a “module”

I guess we'll soon have the answer of what Komodo really is..

 

[Savannah Miller]

If it was an MX sensor, the camera would be dead in the water. Why would anyone pay $6000 for a noisy, outdated sensor, when the Pocket 6K has likely more DR, dual ISO, etc.

 

[Fahnon Bennett]

If it was an MX sensor, the camera would be dead in the water. Why would anyone pay $6000 for a noisy, outdated sensor, when the Pocket 6K has likely more DR, dual ISO, etc.

I think the MX sensor is still beautiful and filmic, but you're right that it's just too old. I really can't go back to not having clean 3200 ISO (6400 even better).

Definitely wouldn't look good on the spec sheet.

 

[emil_h]

First off, the Komodo is 6K, not 5K. Second, there's more to a camera than just sensor specs.

Um I was talking about the $5,000 price tag hence the Mini LF 80k in the same sentence.

 

[David Rasberry]

Ummm they had this exact opportunity with the RAVEN at $6,000 selling like hotcakes and it wasn't alluring enough.

A practical Raven package is/was well north of $10k the last time I checked.

 

[David Rasberry]

Call me crazy all, but i have the feeling that this Komodo has a Mysterium X sensor..
I remember Jarred offering an ultimate upgrade path about 2 years ago for DSMC1 and Red One Mx owners, and i was wondering what will they do with all these old cameras..

Look at the statement made by Jarred in his first post :
" - It is not a Dragon or a Helium or a Gemini or a Monstro Sensor "

That can only be Mx or a brand new sensor, but i don't see them making a whole new sensor for a 6.000$ camera..

Komodo might be a 6k for 6k$ Red epic Mx on a tiny body..

Or maybe a crash cam? He also said in his first post : " talented people banging on it to try and break it ".
But 6.000$ is a bit expensive for a crash cam, something is missing in the equation..

Jarred has said it is a brand new sensor. Red’s older tech is too power hungry and hot compared to what can be done now.