RED TWO (speculation)

[Vince Doran]

Building a camera to a certain price point is what the other guys do. And look what it does to their products. It gives minimally incremental upgrades in most cases, which trickle-down every year or two. I don't want to see RED do that, ever.

And RED has never done this and/or you are just dreaming?

 

[Michael Olsen]

Building a camera to a certain price point is what the other guys do.

I haven't been around as long as most of you all, and I certainly wasn't there for Day 1 at NAB. But it seems that everything I can remember Jim saying goes along the lines of:

"We are going to be absolutely amazing digital cinema cameras and then pass on as much savings as possible."​

Or as I take that: Step 1 - Build amazing camera. Step 2 - Figure out how low we can sell it for.

I've never read Jim say something like:

"We are going to conquer every market segment and make r3d a household name."​

or

"We are going to build an extremely affordable camera that will do what it can for the money."​

If anything, I recall Jim admitting that the brief foray into the prosumer market with 3K for $3K was a mistake.

I think it's a nice idea, but I don't think it is what RED is focused on doing right now and, really, I'm not sure it makes economic sense. Cutting price and features is easy at the high end of things - the drop from Epic-X to Epic-S to Scarlet is a great example. But once we get to the low end of the price range, there are fewer "amazing features" to be removed that would save a substantial amount of money. Which, as Jeff pointed out, even with economics of scale blowing at our back, we'd be hard pressed to get out a $1000 brain that wasn't plastic and probably made a number of other compromises that RED simply wouldn't make.

Who knows, though. Maybe they'll surprise us all - again!

 

[Michael Olsen]

And RED has never done this and/or you are just dreaming?

Look at the jump in features and specifications from RED ONE to EPIC-X. Then look at the jump in features and specification for any other two generations of cameras from any other manufacturer. Even the latest and most highly praised addition to the lineups have changed little else but sensor size. And they aren't offering huge incentives for purchasers of their previous cameras.

RED is very progressive in what they give to the customer.