Red Accessories - Sexy vs. Crappy

[Dylan Reeve]

In talking to manufacturers and suppliers in relation to my SolidStore it's become apparent that it's more or less impossible to 'buy American' these days (or NZ for that matter). Even NZ and US manufacturers I talk to tend to have most of the manufacturing work done in Asia (either by their own factories there, or by a third party). There is nothing inherently wrong with the process, the only issue is that it tends to mean it's harder to have oversight on the manufacturing and that issues might not be discovered until the parts are delivered.

The 'crappy' parts I've used didn't seem too bad to me, but certainly weren't as sexy as the sexy parts.

 

[ericyoung]

According to Jon's post (yellow highlighting post changes), Red are revisiting their cast parts.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7464

"...We have had growing pains in switching from expensive hand machined parts to affordable cast parts. From finish to tolerances, it has been a tough go and we have had to ask the customer's forgiveness as we get things right. We now have a beautiful glossy finish again and are in the process of improving tolerances".

My remaining concern is with parts that will be holding the entire camera package weight. Will the new sexy looking cast parts that are load carrying have similar mechanical shear/impact strength as the original machined ones?

When mounted on Steadicam on a vehicle for example, the G-forces can be much higher than anything encountered on more conventional mounts. So any load carrying support should hopefully have plenty of safety margin built in!

 

[Sean]

After a shoot last week we noticed that we were having a hard time sliding in the rods for the top mount on #511. We took a closer look and found the problem. This is a comparison to the top mounts that shipped with #96.

The cast top mount doesn't have enough thickness to prevent it from breaking. I'm not sure if that's a result from being machined initially or the anodizing process, but clearly it's unacceptable.

Thank you for posting this. We all want Red to rock the industry--and in many ways it's clearly going to do that. But we're using a single top handle to lift our camera. And we have the cast accessories--including the cast top mount. It doesn't look like I can trust this part to support the camera weight! Unless you were doing something exceptionally stressful with that top mount? Were you using it with some other support like a car mount or something?

 

[David Mutchler]

RED, pretty please, with sugar on top, go back to machined!

 

[Michael Hastings]

AquaVideoRed206, I hope you are not insinuating that things made in Singapore or anywhere else except USA are not good enough or are failing QC. I am sure Red has good reasons for making their camera where they want them made.

I think I was pretty clear in my comments:
"I'm not hardcore "BUY AMERICAN", but I try to keep it in mind and I think it is too bad more of it wasn't kept here. And I think a lot of the development woes, and QC problems, would have been reduced too."

My second sentence is echoed by Sycophant:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the process, the only issue is that it tends to mean it's harder to have oversight on the manufacturing and that issues might not be discovered until the parts are delivered.

I think RED purchasers would have been okay with paying a little more for machined parts that would give a greater level of strength and security than cast parts regardless of where they were made.

My biggest disappointment was that RED - in southern california - is in a prime location to get really top quality machining, alloys, etc. and given their volume I think the pricing would have been reasonable to stay with machined parts that were made in the USA. It is simply an opportunity lost as far as keeping American companies in the game.

I think it also may be the case that in looking for the cheapest end price it created a tendency to look over there first to get it done rather than utilizing the capabilities right in their own backyard that could have speeded up the process on a lot of the accessory parts.

 

[reality]

AquaVideo it is ironic that you are swearing up and down about your 25 years manufacturing experience and "USA MAKES THE BEST" when your "American Made" products (no offense) look like they belong in happy meals.

I am proudly American, but I know Germany kicks our ass in precision. Asia is not what it used to be. And unfortunately, USA isn't either.

 

[Michael Hastings]

AquaVideo it is ironic that you are swearing up and down about your 25 years manufacturing experience and "USA MAKES THE BEST" when your "American Made" products (no offense) look like they belong in happy meals.

I am proudly American, but I know Germany kicks our ass in precision. Asia is not what it used to be. And unfortunately, USA isn't either.

First of all, I never said USA MAKES THE BEST, and I would agree that the USA isn't what it used to be. That's kind of the point - it would be nice to keep whatever manufacturing that we can here and I think the RED stuff was a good candidate for that.

I would also agree that Germany generally i.e. on average, beats us in precision but the highest level of US design, machining, etc. is as good as anyone. My brother works in the electro-optical division of Hughes/Raytheon where they design and build extremely sophisticated optical systems for satellites and such and I really doubt if anyone at Zeiss is better than their top end people. However, there's the rub. The US companies pretty much just grab the really high dollar, no risk government/military jobs and we have ceded everything else to the Japanese, now chinese, etc.

However, we still have very capable people - like the Doug Underdahl's of the world who can both design and fabricate a Nikon mount for the RED in a weekend when the design team and the Singaporean contract manufacturer couldn't do it in six months. It is just that with the crazy overhead of American life it is difficult to scale that up to something profitable that competes with otherworld economies (I don't know what first, or second or third world means anymore - too many weird connotations attached) so I will just call it otherworld)

You may be right about the happy meals. I haven't claimed to be the slickest - in fact I generally don't even attempt to be the slickest as I don't think it is warranted for most of the consumer and prosumer camcorders that has been the bread and butter of the underwater video users in the dive industry.

That is, I don't think it makes sense to spend 7 or $8k on a Gates style housing for say an HVX200 when a $2500 pvc one gives you the same functionality and - because of neutral bouyancy issues - often better when you start getting into lights and such.

I started out in 1980 as a 25 year old end user with no money and took the philosophy that it wasn't about high tech or low tech - it is about appropriate technology. Unfortunately, I started when the PVC fabricated housings were really the only practical way to make reasonable priced one off housings for a video system in the days where you had separate cameras and recorders. So I knew about PVC fabricated construction and it still works very well for most cameras. Not all - certain ones like the Z1 and EX1 because of the particular size not fitting the available tube well, and the lousy design of the protruding mike, just don't work that well. But for others like the Sony FX7/V1, Canon GL2, Panasonic HVX200 and the like it works very well. I say unfortunately because I have a hard time selling the "sizzle" not the steak when I know better - even though many people will pay for it and prefer it (somebody on REDUSER posted a very interesting link showing a study that people preferred the exact same wine when it was in a $90 bottle as opposed to a $12 bottle).

And BTW the RED as far as underwater housings is a similar situation - it is almost perfectly sized for a compact cylindrical housing. We are making most of them out of aluminum because that is what customers have asked for and when you get to a $7K to $20K housing for a $20,000 camera the cost difference isn't that much.

The "happy meal" look comes from the difference between a "fabricated" product like mine and a "manufactured" product like Gates. And I'm not knocking Gates - their price is very fair for all the extra work they do - it is just that it doesn't really get you much. Gates is the same basic technology as AquaVideo - i.e. manual, "IKELITE-style" controls in a waterproof box. (Amphibico and L&M at least are differentiated by the electronic controls - a philosophy that I have some issues with too,). So with Gates you are mostly paying for all of the extra work that goes into handling aluminum, machining aluminum (and the jigs and such necessary to setup for machining), welding or casting aluminum, tapping aluminum, anodizing aluminum, painting aluminum, etc.

The cost isn't that much greater if you are making a large number of them, but that just isn't the situation in underwater camera housings - for any of the companies. All of those extra costs get spread over just a few units and the price has to be high.

With the fabricated PVC housings you have probably seen from us, there just isn't any practical way to make them a lot slicker. The aluminum housings we are making for the RED will be a little more machined and "manufactured" looking. But they are still somewhat fabricated as well so probably won't be as slick looking as what GATES is working on - but we are priced between $7K to 8K, with multiple port and lens options, all available now; where the estimates I have heard are $18K or so for Gates - delivery late this year, with limited lens options.

Due to the fact that the RED fits extremely well (almost perfect - Thanks, Jim!) with the cylindrical style housing we are making (the rectanglular shape of the Gates style helps with certain cameras like the Z1 or EX1 Sony's but would actually be bigger in volume with a RED than our cylinder) I don't think you will be giving up much if anything (we may even be more flexible) and I believe most of the extra $10K will go to the things that make it look slicker - i.e. that molded look rectangular shape, and a few "fit and finish" things.

I know you said "no offense" even though you kind of exaggerated my level of touting my experience and the "happy meal" description might be construed as a little harsh - so I won't take too much. But you kind of touched on a nerve because I know there are some questionable impressions out there. No one knows better than I which setups worked well and which didn't - and I have also had some significant customer service hiccups over the last couple years going through some life transitions (divorce, putting kids through college, etc.) but I also know that the basic approach is pretty good. Most of those issues are pretty well behind me and as far as the RED setup it is something I am heavily committed to and I think is coming together very nicely.

As far as the 25 years, you have never seen the results of the many funky projects I've built for NASA, the Seal teams, industrial users, etc. which are nothing like the everyday PVC AquaVideo housings - so you might find my expertise is a little deeper than you think. But even setting those aside, just because I may be a wannabe director, scriptwriter or whatever like the vast majority of REDUSERs doesn't mean I can't recognize a good script or movie. As it relates to RED, it just means I have been around and understand a lot of the issues.

 

[Tony Lorentzen]

I should be receiving my Red #855 in the next few days. I will be giving the accessories a good inspection and will post my opinion then.

Michael - I'm very interested in hearing your opinion once you've taken delivery of #855. Thanks!

 

[Jon Schellenger]

Let me chime in on this-

First off- I am very familiar with the housings from Aqua Video. I started with, continue to use, and will always use Aqua Video housings. I have done a bunch of underwater cinematography off of coral reefs and diving with sharks. I would go all the way around the world with an Aqua Video housing because I trust Mike- he and his housings have never done me wrong.

As he said, his housings may not be the "slickest" in the world- but damn they do function well!!! I have even dropped them accidentally on a boat during rough weather, and still jumped right in the water with it.

I prefer a heavy setup underwater because it is extremely stable for shots.

We were shooting great whites 3 years ago and we were on a live-aboard boat for a week, 225 miles off the coast of San Diego. A film director, who was shooting a documentary, had a gates housing that did not have a properly "seated" o-ring. (This can happen on any housing from anyone) On his first dive, his housing instantly flooded and he lost his camera. This was because he could not see the water rushing in. The gates is a "slick" black looking housing.. very cool looking indeed, however, very hard to see if water leaks in.

A year after that, I was getting ready to enter the water in the Florida Keys with an Aqua Video housing. My o-ring was not "seated" correctly. (My user-error). Because of the design and the fact that I can see clear through one end to the other- when the water rushed in, I was able to quickly get it out of the water and not one single drop of water touched the camera. That sold me on the fact that I will always stay with that design.

I am usually very neutral on peoples opinions- But on this, unless you completely understand why the design is the way it is- and unless you have hours and hours of underwater cinematography experience- I would not cut down Aqua Video's Housings.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

Yeah, those all aluminum housings scare me - I've made a few out of 13mm plexi and it just makes me feel better that I can see that the camera is high and dry at all times. And if you have a really slow leak, you could see a little bit of water in the bottom and know that you have some time to surface before it reaches the cam.

 

[J Clark]

Our bottom rods support - the cheese plate- looks like that and the surface scratched off in the first few uses. Can we ship these defective parts back for a refund or replacement. I guess I assumed they all looked like this but I didn't realize until now that I too seem to have some bad parts.

 

[Damien Molineaux]

problem with a top mount

problem with a top mount

After a shoot last week we noticed that we were having a hard time sliding in the rods for the top mount on #511. We took a closer look and found the problem. This is a comparison to the top mounts that shipped with #96.

The cast top mount doesn't have enough thickness to prevent it from breaking. I'm not sure if that's a result from being machined initially or the anodizing process, but clearly it's unacceptable.

I have a similar problem, I cannot, for the life of me, get a rod through one hole in one of my top mounts, and the other hole is very very tight. No problems with the other top mount.

Red has asked me to ship them the mount so they can have a look at it, but my camera is in use. I would like them to ship me a replacement mount first.

Cheers,
Damien

 

[Peter Majtan]

I think this all comes to the problem of Jim and his team greatly underestimating the demand for their products. Having said that - it is not an excuse. What is going to happen after Scarlet is released? This are going to go get way worse before they will start getting better. I have kind-of came up to same conclusion in the Scarlet forum:

Is RED ready for Scarlet? Is RED going to upset RED ONE buyers?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11180

I guess it is already happening...

Lets hope Jim can recover from this before RED looses its reputation...

 

[CJ Roy]

Thank you for posting this. We all want Red to rock the industry--and in many ways it's clearly going to do that. But we're using a single top handle to lift our camera. And we have the cast accessories--including the cast top mount. It doesn't look like I can trust this part to support the camera weight! Unless you were doing something exceptionally stressful with that top mount? Were you using it with some other support like a car mount or something?

The broken part was from #511. It had no more stress on it than what the other machined part was doing at the same time, on #96. Both were never mounted from the top rods. All they ever did was hold the battery + drive.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Got my camera recently. Seems like RED has reacted on the comments different people have made. In fact, in my eye the finish of the accesorries is just great and look even better than the camera itself. We'll see how the accessories last, but tolerances, overall qualitys etc. looks just fine. At this point they yield no space for any remarks.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

I predict a new top mount prototype at NAB.