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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 :)

Nikon to Acquire US Cinema Camera Manufacturer RED.com, LLC

Phil Holland said:
Just some inside baseball chatter. Spoke with Tommy for about an hour today. Will likely collect more thoughts as a certain other power hitter will be around as well. But yeah, I'm real excited about this at the end of the day.

For those not at NAB. Nikon, MRMC, and RED are sharing a booth and RED has a private booth with some enticing things elsewhere. Some real nice things happening at this point.
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I was hoping to be able to make it this year. It’s a good indicator that he took the time to speak with you for that long. I’ve heard a little bit of good chatter about some extra engineering support from the Nikon on the firmware side of things. Hopefully that materializes into some nice improvements.
 
lumiere said:
Anyone who invested in RED and made a career out of it made a great choice. But unfortunately Obsolescence isn’t Obsolete (I came up with that term 19 years ago) in this case. Tech is moving at a lightening speed and the days of $50k+ cinema cameras will most certainly go away. Not tomorrow, but a few short years later. Nikon isn’t interested in growing a relatively small revenue 3% of theirs by a few percentage points. They are interested in eating Canon’s lunch. They want to do to Canon what RED did to analog filmmaking. That’s OK. I will still shoot with my RED for a few years until the Z15 shoots 10K RAW at 600 fps with AI for $6K. I loved my first MacBook, but we moved on. I give Jarred 12 months tops. I say this with nothing but admiration and love. I know Japanese corporate and let me just say… not compatible :)
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I guess it didn’t take 12 month @Phil Holland

Upon RED becoming a wholly owned subsidiary, RED’s President Jarred Land became a close Advisor to the company
 
Yes Frederic you definitely did call it.

All of this is a bit surreal and I don't think anyone can say with certainty where this will go.
I feel the same as my initial thoughts when this acquisition was announced. This is one of those situations that you have to take a step
at a time as this may be a long and winding road.

Of course, we should put all of this in perspective. There's much crazier more concerning things
going on in the world that can change life as we know it.

Back to cinema, every camera in the current line up already packs a lot of power.
I do hope firmware updates can start flowing a bit more freely to squeeze every ounce out of DSMC 3 (including Komodo).

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
 
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During the Scott Balkum interview with Jarred Land, the suit jacket RED CEO, Keiji Oishi was wearing imbued a lot about the new leadership culture. Jarred was clear on articulating the communication and engagement styles will be quite different moving forward. Reduser, in particular has been a dopamine dispensary for a long time. The engagement on the REDUser forum early on with Jim and Jarred was a very informal style of feedback, both ways - [RED HQ <--> Customer base]. That worked in some many ways. It put the neophytes and professionals in the same conversation. The education component was golden. The information exchange was a force multiplier. Peaks and pokes at emerging camera tech, kept the marketing temperature at a nice simmer. Tremendous execution.

That dynamic will probably no longer exist. Information will be controlled, almost to a trickle.

Notably, during the interview, Jarred payed respect to the volume of new content creators that overwhelming embraced the Komodo and the resulting brand affect for RED. Expressing how this new revenue stream, was an awareness moment highlighting RED's challenge in building cameras for a large retail market.

Moving forward, I will read the tea leaves here, Nikon may attempt to leverage the RED sensor/R3D for use in the mirrorless camera products, which is not necessarily news. But Nikon will express a bigger attempt at moving the market share needle aimed at the Prosumer market. The profile of the future RED customer will focus and narrow. The customer base maybe pushed to the spectrum of higher end RED products and solutions as part of the company ethos. This could represent a change in the market perception of RED. Shifting from being away from being barely entry level friendly to feeling totally exclusive.

I will always have this languishing question, if the Nikon/RED patent dispute mishegoss had never happened, would the acquisition have even presented itself? As it never really seemed that RED was interested in being purchased.
 
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Han Vogen said:
Nikon buys their sensors from Sony. The Burano is crippled because Sony wanted it that way. The same sensor is in the A1 and has better performance than in Burano.
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Yes, Sony did cripple that camera as they have multiple sensor that can do less than 18 ms readout for example. What I meant is that Nikon could have designed their own Burano, Fx6 etc camera with the tech they already have in the z8/z9. But they decided to buy RED!!!! And for me the obvious reason is because of the brand, the tech and networking coming with it is a plus, but mainly because it is called RED and has and is used in Hollywood movies. Just this move put them in places where no Canon or even Panasonic cameras have gone before. Again, they could tomorrow build a 8k 60 fps camera with autofocus, IBis, viewfinder and internal compressed raw with what they already have tech wise with the z8/z9. They already have the Sensor, processor etc. So why buy RED, to just kill it.
 
Daniel Villiers said:
Yes, Sony did cripple that camera as they have multiple sensor that can do less than 18 ms readout for example. What I meant is that Nikon could have designed their own Burano, Fx6 etc camera with the tech they already have in the z8/z9. But they decided to buy RED!!!! And for me the obvious reason is because of the brand, the tech and networking coming with it is a plus, but mainly because it is called RED and has and is used in Hollywood movies. Just this move put them in places where no Canon or even Panasonic cameras have gone before. Again, they could tomorrow build a 8k 60 fps camera with autofocus, IBis, viewfinder and internal compressed raw with what they already have tech wise with the z8/z9. They already have the Sensor, processor etc. So why buy RED, to just kill it.
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I wouldn’t say it’s a place where neither Canon or Sony have been. Indeed, my concern is it is exactly where both Canon and Sony are right now.
Both of these brands have a high end video division. And for that reason we see some features are deliberately left out of hybrid models, while other features available in hybrid models are omitted from the high-end video cameras.
So what does this mean for Nikon/Red? Can we expect dumbed down Z releases? Or will Red become the Redheaded stepchild. Where premium Red features are made available for a fraction of the price in Nikon models? One thing is certain, it won’t be business as usual anymore.
 
Where is RED/Nikon going?

Nikon isn’t going after ARRI’s market share (they are already much larger), they are going after Canon’s market share. Sub $10k cameras.

Matthew Tremblay the Chief Design Officer of RED for 18 years resigned.
 
Time jump forward. Will the Z9 or the Z9 Mark II include 16 bit RAW? The R3D codec? HQ, MQ, LQ, ELQ options? 8K @ 30 fps; 4K @ 120fps? How will the R3D bit rate variants be divvyed up on the lower end of the Z series?
 
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Im just hopeing Nikon releases an update for the older dsmc2 lineup to free up the dying media cards dilema 😩
 
Kenneth interiano said:
Im just hopeing Nikon releases an update for the older dsmc2 lineup to free up the dying media cards dilema 😩
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Reasonable from a dsmc2 owner perspective. Nikon most likely will limit support to products currently listed on RED.com. Clean and simple. Nikon hasn't owned RED long enough to build a Nikon sanctioned warranty/repair/support policy. Current practice and guidance will be noted and adjusted.

Also, supporting legacy products, even a small part of the acquisition chain, discourages customers from making new product investments. RED exiting the media business, if possible, is probably not a bad idea.
 
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Going by what the people actually in charge of and involved in this process are saying and doing, I'm even more optimistic than before that this is going to be a win/win/win situation for Nikon, RED and their customers.

It sounds to me like work has already begun on a transfer and developing of technologies that could result in shorter and longer term changes and advancements of RED and Nikon camera's.

Which sounds kind of obvious, but a key part of it is, I get the impression Nikon aren't messing around when it comes to what they want their Nikon stills camera's or the future RED camera's to be.

I'm also not seeing a collapse of RED, but more of a re-invigoration of it as they can now focus on and work towards goals that simply weren't attainable before, in a similar way to how they've managed to disrupt and push the technological boundaries in the past. Not in exactly the same way of course, but with no less commitment or determination to making products that their customers find useful, while also helping move the whole industry forward.

RED and Nikon have stated one of their core aims is to listen to their current and potential customers, so as to help guide the companies in the development of products those customers will want or even need to buy. I don't think that's just marketing and I think it's an important approach to take.

I'm just as interested though in what the engineeers and visionaries within the companies want to do or make, either in the pursuit of something the customers have said they want, or in the pursuit of the technical attainment of features or capabilities that the customers didn't even realize were possible.

These are interesting times for image acquisition and processing in general. In the past I've thought of RED as being the kind of company that was uniquely suited to taking a place at the leading edge of technological advances in that area. Right now, I'm of the opinion that Nikon and RED working together are in a similarly unique position to do the same thing.

I'm still looking at the images coming out of RED camera's, and the camera's themselves, and just shaking my head at how crazy it is what they've managed to do there. My own personal measure of whether RED and Nikon succeed with their new venture, will be whether or not they come up with more of that. And I definitely think they can.

Anyway, just some more thoughts and observations, partly inspired by and reacting to Jarred and Keiji making an appearance on Scott Balkum's podcast from NAB.
 
lumiere said:
Matthew Tremblay the Chief Design Officer of RED for 18 years resigned.
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Not sure I'd read too much into it. Matt already had a wonderful second company in Global Dynamics United since 2014 supplying us with all sorts of nifty gizmos and gadgets. I'm thinking he probably received a windfall from the transaction, allowing him to step back and reassess what he wants to do.
 
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The DSMC3 platform is probably locked in for the time being and can hold down the fort at least 2 more years. Albeit an accessory and firmware update here or there, to keep it interesting. The more marketable product are the mirrorless series. It is the market Nikon knows well, it's the low hanging fruit that sells by the truckloads.

The DSMC4 could be the big coming out party for RED & Nikon. A new sensor with higher resolution, advanced autofocus (sony/canon-esque), improved energy/cooling/battery efficiency, more robust metadata for realtime VFX integration & post. Marc Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has some cool automation stuff with motion tracking that could make its way into the camera, who knows. Lots of smart people in the industry.

And I think there may be a price bump on new products.
 
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I rethought my opinion about r3d compression in the Nikon's mirrorless cameras. New gate array + ASIC hardware would be needed to handle the compression data. Maybe the next version of the Expeed [v8] processor would be capable? :oops:
 
M.Halsell said:
I rethought my opinion about r3d compression in the Nikon's mirrorless cameras. New gate array + ASIC hardware would be needed to handle the compression data. Maybe the next version of the Expeed [v8] processor would be capable? :oops:
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I can only imagine how complex it would be to integrate RED and Nikon capabilities into each others camera's.

Even without knowing all the ins and outs of it, it's mind-boggling to think of all the decisions that would have to be made and things that would have to be worked out, on so many different levels, not just the technical and hardware side of it, in order to make the most of combining Nikon and RED's expertise.

I think there are good reasons why everyone's saying it will be a year or more before we see new features in their respective camera's.

Would make sense if the implementing of any newly transferred features and capabilities was reserved for the release of completely new camera models too.

Not hard to also imagine that the changes might be more noticeable in the next generation of RED camera's than the Nikon ones.

Makes me wonder if there will be a first generation of RED and Nikon camera's that are all about the integration of each others tech, to form a kind of base to then iterate off of. Mainly thinking about that in terms of the RED DSMC platform and how that could potentially be Nikon-ized (and I mean that in a positive sense).

Something else I find interesting is the potential for the ongoing RED cine-camera development to be used as a kind of test-bed for pushing the limits of motion-imaging, getting results that can then be adapted to cross over into the Nikon stills camera's, while simultaneously redefining the cine-camera with the inclusion of current or emerging stills camera features. It would fit in with the tradition of modifying and customizing and pushing the limits of technology to get a new or better result that's always been there on the motion-picture side of things, along with a comparatively higher tolerance for the extra weight, inconvenience and expense that's traditionally come with it. As an overly simplified example, if only one 'processor' can fit into a mirrorless camera, does that mean RED will be free to see what can be done fitting two or three of them into a cine-camera?

Just daydreaming again now I guess, in the absence of more concrete details of how exactly RED and Nikon are going to go about achieving their stated aims, and while they might still be trying to figure it all out themselves.
 
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