RED One slammed in Feb issue of AC?

[Julian Gerretsen]

I use the Red Drives about 90% of the time with no real issues. If playback is too loud or too bassy on set, I'll sometimes point the speakers away from the camera and that helps a lot. You just need to be aware of the issue and keep an eye out for it. If the problem is causing too many dropped frames, we'll just switch to CF cards.

Cheers Chris. That's really helpful. I am about to purchase an R1 (just waiting for the sensor upgrade in the UK) and it's my first time on tapeless so I am a tad nervous about these things. Nice to have this kind of backup from pro's, especially being relatively isolated in this part of the world.

Loved the duckzilla ad by the way.

 

[Michael Bravin]

The AC article was written by someone who is not associated with the ASC. It was their opinion, not AC nor the ASC, of their personal experience using a Red Camera. What appeared to be an honest assessment was really inexperience. Those who know, and are open, will see the article's naivety. Mistakes mentioned were easily averted. It was dated. Many of us in the ASC think the Red Camera has changed the face of cinematography for the better. I like to think of things as half full rather than half empty. See through it.

Francis-

While your professional and personal experience and opinion is not at issue here, I wonder why you would characterize a fellow cinematographer's expression as naive and inexperienced after 50+ professional shoots with the RED one. Some here are obviously lacking experience outside of working with RED or lacking very much experience with RED in professional setting, Christopher is not in either group. Can there be disagreement with another professional's opinion without questioning their qualifications for forming that opinion?
While his experiences ARE dated because of the constant improvement in the RED systems, Christopher is neither naive or inexperienced.

Respectfully-

Michael

 

[Gustavo Penna]

Just received my online delivery of American Cinematographer for February. Lo and behold the cover mentioned an article 'Assessing the Red One Camera'. What followed was an article by technical editor Christopher Probst (whose name I was unable to find in the Reduser username search) that amounts to little more than a laundry list of obsolete complaints about RED One issues that for the most part have been addressed some time ago.

I'm sure it's no surprise to most to see AC denigrating a camera system that hasn't thrown any advertising dollars their way - but it's still disappointing. Considering RED's impact on the industry thus far, for it to be treated in such an off-hand manner by what is arguably the magazine of note (for now) seems pretty narrow-minded.

I'm not a fanboy - but I own two REDs, RPPs, two RED Rocket™™ cards, and almost every item on the RED store (including the t-shirts . I'm about to turn 30 and my boutique production company has been completely transformed by RED. I'll be standing in line with bells on for a Tattoo Epic as soon as they'll give me one.

I've tried to avoid brown-nosing, fanboyism and sycophantic behaviour in general till now, but this article struck a raw nerve for some reason. So to all the crusty, entrenched, spooled-up, pinhole-visioned dinosaurs out there with your gigantic onboard VTRs, your tethered record trucks and your mates at the post house with the 7-figure investment in tape decks....

...kiss my white pimply heyhoo.

i'm sure i'll calm down after breakfast,
dan graetz
www.graetzmedia.com

Please relax. you are making an entire community of people look bad in front of the world.
by you slamming C. Probst you only show how naive you are. He is a HUGE DP. He is actually one of the top Dp's in the world making the finest images with a RED one.
If there is ONE reason why The Red's are not perceived as professional cameras in the PRO world,
is because many kids in their 20's with rich parents who bought them two Reds with all the useless accessories that the red store sells have a whining attitude in front of people and adults they don't even know.
You need to stop taking all that personally.
If you had the experience that Only Real seasoned Dp's Have you would know how far the Red and its accessories are from being OK.
I own a RED and i agreed with all it was said in the magazine. even though i was never affected by any of those bugs personally. thanks to the fact that i did a huge research before adding a Red Body to my Film Camera packages.

 

[Dan Graetz]

Please relax. you are making an entire community of people look bad in front of the world.
by you slamming C. Probst you only show how naive you are. He is a HUGE DP. He is actually one of the top Dp's in the world making the finest images with a RED one.
If there is ONE reason why The Red's are not perceived as professional cameras in the PRO world,
is because many kids in their 20's with rich parents who bought them two Reds with all the useless accessories that the red store sells have a whining attitude in front of people and adults they don't even know.
You need to stop taking all that personally.
If you had the experience that Only Real seasoned Dp's Have you would know how far the Red and its accessories are from being OK.
I own a RED and i agreed with all it was said in the magazine. even though i was never affected by any of those bugs personally. thanks to the fact that i did a huge research before adding a Red Body to my Film Camera packages.

Thanks for the assumptions Gustavo. I've actually built my business from nothing and have purchased all of my RED kit (without financing) using money I busted my ass to make over the last 6 years. My company has grown from nothing but repeat and referral business. I've ROI'd both my REDs from being a trusted source of Red camera supply and support in Australia. We don't dry hire - we only supply REDs in conjunction with our DIT service to ensure that the very issues Christopher identified didn't affect the end user. We've done extensive training, research and testing every step of the way and continue to educate ourselves daily.

I'm not sure which 'useless' accessories on the RED store you're referring to - but we've been saved countless times by having at least two of everything on hand for every job.

We come up against misinformation regarding RED everyday. I haven't 'whined' once before on this forum - but on this occasion the negative tone of Christopher's article pushed me to say something. Since the initial rant I've been fairly conciliatory and noted that both Christopher and Graeme made good points in the other thread regarding this article.

It would have been a lot easier if my parents had bought me everything - but I've had to do it all myself and it's been a hard slog. Equally hard has been the job of cutting through all the nonsense that gets spread around about RED and showing the top end DPs we work with the kind of power they can have at their disposal when their budgets don't allow for shooting on 35mm. So I feel I'm well within my rights to speak up when something doesn't seem right. If you read through this entire thread I think you'll find the majority of people found ACs treatment of RED in this instance to be unbalanced - and that is the crux of the argument. No one is impugning Christopher's credentials or skill level.

 

[jimhare]

:beatdeadhorse5:

Anyone else think it's time to close this thread? I think we stopped furthering the conversation about 100 posts ago. Now we're just arguing.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

Yeah, I think that unless Graeme or Christopher have anything insightful to add, it's time to move on. Not to mention the fact that all of this is split between two different threads!