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Sony 4K @60fps

Cid J Salcido Uyarra

Cid J Salcido Uyarra

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Just saw this post on Sony Developing a budget point 4K camera that does 60fps

So where does that put Scarlet Dragon?

6K 24fps almost seems crucial.

What do you think?
 
For me personally 6k "at speed" is such a high desire for the Dragon update. The only thing I wish I had access to on my Scarlet today is shooting at speed using the full sensor.

I posted in another thread this extremely optimistic hope:

6k-30
5k-60
4k-72
3k-120
2k-200

One thing that we know is coming from Red competitors is 4k and specifically Sony focuses on burst rates as well. That puts us in an interesting place. Red will do their best. We might even see a two tiered approach to Dragon.

One that gets us 30fps @ 5k and maybe one that gets us 30fps @ 6k for an additional cost. The trick there is going to be balancing the price point for Scarlet owners to upgrade versus purchasing a new camera. And those new 4k cameras are going to start coming in around Scarlet body costs today.

Tricky space to be in, but I'm with Red and believe in their system. They have delivered on their promises in my mind. Hopefully we'll know within the next month or so what to expect on how we can upgrade our Scarlets.
 
This is only good for the market and everyone.

I'm with Phil, there are other cameras coming to the market that are going to offer 4K 60fps. I've heard of one in a price point I can't even believe but I trust where I heard it and won't give that away.

I'm sitting a bit un-easy with my investment at the moment. This may partially be my marketing or lack there of or a mix of everything but my camera isn't renting a whole lot, and honestly i'm not shooting it a whole lot anymore. I'm in love with 4K resolution which is why I haven't strayed. But after spending well over 15,000 on RED gear I'm a bit nervous at the Dragon upgrade and the lack of a price point to yet hit for the Scarlet to this point.

I honestly feel RED will have to drop the price of the upgrade and possibly even the Scarlet body. I think other companies are going to start pricing the market here shortly and forcing some to lower there prices as well.

For those who have already bought the Scarlet I guess maybe I'm alone, how much do you feel you should get for more than 6 thousand dollars on an upgrade?

Say a camera comes out that offers 4K 60fps and raw for under 12 grand? Would you personally pay another 6 grand just to get your scarlet to 4K 60-72 on top of what you've already paid?
 
It's going to be a tough call Jeffrey.

If it's good image quality and raw for under $12k with a S35-ish sensor it's going to get bloody in the MX market. If Dragon provides access to more fps, broader dynamic range, deeper ISO sensitivity, and a larger sensor real estate those are very real reasons for me to put my $6k+ down on Dragon. However, how much "+" that is will effect everybody's decision and future purchases.

I'm sure the powers up high at Red are all thinking about this. Especially since Scarlet owners likely won't get upgrades until mid to late quarter 1 of 2013.

I believe in what Dragon is and can do for the industry and shooters. It's just going to be tricky to price it for this suddenly escalating market.
 
Cid J Salcido Uyarra said:
Just saw this post on Sony Developing a budget point 4K camera that does 60fps

So where does that put Scarlet Dragon?

6K 24fps almost seems crucial.

What do you think?
Click to expand...


I think all of you are only thinking in terms of sensors. What people often forget when they talk about comparing red, dynamic range and frame rates is Redcode Raw. Canon Sony, and everyone else will compromise when it comes to either the codec or actual record size. The 5D II would have killed if it shot raw video like REDCODE. Even in the Canon 4k world, they are still compromising. It's like chinese food, you can only pick 2 of the 3 essential components in your combo.
 
Marc Wielage said:
For-A is announcing this week a 4K camera that will do 1000fps at 4096x2160 resolution... but its internal storage only holds 150 seconds' worth of footage:

http://www.studiodaily.com/2012/09/for-a-to-show-4k-super-slo-mo-camera-at-ibc/
Click to expand...
Well, to be fair, if it holds 150 seconds (or 150,000 frames) worth of 1000fps footage then that's the equivalent of 104 minutes and 20 seconds at 24fps. That's about what a 128GB Redmag holds. I'm not saying that it's an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's worth noting that.

All I'll say is that I've been very pleased with our Scarlet and our other Red gear and very happy with how the company has treated us to this point. Our Scarlet investment has already pretty much paid for itself at this point and we've only had it for about six months. We'll wait and see what the Dragon update means for Scarlet owners before we make a final purchasing decision, of course, but I'm optimistic. We may even buy the upgrade and get a Dragon-equipped Epic body as well depending on how things shake out.
 
Well, I'm not a big fan of Sony's business policy either, but if you compare prices of a F23 a few years ago and a F65 now, RED has definitely kicked some a…es.

Plus, have a look at what a FS-700 can do for less than 10K U$.
 
Its kinda crazy to see how these companies are scrambling to pick up the pace.

I totally feel you Jeff I've had excellent luck with my Scarlet the first four months but about after that it seems like I kept getting undercut which really sucks especially when its way lower than what rental houses offer. Makes no sense cause if I'm being fair and have only paid for the Brain through gigs I still have DSMC accessories to make up for and other toys. How they manage to take the hit I wonder or it could be all the used Scarlets I see for sale. Who knows. I'm seriously hoping Dragon may change that since it may "weed" out the crop. Dropping another $7k+ is a serious investment considering the luck some have had. Granted I think if I stayed in Austin I would have had better luck but I literally bought into Scarlet and moved to LA. Probably not the best idea but it came down to timing everything happened around the new year lol. At the same time it's been kinda rough re-establishing myself in a new environment, for the most part LA is camera saturated and they start "lets shoot Scarlet" and end up with an Epic or a Scarlet from someone else due to "bro deal" or a DSLR cause they plain can't afford it. Thats the case for Webisodes-Shorts-Commercial-Music Videos usually for features they go 5K Epic, it puts Scarlet in a weird place.

Even if I where to sell my camera what would I get?

I mean a BMC sounds tempting but I'm looking at the footage/screen grabs and I remember why I bought into a RED.

4K + Cine-X

Cine-X is the shit I'm sorry but the Red Workflow is my favorite, it's the only system in the world that really makes you value footage you shoot, which to me is everything. NO ONE ELSE DOES THAT! Anytime I'm done with a day and I review my footage I love it. It's a personal daily and gives you an idea of what you really got, camera monitors are just reference.

Every other camera just doesn't do it at the moment but the horizon looks somewhat promising.

Back to Dragon Phil I hope your right those Specs are pretty stellar. Even though most think they wont use 6K I guarantee you'll play with it. I'm pretty anxious to see footi, it has to be nuts. Even for wide shots just to incorporate all the details its gonna be bomb. I can't help but to watch Dark Knight and admire the 6K scans its looks unreal. Trying to picture 6K R3D gets me excited. It's like playing with 4K in 2009 =)

I'm holding tight for now I still think affordable 4K is at least a year away three at worst and I seriously worked way too hard to get my camera! LOL I put some pain sweat and tears to get it. At the moment 2.5K seems to be the magical number, Chinese S35 Raw camera and BMCC. Sony and Canon have to offer 4K output just to kinda future proof their cameras until 4K is internal.

6k-30
5k-60
4k-72
3k-120
2k-200

I hope this 6k 30fps is realistic if thats more or less where it's going sign me up.

I probably wont be able to afford it until late 2013 but I'll work up to it

On another note if RedRocket can only do 5k 25fps more or less then will we see a RedRocket2 which could do 6K or could it be unlocked via Firmware? Either way it'd be cool if they could package Dragon Sensor with a Rocket like with R1 in the past.

Splitting the Upgrade would be dope too but breaking it down maybe tricky. If I could keep my sensor and get highspeed that would be ideal for me with upgrade path for Dragon.
 
As the article says, it has a 2/3" sensor, which makes it closer to an EX3... The camera that comes of this will be a great ENG/EFP camera. Guaranteed the event/tv camera of choice - the true successor to the ex3. 10-12bit... possibly log mode (most likely not log). Hell, if it adds value to you as a cameraman go for it.

Not really competition to Scarlet or Epic though. Different league. I wouldn't worry too much. And if you are worried, perhaps sell up and get another camera which you think will be more useful to you at this juncture.

Cheers,

Ivan
 
my dragons gonna toast that handycam!
 
Apparently the FS700's 4k firmware is going to be $500 and 4k off board recorders are supposed to be $1500... so that would put it at <$10k for 4k with insanely good low-light capabilities, built-in NDs, built-in XLR, built-in Monitoring, built-in peaking, 8hour battery, and everything else needed to shoot... If it comes to fruition, that's not too bad.
 
Mike P. said:
Apparently the FS700's 4k firmware is going to be $500 and 4k off board recorders are supposed to be $1500... so that would put it at <$10k for 4k with insanely good low-light capabilities, built-in NDs, built-in XLR, built-in Monitoring, built-in peaking, 8hour battery, and everything else needed to shoot... If it comes to fruition, that's not too bad.
Click to expand...
this is kind of my point. RED forced everyone to lower prices. Now the prices will be beat. I guess its an individual decision of what you value most in your camera. But the thought of another 6-8K practically a new body doesn't exactly scream value anymore when looking at those prices. I guess it just forces them to make Dragon more awesome for that price?
 
If Dragon brings 6k at speed, more DR(maybe 2 stops) and more sensitivity I would pay 8k for it.
 
Even at 6k/24fps (with HDRx no less), I wouldn't be willing to shell out ~$8000 for just the dragon sensor, when I could have another entire/complete/ready-to-shoot 4k camera that can do 4k/60fps, usable footage at 18db/ISO6400 (or max 30db with noise reduction), and 14stops of DR... that'd be full retard (and 'you ain't never supposeda go full retaud').

I mean, even if you forget Sony/Canon/Panny/BigCompanies, you've still got stupidly cheap options like Digital Bolex and BMDCC s16mm 2.5k RAW for $3k, KineRAW s35 2k RAW (from a 4k/9mp sensor) for $6k, which are just insanely cheap and ready to shoot out of the box (on cheap SSD/HDDs no less)... It's crazy how quickly the floodgates will open (unless, of course, all of those cameras somehow suck ass, but given that they're using off the shelf parts, on an open format, it'd be difficult to make them completely blow.)

Alas, it's all guess work until we know what RED, Sony, etc are actually going to be doing (and charging), but it certainly seems that prices are going to plummet for 4k (and RAW?) acquisition which will definitely make 'obsolescence obsolete' completely obsolete for the scarlet user. Epic (vs Alexa vs F65), on the other hand, benefits fairly huge from the "6k for $6k upgrade."
 
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Red could always collapse the Scarlet line into the Epic Dragon line, and charge us like 10k+ or even 15k+ to get the same specs as the Epic Dragons. Maybe even 20k+ lol... But point being they can get out of this quasi prosumer market on a whim. That is if the prosumer 4k market gets too crowded for Red to want to compete in it. Until Sony plays their hand we all kind of are sitting here wondering... But keep in mind we sort of need Sony to push 4k, to bring the monitors to the mainstream, which will in turn get us all more 4k work. So I am not worried about their tech specs, cuz I know I need them to push 4k mainstream so I can stay busy telling everyone how it "has to be 4k"
 
Mike P. said:
Apparently the FS700's 4k firmware is going to be $500 and 4k off board recorders are supposed to be $1500... so that would put it at <$10k for 4k with insanely good low-light capabilities, built-in NDs, built-in XLR, built-in Monitoring, built-in peaking, 8hour battery, and everything else needed to shoot... If it comes to fruition, that's not too bad.
Click to expand...

Would it be some sort of compressed raw? If so that really is a suprising price.
 
From what I've heard it's gonna be compressed RAW how it compares to ur 16 Bit files it'll be hard to say until we see specs and images.

At least with 6K you'll be able to pull off a great 4K image.

Even though they claim 4K sensor it's really not 4K due to De-Bayer each color in every pixel is not being represented plus optical low pass filter chops away resolution to help moire.

it's gonna be like the whole 1080i camera in the early HD wave lol
 
Jake Wilganowski said:
Would it be some sort of compressed raw? If so that really is a suprising price.
Click to expand...

It'd be whatever your recorder supports, but I'd actually opt against compressed RAW if I had the choice (Redcode is compressed and it shows in low-light and highly detailed scenes at 6:1)... Sure it'd be bigger files sizes but OTS SSDs are like $200 for 256gig so I wouldn't be too concerned. For comparison, I think CinemaDNG is about 2x the size of REDcode (3:1 RC is ~4mb/frame, CDNG is ~8mb/frame) and I think CDNG is uncompressed (which is the tits in terms of quality.) Thing is, Sony apparently isn't going to limit the recorder to their own proprietary one -- so you could have BM come out with a CineformRAW one for $300 and/or Aja come out with one for $3000 that is uncompressed RAW... It could (and probably will) end up being way cheaper than $1500 for the recorder. As for the firmware price, I think the logic is that it won't be more expensive than the F3's s-log firmware (which was $500.)
 
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