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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 :)

Red One or BMCC

I have been shooting on a Red One for a few months now. Saying its heavy is an understatement. It burned up my 504HD head after just a few weeks of shooting. There have been times were the weight really factored into what shots I could get with a micro crew. I love the image quality from it but it did require more than I thought to get it usable. Expensive tripod and shoulder rig to name a few.
 
FYI if you find yourself with the R1 look into getting a Miller 50 Series II head. They are older but handle the R1 amazingly. Even loaded. Hard to find but cheap when you can.
 
Get a used Scarlet. If the comparison was between the BMCC and Scarlet, I would have no doubts suggesting you the Scarlet. The Red One is not the camera for micro crews or one man band situations. And the $ you'll have to invest in support and grip gear is going to put it way beyond the Scarlet or BMCC.

What the BMCC has going for it is its price, internal Prores 4K recording and, well, it comes with a crappy LCD built in. All these excluding the internal prores 4K (which is good for quick delivery-edit-output situations) you can get on a Scarlet with some additional cash, but with much better quality. Yes, the Scarlet hasn't got a global shutter, but if you're not shooting Papparazi stuff or Fashion, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Get a Scarlet if you want the best balance of price, usability and performance

Get the BMCC if you have a very low budget and plan to use it for Event coverage with lots of flash situations

Get the Red One if you always shoot with more than a crew of 3. Yes, its "usable" in guerrilla, but you'll be so tired you'll never be able to get the angles you want in such a situation. The Red One is a Cinema Camera done the old, big team requiring hard way.
 
I sold my BMCC and bought a Red One MX. The BMCC's workflow (RAW) was too cumbersome for anything other than test shots.

Being able to just put R3Ds directly on Premiere's timeline and start editing is great. Yes, the weight and size of a R1 rig is much bigger, but 4.5K 2.33 widescreen, with no cropping, and slomo.

Red Cine X is great for a free color program as well.
 
I think the best advice could be: see the movies shot with Red One MX and see the movies shot with BMCC 4k. The better they looks to your eyes, the better is the camera you can choose. (i know... :D )
 
Its hard to suggest an unreleased camera against an out of warranty camera. But I still think the non warranty is a winner if those were the only options, alas we live in a world of infinite possibility and there are yet more options. I still think if I were you I'd go get business insurance, then buy a new scarlet with armor and try to monetize on it fast enough to upgrade it but I really don't know what your end goals are. Are you making your own content for fun, or using it for a business? If its a business do you understand some of the workflow constraints of this size sensor coupled with media that needs offloading and processing, can your business deal with this with crew or are you alone? Even with a third party recorder doing your transcodes *if your not shooting off speed high frame rates...you still need to cycle cards pull and do your camera moves all by yourself and that is kind of a PIA is the reality. I shoot my red on my own but it certainly can't beat the consumer kind of form factors we have these days, but we all know the quality issues of said devices which is why the red for what it does is as good as it comes for great looking image form factor. It can make shooting more difficult on me as a one man band to have to haul all this gear around only by myself. I love it but makes the shooting def more hard.

When I am just having fun I like to shoot skateboarding down at the park, and having a large mag while shooting overcranked low res made my mag situation work out fine 99 percent of the time. I liked dropping sticks and used dslr glass and still am awaiting getting some glass myself, which is why I chimed in on your other thread. Probably those full frames from Schneider but I am also signed up for some Leica Summicron cine and trying to save.

Another possibility is Chicago must have a lot of Reds around, Abelcine teaches courses in cameras there I am sure like here in NYC. Between the rental house scene and the owner op scene one can run a viable business from renting from others around you or one can become aquatinted and befriend people with other gear then yourself and hang and shoot together. You don't need to own in this economy. Cameras, high end computers, electronics of any kind are a money pit these days. Unless one can get a fast return on investment you should seriously weigh your options quite heavily. Things become obsolete too fast these days in general. Unless one can cope with not having cutting edge...


But if you were capable of that you'd consider sticking to DSLRs, unfortunately for us on Reduser, we like to spend big figures to have the best money can buy generally speaking when it comes to image capture lol...but you should see the happy producers faces, a lot of people I talk to love the Red, and the ones that don't is why I stay brand agnostic while maintaining some Red fanboyism... but i've seen a lot of big names tell me they love the red in my own career generally speaking and since I am an owner op I do mostly Red related work... can't wait for my dragon...
 
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The 2.5k bmc really sucked imo...
Crop - Was the biggest no go for me.
FPS - Were awful, nothing like the 120 on a R1
Menu - (or lack there of) was absolutely ridiculous, my point and shoot has more options....
Mount - Wiggled with a rig and follow focus setup, we had to put gaff on the mount to make it more tight...NO!
Screen - Sucked, of course you could get another, no hdmi was a real pain i must say
Thunderbolt - not usable, you can even use it to mount and dumb your files to your mac WHY!

it all looked amazing on paper, once i had 2 in my hands i was not satisfied, hope its different for the 4k...but im not holding my breath
 
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