My worries

[Joel Arvidsson]

I agree!

Dont worry. I have to keep my hvx200 or I be out of job. After i get a scarlet it will still take a while to get to know it and find my favorit workflow. So i need to keep the hvx for some time. Ill bet alot have to do the same. Don't worry be happy

 

[Leaf Baimbridge]

Lay your worries to rest, Scarlet will likely be the last camera you have to buy.

 

[Eddy Robinson]

Approximate price of a Canon XH-G1 now: $4,500
Approximate price of a Canon XH-G1 during fall '09: $1000-$1200 TOPS.

:biggrin:

Wake up! You are dreaming. It is absolutely not going to happen that fast, I'll be surprised if there is more than a 10% change in the prices of cameras for 6 months to a year after Scarlet comes out.

Consider, HD is the hot thing right now, but if you want a good prosumer SD camera like the DVX100 or the Canon XL2, the cost is till about $1500/$2200, respectively. I have been thinking about this since I'd like to get a Scarlet, but in the meantime I'd just like to shoot and these two cameras offer 'proper' 24p, good quality video for many purposes (not theatrical, but fine for a straight-to-DVD indie film), and real manual control of things like focus etc. (I can not get with 35mm adaptors, personally...)

By your logic, since everyone wants a HD camera I should be able to pick up one of these unfashionable SD units for under $500. In fact, if you have one of these now-worthless devices, please sell it to me at a suitably low price.

Yes, I very much want a Scarlet, but I'm also aware that even if I got one for free in the morning, I would have to spend $1000 minimum just to build a new computer, realistically more like $2000. And much as I respect RED and other software vendors, It's not as simple yet as 'shoot with RED, hook up the disk, click a few buttons and edit your masterpiece'.

Before I order the Scarlet, I'll spend several days sitting at my computer with 2 or 3 piece of test footage until I am sure that I have a workflow that runs as smoothly as taking a piece of Mini-DV footage - you know, so I can do the non-creative part like a trained monkey and output a DVD or whatever 1 hour after I plug in a disk with raw footage.

Of course, this is true for lots of things - after all, people can still screw up mini-DV at 24p, and HD has brought HDV, AVCHD, native H.264 etc. etc. so the workflow issue has to be solved for any new camera. But you can predict in advance the screams of 'aaagh THE PAIN MAKE IT STOP' when the first Scarlet owners realise that Terabytes are the new Gigabytes.

In fact, I've been avoiding getting geared up to HD myself for that exact reason - any such learning curve is expensive and painful, and I don't really want to invest time and money in getting mad skills with HD footage knowing that much of that knowledge will become obsolete when the new Red stuff appears - and even if RED disappeared overnight, HD tools have since had considerable time to mature. So right now I spend a little time learning the ins and outs of working with RedCode, and being very very patient.

Meantime, I would prefer (for myself) to shoot with SD and accept the low quality in return for the low costs. So about that sub-$500 camera...

 

[Eddy Robinson]

....and I thougt that people at first pay for good footage and not for camera. You can allways rent good camera and buy new one just when everythig settle down. So dont jump to that hype with cameras and care more about how to made good picture.

Yeah. you are better to buy a cheap camera with some manual control which can do 16:9 (if you are making films, I guess you don't want to shoot 4:3) and just practice shooting a lot. I have rented cameras before but honestly it's hard to experiment and have fun when a rental clock is ticking.

 

[Pasha Hanover]

I have the same worry. That's why I'm putting up for sale my Sony HVR-A1U this weekend.

Once the Scarlet comes out, I am pretty sure that the $2000 to $7000 cameras will drop in price. Sure the Scarlet will take more work to set up and may not be as easy to operate than what's on the market now, however, the indie film world can finally have a chance to have similar performing equipment to play like the big boys do.

Canon has some very good performing consumer HD camera which are all less than $1000. I myself might pick one up just for fun. No need to have a Z7 or HVX200. You can easily use that for point and shoot and just messing around and practicing. Then when it comes time to make "The Movie", then you bust out the Scarlet for serious power.