Red = Canon Digital SLR CMOS Chip?

[Tonaci Tran]

But if anyone thinks the still frames from the RED are as good or better than Canon's current generation DSLRs, they're just hittin' the kool-aid a little too hard.

Although I'm completely stoked about having RED quality motion footage, the stills from Crossing the Line just weren't nearly as good as stills from our DSLRs. Is it far better than any other motion camera out there? Yes. Is it more quality and resolution than I'll ever need from motion capture? Yes. I'm just not going to pretend the stills are as good as what we're getting from our stills.

EJ, I think you should get Jim some more kool aid.
After seeing more stills and video..and especially now after working with the camera..I can confidently say that the stills from RED are AS GOOD as the digital slr cameras. Granted, it's not the same resolution as Canon's new 22 megapixel camera, but how many of us REALLY need to make images that will print as large as a side of a building?

I do have a friend on the island... but I have to admit, he is not much help.

Shot with the 300mm lens. A couple of apples coaxed this guy in pretty close.

I have put my Canon 1Ds MkII away for good...

Jim

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Crossing the line was done on older hardware, older demosaic. The current stuff is vastly superior. As we've said all along, the image quality on crossing the line is the worst you should ever see from the camera , and that it looks utterly amazing is the talent of the crew. We could take those raw files and reprocess to a superior quality, and will be able to do so in the future due to the recording of raw, not processed video.

Graeme

 

[Jannard]

EJ... I am/was a Canon fan for years. Their still cameras are terrific. And I had fully intended to carry a 1Ds MK whatever along with a RED ONE wherever I go. But I'm not going to do that anymore. While the Canon has the advantage in sensor size and automation, the side by side images of the newest RED ONE DSP and image chain make it very hard to tell the difference between the two on a still shot. And we are just learning how to get the best image from our camera.

It is so close that I have decided to leave the Canon in the closet. When I say closet, I really mean the studio. Not because the image is bad... it is great! And it is not because the RED ONE is better for stills. I just don't need to take two systems around with me anymore.

"Crossing" is not a fair comparison. That is like comparing our newest stuff to the original 1D. We have come too far in the last 5 months.

This deer frame grab was taken from a 24fps stream. Something the Canon can't do. And the shutter speed was 1/48th sec. Motion blur will keep the image from being crisp compared to shooting at 1/1000 sec, which I can do with RED if I choose.

The other reason I am putting the Canon away is that I love being a photographer/cinematographer again. The Canon now is designed to do everything for you. It is a temptress of automation. Manual focus is just not done anymore with that camera. Silly me... I just love to spin the aperture dial and have to pay attention to exposure. I love being more a part of the process with the RED ONE.

When we started to build this camera from scratch, the best Canon had to offer was the original 1Ds. 11+MP and 4fps. The images from the RED ONE look quite similar to the images from that camera, except the RED is 24fps. I think we have made up a lot of ground in a short time. After all, Canon has been building cameras for almost a century.

The simple fact that you can carry one camera that can make motion pictures and stills at the same time is compelling (to me). I am not saying it is to others.

Jim

 

[Vladimir Eugene]

That's kind of what I wanted to hear. As i've been near the edge of buying a DSLR for a couple weeks now.

Thanks,

Vladimir

EJ... I am/was a Canon fan for years. Their still cameras are terrific. And I had fully intended to carry a 1Ds MK whatever along with a RED ONE wherever I go. But I'm not going to do that anymore. While the Canon has the advantage in sensor size and automation, the side by side images of the newest RED ONE DSP and image chain make it very hard to tell the difference between the two on a still shot. And we are just learning how to get the best image from our camera.

It is so close that I have decided to leave the Canon in the closet. When I say closet, I really mean the studio. Not because the image is bad... it is great! And it is not because the RED ONE is better for stills. I just don't need to take two systems around with me anymore.

"Crossing" is not a fair comparison. That is like comparing our newest stuff to the original 1D. We have come too far in the last 5 months.

This deer frame grab was taken from a 24fps stream. Something the Canon can't do. And the shutter speed was 1/48th sec. Motion blur will keep the image from being crisp compared to shooting at 1/1000 sec, which I can do with RED if I choose.

The other reason I am putting the Canon away is that I love being a photographer/cinematographer again. The Canon now is designed to do everything for you. It is a temptress of automation. Manual focus is just not done anymore with that camera. Silly me... I just love to spin the aperture dial and have to pay attention to exposure. I love being more a part of the process with the RED ONE.

When we started to build this camera from scratch, the best Canon had to offer was the original 1Ds. 11+MP and 4fps. The images from the RED ONE look quite similar to the images from that camera, except the RED is 24fps. I think we have made up a lot of ground in a short time. After all, Canon has been building cameras for almost a century.

The simple fact that you can carry one camera that can make motion pictures and stills at the same time is compelling (to me). I am not saying it is to others.

Jim

 

[Chris Kenny]

As I've posted about fairly extensively in my blog, the big deal with what Red is doing isn't the technology, it's the mindset. Of course, I don't mean to downplay the technical challenges Red has had to overcome, which were quite significant and which Red has tackled on a schedule that's difficult to comprehend. But really, what Red has over companies like Canon and Sony, IMO, is that they're willing to let the technology define the product capabilities and price, instead of playing games with market segmentation and planned obsolescence.

Could Canon or Sony have a product like the Red One on the market in a couple of years? Almost certainly. Will they? Almost certainly not. Established companies tend to react to disruptive products and technologies by putting their fingers in their ears and humming. Not by immediately jumping into the deep end and shipping similar products at similar price points. Of course, they'll do that eventually, possibly after leadership changes in the relevant divisions... by then Red will probably be pretty well established and hard for them to get rid of.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I know birger and others are making zoom motors for the Cine and still lenses but it just doesn't seem to be as slick for handheld/shoulder work as a typical ENG/EFP zoom.

There will be more options.

 

[Aldo Ruggiero]

1st post here, thank you all for the great reading.

Canon and Red.. this is what I found out about Canon (everybody knows about RED and his founder here)

From Wikipedia on history of Canon

"In June 1934 they released their first camera, the Kwanon (see "Origins of company name" below). Three variations of this product were marketed, however, none were actual products. Of the ten Kwanon cameras that were rumored to be produced, none were ever known to reach the market."

and about the Canon's founder motivation
at Canon.com

"......the price of the Leica camera was 420 yen.

This high-end camera was considered to be a "takane no hana (something far beyond reach)" for ordinary people. During those years, there was a Japanese man who attempted to make the first domestic 35mm focal-plane-shutter rangefinder camera (hereafter called as the 35mm rangefinder camera) by disassembling and studying the inner workings of a "Leica Model II." This person was Goro Yoshida (1900-1993)."

It looks to me like Canon had a worse start then RED.
It is a good thing that there are people like Jim Jannard and the less known Goro Yoshida that might look inside other people technology and make it cheaper.

On my end I hope we'll see more Red cameras at a price point of an HVX in the near future and for the rest I think it is going probably to be history repeating itself with Red a pushing down the bloated companies that cannot keep up, and maybe one day people thinking to buy a camera at fry's will look at the Canon and Red as people had a chance to compare Canon to Leica.


full articles here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_(company)
http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1933_1936/1933_1936.html

 

[joe12south]

You can guess all day and night what Canon MIGHT do, but it is a FACT that prior to the RED ONE Canon and all of the other major manufacturers clung to their vested interest in inferior video technology and eaked out tiniest incredmental, the lowest quality, digital motion cameras that they could get away with and still sell.

They had no incentive to do better. Today, thanks to Jim J. they do.

If Canon, or Sony or the like decides that they want to sell a kick-ass digital motion picture camera, they can certainly do so. They can probably even do so better than RED, at a lower cost. Again, if they wanted to. Do they? Will they? Who the hell knows.

 

[Tim Lüdin]

Of course Sony and Panasonic could easely bring out a similar cam like the RED one at a similar pricepoint but they would shoot themselves in their one foot because of their high priced highend models like the F23, Varicams etc.
If they start dropping their prices to heavy it would also show that they ripped us off all the time.

The only player that realy could bring some heat against the RED ist Canon. They got great sensors and no high end videocameras with big pricetags on it. They could make a RED One in short time.
The big players are kinda screwed right now. They can't realy do to much about the REDolution.:bleh:

I hope RED will go their own way with it's update path and reusable components, rechangeable sensor etc. so this will become a real big successtory and they will have me as a customer for live.

Go get them boys

:w00t:

 

[albert rudnicki]

EJ... I am/was a Canon fan for years. Their still cameras are terrific. And I had fully intended to carry a 1Ds MK whatever along with a RED ONE wherever I go. But I'm not going to do that anymore. While the Canon has the advantage in sensor size and automation, the side by side images of the newest RED ONE DSP and image chain make it very hard to tell the difference between the two on a still shot. And we are just learning how to get the best image from our camera.

It is so close that I have decided to leave the Canon in the closet. When I say closet, I really mean the studio. Not because the image is bad... it is great! And it is not because the RED ONE is better for stills. I just don't need to take two systems around with me anymore.

"Crossing" is not a fair comparison. That is like comparing our newest stuff to the original 1D. We have come too far in the last 5 months.

This deer frame grab was taken from a 24fps stream. Something the Canon can't do. And the shutter speed was 1/48th sec. Motion blur will keep the image from being crisp compared to shooting at 1/1000 sec, which I can do with RED if I choose.

The other reason I am putting the Canon away is that I love being a photographer/cinematographer again. The Canon now is designed to do everything for you. It is a temptress of automation. Manual focus is just not done anymore with that camera. Silly me... I just love to spin the aperture dial and have to pay attention to exposure. I love being more a part of the process with the RED ONE.

When we started to build this camera from scratch, the best Canon had to offer was the original 1Ds. 11+MP and 4fps. The images from the RED ONE look quite similar to the images from that camera, except the RED is 24fps. I think we have made up a lot of ground in a short time. After all, Canon has been building cameras for almost a century.

The simple fact that you can carry one camera that can make motion pictures and stills at the same time is compelling (to me). I am not saying it is to others.

Jim

i think Canon is listening to you Jim.
http://www.usa.canon.com/app/images/eos/EOS_1Ds_MarkIII/1dsmk3_586x225.gif

 

[Clint Johnson]

/*the following numbers are for illustrative purposes only, I have no inside knowledge of the finances of Red, Sony or Canon.*/

Red may gross something like $70 million dollars next year... Canon isn't gonna be interested in investing the time and money into a camera that would compete with Red One unless they can net $70 million.

It is the same thing with Sony and the F23- the difference between the $20,000 it cost to make and the $120,000 they sell it for is the only way they can fund the R&D and marketing that they've concentrated on a microscopic number of sales.

A company like Sony or Canon would probably have more than a thousand people behind a product like the Red One... they would need to cover that no matter how many cameras they sell. They could sell a 1,000 cameras for $100,000 over cost to manufacture - or a 100,000 cameras for $1,000 over cost. What they can't do is sell 1,000 cameras for $1,000 over costs.

 

[Greg Voevodsky]

I don't think Jim is only making 1000.00 over costs... After reading earlier Jim Posts... he did say.. Red went over budget, break even was 500 cameras... but now with 2000, they are doing just fine...

I'd assume they are doing ok.... with margins between 10-30%... once those first 1000-1500 cameras with accessories are sold... The good news is low overhead, few employees and a Mad Scientist... who unlike Ebay is not going to nickel and dime us.

 

[Clint Johnson]

I don't think Jim is only making 1000.00 over costs... After reading earlier Jim Posts... he did say.. Red went over budget, break even was 500 cameras... but now with 2000, they are doing just fine...

I'd assume they are doing ok.... with margins between 10-30%... once those first 1000-1500 cameras with accessories are sold... The good news is low overhead, few employees and a Mad Scientist... who unlike Ebay is not going to nickel and dime us.

Yeah, I was just grabbing numbers out of the air to illustrate the point... being that the $17,500 cost of the camera probably wouldn't be enough for Canon or Sony if they were only going to sell a few thousand of them, even if it was all profit. I'm pretty sure that either one of them could make a Red One... as long as they could sell it for more than $200,000. They can sell a small number of cameras for a lot of margin or a lot of cameras for a small margin, that is the lot of massive publicly traded companies.

Red Digital Cinema is a small company privately owned by Jim Jannard and it only has to meet his demands. Since he probably won't have trouble with his ends meeting any time soon, his demands can reasonably be anywhere between; not costing him that much out of pocket to keep it going- on up to demanding that it have an ROI of more than 25%... his call.

 

[E.J. Sadler]

EJ... I am/was a Canon fan for years. Their still cameras are terrific. And I had fully intended to carry a 1Ds MK whatever along with a RED ONE wherever I go. But I'm not going to do that anymore. While the Canon has the advantage in sensor size and automation, the side by side images of the newest RED ONE DSP and image chain make it very hard to tell the difference between the two on a still shot. And we are just learning how to get the best image from our camera.

It is so close that I have decided to leave the Canon in the closet. When I say closet, I really mean the studio. Not because the image is bad... it is great! And it is not because the RED ONE is better for stills. I just don't need to take two systems around with me anymore.

"Crossing" is not a fair comparison. That is like comparing our newest stuff to the original 1D. We have come too far in the last 5 months.

Jim

Before this the only images available to see were the crossing the lines images, which just weren't as good as current Canon's. I was only responding to people who were telling me they were. I do still stand by the belief that I think Canon will maintain an image quality advantage.

The irony is that I've had a similar discussions on a pro wedding forum were shooters think I'm high on crack thinking any motion camera can deliver stills as good as a DSLR and that a still/motion convergence was inevitable, despite the fact that even the 'Crossing' images are better than the first three DSLRs that we used professionally.

This deer frame grab was taken from a 24fps stream. Something the Canon can't do. And the shutter speed was 1/48th sec. Motion blur will keep the image from being crisp compared to shooting at 1/1000 sec, which I can do with RED if I choose.

That's the reason I said relative image quality comparisions really didn't matter, since the Red has by far the best motion capture resolution and quality. The deer image just hammers this home even more.

The simple fact that you can carry one camera that can make motion pictures and stills at the same time is compelling (to me). I am not saying it is to others.

This is very compelling to me, and my dream. Right now I'm flying an HD camera with a DOF adapter so that I can sling it to the side and shoot with the still camera when needed. Being able to shoot motion and just extract stills later is ideal. I've already tested my gimble mounted radio slave trigger to fire off our strobes so I can still get flash imagery as well as continuous light imagery.

If you want a poster child for someone would is going to use stills as much as motion, let me use #1 once a month and I'll evangelize as fast as I can type.

 

[Tonaci Tran]

I do still stand by the belief that I think Canon will maintain an image quality advantage.

By the way, no one here is saying the Red has an image quality advantage over Canon when it comes to stills.

 

[kunal2]

Well Jim,

It's great time now to build a Red DSLR, why not:w00t:,i currently use Canon 20D,and would really love to shift....will wait patiently
cheers

EJ... I am/was a Canon fan for years. Their still cameras are terrific. And I had fully intended to carry a 1Ds MK whatever along with a RED ONE wherever I go. But I'm not going to do that anymore. While the Canon has the advantage in sensor size and automation, the side by side images of the newest RED ONE DSP and image chain make it very hard to tell the difference between the two on a still shot. And we are just learning how to get the best image from our camera.

It is so close that I have decided to leave the Canon in the closet. When I say closet, I really mean the studio. Not because the image is bad... it is great! And it is not because the RED ONE is better for stills. I just don't need to take two systems around with me anymore.

"Crossing" is not a fair comparison. That is like comparing our newest stuff to the original 1D. We have come too far in the last 5 months.

This deer frame grab was taken from a 24fps stream. Something the Canon can't do. And the shutter speed was 1/48th sec. Motion blur will keep the image from being crisp compared to shooting at 1/1000 sec, which I can do with RED if I choose.

The other reason I am putting the Canon away is that I love being a photographer/cinematographer again. The Canon now is designed to do everything for you. It is a temptress of automation. Manual focus is just not done anymore with that camera. Silly me... I just love to spin the aperture dial and have to pay attention to exposure. I love being more a part of the process with the RED ONE.

When we started to build this camera from scratch, the best Canon had to offer was the original 1Ds. 11+MP and 4fps. The images from the RED ONE look quite similar to the images from that camera, except the RED is 24fps. I think we have made up a lot of ground in a short time. After all, Canon has been building cameras for almost a century.

The simple fact that you can carry one camera that can make motion pictures and stills at the same time is compelling (to me). I am not saying it is to others.

Jim

 

[Tim H.]

The better question is why has Canon ingored this market?

It's obvious there is a large market for low cost video(HD) cameras that provide 720p/1080p 24fps and 35mm low depth of field. How many people have purchased an HVX, JVC, Sony, etc? How many are throwing a Mini35 or RedRock M2 in front of it to get this "film" look?

Take the Canon 5D or EOS-1Ds Mark II Full Frame censors that have been available for years now. They already get 5fps out of these chips and these are far larger than what is needed for Super 35mm chips. Are you telling me that Canon does not have the resources and R&D in place to get these chips up to 24fps/60fps? Please. Especially if they dropped the resolution to 1080p instead of the 4992 x 3328.

Canon obviously is interested in the HD market or they wouldn't have released a HD camera at all. The fact that they are not wise enough to see how to transistion their cmos and lens technology to a true low cost cinematic solution is a personnel problem not a R&D budget problem, cost problem or technological limitation.

So RED is the answer. They filled the void and actually figured out what people want. There is no reason to spend 100K+ for an HD camera other than the greed and price fixing of the industry. Look how much they charge for just the Mini35? Give me a break.

Thank RED for shaking up the industry, I actually hope it takes everyone else a while to catch up because RED deserves the sales.

 

[Videoteque73]

I never read a post in a forum by the president of Sony or Canon or Panasonic...

 

[Ronnie Silos]

If I was president

If I was president

I never read a post in a forum by the president of Sony or Canon or Panasonic...

If I was the president of Canon, this is what I would say in this forum.

I'm too old and too tired of this. Let's not rock the boat. For about $20k, I can enjoy a Red One. Streamline like Jim and just have 1 camera, retire and be a bad film maker or just shoot family videos. Ok, I will also get the Birger mount so I can use the Canon Lenses I got with my employee discount. When I'm bored, I'll just post here and if I'm lucky and get a rise out of Jim or Graeme, maybe they'll respond back. This would be more fun than trying to make my CMOS chips capture 60 fps and all the marketing/packaging/legal crap I have to deal with. :shiftyph34r:

Ronnie

 

[Tom Lowe]

I doubt Jim is making any money off this, at least not until they start selling over a thousand cameras, at least, at which point they will probably raise the prices a bit. At this point, he's just having fun and keeping his world to all of us who believed in him.