Why aren't Red Pro Primes Popular?

[Björn Benckert]

Interesting notes Bjorn. I guess I am in your amateur category then. When a client asks me what camera to use I always push my epic w. Because I do feel it will be best for the job, and 9 times out of 10 I can persuade them to use red instead of any other brand. Plus I do make the rental cost, which is good! When the job asks for a clean crisp modern image, and I get asked what lenses should we use. I again push for my pro primes. If they want an older look, I have no problem getting a vintage set from a rental house. I also have never gotten any suspicion because I own my kit, and have lenses that say the word Pro on them. But with that I also don't do huge shows, and never get asked - you can rent anything you want, what will it be? In LA I hustle the low budget - Indie Industry. So unfortunately that means, I get jobs because I can bring more to the table, equipment wise. I agree with you a DP is a consultant for a production, that is very true. But not to trust him or her because they recommend their own equipment, I don't agree. In LA everyone talks, and are more than likely full of shit. So it's refreshing to know that a DP has a solid kit and hustles it. You can trust and see the DP knows that kit inside and out, and most likely can trouble shoot any problem, because they own the kit.

The overall goal is to only have a set of lenses and commit to a style. But I'm not there yet, so I'm trying to figure out if I should sell off the pro primes and maybe hustle that ez 1 with the epic w for a while. Have you played with the ez 1 and 2? What are you thoughts with those two zooms?

Just so you get me right, I dont mean that its anything wrong with that tactic which you use. i.e. bringing your own kit to the show or include it in the deal when selling your self as a DP. I´m just saying most of the big guys dont. But what they do a lot, is that they own gear but place it at a rental house and let the rental house be a sort of "bulvan" for their gear. That way, they can rent their own gear for a higher rate without getting the evil eye from the producers, and they also protect them selfs from technical failure. As if the camera or lens breaks during production the DP is not getting the evil eye but the rental house. A bit ugly in more ways than one I think, but thats is simply how a lot of people work it. Then that tactic only works as long as you work in your home market. It gets more difficult to convince a producer to rent a special camera kit from LA if the shoot is in toronto or such so when things get bigger that kind of fails and their gear get left on a shelf at the rental place.

I´m bidding on a set of RPP´s as we speak, not sure I get it but I think it would be a cool set of lenses to recoat. Simply make them into something uniqe as they are really good s35 lenses and the cost of damaging them is quite low. And I think they would look really good uncoated or close to it. A good base for experementing I think.

The EZ1 and two are nice but I would actually rather get rehoused sigmas instead. I like the speed of them and also the creaminess. But thats just my taste so not much to go by. But for rental purposes I guess the EZ1-2 would do better.