To Red Scarlet Dragon or not to.

[Sico van der Plas]

He Guys,

I've been doubting for a couple of weeks now to dive into a older DSMC Red scarlet Dragon system.
I come from Sony FS7 and i've shot a couple of times with the Epic MX/Dragon.

I want to step up a bit quality and production value wise, but i am wondering if 8k euro's excl. vat for a ready to shoot kit (minus vlocks) is a good deal or not?
I am located in Europe so bodies are a bit harder to uptain then in the US.

Other options are the EVA1, Ursa mini pro and other models. but for starters i don't like the colour science of the EVA1 and the Ursa mini doesnt have enough 'low light' capabilities.
Red scarlet fits in between the gap for my commercial work and indie/music video work where it will more then enough and a Scarlet-W is overkill at this point.

Any thoughts and or ideas?

Cheers
Sico

 

[Alex Lubensky]

8k eur for a complete & ready to shoot Scarlet Dragon package is a darn good price. It's more like 11-12k Eur now. Why would you pay VAT on a used item though?

Assuming you're going to hit commercials & music videos mostly, i'd rather look at Red Epic MX because of slow-motion & anamorphic capabilities. Slo-mo is almost always some kind of necessary on product shots nowadays, and on music videos it's a no-brainer.

EVA, C200, URSA MINI PRO are the other items to concider. Alexa classic costs 10 grand nowadays even.

 

[Sico van der Plas]

Alexa is not suited for my shooting style its way to heavy, EVA looks horrible in Low light and the c200 has codecs from 2016, only plus for c200 is its versatility i love this docu style cam, altho i think i can get more bang for buck for the Scarlet Dragon, specially since DSMC1 extras and mags are cheap now.
Epic mx seems okey too, but too heavy price wise i guess.

For me its kind of hard to figure out what the actual FPS rates are of the scarlet dragon / considering i can do 48fps in 5K FF with the right Compression and so on; but i cant seem to find them anywhere.

I need to pay VAT in europe, unless its outside of my country so it depends its a long complex story hehe.

 

[steven michelsen]

I would most certainly go RAVEN, I had an FS7, then by default bought a second hand Scarlet Dragon, when Raven was announced I placed a order exactly that night, When the Scarlet W was announced I felt that I was almost stitched up by RED, until I received the RAVEN that is, granted there are a few minor set backs with the RAVEN, most notably the lens mount ( but all day to day glass & consumer glass is available in native EF now anyway example: cp.2 /.3 , Canon CN , Cooke Mini and the list goes on and on ) What I felt mostly was the picture quality was not only ahead but far far ahead, its just newer tech even though its arguably the same sensor. People say the crop is an issue, yea it might be for some but in a real world shooting situation its never once hindered me and or not allowed me to achieve the shot. Then there is internally 2K proxys that spit out a much better image that a 2K raw r3d on the Scarlet Dragon. So in a nutshell the correct camera is a Raven I would presume.

 

[John Meese]

If you can, do a test. And C200 is amazing because of Raw Light and has more inherient saturation and more in line color wise with alexa and other saturated cameras. But again test it all out.

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

Thread is approaching a year old, but I guess what camera to buy is a perpetual question?

 

[David Peterson]

Other options are the EVA1, Ursa mini pro and other models. but for starters i don't like the colour science of the EVA1 and the Ursa mini doesnt have enough 'low light' capabilities.
Red scarlet fits in between the gap for my commercial work and indie/music video work where it will more then enough and a Scarlet-W is overkill at this point.

If the URSA Mini Pro is not good enough in low light for your then a RED MX sensor will absolutely not be sufficient either, and you should look for at least the RED Dragon sensor.