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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 :)

WEAPON Dragon is really Evolution or What?

Milan S. said:
I don't think anybody complained about that, ever. I'm pretty sure you know that.

From what I understand, most people are upset because they are pouring more money into the system than they are getting out.
At some point, keeping up with the upgrades and new developments probably ceases to be a sustainable business model option for smaller productions.
Especially because of quick devaluation of gear (some of it you can't give away after only a few months) and low rental rates compared to other camera systems.
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This is a real problem. Camera rentals, even as an added fee to your own productions, are not high enough to warrant all these expenses, unless you are a very busy rental house in a major market. You just never get the money back before the depreciation ax falls, it seems, not anymore.

For many people profit margins on productions are also already way, way low, so there is nowhere for all this money to come from. I may get blasted for saying this, but Arri, with their highly infrequent new model releases, makes it possible to actually amortize what you buy from them before some new thing is what everyone is willing to pay for, not your obsoleted version.

I could afford a 100 K camera, but I can't afford to lose money because I am a business. As such, likely I will rent whatever this new Weapon thing is, whenever our still excellent Epic MX is not enough for whatever reason, and get the client to pay for it. Clients can't, after all, argue with a line item that comes from an external supplier, the way some try to nickel and dime the rentals for the things we own internally. In this way you are always breaking exactly even when renting gear from someone else for a client. I do not foresee breaking even with Dragon + Weapon in Montreal before depreciation, so it's a better business to rent in order to access the gear - and still get the exact same tech benefits.

Of course, your mileage may vary.
 
Gunleik Groven said:
Devaluation of tech investments is the reality of things.

And RED has historically held up very well, not at least due to the "upgrade value".*The R1 was insane in that respect.

Still people got angry when it was EOL'ed and RED sold the refurbs.
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Of course they did. I was about to sell mine, and the buyer pulled out because of that. I lost 12K. Now when we bring our Red One MX as a B cam to a production, clients perceive it as worth 4K In fact, it cheapened the whole brand. Who would be happy about that? I wish no-budget film makers well, but not enough to give them a 12K hand-out. There are other charities higher on my list.

That said the R1 did hold up really, really well, and the upgrade was cheap at 6K. We actually made a profit owning our R1.

Unfortunately, through no real fault of Red's, the climate for amortizing gear has changed to the point where I don't think many people can make their money back anymore on cameras over renting.

I'm in a way glad. I like rentals houses and their social component. I like not having to worry about maintenance, storage and insurance. Montreal has a wealth of excellent, well run rental houses, Cinepool being a particularly fine example.
 
I received my Dragon in late November and 2-3 jobs from January until now have already payed back that investment.... So I guess mileage really does vary. Mind you, it helps that I have both OLPF's and unlike the rental houses I actually know which one is in my camera at any given time.... I intend to get in line for Weapon as soon as I know what it actually is/costs.
 
Andrey Blanco said:
I applaud evolution but what is the point of making this kind of announcements this early?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?128336-Dragon-upgrades

We all know NO real users are going to received any weapon until mid 2016 (I had been optimistic here), If you think for a second, Early Dragon adapter not even have a year with their new toys and now you are making obsoleted the camera, Almost making feel people bad with what they have in their hand, You are deliberately creating this need to have this new Weapon.

If you guys at RED are desperate to say something or create attention at NAB, Why don't you better focus on convincing great filmmakers to use your camera? I personally thing that the best marketing campaign for a camera manufacturer would be displaying on a Big Screen all the award wining Movies that had been filmed with the camera you are trying to sell Me (Sadly this is not the case with red now).

Red Epic Dragon is a Great Camera there is not need at this point for another Weapon I think what we need is more people using the Camera.

Looking the recent announcements of companies like Red, Panasonic, Sony, etc. I seriously think something is not right with camera manufacturers these days.
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i agree 100% with you. i just purchased the epic upgrade 2 weeks ago . now im broke cant afford the dragon upgrade . i was hoping to upgrade in july august to dragon. but now thats out. can't sell my epic for 90 days. what a trick bag.
 
Even a few months from now the Epic Scarlet and dragon cameras are all still very competitive packages, high resolution in a small package.... Imagine if you would have bought an Alexa M a couple of weeks back, for those that did I can only assume things feels a lot worse... Not really any upgrade paths for them to hope for,I think and the second hand market for the Alexa M... possibly not such an easy sell at the moment. :)
 
Milan S. said:
Good question. We were forced to. My account was locked untill I bought it. It makes for a good paper weight. Except I don't have any papers on my desk.
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I bought a quad battery module in the after market - when all those folks were "stuck" with them. I probably paid too much (they got much cheaper eventually), but I used it quiet a bit and still do. It's great for loading up REDvolts and RV-XLs and swapping them out continuously. I am pretty sure this is one module that won't move forward with Weapon.
 
Milan S. said:
Good question. We were forced to. My account was locked untill I bought it. It makes for a good paper weight. Except I don't have any papers on my desk.
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$50 delivered?
 
Terry VerHaar said:
I bought a quad battery module in the after market - when all those folks were "stuck" with them. I probably paid too much (they got much cheaper eventually), but I used it quiet a bit and still do. It's great for loading up REDvolts and RV-XLs and swapping them out continuously. I am pretty sure this is one module that won't move forward with Weapon.
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It was handy for longer takes and Redmote storage/charge but made the camera as heavy as the Red One. I eventually went with the Redvolt XL module which made Dragon great for documentary work, which now seems to be another module that will be made obsolete with the new Happy Rainbow camera.
 
Milan S. said:
It was handy for longer takes and Redmote storage/charge but made the camera as heavy as the Red One. I eventually went with the Redvolt XL module which made Dragon great for documentary work, which now seems to be another module that will be made obsolete with the new Happy Rainbow camera.
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I have one of those as well but I like that you can mix and match Revolts and XLs on the Quad.
 
Time for RED to get the rising young fresh talents on RED side. Seriously ever since Hezorg cursed this camera, the high art crowd has been moving away from RED. Best way to beat them is to win them over. What happened with Peter Jackson was good for a while. But the 48 fps thing, the reception was lukewarm. Frankly I think the 48fps worked for some scenes, but those where the scenes not shot with RED camera ironically. Woulod be interesting if Herzorg could be won over.
 
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