Sell it all or wait

[Elton]

I agree with everything you've stated Barry, but the one thing that I don't think is passe' about the 2/3" Scarlet (if it's still in the pipeline) is 120fps overcranking and even internal speed ramping. If the S35 can do that, than awesome, but if given the choice, the frame rates and ramping would be tough to forego.

 

[arrestthisman]

This is not intended to "bash" red, but a couple of things...

How do you know that Canon or another DSLR company may have something comparable or better than Scarlet by the time it ACTUALLY comes out?

RED has wasted SO much of my (and many others') time with their hype. And I can't blame them a bit, it is my fault... BUT, a few months ago I heard of the 7d, now people are actually USING the 7d. A few years ago I heard about Scarlet, and who has been using it? It has undergone countless delays (after they originally said they did not want the same delay problems as the R1 rollout) and they've changed the price. Scarlet doesn't exist yet, and it may never exist. It probably will, but who knows.

The worst thing, I think, is that the RED ONE camera is still practically in beta, so while people are using it, it is not a finished product. The 5d, GH1, and 7d are all finished products. If you are comparing like for like, you cannot fairly compare any offerings against the RED one or Epic or Scarlet until they either exist or are finished.

An HPX3700 doesn't need ice packs to function. If Panasonic's customers tolerated products that shut down randomly, or overheated routinely, then Panny could probably release products as "revolutionary" as RED. That's the trade off. There's ALWAYS a trade-off.

So you can see how one would eventually lose trust... or the conversation becomes muddled.

Most companies prove themselves to rollout products when they say they will, and if they don't, delay is measured in months, not years.

When scarlet arrives and assuming it's awesome, and is a finished product, GO FOR IT! With what they promised it should be a revolutionary product. But I would NEVER plan around its release. First it has to come out, then the aftermarket experience has to prove it to be a reliable product. That takes time.

I've shuffled my equipment purchases around RED's announcements before, and I can tell you first hand, it's a losing game.

So finally to the point, I think the smartest thing is to pretend RED doesn't exist. Use the best tools you can for the job until RED's kit is out and reliable, then if you like it, buy it. That's what I'm going to do.

I own an HMC150, and I plan on getting an HDSLR sometime next year when the product lines mature, and keep them both. If Scarlet finally arrives as a proper product, depending on when it hits it may mean I'll skip an HDSLR, but I'm betting that HDSLRs will evolve quickly.

 

[J. Odoms]

If you take care of your gear, it has a very good resale value. Look at the prices for used cameras, and there are plenty of buyers out there in ebay-land. . I owned a D90 for 6 months and sold it for about $150 less than I paid. That's a steal for a 6 month rental. Buy, sell, buy, sell. It's fun, like christmas every 6 months and you'll always have the latest and greatest while you go out and shoot, practice, and make some $ for the next one.

I completely agree with this philosophy. If we keep gear for as long as it has on the "NEW LINE" product shelf, and dispose of it (sell on Ebay) before the new tech os released we can always keep the best and newest items at minimal upgrade costs. I consider it a method for protecting my investment.:happy:

 

[mhood]

When I announced I intended to sell my Nikon D90 to make the 7D more affordable, my wife and 13 year old Granddaughter said in unison: "I want it!" They both couldn't care less about video (their Flips are for that) but both of them can slip the D90 into full auto and take beautiful pictures. This coupled with my habit of getting severe sellers remorse when I let go of something I've enjoyed owning throws a real monkey wrench into the "turn it for a new one" philosophy.

 

[arroway]

If you take care of your gear, it has a very good resale value. Look at the prices for used cameras, and there are plenty of buyers out there in ebay-land. . I owned a D90 for 6 months and sold it for about $150 less than I paid. That's a steal for a 6 month rental. Buy, sell, buy, sell. It's fun, like christmas every 6 months and you'll always have the latest and greatest while you go out and shoot, practice, and make some $ for the next one.

I owned a 5DMII for less than two months and sold it for about $500 less than I paid (with tax). I'm glad I sold it when I did too, since they seem to be going for even less now that the 7D's been released.

I think what you're saying only works if you're on the very front end of a new technology wave. If you find yourself on the back end, like I did, naively assuming that Canon would never eclipse their own camera by something cheaper after only being out for eleven months...then you'll probably find it feels a lot less like Christmas than you would have hoped.

 

[J Davis]

Remember the RED ONE owners are first in line. Not sure if the delivery schedule can predict when us non R1 owners will take delivery.

 

[Barry_Green]

This is not intended to "bash" red

And yet bashing commences...

RED has wasted SO much of my (and many others') time with their hype. And I can't blame them a bit, it is my fault...

Nobody has any power over you that you do not grant to them.

An HPX3700 doesn't need ice packs to function.

No, it doesn't. But the 7D apparently does. We're getting overheating reports now, in the mild temperatures of fall; it might be quite alarming during the heat of a New Mexico summer.

I know what you're saying, and I agree, in general -- but the early Red owners (such as me) were told "if you don't want to go through the beta stage with us, you don't have to pick up your camera yet." I think every single one of us got them right when they were available, I only know of one guy who waited, and that was because he was broke and had no business putting the deposit down in the first place.

New cameras have problems, the majors are not immune to them. Look at the unholy caca-storm that happened with the EX1's launch, with the vignetting and the infrared and the paint peeling off and the power switch and all the other things. Probably Sony's most bungled product launch. JVC's nightmare with the HD100 split-screen issue. Panasonic's battery tabs. It happens.

The difference is, those are almost entirely hardware issues, whereas Red's software is actually evolving, giving it more of a "beta" feel (well, plus the overheating and boot times and stuff... you're right, Red def gets away with things that Panasonic and Sony would never be allowed to).

I would NEVER plan around its release. First it has to come out, then the aftermarket experience has to prove it to be a reliable product. That takes time.

Agreed. Look how the 7D went from "The Holy Grail" to "aliasing? overheating? forget it" comments. And it's only taken a week for that to happen. It won't take very long for people to know the real deal about the Scarlet when it starts shipping. If it's great, we'll know. If there are issues, we'll know.

And in the meantime, the other companies stubbornly refuse to go out of business, and they keep introducing their own "revolutionary" products.

So the advice stands: don't buy anything until you need it. And when you need it, buy the best product for your purposes there and then, and don't look back.

 

[Lucian]

$3,000 isn't a Scarlet, that's a ... Pink... or something. Puce. Maybe orange. It's not even scarlet. The 2/3" is -- well, we'll see when the new announcements are made at the end of this month but I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that the 2/3" model has been dropped.

The video SLRs have changed people's expectations. When a GH1 at $1500 has a sensor 4x as large as a 2/3" chip, how happy will you be to pay two or three times as much to get a sensor 1/4 the size? Bah, I say. Bah. 2/3" Scarlet made a lot of sense two years ago when it was announced, but now? 2/3" is soooo passe. I mean, are you really seriously going to want to bolt a Letus or M2 on the front of your Scarlet just to get the same DOF that GH1 and 7D users are getting from their under-$2,000 cameras?

To me the Scarlet starts at the S35 size.

And yes, I have no reason to think that an S35 Scarlet *wouldn't* perform as good as, or better than, a Red One. Its sensor is just as big, its resolution is higher, and it's the later-generation Mysterium-X, which Jim has said repeatedly is a significant jump in performance over the original Mysterium.


Well, the Red One isn't their flagship model, it's their only model. And it's not going to be the flagship the second the Epic is released. There's a reason they're offering the Epic-X upgrade program after all. Obsolescence may be obsolete, but probably not with the Red One, I think every One owner is going to be strongly encouraged to get on the DSMC bandwagon. I don't think Red views the Red One as the future, that's the past and the present but not the future; they're engineering everything around the modular DSMC concept. I think Jim's already gone on record saying something like "any Red One owner who hasn't ordered an Epic-X is going to be kicking themselves" or something like that.

Barry in your opinion, what will RED do with all with all the R1 units that are traded in for Epic?

 

[Barry_Green]

naively assuming that Canon would never eclipse their own camera by something cheaper after only being out for eleven months...then you'll probably find it feels a lot less like Christmas than you would have hoped.

Okay, having intensely watched this market for the past 15 years, I really, really, really wish people would start to embrace this idea: these companies do NOT "protect" their higher lines, they cannibalize them. All the time! It's part and parcel of doing business!

If Panasonic held up development in advancing their lower lines to "protect" the Varicam, where would we be? Would we ever have had an HVX200? The HPX170 is a better camera in all ways than the HVX, and costs less. The VariCam? It got replaced. Discontinued, replaced with cameras that beat the living hell out of it (the 2700 and 3700) and cost 1/2 to 1/3 what the original VariCam cost. Look at the HMC40 -- that little bugger puts out an EX1 style picture, for $1995.

Look at Sony -- the EX1 rivals the F900, at 1/10 the price. Absolutely yes these companies cannibalize their higher products all the time. That is what they do.

The camera companies live by the law of the jungle. If something can't survive, screw it -- ditch it and move on. If the 7D is better than the 5D, then screw the 5D. Make it up on sales of the 7D. If the VariCam 3700 can't compete, put a 1/2-off sale on it. If the HPX300 is the new News camera, don't stifle the product development to "protect" the HPX2000 -- sell as many HPX300s as you can, and if that means nobody's buying HPX2000s, well, "survival of the fittest" y'know?

So every single piece of electronic gear you own today is going to be completely obsolete next year. Get used to it. There is nobody "protecting" your "investment" -- so don't go buying expensive gear like this thinking that it's going to last. Buy what you need to do the job you need done, period. And hope that you can make your money back really quickly on it, because next year there's gonna be something out that's twice as good.

Even as the 7D is supposed to arrive day after tomorrow, I'm already thinking (after seeing Elton's aliasing pix) that I probably shouldn't have ordered it, I should have just used my GH1 until the Canon I want comes out, which is the video-oriented 1D Mk IV (or whatever they end up making). But that's how the market rolls.

 

[Barry_Green]

Barry in your opinion, what will RED do with all with all the R1 units that are traded in for Epic?

Well, remember, it's Epic-X that they get traded in for, a special version of the Epic.

As for what they'll do with the trade-ins, I really have no idea. Used as a rental fleet? Probably not, because many of their customers are in the rental business and would loudly object to the competition... cannibalized for repairs and parts? Donated to film schools? I really don't know, but ... yeah, that's quite a question, because I bet the majority if not the vast majority of R1 owners are going to go for the Epic-X, so ... yeah, thousands of Red Ones...

Well, the obvious answer is to do like the car dealers do -- sell the customer a new one, take his trade in and sell that to another customer. Maybe after the Epic-X trade-in program is complete, Red will sell off used Red Ones to the end user? I don't really see a downside to that, I mean with 5,000 units potentially coming in that's $87,500,000 in inventory... I wouldn't be surprised if they sold them all. Actually that would be a heck of a business move too -- I mean, not only is it the most successful digital cinema camera of all time, but they'd manage to actually sell each one twice? Heh.

 

[J. Odoms]

This thread is kinda spiraling into a RedUser topic, which it wasn't intended to be. Let's attempt to keep our statements somewhat relevant to the original question.

 

[Tim Joy]

Even as the 7D is supposed to arrive day after tomorrow, I'm already thinking (after seeing Elton's aliasing pix) that I probably shouldn't have ordered it, I should have just used my GH1 until the Canon I want comes out, which is the video-oriented 1D Mk IV (or whatever they end up making). But that's how the market rolls.

Unless that dream-canon is right around the corner, I really doubt you'll feel that way once you have it.

Aliasing is relatively fixable, but banding and mud are really not. After I shot with the two cameras side-by-side and went through the entire post workflow there was no contest.

 

[ydgmdlu]

Well, remember, it's Epic-X that they get traded in for, a special version of the Epic.

As for what they'll do with the trade-ins, I really have no idea. Used as a rental fleet? Probably not, because many of their customers are in the rental business and would loudly object to the competition... cannibalized for repairs and parts? Donated to film schools? I really don't know, but ... yeah, that's quite a question, because I bet the majority if not the vast majority of R1 owners are going to go for the Epic-X, so ... yeah, thousands of Red Ones...

Well, the obvious answer is to do like the car dealers do -- sell the customer a new one, take his trade in and sell that to another customer. Maybe after the Epic-X trade-in program is complete, Red will sell off used Red Ones to the end user? I don't really see a downside to that, I mean with 5,000 units potentially coming in that's $87,500,000 in inventory... I wouldn't be surprised if they sold them all. Actually that would be a heck of a business move too -- I mean, not only is it the most successful digital cinema camera of all time, but they'd manage to actually sell each one twice? Heh.

If the Scarlet manages to supercede the RED One in just about every way, then the trade-ins could be sold at a lower price than an S35 Scarlet. That's the way that RED could keep their first camera relevant and attractive in their new DSMC world. Reselling is honestly the smartest business move that they could make, unless donations would result in a bigger pay-off through tax exemptions...

 

[Barry_Green]

Let's attempt to keep our statements somewhat relevant to the original question.

Well, your original question was basically "should I keep this stuff, or ditch it for a Scarlet"? And three of your four poll options involve a scarlet. So obviously it's going to focus heavily on Red, on Red's delays, on the Scarlet, what the Scarlet is, what it isn't, what it costs, etc...

In any case, waiting for something that doesn't exist yet is only an option for those who aren't doing anything anyway, right? Because if you're working, you need something now, and waiting for a product that may come out in a month or three months or six months or two years -- obviously, anyone who can wait that long is in no rush and shouldn't really be buying anything now, because they don't need it. And anyone who's working now, wouldn't fathom putting off buying what they need in order to wait for some unreleased product.

So the question you have to ask yourself is: are you in the game for good? Are you going to start working? Because the Scarlet might be six or 12 months away. And it may cost more than you want to spend. And it may not even do what you want -- we know *nothing* about what the Scarlet is or isn't. The only thing we know at all, is that Red calls it "Scarlet" and that it's a modular DSMCTM. Anything beyond that is complete conjecture. Well, that plus some CGI renderings.

 

[ydgmdlu]

But there was also the "Izzy" video... That's the most "real" that the camera has come so far...

 

[J. Odoms]

We'll I'm solid on my 7D purchase, and will definetly be shooting once it arrives. And I will surely make the best of it. If anything, I will look at this as a strength, within its weaknesses. Become increasingly solid at camera movements, extremely meticulous within the shot developments, so on and so forth.

I indeed will be needing this camera ASAP, because I have missed out on a lot of contests, due to not owning a camera, and will make the nest of it.

My goal is to make $$$ with it that, I can used to fund the purchase of better equipment as it becomes available, wether that be the Scarlet, new Canon Mark 1lV, or whatever.

 

[J. Odoms]

But there was also the "Izzy" video... That's the most "real" that the camera has come so far...

I haven't seen it, link, please.

 

[arroway]

Look at the HMC40 -- that little bugger puts out an EX1 style picture, for $1995.

rogar-Shock(DBG):

...what?!

How isn't this bigger news? Doesn't the HMC40 have 1/4 chips? Are you talking about sharpness or something?

 

[ydgmdlu]

I haven't seen it, link, please.

Supposedly from the 2/3" chip: http://redgrabs.com/izzy/

 

[J. Odoms]

Supposedly from the 2/3" chip: http://redgrabs.com/izzy/

If that is true, that image is awesome.