- Moderator
- #41
Jeff Kilgroe
Well-known member
What shows are you used to frequenting? Panasonic took over 2 years to bring the HVX200 to market after it was announced, or rather 2 years after announcing their "under $7500 prosumer HD camera that records DVDPROHD @ 100Mbps". OTOH, there were no direct statements other than a press release from the manufacturer. I've lost track of the amount of cool new things talked about at NAB 2007 and 2008 that are still not available. RED has not missed any dates with the DSMC cameras. They were only 4 to 6 months "late" delivering the first RED One, depending on who you ask, but lots of things changed for the better.
As for trust issues, what are they? If I have a problem, I can call them. I can email many of them directly, even the owner of the company. They have not made any promised dates for any upcoming product. Just tentative time-frames.
Going back to your previous post about dangling carrots and producers can't budget... That's just a load of bunk. Any producer or estimator who has been estimating budgets for a while (and doing it successfully) will know you don't pin down budgets based on unreleased products. Works that way in any other industry, whether we're talking about an IT data center and trying to plan for future server blades and CPU upgrades or highway construction and a new GPS-assisted laser leveling system for a paving machine. Can't buy it today? Fine, don't put it in the budget for a production. If I were writing a budget or proposal for a production that I would like to use Scarlet on, I would just have to suck it up and accept that I can't do that. I plan for what is actually available now and I can revise the budget as new products arrive. Even if Jim came on here and announced that Scarlet was shipping tomorrow and all orders would be filled in two weeks, I still wouldn't plan to use the camera until I actually had it in my hands and also had a chance to test it under the conditions I would need to use it in.
RED won't say how many cameras they have shipped. But they stopped skipping serial numbers due to reservation fulfillment sometime around sn:3000. I know a couple people who have just taken deliveries of cameras numbered over 6000.
Yep. But to have Scarlet already would have been putting the cart before the horse so to speak. The RED One served as a development platform on which to build the future cameras. In a way, it's almost more of an R&D project that consumers could buy into and receive a functional camera out of the deal. The upcoming cameras are a lot smaller and more powerful due to custom developed ASICS / processors and not as much "off the shelf" circuitry. Things that could not have been developed as easily without first building something like the RED One. I think the actual "explosion" is still to come. The market for $18K camera bodies isn't that big. But the potential market increases exponentially when that price is cut to 1/3 of that and features are maintained, some even improved.
To say that these cameras are overkill for the lower-end market, most of their stuff is destined for the web, etc... Is rather short-sighted, IMO. My RED One makes some of the most amazing web videos. It does things I can't do with an HVX200 or other camera I own or have owned. What I love about the camera is the ability to manipulate the RAW data as one would with stills from a DSLR. Additionally the extra resolution and image quality over HD is phenomenal. My clients love it because I can shoot a video for web distribution and inclusion on a corporate DVD. But they can call me up wanting an HD version of it to show on a 1080p projector at a tradeshow venue and I can say, "Sure no problem, I'll have that for you in the morning. Would you like it on hard drive or blu-ray?" And it's already done because I shot the piece in 4K, ran post in 2K and already have a 2K / 1080p master done, which is what I used to produce the web video. It didn't take me any more time or effort to do that than had I shot the piece on an HVX200 and ran post at 720p.
Hmmm... I haven't seen any snide comments. Of course, there was the request for you to leave in peace if your opinion differed. And that they will add your comments onto their industry comment wall, which is probably rather huge. Looking at it from RED's point of view, they have faced harsh criticism since the original RED One was announced. And yet they have delivered. It probably gets tiring to read or hear the same tired comments over and over and over.
You also have to figure you may have ruffled some feathers with some of your assumptions when you stated them as a matter of fact.
