Sony 4K @60fps

[William Robinette]

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."

This is the thing. I just don't see how that statement applies if a Dragon upgrade is $8,000+. That's 82% of the cost we all paid for the camera to begin with.

I really like RED and especially REDCODE and the workflow. That is where the magic is. By the same token I'm personally invested in the whole system regardless of what brain is being used, and as a company they have me for life. But I think it was somewhat apparent last November and even more so now that although the cost of entry is comparatively low for a Scarlet over an EPIC, it really is that much more of a dead end.

That said, the images the Scarlet produces still blow almost anything else out of the water. Honestly, I love MX so much I'd be happy if they just stuck in some more boards, forget DRAGON and give me use of the whole chip (5k) at speed.

 

[Shane Kelly]

Cid , you said yourself that you were undercutting the rental houses and now you, yourself are being undercut, that's the way it is these days. I've decided to only invest in lenses and accessories for the foreseeable future. The camera market is just too crazy right now and will be for a long time I think. The one thing that people will need is lenses and that's a solid investment imo.
The dragon won't change anything for scarlet renters, another $10k investment will not make your scarlet an epic. That's a really bad investment.
Sell your scarlet and buy an epic if thats what you really want but a scarlet will always be a scarlet and people want to rent an epic. I have never got one call for a scarlet rental, only for my epic. Or use your camera to build your reel but don't expect to make money renting it, the market is not that way anymore.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Shane Im aware of quite a few examples of Scarlet being used over Epic based for TV. Cinema is another issue.

Making money from Rentals, unless your are a rental house, IMO is a lazy business plan & with camera saturation the way it is also a bad business plan.

However what does work as a business plan, is owning a Scarlet thereby avoiding hire charges entirely. As long as you work in the biz & have regular work somewhere along that timeline you own it & everything else after that is profit. In the past camera hire was the only way, nowadays I reckon your mad if you rent unless you need a specialised camera for a 1 off job.

 

[Shane Kelly]

Shane Im aware of quite a few examples of Scarlet being used over Epic based for TV. Cinema is another issue.

Making money from Rentals, unless your are a rental house, IMO is a lazy business plan & with camera saturation the way it is also a bad business plan.

However what does work as a business plan, is owning a Scarlet thereby avoiding hire charges entirely. As long as you work in the biz & have regular work somewhere along that timeline you own it & everything else after that is profit. In the past camera hire was the only way, nowadays I reckon your mad if you rent unless you need a specialised camera for a 1 off job.

as long as you are charging the production for the camera or it is your own production then there is potential profit. If you are not charging then how do you make a return on investment?

I do agree with you on it being a bad business plan although I made about 30% of my gross last year from rentals but that was because producers hired me, not the camera and I then rented them mine.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Shane, I'm a Producer/Director not Dp/cameraman . Every time I work I use a camera, I hire in the wetware, the Dp & crew.....the hardware, the gear.....then even the catering & charge accordingly. Negating external camera hire from this equation whilst still charging out camera hire, I can assure you is valid pathway to profitability.

It truly is a new age when people like me start owning camera gear.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I think dragon DR is more important than speed. Shot macro with the Miro the other week. It does not cost much to rent even though it shoots 1200fps. The materal lookd nice and sharp as we used the sumilux C's and the fact that the camera had a small sensor was a good thing since we needed more depth of field to be able to stay in focus.

But I can tell you one thing the, proress files we got out of it is very much baked... far from r3d raw, far from log etc. I have almost forgot how harsh it is to find out in the flame that the colors of that cucumber would do well of some increased gamma... and then realizing that... hmm or maybe it's good as it is, or, atleast there is nothing we an do about it

So even a 4k scarlet with todays frame rates beats those new low prices cameras that will probably shoot out 4k h.246 quick times

 

[Cid J Salcido Uyarra]

Hey Shane hope your doing well, I should be back in Austin for a shoot in Nov. which I may need to rent some gear from you

Cid , you said yourself that you were undercutting the rental houses and now you, yourself are being undercut, that's the way it is these days.

I should re-frase myself, all my experience has been with me going out with my camera. I've never low balled under what rental shops charge, no lower than $600/day $2500/two weeks etc.

I've been undercut from people charging less than $400/day, hell a $75/day gig for 2 weeks Operator & Red kit got offered to me and I had to pass, too much is on the line for a project that doesn't pay, but someone took it. Another one was a 25 Day feature DP & Red kit for $500. Just plain bad but people are making movies which is cool.

Or like Mike said allot of producers own gear so your production is never on halt if the owner operator decides to walk off with the gear and footage, recently I talked to a director who had that problem she didn't know what to do and already paid him lol. Directors are starting to own gear now in the Red arsenal, producers for sure have full on DSLR rigs.

Yeah the rental days are for sure over they must have sold a ton of cameras over the pass three years, I really wish we knew a number.

Francis Ford Coppola

To me the great hope is that now these little Super 8mm Video Recorders 'cause people who normally wouldn't make movies are gonna be making them. Suddenly one day some little fat girl from Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her fathers camcorder. For Once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever and it will really become an artform. ​

Bjorn Phantom is a ton of fun, Higher Frame Rates and Shutters create better images some will argue main push for 48fps on Hobbit and new Avatar. 24fps is bare minimum and less light goes through causing a dim dull image. But thats a whole new discussion some directors are experimenting play back at different framerates to create new feels for characters or scenes.

 

[Shane Kelly]

Shane, I'm a Producer/Director not Dp/cameraman . Every time I work I use a camera, I hire in the wetware, the Dp & crew.....the hardware, the gear.....then even the catering & charge accordingly. Negating external camera hire from this equation whilst still charging out camera hire, I can assure you is valid pathway to profitability.

It truly is a new age when people like me start owning camera gear.

i'm glad that it's working out for you as well as it is for me. What you have is a viable business model and you are not depending on your gear to get you work but rather to allow you to make more profit. I guess my original answer to Cid was that owning a camera and expecting to profit from it in rental income is not necessarily a viable business plan these days.

 

[Shane Kelly]

Hey Shane hope your doing well, I should be back in Austin for a shoot in Nov. which I may need to rent some gear from you



I should re-frase myself, all my experience has been with me going out with my camera. I've never low balled under what rental shops charge, no lower than $600/day $2500/two weeks etc.

I've been undercut from people charging less than $400/day, hell a $75/day gig for 2 weeks Operator & Red kit got offered to me and I had to pass, too much is on the line for a project that doesn't pay, but someone took it. Another one was a 25 Day feature DP & Red kit for $500. Just plain bad but people are making movies which is cool.

Or like Mike said allot of producers own gear so your production is never on halt if the owner operator decides to walk off with the gear and footage, recently I talked to a director who had that problem she didn't know what to do and already paid him lol. Directors are starting to own gear now in the Red arsenal, producers for sure have full on DSLR rigs.

Yeah the rental days are for sure over they must have sold a ton of cameras over the pass three years, I really wish we knew a number.

Francis Ford Coppola

To me the great hope is that now these little Super 8mm Video Recorders 'cause people who normally wouldn't make movies are gonna be making them. Suddenly one day some little fat girl from Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her fathers camcorder. For Once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever and it will really become an artform. ​

Bjorn Phantom is a ton of fun, Higher Frame Rates and Shutters create better images some will argue main push for 48fps on Hobbit and new Avatar. 24fps is bare minimum and less light goes through causing a dim dull image. But thats a whole new discussion some directors are experimenting play back at different framerates to create new feels for characters or scenes.

Cid, I feel your pain. I recently bid on an epic rental and the "producer" said that he could get it for $600/day. I told him "good luck". Sometimes you have to walk away from those jobs that won't pay you a living wage. Stick it out in the den of thieves, go to parties, meet people and if you have to work for little money, make sure that it's something that will benefit you. Get the dit (if there is one) to pull selected takes for you as you will have a hard time getting the footage later.
Only you can determine if a project is worth doing. I did one a long time ago for very little money that ended up in competition at Sundance so you never know. It can pay off down the road.
But remember, it's called show business, not show friends.
regards,
Shane.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I've recently done a lot of undercrank and 5k with my Scarlet. The 5k footage when scaled down is much sharper than straight 4k out the Scarlet.

 

[Mike P.]

I've recently done a lot of undercrank and 5k with my Scarlet. The 5k footage when scaled down is much sharper than straight 4k out the Scarlet.

Yeah, that's kind of why I was hoping for a 24-25fps 4.5k WS mode like there is on the RED1 and Epic... It falls within 4k 1.9:1 pixel filtrate... In fact, the current 4.5k is actually something like 4480xwhatever, and ends up being less overall resolution than 4608x1920 (which is the exact same ~8.85mp pixel count as 4k 1.9:1). Obviously not as good as 5k at 4k, but it still scales down noticeably better to 4k/2k/1080p. In the meantime, with look-around enabled, off board recorders allow for full-sensor-to-1080p sans REDcode compression for cleaner highISO, but you'll be stuck with prores/DNxHD/baked-in format.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Yeah, that's kind of why I was hoping for a 24-25fps 4.5k WS mode like there is on the RED1 and Epic... It falls within 4k 1.9:1 pixel filtrate... In fact, the current 4.5k is actually something like 4480xwhatever, and ends up being less overall resolution than 4608x1920 (which is the exact same ~8.85mp pixel count as 4k 1.9:1). Obviously not as good as 5k at 4k, but it still scales down noticeably better to 4k/2k/1080p. In the meantime, with look-around enabled, off board recorders allow for full-sensor-to-1080p sans REDcode compression for cleaner highISO, but you'll be stuck with prores/DNxHD/baked-in format.

Hmmm ... if I am doing my math right ... and given the logic above ... I was thinking the current scarlet should be able to do 5k WS at 24 fps:

4096*2160*30 (current scarlet 4k mode) = 5120*2160*24 ( epic 5k ws mode) = 265420800 "pixels" per second

I am hoping RED will allow that mode on the scarlet soon ... would help me out a ton ... did i do that math right?

 

[Mike P.]

Hmmm ... if I am doing my math right ... and given the logic above ... I was thinking the current scarlet should be able to do 5k WS at 24 fps:

4096*2160*30 (current scarlet 4k mode) = 5120*2160*24 ( epic 5k ws mode) = 265420800 "pixels" per second

I am hoping RED will allow that mode on the scarlet soon ... would help me out a ton ... did i do that math right?

I was going on a per frame basis as it's a lower common denominator in terms of processing and, presumably, technologically feasible. Judging off a "per second" basis could have unforeseen processing overhead that eventually overwhelms the Scarlet pipeline somewhere... But yeah, I'm using equally straight-forward (and probably very assumptive) math... I figured it would reduce the number of excuses as to why it wouldn't work.

4096x2160 (1.9:1) = 8,847,360 (8.85mp) per frame = 4608x1920 (2.4:1).

The RED1 and Epic 4.5k WS modes are actually less pixel throughput than that -- 4480x1920 (2.33:1) which equals 8.59mp per frame. I just like using "more" of the sensor and getting ~1.45x crop factor (instead of 1.6x; albeit pre-WS cropped) which has benefits when downscaling and should technically have better low-light (aka slightly cleaner high ISO performance)

Conversely, 4k or 3.5k WS modes could potentially have 36 or maybe even 48fps...