Red CF to side SSD module adapter ?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hehe... I know all about taking minimal gear into the wilds. Better than half of my shoots are me alone or occasionally with an assistant and we're out in the middle of nowhere. You can download that fast on a PC notebook or Macbook Pro. Just gotta have the right connections and gear. I rarely use a tower for DIT work. Actually had the '08 Mac Pro on my DIT cart die (just barely still on AppleCare too!) and when it was replaced with a new '10 Mac, I made it my new primary workstation and never put the DIT cart back together. My approach lately with EPIC is to be as self-reliant as possible. I take enough media to get me through the day (and then some) and worry about unloading it later unless I have a good reason to handle it in the field. Less equipment to carry and less potential risk of something bad happening by copying over to hard drives. If I do copy in the field, it would be for backup and/or immediate hand-off at the end of the day, I don't wipe the camera media. So yeah, I'm walking around with EPIC and 5 to 7 of the 256GB SSDs plus a few 128's. Expensive, but as the various ad agencies and bigger corporate clients get more in tune with how all this works these days, they're willing to pay for it. If you have the contacts for the work, it's a lot easier to swallow. If you're an indie filmmaker owner/op trying to pull rentals and small jobs to pay for the gear, it's a tough nut to crack.

You do bring up a good point though. All the RED Ones now equipped with SSD modules are probably the best reason for RED to make such an adapter.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Your basing everything on the c300 selling at 20k ...

Do you know of some magical place where I can order one cheaper?

also the data rates will only stress those cards if you select those data rates

With the extra data overhead on EPIC, if you're shooting 4K, you're going to be at 10:1 for practical purposes. 4KHD, 4K 16:9 or frame rates of 30fps will most likely force you to 12:1, or not work at all. At 10:1, Compression level and attributes are going to resemble RC28 on the RED One, but you will be handling the same data rate as if you were recording RC42 on the RED One. So there's not a whole lot of room to move down the ladder of compression options in order to eliminate stress. 12:1 is the lowest data rate (highest compression) you can go with and it's a noticeable loss of quality compared to 10:1, especially compared to 8:1 (which the CF cards almost certainly couldn't handle), let alone compared to 6:1, which is the top rate Scarlet can record at for 4K. Just saying that if these cards were to work, you would not have a lot of breathing room, or any, to lower your data rates and relieve stress.

You could always shoot 3K, but that would be more trouble than stepping up and buying more SSD media. RED-savvy clients want 4K and 5K, they don't want 3K or lower unless they're overcranking or have a good reason to go lower. Most clients, RED-savvy or not, don't like 3K. Then again, it gives an AOV similar to micro-4/3 and makes pristine 2K / 1080p when downsampled.

 

[J Davis]

Do you know of some magical place where I can order one cheaper?

magical france?

http://www.videoplusfrance.com/recherche?text=EOS_C300

edit - there's another article somewhere around for Berlin prices as well

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

??? Hope it's a joke and the humor isn't coming through. After the conversion to USD, it's still $19K, never mind it's out of the country and doesn't have a USA warranty and will require more expensive shipping plus import/export fees... Good news if you're in France, I guess, seems the cameras are being listed for a bit less than MSRP there.

Seriously, I have one on order for the price I listed above. I think I did pretty well, as that includes overnight shipping from an authorized USA dealer. Personally, I'm not that interested in the C300... But I'm getting so many calls about it, I don't think I can turn down buying one to whore it out to all the indies that want to shoot it. If I change my mind, I'll just sell it as new, unopened and can probably make a few bucks.

 

[Ivan Cortazar]

You can't download SSDs without a computer. I've downloaded many CF cards with a nexto on locatiorns where there wasn;t power. I know all the limitations CFs cards, but I also wish there was an option to recycle them on the Epic/Scarlet. Just for the easy of downloading without computer. Maybe what REd should invest is in a nice way to offload the SSDs without the need of a computer. That'd be nice.