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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 :)

Scarlet and Dragon...

Stare deeper in to the RED crystal ball.....

Anything? :P

Sensible Dragon question: will Dragon Monochrome arrive alongside the regular Dragon, or be a 'wait and see' part of the programme?
 
While I'm a little nervous for myself & Scarlet owners, at the end of the day RED has always been more than generous. I'm hoping Scarlet adopters are treated akin to the Epics, and if you look at the worst case scenario (from numbers alone), we should be looking at no more than a max of 15k upgrade to Epic Dragon. That's if Scarlet dragon is never to exist, though I do hope there is another way.

I await the day RED provide that sigh of relief.
 
Josef Gatti said:
While I'm a little nervous for myself & Scarlet owners, at the end of the day RED has always been more than generous. I'm hoping Scarlet adopters are treated akin to the Epics, and if you look at the worst case scenario (from numbers alone), we should be looking at no more than a max of 15k upgrade to Epic Dragon. That's if Scarlet dragon is never to exist, though I do hope there is another way.

I await the day RED provide that sigh of relief.
Click to expand...

Yeah this is one of those times it might be nice if RED would just make the final decision rather than tell us they might not offer Dragon upgrades for Scarlet, since it just leaves us Scarlet owners to worry that our obsolescence obsolete camera might be made obsolete in a month. I have been very impressed with how RED has handled things in the past with R1 and living up to always giving users a reasonable upgrade path, and that is partly why I bought a Scarlet camera in the first place, feeling that RED would have our backs. I know they will in the end since they seem to be endlessly fair with their upgrades and pricing, but even if they only put Dragon in Epics and offer generous upgrade routes to Scarlet owners, those upgrades will likely cost over 2x that of a new Scarlet brain, pricing most Scarlet users out of the RED world, me included.

Hard to imagine a company like RED who is so devoted to their customers basically kicking out the majority of the new users they gained in the past year and leaving such a huge market segment ready for Sony/Canon to snatch away from them. That can't be that great for business, nor can giving users the full list price for their used cameras credited toward upgrades to stay true to avoiding obsolescence. Then again neither will probably happen, but these are the things we have to think about when RED says they are considering EOL'ing our Scarlets :P
 
So, with a more expensive upgrade, will a Scarlet basically turn into a Dragon Epic?

Jannard said:
Of course it makes sense that we will upgrade EPICs to the Dragon sensor before Scarlets. However, we are considering how to upgrade Scarlets to the Dragon.

There are several boards that need to be changed so the upgrade for Scarlet may be a bit more expensive than the upgrade to EPIC..

We are always thinking about our customers... just so you know.

Jim
Click to expand...
 
Or you could have taken the other Scarlet upgrade path and got a BT Red One MX hehe (I did that) ;-)

In all seriousness, I believe my Scarlet still has life left in it and we will have a fair upgrade path to either Epic-X or Epic Dragon. One thing is for sure, RED takes care of its customer base!
 
Is there any chance of a '6k for half way' solution, if I may rewrite the lingo. Im a current Scarlet owner and totally understand that 4k will be pocket sized before long and that if I want Dragon I should have to pay for it. After all my camera is great but you have to continually invest to stay with the new technology. But Im not entirely sure I need to leap to 6k right away. I would however very happily pay $6k to upgrade my camera to the current EPIC specs including the higher frame rates etc.

Thanks for the openness as always RED.
 
Interesting that RED may be selling new Epic-D's while old customers are still waiting for upgrades. I wonder if that means that, for Epic/Scarlet owners who really want the upgrade asap they should order a brand new Epic-D/Scarlet-D on credit asap for immediate use and either sell it or their upgraded camera when their upgrade goes through and hopefully new Epic-D/Scarlet-D's are still on backorder :)

Then again I guess that is more complicated due to the cost of transferring ownership/warranty and not everyone has that much credit/ money to throw around.

Maybe RED can just save current owners the trouble and reward current early adopters/owners by releasing Dragon bodies like this:

Step 1. X owners put down a deposit for the full value of a D body if they want to avoid downtime
Step 2. Previous X owners whose deposits or X bodies that have been received are sent the first D bodies and asked to send in their X bodies ASAP if they haven't already
Step 3. Owners refunded the value of their X bodies
Step 4. Once previous owners are taken care of, new D bodies go up for sale
Step 5. Old X bodies are refurbished/upgraded and sold as X or D battle tested ($1-3k extra could be charged to X owners taking advantage of this process to get the first D bodies to pay for the REDs loss in selling BT units, or the cost could be passed on to early buyers of new D bodies since that pricing has not been announced).

Similar to the R1->Epic process, with customer loyalty and early adoption rewarded with first pick. RED has had such a history of keeping its current customers as its highest priority, it gives people even more reason to buy into their product line earlier. Why remove that now by selling D bodies to new customers while early adapters and current owners are still waiting for their dragon upgrades?

I think its important that RED maintain their adopter hierarchy to some extent since there is inevitably a fair amount of waiting and backorders in their distribution process, and getting to the front of the queues by buying early has always been a strong force in RED's business, and in a way a right of passage in entering the RED ecosystem especially when RED's products are most exciting. Plus you want the most experienced REDusers using your new hardware/firmware first since they will be the most knowledgeable and the most comfortable with the process of dealing with the inevitable bug reporting and testing with REDs newest equipment, and they will be most forgiving and flexible since they've done it before with previous RED equipment.
 
So far there seems to be 2 camps going for Scarlet.

1. Those that hope for "Epic Trade-ups" - full power of Epic-D (for an equivalent or high price).
and
2. Those that are budgeted Scarlet upgraders (updating from current specs to something close to current epic or epic-D) for a low price.

There is one other camp that's rather ridiculous wanting full Epic-D capabilities yet not pay the amount as an Epic and upgrade to Dragon. Those folks are dreaming if they think it'll pay less and get matching specs.

What camp are you? I'd love an Trade-up plan.
Thoughts?
 
I want the dynamic range and Iso of the dragon for my scarlet. Keep it at 4K or limited 5K and I'm still happy. My Epic is going full Dragon. Just want to be able to match the scarlet as a B camera.
 
Adam Johnson said:
In all seriousness, I believe my Scarlet still has life left in it and we will have a fair upgrade path to either Epic-X or Epic Dragon. One thing is for sure, RED takes care of its customer base!
Click to expand...

I agree, I am happy with what I have and will use it till it pays me back.
I still cant believe Im shooting 4K at 24fps ;)
 
Suresh Kara said:
The truth is technically your not. To red standards you need 5k to produce true4k
Click to expand...


haha well technically or not, Im still enjoying my experience.

and technically I dont have a 4K display to enjoy all this so its all moot :)
 
I bought scarlet early due to the promised upgrade path to dragon. We were told it would cost more, they didn't know the price, but more than 6k and less than a full scarlet brain... now everything is subject to change but I would like people to understand that early scarlet adopter were told they would have an upgrade to a scarlet dragon and for under or around 10k(now nothing concrete). Now that included no figures for frame rates or resolutions but I would hope it would at least give us 5k 24p(should be paying the equivalent of a new brain so the jump from 12fps to 24 seems reasonable to me)... if that happens at all.

I like to keep all my camera's I don't want to sell my scarlet I would prefer to upgrade it to dragon and when I need it purchase a epic dragon. Now I understand this all hinges on if they can upgrade the scarlet's efficiently and affordably, I trust RED will give us the most for the best price they can offer. Now doesn't have to be exactly what was talked about at that time, could be a trade in(I would prefer upgrade but anything is better than nothing) could be a little more expensive(but give us more frame rates and epic style options, compression, 4.5k/5k, 4k high speed..) but some sort of path aside from just buying a epic-d or something for us scarlet owners especially the early adopters... though that is just my bias showing... would be very nice. Though they have said there will be a path to dragon no matter what for scarlet users so maybe I should just wait it out.

the funny thing is this is far from business as usual and I'd be happy with any kind of customer rewards program let alone the vast and incomparable trade in programs this company has run and continues to do so really even if they said suck it up and buy a epic dragon I couldn't really fault them after how much they have done already.

I'd love for RED to give us our wildest dreams for pennies, but I'd settle for my most mundane fantasy for more than I can afford.

Ah well hopefully we will know soon!
 
I would actually prefer this over anything else. All i want truly is the udated lowlight and dynamic range of the dragon sensor. if i wanted high frame rates and 6k I would upgrade to Epic. But 5K 24fps and still lower frame rates than epic, but Dragon lowlight and DR would be awesome :)

Thomas Koch said:
I want the dynamic range and Iso of the dragon for my scarlet. Keep it at 4K or limited 5K and I'm still happy. My Epic is going full Dragon. Just want to be able to match the scarlet as a B camera.
Click to expand...
 
Isn't the obvious upgrade path for Scarlet owners to get a trade-in discount when buying a new Dragon Epic? I'd be more than happy with that.
 
Jonas Klittmark said:
Isn't the obvious upgrade path for Scarlet owners to get a trade-in discount when buying a new Dragon Epic? I'd be more than happy with that.
Click to expand...

As long as that is not the only path... Telling Scarlet-X owners triple their investment or leave doesn't really fit with obsolescence obsolete, does it? I suppose red could get out of it by offering to buy Scarlets back from people who can't afford an upgrade path costing 2x the cost of a Scarlet, but it couldn't be very lucrative to lose money buying back EOL'd products while simultaneously losing a huge user base and market segment.

Isn't there still some room to keep a lower budget product made from lower binned components and defects that don't compromise 5k operation? Maybe not?
 
Jannard said:
Of course it makes sense that we will upgrade EPICs to the Dragon sensor before Scarlets. However, we are considering how to upgrade Scarlets to the Dragon.

There are several boards that need to be changed so the upgrade for Scarlet may be a bit more expensive than the upgrade to EPIC..

We are always thinking about our customers... just so you know.

Jim
Click to expand...

I think this is mainly a total cost decision. When the upgrade becomes too expensive, so that getting too close to a fresh Dragon equipped EPIC, it makes probably far more sense to provide a trade-in path for the SCARLET brains from my perspective.

This would in fact be a much easier and better deal than back when we had the option to trade in the RED ONE for getting our EPIC-X. Here is why:

Most of the grip equipment for the RED ONE was no longer directly compatible with the EPIC ecosystem. You need a lot of adapters and stuff, and still may not be able to use all parts. So whatever you invested in RED ONE gear except the body was a bit obsolete or required additional investment. So we decided against returning the RED ONE. Instead, we upgraded it to M-X sensor and kept it, went for stage 2 EPIC-X, so we got a very good deal and now have two cameras at hand.

As the SCARLET ecosystem is pretty much the same as the EPIC ecosystem, there is far less trouble involved when upgrading from a SCARLET to an EPIC.

Now to the important point:

None of the returned RED ONEs was sold with their original Mysterium sensor to the recent 4000 US$ deal customers. All those cameras was apparently upgrade to M-X, and apparently to SSD as well.
When Dragon comes out, it makes from my perspective not much sense to sell older M-X sensor equipped EPICs anymore (except one needs one to match a second camera - but the market is full of the cameras anyway). So new EPICs will from then on be equipped with Dragon. The question is now what the actual cost involved will be. In fact, RED does not need to swap the sensor of a new EPIC Dragon, nor its ASIC board or whatever else its needing. The parts are being build "fresh". So the cost to provide EPIC with Dragon "out of the box" should be somewhat less than providing an upgrade path to EPIC M/X to EPIC Dragon. Lets say - reaching far out the window now - RED would sell fresh EPIC Dragon for like 50% less the difference than EPIC M/X with additional Dragon update, then actual difference between the SCARLET and a fresh build EPIC Dragon would be somewhat smaller. However, no-one can expect RED to take back the SCARLETs as they did the RED ONEs for full price paid. Thats economical self murder. So they might give you a discount on the EPIC Dragon of like 50% of the SCARLET and later make a fire sale on returned / refurbished SCARLETs for 50% their original cost as they just did with the RED ONEs.

Remember, REDs actual user/owner base has exploded over the last couple of weeks due to this fire sale. Instead of placing their hands into new unexplored workflows with fresh third party cameras popping up all the time, users have changed minds and went for the already well explored and established RED workflow instead. From a customer perspective that made a lot of sense. Compressed RAW is almost unavailable with other systems as of now. While other state that uncompressed is the way to go, I don't think so, after doing extensive research with codecs since well a decade now.

I don't own a SCARLET, but I can imagine its a far better deal for a SCARLET user to swap a SCARLET and get a discounted EPIC Dragon instead, than trying to upgrade the SCARLET with all its inherent restrictions (computing power wise) for a final price getting even closer to the EPIC level.

Personally I see no reason why a SCARLET must have the same dynamic range as an EPIC Dragon. If it works out, cool. But if not, there is another horse you can ride.

Again, SCARLET and EPIC have far more parts in common (talking add-on equipment here) than RED ONE and EPIC had. So the deal will always be easier to go than from the RED ONE (from my perspective).

However, maybe RED finds another trick to do it. I can imagine that RED could even build a lower res version of Dragon that has the same mechanical/electrical/resolution specs as M-X, just with better dynamic range. But the cost to do this is probably way to high. Then better provide a trade-in program.

Just my two pennies.
 
Jarred Land said:
That is an option we are exploring.. There becomes a point where you need to change so many boards that it doesn't financially make sense anymore for either of us. In Scarlet it's not just a swap of the ASIC and the Sensor, it is memory, IO boards, and a bunch of other things that make it different from an Epic.

That said.. we won't know till we know. The power of the Dragon is a bit difficult to harness... It is definitely living up to it's namesake.
Click to expand...
Mark Toia said:
With the price of the EPIC so low now... Why would you even worry about Scarlet sensor upgrade. Just move up to EPIC and get the whole enchilada.

Keep them cheap and simple I say.
Make a pocket Scarlet, discontinue this one.


My two cents worth.
Click to expand...

Yes a pocket Scarlet would definitely be nice :D
Something about the size of a small DSLR or Mirrorless camera that still shoots REDCODE RAW, I'd want that so badly :P

It's a bit disappointing to see Sony/Canon etc crippling their Mirrorless cameras and DSLRs to protect their higher end cinema range so maybe RED can show them how it's done :P
 
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