What Will Red One's Lifespan be?

[Michael Schrengohst]

I wonder if red will license their specs to third parties or will they be more like Apple? It would be interesting to see drives from several manufacturers.

I am sure RED has an exclusive with a drive mfg. to produce the RED drives.
The drive mfg. will help with R&D if they can get a head start in the sales process or there would be no incentive to produce such a drive on it's own.
Same thing with the chip....I would not imagine RED has the mfg. capabilities
to produce a CMOS chip....so whoever is making it probably has an exclusive deal with RED. Jim knows once the cameras ship all the competition will be getting a hold of a RED and tearing it apart. Maybe that guy who buys electronic gear and then tears it apart to see what components are inside has a RED on order? OOOOhhhhhh the humanity!!

 

[Joel Kaye]

a technical article in the American Cinematographer book that pronounced 4k to be overkill when scanning 35mm film and that 2K was good enough. Now people barely think 4K is enough. And 15 years ago people where saying the audio cd would be the last copy of a record one would ever buy (remember "perfect music forever").

Hmmm... if holographic cameras and cheap players hit the scene RED might become obsolete.

Red is modular so it should be very upgradable.

The main reason I think Red will have a very long lifespan (10+ years easily) is because display technology - particularly installed projectors - aren't going in fast enough to make 4k obsolete. I just saw a 2k projection in a local theater of a movie shot with the Sony ZR1U and it looked amazing. It'll probably take a decade for 1080P TV's to hit 70% installed base.

If RED is upgradable to include more low light sensitivity, HDR and 2 REDS could be setup for stereo imaging then I just don't see what else on the horizon obsoletes it. I can see cooler things coming along (GPS Metadata), and maybe even for less money - but that doesn't mean RED won't still be good enough to compete for a viewers attention.

Chris Kenny, I agree 100%. I'm taking a more extreme path though - I'm going to get an HV20 and a 35mm adapter (total cost for that is around $2000) and spend the rest on accessories that don't go out of date (eg matte boxes, follow focus, lights, lenses, microphones...). I'll rent the Red.

Bruce - I just shot a HV20 and I thought the same thing to myself. It would be a great match for an adapter. I'm still going to get RED because it will shoot better quality (better codec, colorspace, range and resolution). The time to own RED will be in the first year or two. After that selling it and renting might make more sense. I love the idea of owning the means to production and keeping it with me at all times to grab footage though.

I'll re-evaluate RED vs. the field every year or so. Somehow I think they'll find a way to stay ahead of the field - but we'll see.

 

[Milan Nikolic]

In ten years 8K will be the standard digital movie format but we, the early RED ONE adopters, will have the privilege to reserve RED TWO with even higher resolution!