Should RED be using an Adobe CC Upgrade Model?

[Zeb B]

The Adobe CC model puts creatives in a box, servitued.

Hyperbole much?
Errmergerd . . . me mind is 12 years a slave to the Adobe CC Plantation Owners ;-)

Like I said earlier in the thread: if you can't pay for your annual CC bill in one day - you suck as a commercial artist and should consider a different career. Example: Photography CC, which includes PS and LR, costs $120/year. That's like a good dinner out for 2 for the best imaging tools in the business.

This thread was in response to the general dissatisfaction with the NAB Weapon financial model. Still looking for alternatives that challenge the status quo and which provides RED access to new markets who can't write a lump sum checks for $Thousand$

Simply retaining .X% of your current customer base does not grow the brand. More personally, the value of our stake in RED equipment depends on them growing marketshare.

 

[Brad Grimm]

Simply retaining .X% of your current customer base does not grow the brand. More personally, the value of our stake in RED equipment depends on them growing market share.

I disagree, REDs value increases when more mainstream films are shot with it. When more Best Cinematography awards go to films shot on RED, then the value of the RED brand grows. We don't need more Skateboard videos shot in 8K, That does the RED brand and all of us no good. The bottom line is too many people walk around with Dragons currently, shooting less than stellar work and that then becomes attached to the RED brand. Wait and see what happens now with the Alexa Mini released to the masses

Bottom line is there is now a RED for everyone, and a new top tier that will hopefully be used on more major motion pictures, which helps us all with our investments.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Simply retaining .X% of your current customer base does not grow the brand. More personally, the value of our stake in RED equipment depends on them growing marketshare.

I disagree, REDs value increases when more mainstream films are shot with it. When more Best Cinematography awards go to films shot on RED, then the value of the RED brand grows. We don't need more Skateboard videos shot in 8K, That does the RED brand and all of us no good. The bottom line is too many people walk around with Dragons currently, shooting less than stellar work and that then becomes attached to the RED brand. Wait and see what happens now with the Alexa Mini released to the masses

Bottom line is there is now a RED for everyone, and a new top tier that will hopefully be used on more major motion pictures, which helps us all with our investments.

You are both correct IMHO.

In as much as Red is focused upon being a Digital Cinema Company I would agree with Brad, but that is not all that they do. They also exist to some degree in what is, in a way, the upper echelon of the old "Prosumer" market and to that degree I have to agree with Zeb.

 

[Will Keir]

Yep. RED opened the door for thousands of creative souls that had to learn the hard way. Many people who bought in the first batch never made a film with their camera as they intended, only the cream rises to the top, and it takes extraordinary drive to finish a film. I know one man who spent $30K-$40K on his first R1, he was happy just to be a part of something bigger.

The bottom line is too many people walk around with Dragons currently, shooting less than stellar work and that then becomes attached to the RED brand.

Boring...

This thread was in response to the general dissatisfaction with the NAB Weapon financial model. Still looking for alternatives that challenge the status quo and which provides RED access to new markets who can't write a lump sum checks for $Thousand$

Simply retaining .X% of your current customer base does not grow the brand. More personally, the value of our stake in RED equipment depends on them growing marketshare.

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

The whole subscription model is being abused by a lot of companies.

"For only $$$ a month you can get this and this and this..."

RED has improved with the upgrade model they currently have. I'm for keeping it the way it is.

 

[Jason Osterday]

Makes perfect sense to me. I think those that are happy with purely their own ownership idea may live and work in a different market. Personally, I'm tired of having to own the latest device simply to get a job. Yes, a Dragon is a great camera, but you better believe when the bigger commercial clients roll into town dropping a 1/4 $mil on a 30 sec spot they'll want a Weapon or an Alexa. Period. That means my Dragon gear doesn't work and yes I've paid for it already, but I'd rather pay one day's worth of rentals (~$1500 for this upgrade subscription program) to ensure that my camera works for a week or two on the show and NOT have to convince the producer/DP/UPM that a Dragon is good enough. To them, $2000/day for a camera is the same as $1000/day if it means shooting on the latest platform.

People sometimes forget that not everyone can invest $50K into a camera package and force all their clients to use it as the owner operator. Sometimes the work comes to you and you have to be flexible with the format THEY want. The market changes drastically by the week. Last year maybe 2/10 of my shows were RED. The remaining 8/10 of the year was C300/500, GH4/A7S, FS700/F55, Alexa, so on and so forth. There's no way for me to own all those cameras and compile that with chasing the RED upgrade train and you have yourself a very tricky game of investments as a business owner.

I also want to mention that not all financing options are mindful of your monthly labor rates and gear rental income as a shooter. Sometimes you get accepted without needing income projections, major collateral or perfect credit scores but you'll be shelling out $800/mo at 25% interest for a measly $10K. RED isn't in the business of driving interest profits from users, instead they want their gear out working, creating more sales for accessories, workflow, etc and you're eventually entrenched in their ecosystem. Not to mention lease to own formats could further improve the value of the system by allowing subscribers to offload their gear quicker while the market is hot for the last gen gear assuming they've paid up. Just like all the major cell carriers have quickly implemented.

I work with a lot of photographers who do subscriptions with Lensrentals and Borrow on a seasonal system vs buying gear. They bill the clients and know that at the start of their job stretch, they get the latest body, glass and AKS without having to research and decide what investments will/won't place a dent in their annual spending and per job income.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

This kind of business strategy doesn't work for hardware. It also doesn't work for people who don't use their camera on a daily basis. I for one own a camera but I don't work with it every day. For me it would be an extremely economical loss if I need to pay the amount needed for a subscription.

Honestly I think the Idea is rather stupid, there are already rental houses. If you want to pay for the latest tech on your latest gig, just rent your gear. You will get much more gear for less money that way. The whole point of owning gear is to be able to use it for free but having a subscription is like having to long term rent it to use it, pointless. If there was a leasing option that would make sense, just like a car, but most people know that leasing a car is a loss in most cases.

The Adobe subscription isn't really loved by everyone, it has actually divided a lot of professionals. So no, this kind of business strategy is not good for anyone and Red will loose a lot of customers if they did it. Maybe as a compliment to what we have now, just so some who will benefit from it could go down that road, but only giving the option for subscription just like Adobe did is the worst possible idea ever.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Personally, I'm tired of having to own the latest device simply to get a job.

You don't have to own the gear to get a job. You may need to supply the gear, but what would be stopping you from showing up with gear that you rented?

If the client is looking for an owner/operator because they are hoping to wrangle a cheap or free camera rental out of you then I can see how this might make it difficult to close the deal. The question is; do you really want a gig that costs you that much in the first place? That isn't a job, it's charity.

 

[Sabyasachi Patra]

If you need to pay money monthly, then open a recurring deposit with a bank.

Let's not force RED to hire clerks to keep track of your monthly deposits. Let them be a lean team.

Also, RED is not facing financial crisis. At least I won't expect when its products are doing reasonably good with many users silently using it (without finding time to post here online).

If RED accepts this muddle-headed idea of accepting monthly public deposit schemes, then it will send a strong negative message about its financial capabilities. Not many businesses want to work with a company that is facing financial challenge/bankruptcy. So expect many customers (current and future) to desert.

 

[ignition]

Having read many of the posts herein .. I think the overlooked fact that discounts this idea of "pay per month" is the fact RED gear 2-3+ years old is still commercially relevant in the marketplace, and the commercial prospect is even further enforced with owner/operators.

There are plenty of commercial finance avenues for people to go down in acquiring such equipment on a transient (ie. I just pay per month and upgrade per year) basis. Consult an accountant on this, who can give you options to embrace a monthly payment option towards your equipment that doesn't involve the manufacturer hampering their innovation and sales pipeline by trying to become a chattel mortgage or equipment finance specialist.

I'm wholly lost on the parable of high end camera hardware to 'software as a service' monthly subscriptions where the model is not so much about finances as creating consumer dependency and 'stickiness' by a low entry fee and an increasing dependency (through cloud storage and format compatibility of your documents (Office 365) or accounts (Xero) etc.) that assures a steady future pipeline of subscription fees. Can somebody pls explain this long drawn bow?

 

[PC Greene]

I think Zeb's idea is an interesting one - and one I also started considering at NAB this year after the sobering Weapon upgrade pricing was made public. I resisted subscribing to CC for a very long time but have found myself begrudgingly accepting finally. That said, I do still feel like new purchasers of Weapon get a better deal than previous upgrading owners and also think that if a hardware subscription model is a viable solution, it's not one that would suddenly allow someone who couldn't afford a camera upgrade (like Weapon) to be able to. So while I personally am probably not an ideal customer for the subscription hardware model, I do think there are people who might be. Either way I do think Epic Dragon to Weapon Magnesium should've been much more competitively priced as a nod to REDs loyal customers. 15K+ new accessories just for a different form factor (and obvious fan, red orb and black shade fixes) seemed like a bit too much for the Indi guys and adding another 35k or so on to that in order to get another 2k resolution when its available not particularly "indi friendly" either.

Thank you,

 

[Zeb B]

Loving my CC subscription. "Dehaze" alone is worth the $120 I'll pay for CC Lightroom / Photoshop this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmkJpCg_BJ4

 

[Zeb B]

Seriously kids . . . this Dehaze is a really cool algorithm. Props to my bud Eric Chan and the ACR boyz for this neat little gidget

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouK45KOi_GE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF265glOl-k

Best tut I've found so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I49pzPbylQQ

 

[Elsie N]

Wonder if this makes those old lens with haze, useable again. '-)

 

[Zeb B]

Wonder if this makes those old lens with haze, useable again. '-)

Actually it would . . . or add vintage haze to a scene (without just jacking Black Levels) or emulate a high quality Pola filter for landscape or commercial work where snappy colors are key. It's like the last bit of RAW milk is removed with some kind of local contrast magic. Fuckin amazing

Doing a Real Estate video edit right now with some stills that seemed crisp before yesterday. After applying Dehaze to them my video footie looks dead. Shame that the video world doesn't have Light Room / ACR processing algo's. Adobe simply has the best chefs in the biz for image cookin

 

[Elsie N]

I confess to not using Lightroom although it is part of my CC. When I was doing stills I used Corel Paintshop Pro, even before Corel bought it. I was watching one of the tutorials you linked to and saw something where there was haze in the background but she didn't want to de-haze the entire photo. I don't remember the steps she went through to get that done, but I was thinking in PSP I would have used the magic wand to select the area, then applied the de-haze to that selected part of the photo.

PSP does very good things and actually works better for a hands on approach, IMO. PhotoShop seems to be using a more technical approach. Horses for courses, of course.

 

[Andy Maser]

The reason your idea won't work for most people is because for most people a camera is just a tool to get a job done. For me, it's a tool to make pretty pictures and tell stories. Because of that, I choose the best tool for the jobs that I do (which just happens to be RED right now). But if someone else makes a better tool for my applications, I'm going to buy theirs instead. I'm not an investor in the RED company and don't feel any responsibility to fund their R&D or any of that type of stuff. If they make the camera that's right for me, I'll buy it. But that's the extent of my responsibility.

Being a RED owner sounds like more of a lifestyle choice for you. You take pride in owning a RED camera and are psyched to stay up to date with their latest and greatest. You've drank the kool aid. And that's fine. But I suspect that lots of folks who own RED cameras are a little more pragmatic than that, which is why you aren't finding many people that agree with you.

The reason the CC model doesn't really hold weight is because there's really only 2 players in the post game. I'm pretty confident that I'm not switching to AVID anytime soon, so i'll pretty much sign up for whatever program Adobe sets up as standard. What else am I going to do? But if Arri releases a camera in a couple years that is as small and light and higher performance than whatever RED's got, I'd likely get that instead. I don't have default brand loyalty--I have loyalty to my stories and images.

But this year and next it looks like RED's the best game in town for me. We'll see what happens down the line, but I'll be glad not be committed before I know what my options are. I'm much happier to set aside money in my own bank account to gradually save for a purchase rather than put it in RED's. Because as soon as I start putting it in RED's I become an investor, which is a separate thing than being their customer. They are certainly nice folks, but I'm happy just being their customer for now.

 

[Zeb B]

Being a RED owner sounds like more of a lifestyle choice for you. You take pride in owning a RED camera and are psyched to stay up to date with their latest and greatest. You've drank the kool aid. And that's fine. But I suspect that lots of folks who own RED cameras are a little more pragmatic than that, which is why you aren't finding many people that agree with you.

Yes Yes Yes! . . . I was born as a Canon user but now I'm making the lifestyle choice to be a TransRed User!!! Thank you for your permission to be the true me!!! Now if I could just learn how to walk in 5" heels . . .