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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 :)

Something New....

Michael Hastings said:
I've been at multiple shows with Canon, Sony, and Panasonic people, some that knew I was an early RED adopter and haven't heard much knocking of RED. I could show a number of threads here with dozens of comments like Tom's trashing Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Arri, etc. I just came from the DEMA dive industry show where I was able to have very friendly conversations with the owner and employees of GATES who is my main competitor for RED underwater housings. I believe you can respect your competitors even if you disagree with their approach or think you have a better product.
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Except, I have to make an important distinction --- we are users, not employees or representatives of the RED company - you don't actually hear employees of RED making snarky comments here - it's us, the user base, in our house.

You can bet that on any general video/film forum, you will hear plenty of other non-RED user bases making fun of RED, for various reasons. There is plenty of RED criticism right here, as well. RED doesn't get a free pass right in their own house either. Far from it, and they are a better camera company for having direct access to the good, bad, and ugly responses of their user base. But all this innovation seems to have a price to pay in the company's ability to keep some of the support ongoing.

But I get a little tired of hearing how RED users are so much worse - or fanboys - or whatever.

All user bases have their fan bases which trash talk about other cameras and sing the praises of the technology in which they are most invested -- we humans seem to universally love that shit. The only difference is RED users have a consolidated forum - other camera companies don't, and are generally dispersed across the web. But the song remains the same.

But to get to my point...Tom and Jay's interchange is a pretty basic summation of our choices...going with a trusted name with adequate support and infrastructure but a conservative approach to innovation or picking a company of gunslingers which is innovating like crazy but struggling, at least it appears, with some basic inventory control issues.

I am betting that the gunslingers get their inventory control issues in hand before the conservative company begins innovating at an equal level and delivering these innovations at an equal price point. Anyone want to take the other side of that bet?

At the end of the day, we don't have a perfect camera company (ask me again when I'm running around with my hands wrapped around EPIC-X...), just a set of choices. But oh, what choices they are!

My MX-ed RED ONE already makes me so happy. Cut the weight in half, add HDR and Magic Motion and I'll be climbing the stairway to heaven.

(I don't know why RED is inspiring Led Zeppelin allusions this morning, but there it is...)
 
Meryem Ersoz said:
Except, I have to make an important distinction --- we are users, not employees or representatives of the RED company - you don't actually hear employees of RED making snarky comments here - it's us, the user base, in our house.
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Well, the Sony guy didn't make it here. It was hearsay and probably said in response to someone bringing up Red at a Sales/trade event, which makes it fair game.

As an example (probably a poor one, but no time for hunting) I love Graeme, he's the most knowledgeable guy on here, but he can get a little snarky with his "zone plate of death" as if we don't know 4/5K is going to be sharper than 1080P. And you may have heard some trash talking by red employees in person at Red trade events too.

Yes it's " our house " but it's also the official unofficial red house organ and the doors and windows are all wide open, so the overall level of discourse does affect the impression of Red/redusers to an industry that often makes hiring/purchasing decisions based in part on impressions since it is ALL creative and therefore often not much concrete info to go on. And red's marketing style tends to encourage it.

I just think it's time not only to "man up" but to "grow up" a bit.
 
Jim Retar said:
It is a good, valid and valuable post. RED need to sort this issue out and talking about it will help the process.

We have to be vocal about any negative aspects we find with the company, it is in the best interest of RED and all the REDusers.
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Agreed, this is the most important point of all.
 
Sorry if I was a little feisty and flippant about this, but it kind of baffles my mind that anyone would take seriously the little swipes and comments made by some Sony rep. Jim has stated clearly that the nonsense, anti-filmmaker business practices of companies like Sony and Panasonic are the very reason he started the Red camera company.

I think Sony needs to spend less time worrying about Red SSD modules, and more time worrying about the devastation Epic is going to cause their "high-end" $250,000 1080p, non-RAW cameras. Sony CineAlta will be lucky to even survive as a division of Sony. Instead of talking trash, they should beg forgiveness for their practices of withholding technology from indie filmmakers and swear to never do it again.
 
It's a bit of a contradiction... you are suggesting we shouldn't take notice of a Sony rep (one guy) and in the next paragraph... saying that Sony (the whole corporation/film division) should spend less time worrying about RED.

To you, me and the next guy... RED might seem like the best option... but Sony will always have it's place and DO make great tools that are obviously worth buying for certain people. If they don't suit your goals, don't buy/rent. Simple.

Calling Sony "anti-filmmaker" seems a bit strange (in many ways) but especially considering they are the main company pushing 4K projectors into cinemas.... chances are your Epic production will be shown on a Sony projector.

Sony and RED are just options... both have positive and negative points. You don't even just have to pick one and stick by it.
 
Jim Retar said:
Sony and RED are just options... both have positive and negative points. You don't even just have to pick one and stick by it.
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Oh c'mon.. That's like saying you don't have to be either a tea partyer or a Marxist. You're either "on the bus, or off the bus". :) :001_cool:

Seriously, I'm jk in case it isn't obvious. Your post was well spoken.
 
Great. You have appreciation for Sony, I have disdain for most of their business practices. To each his own.
 
I'm sure experiences vary, but I've had a long and fruitful experience with Sony, going back all the way to their first CCD cameras. I've found their service to be very good, their tech support first-rate, and their reps almost like planning partners in my business.

We were early adopters of almost all of their gear, BetaCam, BetaCam SP, including the D2 machines. Those were a rather ill-fated choice, and when we went all component digital, they bought them back from us at a nice price.

Unfortunately for Sony, I pretty much left them when Panasonic introduced the VariCam, and non-linear has taken the rest of the Sony gear out of the suites, but I still have great respect for them and I wouldn't be so quick to count them out of the game.

Every piece of Sony gear I ever owned worked flawlessly; I think that says a lot.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
To be fair, I think Graem's zone plate of death is usually brought out to directly counter the many many claims about the "superior" nature of, well, you name it, many things not RED. Why beat around the bush when you can give them a good tangible boot in the ass.
 
Manuel Wenger said:
Anxiosly waiting for the availability as well. meanwhile I´m very happy with the NextoDI.
They are cheap (about 300 EUR/400 USD) and they never let me down so far. the nexto reads a full 16GB Card in about 7min including file verification. Since they power off automatically after copying and will give you a message if the last copy was sucessfull, you don´t have to pay a lot of attention to the units.
I always use one unit as backup together with my MacPro or Macbook where i copy to another disk.
In seldom cases, where there is limited budget i use up to 4 nextos to shuttle between post house and set without a Data Wrangler and never had any problem for over 2 years now.

Manuel
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Same experience here (give or take a few months). I think the drive has a shock detector of some kind, so it's pretty solid.
 
Peter Matthes said:
Matured 4K

Canon4k.jpg
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It has curved lines. Like your body. It doesn't have wires hanging out. It won't catch on something or leave marks on skin. You'll clean it with a one wipe. It will slip out from and into a bag in a second. Might want to check the evolution of handheld motion imaging devices in the last 20 years which have not been designed to keep 3 people from the union pampering the camera. Also might want to check what is the perfect geometrical shape.


Your point was ?
 
Hrvoje Simic said:
It has curved lines. Like your body. It doesn't have wires hanging out. It won't catch on something or leave marks on skin. You'll clean it with a one wipe. It will slip out from and into a bag in a second. Might want to check the evolution of handheld motion imaging devices in the last 20 years which have not been designed to keep 3 people from the union pampering the camera.
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And you need to bolt a handle to it so that it's ergonomic for long periods of use. The viewfinder is on its ass-end, so if you want to use it, you always have the camera glued to your face like a monocle. The onboard LCD is fixed to the top of the camera... OK, but what if I want/need it somewhere else? No wires coming off of it??? Puh-leez... As soon as I want it to be more than a self-contained handy-cam, it will need wires going here and there. I can rig up an Epic/Scarlet with no wires, except for the one single cable to the LCD or EVF. But at least I can put that LCD/EVF wherever I please.

Sticking a camera inside a hand-held hair drier housing does not make a good design. Evolution, my ass...

RED One is big and clunky at times. And yet it doesn't need 3 people to pamper it. I go out with the RED One all by myself all the time. Works just fine. Epic will be a breath of fresh air though as it will shave off some weight and volume as well as have support for AF lenses.

This example is not "matured" 4K. It's 4K worth of conceptual pixels in a curvy, sexy, ergonomic nightmare that is clearly aimed at the spendy consumer gadget crowd. It's also a lot bigger than a hair drier, even though it looks like one. And I wonder just how many electronic components are stuffed into that box-like base?
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
And you need to bolt a handle to it so that it's ergonomic for long periods of use. The viewfinder is on its ass-end, so if you want to use it, you always have the camera glued to your face like a monocle. The onboard LCD is fixed to the top of the camera... OK, but what if I want/need it somewhere else? No wires coming off of it??? Puh-leez... As soon as I want it to be more than a self-contained handy-cam, it will need wires going here and there. I can rig up an Epic/Scarlet with no wires, except for the one single cable to the LCD or EVF. But at least I can put that LCD/EVF wherever I please.
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Thinking cinema-style and putting down camera which is not designed for that purpose ?

Viewfinder sucks, yes. It's redundant.

"Self-contained" doesn't necessarily mean "handy-cam", which sounds derogatory in your post.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
RED One is big and clunky at times. And yet it doesn't need 3 people to pamper it. I go out with the RED One all by myself all the time. Works just fine. Epic will be a breath of fresh air though as it will shave off some weight and volume as well as have support for AF lenses.
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Comment wasn't directed to RED, but cinema style cameras in general where focus is on expandability and interoperability at the cost of ergonomics and speed.

I shoot RED all by myself also when I prioritize picture quality. It works just fine. I do shoot faster with other cams, though.

What you see as "self-contained handy-cam" I see as independence, speed and efficiency because I'm not wasting my time and focus on assembly, setup and taking care of 50 parts.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
This example is not "matured" 4K. It's 4K worth of conceptual pixels in a curvy, sexy, ergonomic nightmare that is clearly aimed at the spendy consumer gadget crowd. It's also a lot bigger than a hair drier, even though it looks like one. And I wonder just how many electronic components are stuffed into that box-like base?
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Enough electronics to enable a 4K feed out of 2/3" sensor. They are not displaying the box or finished camera but ideas and visions. By incorporating what looks like an innovative product design combined with efficient cooling system. I really doubt that finished camera would consist of this base.

RED is not the only company who has a great team and some visions. It seems like folks get a kick out of putting down other companies, even to the extent of shitting on coupe for not being a bulldozer.

It's pretty logical why it reminds of a hair dryer. So what. I also see handheld ergonomics in centered mass per minimal volume for perfect balance and uniform inertia.
New generations will prefer hair dryer over a toaster.
 
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