Weapon Aluminium - Poll

[James Falco]

Phill I really respect you a lot dude. But you and everybody else need to stop saying that no other camera company is offering upgrades.
Simply not true.

I have gone through multiple digital medium format backs from Mamiya Leaf, and have gotten always a trade in option as a existing customer buying a new back.
They have had a upgrade program since over 10 years. Or at least thats how long I am aware of it.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

James. That is true.

 

[Phil Holland]

Phill I really respect you a lot dude. But you and everybody else need to stop saying that no other camera company is offering upgrades.
Simply not true.

I have gone through multiple digital medium format backs from Mamiya Leaf, and have gotten always a trade in option as a existing customer buying a new back.
They have had a upgrade program since over 10 years. Or at least thats how long I am aware of it.

We're not talking medium format backs here however. Previous PhaseOne owner here. Mamiya did good as far as that's all concerned.

Several companies are now catching wind to the whole thing. Sony is now somewhat doing it. ARRI is about to do it with SXT, though all of that is silly pants at that price point. Canon is doing what Canon does and not doing it. Panasonic is new to the 4K digital cinema plate and we don't know exactly where they go from here. The lower tier cameras are virtually disposable upon the new releases. URSA folks aren't totally happy with the Mini for instance. But many haven't been happy with the Ursa anyways. Though some have. Meanwhile JVC is stating they invented windowing down this year.

All of this seems to allude to different cameras for different types of shooters at this point. I'm just grateful there's a path to the newer technology as there's value in what's being offered from the RED camp with 6K and 8K Weapon cameras for me and my needs.

 

[Ross Isaacs]

I want Titanium lol

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

We're not talking medium format backs here however. Previous PhaseOne owner here. Mamiya did good as far as that's all concerned.

Several companies are now catching wind to the whole thing. Sony is now somewhat doing it. ARRI is about to do it with SXT, though all of that is silly pants at that price point. Canon is doing what Canon does and not doing it. Panasonic is new to the 4K digital cinema plate and we don't know exactly where they go from here. The lower tier cameras are virtually disposable upon the new releases. URSA folks aren't totally happy with the Mini for instance. But many haven't been happy with the Ursa anyways. Though some have. Meanwhile JVC is stating they invented windowing down this year.

All of this seems to allude to different cameras for different types of shooters at this point. I'm just grateful there's a path to the newer technology as there's value in what's being offered from the RED camp with 6K and 8K Weapon cameras for me and my needs.

BMD does upgrades...

 

[Phil Holland]

BMD does upgrades...

Correct. Forgot about that full sized Ursa upgrade.

The Mini Ursa however........

I'm cool man. It's cool that other people are offering upgrades these days. It gives shooters options. RED has allowed all of their cameras to upgrade since the RED One and they were doing that in a time when everybody else was not-so-inclined to do so.

It's always up to the owner to pursue those upgrades though.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Let's have a poll about whether we should keep having these crazy polls. :-/

 

[Mike P.]

I get what RED are saying, about how Epic and Scarlet are sticking around so they're the "Scarlet and Epic of the Dragon Line", but they're hardcore segregating the camera systems -- if people purchase DSMC, none of their accessories will work with Weapon (or if they want a cheaper B-Cam, they got nothing lower that'll works with their Weapon accessories). Who would want a Epic-Dragon B-Cam on a Weapon A-cam shoot, when all the accessories don't mix and match? That was kind of RED's saving grace over other "modular" designs -- knowing that everything you bought for your Scarlet-X would work if you went all the way up to a CF Epic Dragon.

Let me rephrase; far less people are going to buy into the RED ecosystem with the intention of growing, since they'll basically have to sell off all of their kit if they want to make the jump to the high-end (Weapon). In that case, upgrading/modularity are no longer advantages, just more hurdles. I don't know the exact RED numbers, and it may be anecdotal, but almost everyone I know personally with Epic-Dragons now, started with Scarlets in 2011.

 

[Brian Merlen]

maybe we aren't meant to make this leap? this is the red version of alexa studio maybe? they seem to indicate upgrade options exist down the road for scarlet and dragon.. and this one isn't going away yet either

 

[Petr Dvorak]

I dont know, but as I understand to this, magnesium body is somehow important to the Weapon, like better heat managment or what, so Weapon was probably designed around this physical specifications. So its probably not good to change to another for material.

 

[Dr. Sassi]

The number for aluminum is 236 and for magnesium it is 170 W/(m*K) with rubber around 0.16 to make clear how the Watt meter Kelvin number works.
In short, aluminum would be better to transport heat, compared to magnesium.

 

[James Falco]

I think what most of us are looking for is not the material, but the price point vs Weapon form factor vs processing power.

You might find this interesting: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?130699-Observations&p=1498467&viewfull=1#post1498467

 

[Björn Benckert]

right, but the question was are u interested in W AL, if (!) the price tag is lower compared to the currently available options ? ;-)

The price difference is not about CF, Mg or Al. those are just the stickers on the products All in all the CF bits on a carbon camera is just a fraction of the production cost. I bet if red would decide to only do CF bodies it would possibly even be done at a lower cost than having Mg, CF and Al production lines, inventory etc. I think it´s more about product differentiation, basically being able to provide product at different prices. Scarlet, Epic, Weapon and Weapon CF... is all together a pretty wide range all ready. One could argue that they could extend that even further with a Al version and a plastic version as well but then again... having more production lines brings up the overall costs and inventory hassle...

 

[Mike Nagel]

I think what most of us are looking for is not the material, but the price point vs Weapon form factor vs processing power.

You might find this interesting: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?130699-Observations&p=1498467&viewfull=1#post1498467

yeah, for sure. The wireless, LUTs and slight fps increase are the only thing interesting to me... can't believe this thing does not have 96 Khz... R1 had it and was perfect.

I don't need or want Prores - at all. RAW is one of the main reasons I jumped on R3D. And R3dcode is a dream.

I'm looking for an excuse/reason to upgrade to Weapon, and the (usual) 10K-ish upgrade-price would be the only thing that does that for me (although I don't "need" any of the new features)...

but tbh, that thinking (my last sentence) is old-school RED operating procedure, when being on the latest RED cam was smart (whether u needed the new features or not) b/c the upgrade path was a win-win for both RED and customers.

This has changed with Weapon (5K AKS credit does not change that) and no one knows how it'll be on the next gen etc.

But - just to clarify, because some peeps feel that some are "complaining" about the prices - I think the price of US$34.5K for a new Weapon is absolutely fine, I think it''s actually very, very fair. It's the upgrade path pricing that has changed, which used to be the smooth way to do it because u didn't need to sell ur cam, u just kept it until they called ur number...

If they can take Prores out - or make it optional - but offer that (new) Weapon version with the faster boards and the 8K option, that'd be it, and that would be 1000% RED. 8K RAW. That's it.

They gonna figure something out... I have no worries... they're smart and they know it's best for everybody involved the more people stay on RED train... ;-)

 

[Björn Benckert]

yeah, for sure. The wireless, LUTs and slight fps increase are the only thing interesting to me... can't believe this thing does not have 96 Khz... R1 had it and was perfect.

I don't need or want Prores - at all. RAW is one of the main reasons I jumped on R3D. And R3dcode is a dream.

I'm looking for an excuse/reason to upgrade to Weapon, and the (usual) 10K-ish upgrade-price would be the only thing that does that for me (although I don't "need" any of the new features)...

but tbh, that thinking (my last sentence) is old-school RED operating procedure, when being on the latest RED cam was smart (whether u needed the new features or not) b/c the upgrade path was a win-win for both RED and customers.

This has changed with Weapon (5K AKS credit does not change that) and no one knows how it'll be on the next gen etc.

But - just to clarify, because some peeps feel that some are "complaining" about the prices - I think the price of US$34.5K for a new Weapon is absolutely fine, I think it''s actually very, very fair. It's the upgrade path pricing that has changed, which used to be the smooth way to do it because u didn't need to sell ur cam, u just kept it until they called ur number...

If they can take Prores out - or make it optional - but offer that (new) Weapon version with the faster boards and the 8K option, that'd be it, and that would be 1000% RED. 8K RAW. That's it.

They gonna figure something out... I have no worries... they're smart and they know it's best for everybody involved the more people stay on RED train... ;-)

If red has done it right, which I assume, the proress is made from the uncompressed downscaled sensor stream. If so proress will outperform r3d for a lot of situations when shooting 8k for 4k mastering. This will aslo be true for a lot of 6k to 4k or 2k or HD situations. Think alexa HD proress from 3.2k sensor but at a UHD scale. Basically there is a lot of benefits from applying compression after downscale and debayer. I not saying that compressed Raw is a bad format but a precompression downscale for sure have it´s benefits as well. As I see it weapon will have both in a very tight package and enough pixel density to have use for both. All talk about low light level preformance and RED noisy blacks etc is something that has to be completely re evaluated with the proress 12 bit feature allready with weapon 6k... then for 8k the difference will be huge. 8k to 4k proress 12bit will for sure stand out in the 4k crowd, kind of like a pair of night vision goggles in a crowd of sunshades.

 

[Brian Boyer]

Many people are going to hate me for saying this but...

I think RED should keep the 8K VV Weapon made of CF or Mg and ~$70K because it will keep out the riffraff. And by riffraff, I mean most of us.

This is their top-of-the-line, cutting edge, specialty camera. It is NOT an everyday, every(wo)man camera. You have 6K Weapon Dragon, Epic/Scarlet Dragon and Epic/Scarlet/R1 MX and M for that.

I know that sounds elitist and seems to go against what RED has always stood for (Jim and Jarred may lose their shit after reading this) but that philosophy has been a double-edged sword for them, and some of you know it.

One of the greatest things RED did was make the same high end tools that were used on the biggest productions realistically affordable for the rest of us.

One of the worst things RED did was make the same high end tools that were used on the biggest productions realistically affordable for the rest of us. There was a ton of footage from people who didn't know what they were doing and RED's reputation for image quality unfortunately took a significant hit. To be honest, that's still kinda the case.

I remember times when Jim would practically be begging people to stop blowing out their highlights. There was one rather sarcastic post of his about how to make RED footage look like video. He was fed up at times but it was an unavoidable by-product of having a camera that almost anybody could afford.

By contrast, in addition to being a stellar camera, I think Alexa's success can can be attributed in large part to the high cost of admission. The premium price meant far fewer examples of poorly shot footage by inexperienced shooters. It was a perception thing and, for many, perception is reality.

Now, with the high cost, rental-only status of the Alexa 65, I'd guess >95% of the footage you see from that camera is going to be shot by extremely talented DPs and graded by extremely talented colorists.

The next closest competitor in terms of frame size and image quality is going to be the VV Weapon. Let that camera be the high end, smaller, lighter weight and less expensive alternative to the Alexa 65, for when it can be fully exploited and would have the most visual impact.

Don't be selfish and try to browbeat RED into making a less expensive VV so you can shoot quick turnaround, 8K projects you "grade" yourself in Premiere with an S-curve and LUT on a budget monitor simply because it would be cool to have.

Consider this...

If you poll every working cinematographer/DP/shooter with at least 5 years of experience and ask them to rate their ability to consistently produce a great-looking image on a scale from 1-10, I'm willing to bet the majority of them would rate themselves above average.

The problem is that's statistically impossible. Most would fancy themselves right of the hump on the bell curve - which makes what I'm proposing an even more difficult ask - but that's simply not the reality.

There's this fallacy in thinking that lower cost tools would mean greater access for more talented (not simply rich) people, thereby leading to more and better looking productions.

White technically true, it ignores the fact that more mediocre to not-so-talented people would have the same access, so the number of mediocre-to-bad looking productions would increase proportionately.

The number of truly gifted people in the world doesn't change with lower price points. That ratio probably stays pretty consistent to the population. The majority of people in the world just aren't extremely talented - at anything.

There's nothing wrong with that. I only state it because I know there are people who think it doesn't apply to them when it does.

In this specific instance, at this time, I'd rather see the VV in less, more capable hands than more, less capable ones. Sorry, but a high price tag helps to accomplish this in the least insulting (to a person's skill level) way. As for all of RED's other camera offerings, the prices are extremely competitive and comparable to what they've always been.

In order to protect the integrity of the brand at the very highest end, we should all consider taking one for the team and letting VV do its thing at the top end (in terms of talent, by way of budget, if necessary), at least for a while. For everyone else, 6K is freaking plenty.

 

[Maik Müller]

Brian, i get your point and i agree partially. It might be good to keep out the noise (in terms of disappointingly used VV-Weapons) for a while as it could do some damage to RED's reputation...

...but the same arguments where valid when RED released all other cameras, Scarlet on top.

If RED had listened to those arguments and made their decisions based on that thought - then think about how much great work would not have done on RED. There are so many low/no-budget-productions shot on RED that actually look great and aren't that easily to separate from blockbusters. Noise did increase, easy to find and critics will always pick bad examples, but by at least the same amount we see a increase of good looking stuff too.

And we saw and see lots of careers getting started - just because RED made it affordable to shoot at the highest technical level.

Without RED the competition wouldn't try to catch up here, imagine a world were the One and EPIC would have priced like an Arri and with the absence of Scarlet. I guess most of us would still shoot DSLRs and HD.

All that being said. I think Weapon/CF 8k has a fantastic price when you look at the camera and compare it the competition. It's just not in reach for all of us.

 

[sam karr]

I don't agree at all Brian.
I see many guys here who are posting a lot, who gave their money right away for the most expensive red model this week without even thinking about it. If you go and google their work (if we can say so, as many are just doing nothing with their cam or shooting tests for years), you will just see terrible footages. You can't avoid that. And if you check, there is a ton of bad Arri footages on vimeo too. The difference is the color science Arri is offering right away. The colors are not as lifelike and accurate as Red colors, but they are really close to film colors and there is something soft and pleasing out of the box. Red should work on that. I'm sure all the elements are there, but we need filmic redcolors and redgammas for the people who are not color grading pros. Right now we have super accurate images that can become terrible in a sec by just pushing the wrong knobs. By just playing with alchemy and hue in resolve you're already close to Arri's softness and colors.

 

[Brian Boyer]

Brian, i get your point and i agree partially. It might be good to keep out the noise (in terms of disappointingly used VV-Weapons) for a while as it could do some damage to RED's reputation...

...but the same arguments where valid when RED released all other cameras, Scarlet on top.

If RED had listened to those arguments and made their decisions based on that thought - then think about how much great work would not have done on RED. There are so many low/no-budget-productions shot on RED that actually look great and aren't that easily to separate from blockbusters. Noise did increase, easy to find and critics will always pick bad examples, but by at least the same amount we see a increase of good looking stuff too.

And we saw and see lots of careers getting started - just because RED made it affordable to shoot at the highest technical level.

Without RED the competition wouldn't try to catch up here, imagine a world were the One and EPIC would have priced like an Arri and with the absence of Scarlet. I guess most of us would still shoot DSLRs and HD.

All that being said. I think Weapon/CF 8k has a fantastic price when you look at the camera and compare it the competition. It's just not in reach for all of us.

Maik, I'm not suggesting RED should've done it any other way. If they had, I wouldn't own a Scarlet Dragon. However, in keeping with my own philosophy, you've never seen any footage of mine because I don't think it's quite ready for prime time. That's my small way of protecting your investment. You're welcome.

RED, nor any other manufacturer, is under any obligation to make their top-of-the-line, most technologically advanced product affordable for the masses to buy.

There's always a trade-off. Remember, RED was serving both ends of the budgetary spectrum with the same gear.

Making a camera super affordable so more people have access to kick-ass technology is awesome. The trade-off is having to take your lumps when the internet is flooded with crappy images from your very capable camera because people don't know what they're doing. That hurts RED and us.

Pricing your highest end camera out of the reach of most people, at the added risk of denying a low- or no-budget phenom a democratized crack at the crown, may seem bad. The trade off is the crown jewel potentially has more exemplary footage out in the wild and suffers far fewer unfair criticisms and prejudices. That ultimately helps RED and us.

The added bonus is those low- and no-budget shooters still have 6K Weapon, 6K Epic Dragon, 5K Scarlet Dragon, 5K Epic MX, 4K Scarlet MX and 4.5K R1MX to buy or rent in order to work their magic. No one is getting left behind at this point.

I don't agree at all Brian.
I see many guys here who are posting a lot, who gave their money right away for the most expensive red model this week without even thinking about it. If you go and google their work (if we can say so, as many are just doing nothing with their cam or shooting tests for years), you will just see terrible footages. You can't avoid that. And if you check, there is a ton of bad Arri footages on vimeo too. The difference is the color science Arri is offering right away. The colors are not as lifelike and accurate as Red colors, but they are really close to film colors and there is something soft and pleasing out of the box. Red should work on that. I'm sure all the elements are there, but we need filmic redcolors and redgammas for the people who are not color grading pros. Right now we have super accurate images that can become terrible in a sec by just pushing the wrong knobs. By just playing with alchemy and hue in resolve you're already close to Arri's softness and colors.

Yes, there are crappy examples of Alexa footage as well, which is why I said "far fewer' examples, as opposed to none.

I was mainly trying to get at the fact that people who have 15 or 20 years of shooting under their belt may think that fact alone counts them among the most talented of cinematographers. That's not necessarily the case, but how do you tell them they only make so-so images? You don't.

If you price your most advanced camera, in the industry's smallest pro package, with some of the industry's best imagery, like it's your most advanced camera, in the industry's smallest pro package, with some of the industry's best imagery, you avoid the subject of talent and the focus gets placed on monetary constraints.

A high premium on the top dog camera will help keep most (not all) of the people who would saturate the internet with mediocre or plain crap footage from doing so. I'm not saying RED is purposely trying to accomplish this. I'm just saying the net effect is something I think will help them in the specific case of VV.

It gives RED, which is still fighting old prejudices, misconceptions and misrepresentations, a chance to show off its flagship in a way they've never been able to before. If I'm right about that, it's not going to kill anybody if they can't afford to own VV before a slew of spectacularly shot projects with the budget to afford it come out.

If you like, think of it as a way to give back to RED, above and beyond just spending your money with them, for all they've done for you over the past 10 years.

As for color, as good as it is currently, RED can, should and will improve it. Here, again, is another trade-off. A balance has to be struck between accuracy and artistry, realistic versus pleasing.

 

[Mike Nagel]

If red has done it right, which I assume, the proress is made from the uncompressed downscaled sensor stream. If so proress will outperform r3d for a lot of situations when shooting 8k for 4k mastering. This will aslo be true for a lot of 6k to 4k or 2k or HD situations. Think alexa HD proress from 3.2k sensor but at a UHD scale. Basically there is a lot of benefits from applying compression after downscale and debayer. I not saying that compressed Raw is a bad format but a precompression downscale for sure have it´s benefits as well. As I see it weapon will have both in a very tight package and enough pixel density to have use for both. All talk about low light level preformance and RED noisy blacks etc is something that has to be completely re evaluated with the proress 12 bit feature allready with weapon 6k... then for 8k the difference will be huge. 8k to 4k proress 12bit will for sure stand out in the 4k crowd, kind of like a pair of night vision goggles in a crowd of sunshades.

interesting and I'm looking forward to the comparisons - which YOU will lead, Bjoern !!! ;-)

but, just logically, instead of shooting Prores, you simply shoot at the lowest compression setting and you remain all the freedom in the world to do whatever... if the cam already internally downsamples to 4K, u're starting in post with a 4K baked in file, not with an 8K RAW file which you can tweak and tweak and tweak to ur liking and then downsample...

so, shooting 8K RAW at lowest compression, then tweaking the file depending on what is going on in the scene, and then downsample will give the best results... if u add the option of D.E.B. and A.D.D. (which is spectacular), the cases where Prores will "outperform" the performance u can get out of the RAW file are probably very slim...

but yeah, for fast turnaround like TV or commercials, that may just be a very viable option...

I'm looking forward to ur 8K .r3d raw files, please don't share horses again... ;-) jk