Scarlet Announcement

M

Max Smith

Active member
I wonder how Red's new Scarlet fixed lens announcement will effect pricing and specs in the rest of the prosumer market.
 
Since it's only an announcement of when it could be out (subject to change) I doubt if there will be any immediate impact. They have already announce another 30 day delay.
 
True. And don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those RED-or-die nutcases, but I'm guessing if they're making an announcement they must have most of the tech irorned out.

If they do deliver in June, or even a few months later, it might well shake up the prosumer market. Or maybe not, time will tell.
 
I would be surprised if it changed anything. This is the third time Red's made announcements on Scarlet, and announced shipping dates in the future. Why should the other companies change?

Now, when Red actually ships the product, and it actually starts to impact the other guys' sales, then that's when you'll see the other companies responding with either new products or price cuts or ... well, whatever they think they would need to do, at that point, to stay competitive.
 
Yeah, but maybe 3rd times the charm. This time, they have actual photos. So a picture being worth a whole lot of renders and words, might mean something to Japan, Inc.

I'm not holding my breath though, I doubt we can put money down for one until late summer 2010.
 
I read the announment with little enthusiasm, guess I'm tired / burned out from all the hype.

I'm waiting to see lots of footage / tests before I get excited again. Jarred just posted a pic of the Scarlet next to a Nikon D3 for a scale size comparison, It seemed to get my attenton more than any other Scarlet pic or 'render' so far.

I'm really tired of big cameras with big prices if you can't tell :)
 
Barry_Green said:
I would be surprised if it changed anything. This is the third time Red's made announcements on Scarlet, and announced shipping dates in the future. Why should the other companies change?

Now, when Red actually ships the product, and it actually starts to impact the other guys' sales, then that's when you'll see the other companies responding with either new products or price cuts or ... well, whatever they think they would need to do, at that point, to stay competitive.
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Yeah, I doubt if the "Other guys" are waiting around for Red to do anything. I think we are going to see some outstanding products from all the big players in the very short term. However, if there is only one thing I have learned from you Barry (Which is absolutely not the case) it is that the video camera market is diverse enough for many, many end users and for many, many products from all the camera manufactures.

That being said, I gotta give Red their props... they are making thing interesting.
 
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I'm digging the mini-primes. interested to see how those perform. fast glass, and affordably priced, imo.

Also, was nice to see some of the modules come down in price... the 5" touch LCD went down 300 bucks. the 2.8" went down 100.
 
Yea, 6mm & 8mm mini primes for $950 looked interesting, I just need to see how good the glass is before I get excited again.
 
I'll tell you. I was one of the first thirty people in line on the first day of NAB 2008 when the scarlet was first introduced. I have been following (ever more distant) RED's progress as have many of have here, and with this latest announcement I started to wonder if the pursuit of making obsolescence obsolete isn't a self defeating goal. I mean, I want the perfect camera. But I would like a camera with a few less features then one with everything I want I can only hold in my dreams.

I feel weird saying this, because I have always been of the opinion of shoot now, buy later. Let RED do their thing and it'll be ready when it is. I still believe in that, but I wonder... really, are they ever going to make the perfect camera? No. They won't. But where do you draw the line of "good enough?"
 
For me the issue is being able to shoot 3k and 120p (with everything else mentioned) for less than the price of an EX1 and quite a bit less than an EX3 or HPX300. Not to mention the PMW 350 with is a 2/3 chip.

For instance, what does Sony do with it's newly announced NXCAM series?

And for the record I've been firmly on the 'I'll believe it when I see it' bandwagon with RED.

I just think there is a decent probability that camera debuts this year and if so it will alter the prosumer market considerably. And while I partially agree with Barry that the big boys won't change until their bottom line is affected, they've got to be taking this into consideration in terms of their own development cycles.
 
Max Smith said:
And while I partially agree with Barry that the big boys won't change until their bottom line is affected, they've got to be taking this into consideration in terms of their own development cycles.
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Anything that would come out in competition with Scarlet, was probably set in motion the day Scarlet was first announced, back about 19 months ago. It takes a long time to bring a camera to fruition. Everyone talks about how "quickly" Red can move, because they're a small company, but ... Scarlet will be at least two, two and a half years from first announcement to first product being delivered.

The EX1 successor was probably started on before the EX1 even shipped. The HPX170 was probably being worked on before the HVX200 shipped.

As far as PRODUCT goes, I don't think they could respond quickly, if they haven't already been working on it.

I was referring to pricing -- I can't imagine why they'd drop their prices a penny based on an announcement of a product that's a minimum of six months away. They'll react to actual changes in the marketplace, yes. But not just because someone announced something, and (with all due respect) certainly not because Red announced something (because Red has made a very clear case that their announcements are subject to drastic change).

Now, if all the customers in the marketplace just stopped buying today's products, whether due to the announcement or job losses or recession or whatever reason, I believe THAT they would react to. They would do like any business would -- offer incentives, rebates, discounts, promotions, whatever it took to stimulate sales again.
 
this is more in response to the other scarlet thread that got closed, but in terms of dslr's vs. the scarlet and whether the scarlet has lost a lot of its potential user base to the dslr's, I think honestly it has, but there are still a lot of people that are more comfortable with traditional camcorders and weren't ready to trust the video dslr's due to their limitations that will probably go for the scarlet now. it will probably take a lot of the market away from the mid-to-high end camcorder market than it will lose probably. I don't think there are really any sub-$10,000 2/3" cameras out there right now.

as far as why you would go with a scarlet over a dslr, there are obvious advantages like in filming any type of action due to rolling shutter; also for greenscreening, the 4:2:2 color space and lack of aliasing will definitely make it better suited. I see the dslr's as more complementary actually, better for static (or dolly) shots where you would want the shallow dof. but people have been talking about how they're willing to shell out 1-2k for an uncompressed hdmi card or box, and if you couple that with a shoulder rig and maybe the foundry's $500 rolling shutter plug-in you're already pretty much at a similar price point if you add all those to a 7d/gh1/5d. you don't get quite the low light capability (I think the difference is supposed to be around 2.5 stops) but people have been able to achieve pretty shallow dof with 2/3" sensors before. I like them both though.
 
Max Smith said:
For me the issue is being able to shoot 3k and 120p .
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Red "3K" "4K" is not what it seems. It is a Bayer pattern sensor - so 3K works out to about a 1080p class resolution. I shot a number of commercials with a friends Red One at 3K. At full 3k rez, very, very soft. At 1080p, it looked very good - like a smooth EX1.

The only significant advantages of the 2/3" Scarlet is a slightly larger sensor (somewhat mitigated by Bayer), 120fps and RAW codec. However, it's lens appears to be much less feature wise and usability than EX1, HVX etc. as well as onboard audio, bundled IO etc.

Plus, workflow is still problematic. And we know nothing of build quality, reliability, and stability. And very little of IQ especially artifacts and issues.

I found the whole announcement at this late date underwhelming. I think Red as missed the boat on the sub $10k market. Unless everyone else stand stills for the next 9 month and Scarlet ends up being perfect, they are risking slipping into nichedom and very limited appeal.
 
honestly I admit I jumped the gun and got a dslr because I kind of couldn't wait around for more news about the scarlet anymore- and I really like them, but if money weren't an object I would still get a 2/3" (or an s35 I suppose if we're talking hypothetically) scarlet as soon as it came out.

we still have to see footage though.
 
stephenvv said:
The only significant advantages of the 2/3" Scarlet is a slightly larger sensor (somewhat mitigated by Bayer), 120fps and RAW codec. However, it's lens appears to be much less feature wise and usability than EX1, HVX etc. as well as onboard audio, bundled IO etc.

Plus, workflow is still problematic. And we know nothing of build quality, reliability, and stability. And very little of IQ especially artifacts and issues.

I found the whole announcement at this late date underwhelming. I think Red as missed the boat on the sub $10k market. Unless everyone else stand stills for the next 9 month and Scarlet ends up being perfect, they are risking slipping into nichedom and very limited appeal.
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I dunno, I know there are still a lot of questions left about it, but I can't see why anyone would choose an hvx or ex1 over one now. I don't get what you mean about the lenses though since the mini primes seem really nice and even the fixed lens seems to be pretty advanced? as far as audio, I know it has no onboard microphone but I thought one of the features was "Two independent microphone level channels, balanced input circuits, 48V Phantom Power, digitized at 24-bit 48KHz". I know the extra I/O modules have extra XLR inputs along with some other stuff but I didn't think you'd need the modules except for advanced or special cases.
 
stephenvv said:
RHowever, it's lens appears to be much less feature wise and usability than EX1, HVX etc. as well as onboard audio, bundled IO etc.
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What are you basing that on exactly?
From what I've seen so far the specs on the 2/3" fixed scarlet lens seem pretty sweet.
But regardless, it's kidn of hard to judge seeing as it hasn't been released yet.

And I"m not sure what you mean by onboard audio and bundled IO - seeing as we haven't seen much detail on those specs yet.

EDITED TO ADD:
Looks like Killacam posted while I was typing.
:)
 
killacam said:
I dunno, I know there are still a lot of questions left about it, but I can't see why anyone would choose an hvx or ex1 over one now.
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Well - I can see one huge reason why someone would choose and HVX or EX1 over a Scarlet now.
:)

There's still quite a bit of time before anything is released.
If someone is working for a living, a camera like an HVX or EX1 bought today will have paid for itself WAY before Scarlet is released.
 
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