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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 :)

The Update Thread

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That's what I tried to make Jarred understand, but unfortunately I don't think my opinion counted ;-) Well, time will tell, but delivering quickly the goods is by far the most important thing than announcing new products every 6 months.

George A. said:
Hi Brent,

A LOT of people still have Red Dragons and they are waiting to upgrade to WEAPON.
I know because I work and talk to them.
I hope the cut off time is not very soon. The path to upgrade has been opened since NAB 2015 - true - but it's been barely more than a year ago. It's very short.
The upgrade path should be opened for 2-3 years. How long has the upgrade path for MX to Dragon been open, in total?

Please understand. I am an early RED ONE adaptor. I used to know the RED ecosystem inside out. Now I am confused. I don't even know all the myriad of options RED offers.

Please consider that you are moving too fast for a lot of your customers. Take it slower please.

Cheers and thanks for all the hard work!
George



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George A. said:
A LOT of people still have Red Dragons and they are waiting to upgrade to WEAPON.
Click to expand...

Do take special note that Helium is in a Weapon body. Very important.

Sensor, Body, Sensor, Body. Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

Helium really begins in October (near the end of 2016) and will go on for a while.

It's an accelerated pace, but the industry is also moving faster it appears.

RED at the moment has two of the most important formats covered by 8K motion picture technology.
 
Phil Holland said:
Do take special note that Helium is in a Weapon body. Very important.

Sensor, Body, Sensor, Body. Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

Helium really begins in October (near the end of 2016) and will go on for a while.

It's an accelerated pace, but the industry is also moving faster it appears.

RED at the moment has two of the most important formats covered by 8K motion picture technology.
Click to expand...

All true my friend!

That being said, my point still stands - a lot of people (at least, the Red owners that I know or I am regularly in contact with - quite a lot of them!) still have the Red Epic Dragons.
It's been barely more than a year since the upgrades were announced (Dragon toWeapon).
If RED is already thinking of cutting off the upgrades from Red Epic Dragons to Weapon, I think it's way too soon in my humble opinion.

Cheers and thanks Phil! Good luck with your current jobs!

George




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I wonder if RED would be open to an upgrade path from RED EPIC DRAGON DSMC1 (pre nab 2015) to WEAPON MG without all the accessories (tophandle, base expander, redvolt XL mod, sidekick, 3pack olpfs, case etc etc) forget the $5k accessory credit

reason I ask is I have some dsmc2 accessories now, with more becoming available/updated

what would the price of something like that look like?
 
Just reading through much of this thread, a couple of questions for clarification;

If I send in my Epic Dragon for MagW upgrade, I will spend $29K and get my Dragon sensor back along with upgraded circuit boards and a mini-mag side recorder. I assume most if not all of my Dragon AKS will work - but maybe not; 5" LCD? Redmote? WC Anton Bauer rear adapter? PL Mount? Canon Mount?

Now, if I look at the Helium sensor which sold a few days ago for $59K, my question is this; is it going to cost another $29K to upgrade to Helium sensor from Dragon-sensored MagW? Should someone in my position then wait for the MagW upgrade including the Helium sensor in October? Am I missing a crucial point here?
 
Bruce Schultz said:
I assume most if not all of my Dragon AKS will work - but maybe not;
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Some, not all...

Bruce Schultz said:
5" LCD?
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Yes, with the Lemo A adapter

Bruce Schultz said:
Redmote?
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I'm pretty sure that's a no, but not 100% sure.

Bruce Schultz said:
WC Anton Bauer rear adapter?
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Yes, but they have a newer cableless design for the DSMC2 cameras that is cleaner and leaves the DC in free.

Bruce Schultz said:
PL Mount? Canon Mount?
Click to expand...
Yup, mounts work just the same on DSMC1 and DSMC2
 
Phil Holland said:
snip:
Do take special note that Helium is in a Weapon body. Very important.

Sensor, Body, Sensor, Body. Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify - hasn't it always been:

Body, Sensor, Body, Sensor?

Red one (Mysterium)
then MX

Epic-X DSMC (MX)
then Dragon

DSMC2 (Dragon)
then Helium
 
I guess the question for a lot of epic dragon people is will we be able to directly upgrade from Epic Dragon to Helium Weapon and for how much? Upgrading to mag weapon and then again to the helium sensor initially doesn't seem to make much sense financially (even though we don't know all the details / pricing yet)?

I'm sure RED will offer up a path, if not, I guess a lot of people will be selling their dragons in the used market and buying a new helium camera up front?

Craig Lees
ED & SMX UK
FD SSC & Lomo Anamophic sets
 
Not to be a buzz kill, but...

Not to be a buzz kill, but...

As someone who has as much interest in the larger VV-ish format, as I do the move from 6 to 8K, I'm still jonesin' for the 8K Dragon cut. That said, from a business perspective, having all the buzz be about the new Helium sensor tech at 8K is bound to put a damper on demand.

If the 8K VV Dragons had started shipping earlier this year I would have had a good chance to make back the $10K upgrade cost in rentals before throwing down for Helium. Yes, that is still possible, but every day that passes makes it harder.

I'm not looking to blame RED for the situation, I feel certain they expected better yield on the 8K cuts than they have been getting. Jarred was clear on just how hard it was and how long it could take - we were properly informed. That said, if the 8K Dragons are going to roll out at roughly one per month, perhaps those of us who trusted RED with our $10K and threw down for the CF Weapon to house it, might be offered some kind of preference in initial Helium allocations...

Cheers - #19
 
Craig Lees said:
I guess the question for a lot of epic dragon people is will we be able to directly upgrade from Epic Dragon to Helium Weapon and for how much? Upgrading to mag weapon and then again to the helium sensor initially doesn't seem to make much sense financially (even though we don't know all the details / pricing yet)?

I'm sure RED will offer up a path, if not, I guess a lot of people will be selling their dragons in the used market and buying a new helium camera up front?
Click to expand...

Exactly my point. A direct upgrade from Epic Dragon to Helium sensor via the MagW body should/would cost the upgrade to MagW + somewhere around the $10K we paid for the Dragon sensor upgrade from Epic MX. That would put the price about $20K south of a new Helium unit like what sold this week.

People will really have to decide if that $40K is a worthwhile investment for a state-of-the-art camera or be looking at other cameras like the Varicam or Alexa models - none of which excepting the Arri 65 are even up to 5K sensor resolution though. As someone who has owned numerous cameras dating back to the 1970's with an Ikegami HL79, I have paid up to $90K for some of the cameras along that 30+ year journey - remembering specifically the first two Sony F900's the I bought were at that higher price point. So I get that $40K is a reasonable amount for this much advanced technology. I can't ignore the fact that every client I work with is perfectly happy with either 5K or 6K out of the Dragon sensor right now. The only truly revolutionary improvement that Helium might present is in it's low-light imaging capabilities. If I've read one, I've read a hundred threads on RU dedicated to this subject. My take has always been that the larger the photosites, the better the camera performs in low light situations. This is why a 12MP Sony A7s kicks a comparable 40MP Sony A7R in the butt in low light - so I'm skeptical that packing 30+MP into the Helium is going to gain better low-light results, but I have been surprised before. I will believe it when I see it on a grading quality monitor, and not on a web page still frame example or Vimeo. It is my hope that it will be an improvement in sensitivity to match the increased resolution making the $40K investment an obvious choice.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
As someone who has as much interest in the larger VV-ish format, as I do the move from 6 to 8K, I'm still jonesin' for the 8K Dragon cut. That said, from a business perspective, having all the buzz be about the new Helium sensor tech at 8K is bound to put a damper on demand.

If the 8K VV Dragons had started shipping earlier this year I would have had a good chance to make back the $10K upgrade cost in rentals before throwing down for Helium. Yes, that is still possible, but every day that passes makes it harder.

I'm not looking to blame RED for the situation, I feel certain they expected better yield on the 8K cuts than they have been getting. Jarred was clear on just how hard it was and how long it could take - we were properly informed. That said, if the 8K Dragons are going to roll out at roughly one per month, perhaps those of us who trusted RED with our $10K and threw down for the CF Weapon to house it, might be offered some kind of preference in initial Helium allocations...

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...


Agreed, going on 16 months now...
 
William Tracy Babcock said:
Agreed, going on 16 months now...
Click to expand...

What's so weird is that Jarred had a working prototype before the release, and Guardians of the Galaxy or Universe, or whatever, had 12 of them early on. They must have known any problems by then. But I'm not sure there have been more than a dozen produced for the last year or so... at least not for civilian use.
 
Elsie N said:
What's so weird is that Jarred had a working prototype before the release, and Guardians of the Galaxy or Universe, or whatever, had 12 of them early on. They must have known any problems by then. But I'm not sure there have been more than a dozen produced for the last year or so... at least not for civilian use.
Click to expand...

There's so much we don't know - and I certainly don't expect RED to publicly disclose any issues that could bite them competitively. That said, at the time the 8K cut was offered for pre-order, RED must have believed that they could push them out faster than this. I won't take any free shots at Jarred - not just because it would be counter-productive, but because he was always very clear about just how difficult the technical challenges would be. Hopefully better yields are coming soon...

Cheers - #19
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
There's so much we don't know - and I certainly don't expect RED to publicly disclose any issues that could bite them competitively. That said, at the time the 8K cut was offered for pre-order, RED must have believed that they could push them out faster than this. I won't take any free shots at Jarred - not just because it would be counter-productive, but because he was always very clear about just how difficult the technical challenges would be. Hopefully better yields are coming soon...

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Hoping my post didn't come off as taking a free shot at Jarred... just stating facts that we know and wondering why what we know doesn't add up to what we reasonably expected.

The very clear part came after all the known sensors were in the wild (GOTU) and his personal camera. I'm curious if those cameras continued to perform or if they revealed a flaw somewhere in the tech.
 
Hopefully Scarlet-W has a Helium path, a la Dragon upgrade options that the Scarlet MX had. I'm a little worried that you'd have to upgrade Scarlet-W to Weapon and then upgrade to Helium from there. That seems like it would be pretty cost prohibitive. It also seems a little weird that Helium could be dropping in October and I don't even know if I'll have my Scarlet-W by then... but then again, it's not like I'm paying the cost to be cutting-edge with the Scarlet-W, haha (1/6 the cost of the Stormtrooper!), so I suppose I should expect to lag a little.
 
Antony Newman said:
Incredible news that the new Ovens are operational and already up to the job of creating 8K sensors!

Would these new ovens be able to create VV Sized Helium sensors too - or is this a dream from the future?

AJ
Click to expand...
+1 on these thoughts.
 
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