VDSLRs have changed the Scarlet approach?

[David Swan]

Forgetting about the "soccer moms", a term I don't even understand, I recall enthusiasts and film students being in the original target audiance, not just the people for whom even a $10k camera is "expendable".
Dave

 

[David Rasberry]

So what else is there in the sub 10k space that is a practical rugged all purpose motion picture camera? The best all around camera in that range for image quality is still a used super 16mm film camera IMHO. The VDSLR's fill that lower sub $3k market niche quite nicely for students I think, certainly for web video. If you trick one of those out with all the accessories to make it work like a practical motion camera you are still looking at around $3k or more on top of the camera cost though, and that is not even thinking about lenses. While I understand the budget woes of students, my stepson is in film school, I think people have unrealistic expectations of what decent camera systems cost.
So buy a sub 2k VDSLR today, spend money for high quality lenses, and when you can afford to upgrade, the glass will work on an S35 Scarlet just fine. It doesn't have to come all at once.

I personally prefer the 2/3"/16mm sized format. Even with the formerly announced $2500 price for Scarlet Cinema interchangeable brain, my planned budget for a minimal field package is still around $8k+. I have about $3k invested in used 16mm lenses so far.

 

[Reale]

What I Want for My Birthday...

What I Want for My Birthday...

"Scarlet 2/3" Program. Given the recent new VDSLR releases, we have decided to up the capability of the Scarlet 2/3" Fixed 8x and interchangeable models. Several new features are being added that will NOT impact the release schedule (anymore than it would have been otherwise) but it will mildly impact the pricing. We should have all the details ready by the end of this month.

Some of the new Scarlet 2/3" capabilities include:
.....

To accomplish all of these, we have added one additional ASIC and four new boards to each model Scarlet 2/3"."

Why would Red improve the capability of the Scarlet due to new VDSLRs when the previous Scarlet design still kicked any VDSLRs in the pants? The VDSLRs were not even coming close. The VDSLRs don't seem to in the near future be abkle to shoot 3K raw, or improve those artifacts issues so many people have gripes about (granted, we don't even know if the Scarlet will have any of those issues either). Nothing in the market compared to Red Scarlet's specs even for the next few years. So why change a design that would now effectively price out people who, for them $3500 was a perfect price point, get priced out of the Scarlet? It does not seem sensible. It seems like such a decision would drive people to compromise and therefore purchase an inferior product simply now for economic reasons, such as a Canon 7d.
So really, given new VDSLR releases, Red says that they will now re-engineer the Scarlet and make it more expensive because.....why? People have been buying the VDSLRs because the price point has been that attractive. If you re-engineer this thing, and increase the price, I think Red will be losing many potential buyers who gladly would have spent $3500, but that was a maximum. I temper all these thoughts though with acknowledging Jim J and Red owe no one anything, and have done already a great job at giving the market a product at a price point that hitherto had been unheard of. But I would venture to say, that $3500 for some people was the new $2000. At one point, at maximum, they were willing to spend $2k for a camera. But then they heard that this Scarlet was coming along, and they figured that somehow, they could bite the bullet, sell some stuff, and convince their wives or husbands that this was a good investment..etc. However, for many of these types of people, and I can speak now from experience, with a lovely wife and 2 young children (http://vimeo.com/5777456), we will not be so successful in convincing our wonderful wives that $5k is the new $3.5K. So, I know that Red owes us nothing, but I would like to remind them that I/we make up a large market segment, and if you are able to keep the price of a working Scarlet at $3500 max, you will not only get 10s of thousands of buyers like me, but loyal customers for life. Ce la vie. If consumers like me simply aren't supposed to get such an advanced product for that low of a price point, I totally understand. Red needs to make money. Last time I read, they didn't receive any bailout money and are not being run by the Obama administration. But, I am holding out hope against hope, and if you can do it, keep it at $3500 or less, and still be profitable, you will take a large chunk of Canon and Nikon's business.
yours truly
man with $3500.
p.s. Jim did say ,in so many words, don't have a conniption either about the price. That's fair....

I completely agree, I am very much concerned because the Scarlet fixed lens kit has been slowly but surely evolving towards the upper bounds of my possible price range. If the Scarlet fixed lens kit is more than $4200, I don't think there's any way I can afford it.

And another thing, I think there is a point to reaching this price range, by the way, since there are many many students and college film programs which can and would spend this much money but probably not much more.

I didn't care about some delays with release, but when Jim mentioned price increases.... those do concern me because they may be the difference between me being a red customer within a year and me being a red customer in some 7, 8, 10 or more years when I hopefully will be in a higher tax bracket... so to speak.



of course, then again, this could all be worrying about nothing, because, as I remember, the Scarlet Fixed lens kit was last appraised at 3750...

... and Jim said there would be a mild price increase... mild in my book would be 4000 dollars, which is still allot from my standpoint, but not unmanageable.

Let's hope there really is going to be good news on November 30th, which by the way is actually my birthday

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Reale

 

[David Swan]

Hmm.... I already have Canon and Leica glass, so all I need is the body.
Even so, I reccen even a minimal s35 Scarlet will be way out of my league, both in price and capapbility. Not bitching, just facts.
Realisticly even the fixed 2/3" will be a stretch for me, but may be one I will be willing to make, I'll just have to wait until the 30th.
Of course by the time the 2/3" fixed Scarlet is released, and I've enough to afford one, Canon may have produced something that, while not up to Scarlet standard, is of sufficiant quality for my modest needs.
We'll have to see.
Dave

 

[dansh]

The camera was originally introduced as the go anywhere do anything rugged Hollywood B-cam/crash cam alternative to RED 1, not as a home movie camera for soccer moms.

Hum, actually, Red's spokesman specifically used the "soccer mom" term when Scarlet was first announced :lol: and THAT has changed.

I do agree with everything else you have said, though. The bummer for me is that if the price goes above what I can afford, I am stuck with no good alternatives. The VDSLR's are nice, but not good. Everytime I blow up some h264 or hdv acquired footage I cringe :angry:

Sorry for the rant... Again, I couldn't be more enthousiastic about the 'Red Revolution'... I find it absolutely amazing. And I can *almost* afford it...

 

[Tim H.]

What is Soderbergh shooting on film? Not that it matters. At his level filmmakers pick the medium that best suits the individual project.

For those who think that 2/3" Scarlet is not intended for feature production. The camera shoots native 1.89:1 wide screen digital cinema without cropping the sensor and exceeds the resolution of the 2k DPI/DPX digital format that is the industry standard for finishing both film and digital originated projects. The camera was originally introduced as the go anywhere do anything rugged Hollywood B-cam/crash cam alternative to RED 1, not as a home movie camera for soccer moms. That hasn't changed. Scarlet has just been massively improved from that original concept at a very moderate price increase. Should be quite possible to assemble a decent sub $10k field package. Even at the original 3k for 3k target, a practical field package would have been more like $5-6k.

Resolution is not everything and this has been proven time and time again in various tests. However, I agree that the Scarlet as defined by Red at this point will allow someone to shoot for the cinema far better than some other cameras out there. Although I would bet that most of the footage shot with it will never make it on the big screen.

Soderbergh may or may not be shooting film on the next project but it's probably dependent on who is financing the film and what they want for their money. Is he the DP or not? Maybe the DP on the film doesn't want to shoot Red? Who knows.

I went to see the Informant and all I can say is....If you want to see how bad the Red can look in the wrong hands then go see that movie. Luckily there are other movies out there shot on the Red that can show what it really can do because this movie was a disaster. Perhaps who ever is financing the next Soderbergh movie said no way. There were people in the theater who had no clue about cameras, tech, etc and were complaining.

So once again we come back to the idea that even a 200K camera in the wrong hands will produce crap. I'm excited to see the images form the Epic and Scarlet though.

As far as DI's. A lot of time they scan at 4K and rez down to 2K on the fly because the storage is cheaper and thus the DI is cheaper. However, a lot more DP's are requesting that they scan at 4K, stay at 4K and some are even doing 8k now. The film hold up fine to this and really shows you why film is not going to die anytime soon.

 

[Pierre T.]

I went to see the Informant and all I can say is....If you want to see how bad the Red can look in the wrong hands then go see that movie.

Well, I have not seen the movie, so I cannot judge. But could you please elaborate. I mean, do you think the movie looks bad and it would have been just as bad on film or do you think the camera has been used in a bad way and deficiencies become visible?

 

[Tim H.]

Hi Pierre,

Since I was not on set I can't tell you the exact mistakes Soderbergh made but after watching the movie I did some research to see why the film looked so poorly. Soderbergh likes to shoot run and gun style with minimal lighting and while you can get away with this in some cases this is not going to give you the best results. Thus why so much care goes into lighting professional productions. It really does make a difference.

There were several scenes where he tried to shoot in available light with regular practicals. They were just awful, especially the indoor shots. As you might know the Red sensor is Daylight balanced (as silicon sensors favor blue light and thus naturally daylight balanced). If you shoot with tungsten light and don't correct with a filter on the lens (matte box) then the camera will have to compensate in the blue channel which usually adds noise and also forces the red channel to work harder. You can see a red cast throughout the film where it was obvious he did not properly compensate for the tungsten lighting. So in addition to just not having enough light for some scenes he compounded the noise by shooting tungsten and forcing more noise int eh blue channel.

Now, the over all film had a throwback look to it because the story takes place some time ago. While that is fine in general you could see the faults of not properly exposing for the Red even through this "look" he was going for and to my eyes did not help add to the feel of the movie but instead made it look very bad. Most rate the Red at around 300ish ASA and that is just not enough for the low light shooting he tried to pull off.

Maybe it will look better on DVD but in the theater it just was not good. I didn't see Che but I've read many comments about that film looking bad too. So maybe the Red and Soderbergh are not mean to be but that doesn't mean the Red can't shoot some good stuff.

 

[Steve Power]

Haven't seen the Informant, but Che was nothing to brag about from a looks perspective either.

 

[Deanan]

Hi Pierre,

Since I was not on set I can't tell you the exact mistakes Soderbergh made but after watching the movie I did some research to see why the film looked so poorly. Soderbergh likes to shoot run and gun style with minimal lighting and while you can get away with this in some cases this is not going to give you the best results. Thus why so much care goes into lighting professional productions. It really does make a difference.

There were several scenes where he tried to shoot in available light with regular practicals. They were just awful, especially the indoor shots. As you might know the Red sensor is Daylight balanced (as silicon sensors favor blue light and thus naturally daylight balanced). If you shoot with tungsten light and don't correct with a filter on the lens (matte box) then the camera will have to compensate in the blue channel which usually adds noise and also forces the red channel to work harder. You can see a red cast throughout the film where it was obvious he did not properly compensate for the tungsten lighting. So in addition to just not having enough light for some scenes he compounded the noise by shooting tungsten and forcing more noise int eh blue channel.

Now, the over all film had a throwback look to it because the story takes place some time ago. While that is fine in general you could see the faults of not properly exposing for the Red even through this "look" he was going for and to my eyes did not help add to the feel of the movie but instead made it look very bad. Most rate the Red at around 300ish ASA and that is just not enough for the low light shooting he tried to pull off.

Maybe it will look better on DVD but in the theater it just was not good. I didn't see Che but I've read many comments about that film looking bad too. So maybe the Red and Soderbergh are not mean to be but that doesn't mean the Red can't shoot some good stuff.

All three movies had a very specific creative intent.
If you don't like the intent that's subjective critique but not everything is supposed to look like a merchant ivory production.

 

[Tim H.]

Deanan, I completely agree and I noticed the creative intent but there were also some very technically poor shots in the film that had you done that as a DP you would probably not be working much.

Did you happen to see this movie in the theater?

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I loved Che as a film and visually, specially indoors.

Many outdoor scenes looked poor IMHO.