The Update Thread

[Jose Mojica]

The Scarlet-W ordering web page has been updated to say: "ORDERS PLACED TODAY EXPECT TO BE SHIPPED IN EARLY 2017". This must have been updated yesterday. I've been checking almost daily.
Also the Weapon Mg page has been updated to say, "Orders placed today are expected to ship in October 2016." It used to say September.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Yup...RED has finally penetrated the mass market and attracted so many new customers at an astonishing level that I don't think they even expected to reach...yea, new orders take longer to fulfill, but this is good....for all of us!

 

[Simran Dewan]

Hey Jarred,

Really loving all these upgrade paths. Really inspiring to see Red evolve. Our bomb squad rep, Bryan came in for a visit this week and had a great chat with him too!

I'm curious where Epic Dragon Monochrome fits in. I understand there are a couple of Weapon Monochromes (with the current 6K sensor) in the wild. What are your guys' plan for us?

Not too sure if my opinion matters in all this, but I would personally LOVE to see an 8K VV Monochrome. Can't even begin to fathom what those images are gonna look like...

 

[Kazu Okuda]

I hate to break this to everybody with a 2016 timestamp but i think some news is better than none.
i have a 1/2 and was told today they are hoping to have me allocated by end of year.
still praying for earlier.

 

[Derek Carlson]

I hate to break this to everybody with a 2016 timestamp but i think some news is better than none.
i have a 1/2 and was told today they are hoping to have me allocated by end of year.
still praying for earlier.

Oi. The Vericam LT is starting to sound pretty nice.

 

[Cicero A]

I hate to break this to everybody with a 2016 timestamp but i think some news is better than none.
i have a 1/2 and was told today they are hoping to have me allocated by end of year.
still praying for earlier.

1/2?

 

[Scot Yount]

Guessing here, but I think he means January 2nd by 1/2..

 

[Jasper Van Gheluwe]

I don't get why RED can't give a correct estimate of allocations.
Couple of months ago they said March time-stamps would be allocated during Summer, now I have the feeling it will be early 2017.

And for all the people who are saying that the RED newcomers are whiners: some people are relying on this camera, spend almost all their money on it and don't have the budget to just rent a good camera while waiting for it.

It's a shame I already bought all the accessories, because now I don't have a choice anymore.

RED, please enlighten us. I figure you're a great company, please also take your new-comers serious.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

If it can reassure you, Red isn't taking early adopters and believers more seriously than new-comers, they ignore them the same way ;-)

They can't give a precise date because they don't have a good production process, it's more an artisanal stuff. They should hire a good process manager, with a good experience from another industrial world, to have a better organized workflow.

In fact, I feel sorry for the people from the Bomb Squad (what a name, by the way, when you read a little bit the news and know what's going on in the world). They send you a quote in less than 1 hour, and then spend at least 1 year repeating to their customers "We don't have a single info about delivery".

I don't get why RED can't give a correct estimate of allocations.
Couple of months ago they said March time-stamps would be allocated during Summer, now I have the feeling it will be early 2017.

And for all the people who are saying that the RED newcomers are whiners: some people are relying on this camera, spend almost all their money on it and don't have the budget to just rent a good camera while waiting for it.

It's a shame I already bought all the accessories, because now I don't have a choice anymore.

RED, please enlighten us. I figure you're a great company, please also take your new-comers serious.

 

[Cicero A]

Guessing here, but I think he means January 2nd by 1/2..

ouch. Im a few months past January. I hope its not december or 2017 for me.

 

[David Herbst]

I hate to break this to everybody with a 2016 timestamp but i think some news is better than none.
i have a 1/2 and was told today they are hoping to have me allocated by end of year.
still praying for earlier.

Why do some RED reps apparently know something that others dont?
My rep just sent me a screenshot of this forum after asking for informations. So unfortunately mine doesnt know anything. Strange. Reps only get Informations when cameras get allocated? Sorry but thats a sad philosophy of customer care.

 

[Jarred Land]

Why do some RED reps apparently know something that others don't?
My rep just sent me a screenshot of this forum after asking for informations. So unfortunately mine doesnt know anything. Strange. Reps only get Informations when cameras get allocated? Sorry but thats a sad philosophy of customer care.

Unless you are about to be allocated ( i.e a week or so away ) , if a Rep tells you a specific date down the road that you are getting your camera then he or she is just making it up. I know that's pretty blunt... but it's the truth.

I know you guys don't fully understand and I've explained it many times but we just cannot make cameras fast enough to extinguish the backorder. Its just how it is.. and I can't change that. Right now we are hand to mouth with sensors... completely wiped out every day that the new ones come in.

Our sensors are arguably the best out there... the reason nobody else does what we do is because its fucking difficult. Our sensors ride so far to the edge of technology that there is no constant dependable number we can make every day.. sometimes we lose a whole batch, sometimes we have an almost perfect batch. It's just how it is.

When we are caught up with manufacturing and are ahead of cameras with more in stock than we sell, those sensor fluctuations sort of ease out because we have a few batches in reserve to absorb those fluctuations. . Scarlet-W and Raven however completely caught us off guard by the demand, wiped out everything and hence why we are rolling day to day with no reserve. Put that variability in of the sensors together with the additional random schedule of Dragon Owners sending in cameras for upgrades that have a pre-allocation, and you can start to understand why giving you guys a firm date is just impossible.



Let me kinda simplify this. Don't pay attention to the actual numbers because they are all imaginary.

Say you are order #180. and its Monday morning and we are building camera #100. Since we cant ship your camera till it gets a sensor , we need to wait till 10am to see how many perfect sensors we get out of the oven.
Nobody knows that answer ahead of time.. you can only guess. So if you ask the question before 10am.. any answer anyone gives you is made up.. even if you are close.


So 10am comes and we get in 100 perfect sensors out of a possible 200. Great. Better than zero... not as good as 200.
So we start putting those 100 sensors into cameras. You get your call because you have a sensor and have been allocated.


Fast forward a week. another batch of cameras ready for sensors. Monday 10am comes , and we get only 30 good sensors this time. O fuck.
So we put those into 30 cameras and call those 30 people and we gotta wait another week. Again... we are hand to mouth so this really is all happening in real time.


So 3rd week comes. We get 180 perfect sensors!!! woo hoo. awesome. Or maybe we get a zero yield ( which happens ). O fuck.


That's kinda how we are living... and I hope you can see if you ask the question " what week will my camera ship " its an impossible answer.


I like to think we make the best cameras... especially Raven and Scarlet-W in that price point. You are getting a lot.. at the horrible expense of a long wait.. and I know it's a brutal wait.

We don't mass produce things... these are all hand made and not just things we can bolt together in the dark and stamp parts out with cookie cutters.

I know its longer than you guys wanted and longer than many of you were told.

I am not hiding anything from you... Its not like your reps all know the days your cameras are going to ship and are just playing some sadistic game not telling you... the answer is just impossible to calculate.

Cameras are shipping, orders are being fulfilled... like I said, more this month than last and should be more next month and then monster more the next... it's just taking time to ramp up and catch up. We are expanding everything... but it takes time for everything to come together.

And yes.. we are not the only camera company. You have lots of options out there . We are happy to refund your deposit in full and give your spot to someone else in line so you can go buy something else if you just cannot wait any longer.. It's totally understandable.

Sorry if i am starting to sound like a broken record... but as long as people keep asking why, I feel obligated to keep explaining.

 

[Jaimy Soares]

What you are doing is unbelievable.

I wish this happened 4 years ago so I didn't have to put all my money in the Epic MX at that time, and being broke for the rest of that year. But I believed.

You also pay for the best community and costumer service known to mankind. I mean if I had bought a camera somewehere else I would had a bad time just with this point.

I also think that when people get their camera this whole wait "drama" wil be forgotten the time they press record.

Be happy you can afford a RED this time around because a lot of people would not have if RED didn't make it so affordable now.

Oh and, do you know that kind of people that ask you to do a whole 90 minute film edit in 2 days? What do you say then? Something like, you can't rush something great...

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I can testify what Jarred is saying is true in chip making. In the old days some chips manufactures would loose virtually all their Chios for months sns months and go broke, not figuring out what caused it (I'd he calling the police in frankly). These days it s much more refined, but when you ate on the cutting edge it might take ywses to develop a chip making process so it produces dependable quantities, until tjtn, if you use it, it might swing wildly before you get it under control (if you can, as it as s bleeding edge and you are pushing out the door to best another sensor manufacturer). So you might land up with 50% or so chips that are not up to scratch, but maybe hopefully, mostly suitable for a lesser model of camera).
I am still interested if they can do my suggestion if a variable cut chip (particularly with BSI for access to alternative taps) to cut out some defects and use in a smaller format. Pretty disruptive as far as quality wise but interested if it can be reliably done.

It also means it might be possible to manufacture a gigapixel large format sensor on the same chip (but all this more suites at pixel, or corner/central, analogue to digital conversion to cooly transport a binary stream without signal disruption from the cuts etc etc etc).

 

[Luca Volpe]

Honestly I am blessed I had the opportunity to buy a Red, I remember three years ago I was showing a friend of mine the cameras on Red website and I told him "one day I will have one"!...well now I have it! The law of attraction at work!
I understand is not easy to wait so long, but I don't think there is a company that gives so much passion in what they do so is completey understandable why it takes so much time, they are giving us the best. About the customer care I think is the best out there, I had some problems with my SW and they have been super helpful and very Kind. With all the bad things happening in the world I think is not worth it to get stressed for an allocation, let's be happy to be able to get this camera instead!

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Jarred, I'm curious. I'm looking at doing some low threshold low light recording for research purposes. Any chance the ISO ceiling can be removed on the cameras, particularly monochrome. People are doing 5m ISO, possible a fair bit more. But Ud be interested in how far your sensors xsn go? There is a large market in machine vision and research fields, and security (particularly something like Thunderbolt 3 or display port direct DMA frame grabbing to memory). At the moment limited USB 3.x, GigE, or expensive frame grabbers are used.

 

[David Herbst]

Thanks Jarred for the detailed explanation how things going on right now in this maybe most challenging time for you guys.
Absolutely no doubt that you´re creating maybe the best cameras out there in my view and probably every other user in this forum agree about that.

It´s completely comprehensible that you can´t ship as fast as the orders come in.

I think that your answer is a satisfying clarification for many customers. At least for me.
It´s exactly just a statement like yours that I missed from my rep.
The answer "You´ll get news as soon as your camera has been allocated." is so disappointing. That´s what I meant with "sad customer care"
Maybe the next customers will get an answer more like yours after asking for information about their order.

Thanks again.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Unless you are about to be allocated ( i.e a week or so away ) , if a Rep tells you a specific date down the road that you are getting your camera then he or she is just making it up. I know that's pretty blunt... but it's the truth.

I know you guys don't fully understand and I've explained it many times but we just cannot make cameras fast enough to extinguish the backorder. Its just how it is.. and I can't change that. Right now we are hand to mouth with sensors... completely wiped out every day that the new ones come in.

Our sensors are arguably the best out there... the reason nobody else does what we do is because its fucking difficult. Our sensors ride so far to the edge of technology that there is no constant dependable number we can make every day.. sometimes we lose a whole batch, sometimes we have an almost perfect batch. It's just how it is.

When we are caught up with manufacturing and are ahead of cameras with more in stock than we sell, those sensor fluctuations sort of ease out because we have a few batches in reserve to absorb those fluctuations. . Scarlet-W and Raven however completely caught us off guard by the demand, wiped out everything and hence why we are rolling day to day with no reserve. Put that variability in of the sensors together with the additional random schedule of Dragon Owners sending in cameras for upgrades that have a pre-allocation, and you can start to understand why giving you guys a firm date is just impossible.



Let me kinda simplify this. Don't pay attention to the actual numbers because they are all imaginary.

Say you are order #180. and its Monday morning and we are building camera #100. Since we cant ship your camera till it gets a sensor , we need to wait till 10am to see how many perfect sensors we get out of the oven.
Nobody knows that answer ahead of time.. you can only guess. So if you ask the question before 10am.. any answer anyone gives you is made up.. even if you are close.


So 10am comes and we get in 100 perfect sensors out of a possible 200. Great. Better than zero... not as good as 200.
So we start putting those 100 sensors into cameras. You get your call because you have a sensor and have been allocated.


Fast forward a week. another batch of cameras ready for sensors. Monday 10am comes , and we get only 30 good sensors this time. O fuck.
So we put those into 30 cameras and call those 30 people and we gotta wait another week. Again... we are hand to mouth so this really is all happening in real time.


So 3rd week comes. We get 180 perfect sensors!!! woo hoo. awesome. Or maybe we get a zero yield ( which happens ). O fuck.


That's kinda how we are living... and I hope you can see if you ask the question " what week will my camera ship " its an impossible answer.


I like to think we make the best cameras... especially Raven and Scarlet-W in that price point. You are getting a lot.. at the horrible expense of a long wait.. and I know it's a brutal wait.

We don't mass produce things... these are all hand made and not just things we can bolt together in the dark and stamp parts out with cookie cutters.

I know its longer than you guys wanted and longer than many of you were told.

I am not hiding anything from you... Its not like your reps all know the days your cameras are going to ship and are just playing some sadistic game not telling you... the answer is just impossible to calculate.

Cameras are shipping, orders are being fulfilled... like I said, more this month than last and should be more next month and then monster more the next... it's just taking time to ramp up and catch up. We are expanding everything... but it takes time for everything to come together.

And yes.. we are not the only camera company. You have lots of options out there . We are happy to refund your deposit in full and give your spot to someone else in line so you can go buy something else if you just cannot wait any longer.. It's totally understandable.

Sorry if i am starting to sound like a broken record... but as long as people keep asking why, I feel obligated to keep explaining.

Once again, transparency at it's finest. Thanks Jarred!

 

[Jarred Land]

I am still interested if they can do my suggestion if a variable cut chip (particularly with BSI for access to alternative taps) to cut out some defects and use in a smaller format. Pretty disruptive as far as quality wise but interested if it can be reliably done.

BSI has some great advantages but at a massive expense of dynamic range since there is so much light spill between pixels with BSI... which is something I feel is not worth the tradeoff just quite yet.

 

[Abiodun Shote]

Hope you had a wonderful flight, can't imagine straight to the forum right from the plane. BTW, thanks for Raven, I have a rental client who doesn't see any reason to shoot on WMg simply because the images Raven give him is just damn gooood. Try to convince a couple of times to try WMg but he won't!!! So for all the guys waiting, it's worth it. Same ol'song, yeah I know, but wait till you get yours, the long wait will melt away.