Why All The Hate Towards Red?

T

tommygdawg

Well-known member
Hey all,

I just wanted to pose a question from a neutral standpoint here. I've never shot RED, or even shot RAW video. The most expensive/professional camera I've shot on is my AF100, which is a great camera but I've always seen the Scarlet/Epic as my dream camera. I've shot RAW photos and I freaking love it, the flexibility is just amazing. I'm aware that log gammas and pro-res and other internal codecs can offer great quality and flexibility. However, something still perplexes me...I often see on these boards and some others that there's some kind of stigma surrounding RED. Previously I've just chalked it up to pretension, but with the announcement of the F55 and F5, it really struck me.

People are heralding these cameras as the Red-Killer, talking about how Jim at Red must be in some form of despair, and I just don't get it. From someone who has never shot either Sony or Red, it seems that the Red cameras are still doing things that Sony can't do (for better or for worse). And even if that weren't the case, these are all (Sony, Panasonic, Red, Canon, the lot) still great cameras, so why all the hate?

I'm really not trying to send a political message here or anything, I'm just curios about the community's opinion on this. What do you all think?
 
I think the new sonys have a few things, ND, frame rates, edit ready codec onboard

but also 2k/4k will this be done nicely, sony talk alphabet soup

I like the simple red - crop gives you more fps and less res - seems simple

I think JJ has always wanted a simple camera - like a stills camera that could do 25FPS or more

As for raw - im used to the colour bending and am not sure that sony ABCDEFEMCXDFS Cam will provide that..

Horses for courses I guess

S
 
Watch Prometheus, new Spiderman, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, upcoming Hicthcock, the Hobbit trilogy, hell, even Gangham Style Video (shot on Epic) etc...

All crappy pseudo-4K noisy images plus in 3D quite often, right?
I think not...

Much of Red's hatred comes from being a new non-traditional American "CINEMA CAMERA" /equipment manufacturer with attitude, quite volatile compared to Asian manufacturers, with a track-record of continual bugs with new firmware releases
improving features while squashing old bugs (PS. a bug often means your camera requires a REBOOT)...

IF you look at one of the biggest complaints about RED cameras from new users, it's about FAN NOISE while not shooting and MEDIA COST!
Complaining about $800 SSD cards, when buying into a $15,000 system at minimum just puts things in perspective...

BUT Once you shoot at 4K RAW and above, you'll see non-RAW 1080p as SOOO limiting...
BMCC and other companies will prove to be a RAW gateway drug for many people to consider 4K RAW as
more entrants enter the market at under $10K.

So, in the end, my best analogy is to think of RED as a "wild" ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend... exciting for a while, but frustrating as a long-term partner

My best advice: Red cameras are sort of becoming saturated rentals in certain areas- why not rent a Scarlet-X for $250-$350 and see if you like it?
That single day of practical use will educate you enough that you'll know whether expensive RAW cinema cameras and their workflows work for you...
 
I would hazard a guess (and I don't think I'm wrong) that people are still bitter that 3k for $3k didn't come true for them. Most of the noise on this forum is a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking from people who have never even shot with the camera. You can just tell by the way they speak.

RED has some definite drawbacks you learn as a user, but people also forget it's a pro camera system. Yup, batts cost at least $400 a pop and media starts out at $800. Horses for courses, deal with it. That's how it's always been. Remember the price of HD-cam tapes? You either learn to adapt or you sell and buy another system. Anything else is just wasted breath.

There are some (not small) things I would change about the RED, but as said;

BUT Once you shoot at 4K RAW and above, you'll see non-RAW 1080p as SOOO limiting...
Click to expand...

yup..
 
Red is the Apple of the professional camera world. They did something very different. Some people love them, and some people love to hate them.
 
I think apart of the hate comes from the snarky better then thou attitude you'll find over at Reduser. There's a way to be right about something without being a d-bag. Not saying they all are or anything, but the whole "If you don't use RED then you're just...obsolete and stupid" is annoying. I like what they're doing, love the specs of the cams, etc. but not sure I'll ever own one. That sort of gear needs to be put to work often to make sense.
 
I was one of the original RED haters back with RED one. My hate was based on the camera simply not working - EVERY take the camera stopped recording mid take. But since then i came around. Today i'm pushing for RED for low budget feature because RED is so dirt cheap - we r talking $1500/week (!) for full system (including lenses) so for around $10k you can have two (!!) systems for a month. This is quite unbelievable. Gear, literally, has no value anymore.
 
My dislike for RED as a company comes from their attitude. I've never seen a company with so little regard for their customers and such a poor, confrontational attitude when it comes to dealing with actual RED-using professionals. If the head of Canon or Sony was participating in name-calling, asking for paying customers to return cameras for a refund, or any other such nonsense that the RED guys participate in on a regular basis there would be a PR s*%tstorm. There is a genuine, undeniable air of elitism surrounding the company and it's employees/executives, to the point that it becomes difficult to discuss honest-to-goodness issues with the cameras themselves. Some of their accessory pricing (*cough* *cough* media) is also abusive, though to be fair that same statement could be made about all of the major players in this industry.

That being said, the Epic and Scarlet are a joy to shoot with. Great ergonomics, modularity, size/weight, reliability, etc. on top of a stellar image. I have nightmares about the original RED One, and love the image (but HATE shooting with) R1MX. My main beef with the cameras is that they've become too popular for their own good. It's laughable how often I come across jobs where the camera was picked first, based on name alone, with little regard to the needs of the shoot. Shooting RED requires a lot of battery and media, a lot of hard drives, a good DIT, and extra time for post. I'm starting a feature (DP/Editor) next week that will be shot in 12 days on the R1MX with no DIT, no assistant editor, and less than a month to deliver picture lock. If (and I mean if) they give us enough batteries and media to get through full days and the camera doesn't lock up too much, I'll be sitting on a mountain (15tb+ before backups) of unlabeled r3d files with a non-red rocket enabled workstation. *Gulp*.

It's very common for producers to not realize that going with RED (or anything raw) will add costs and time to their production beyond the rental cost of the camera and a dozen hard drives. For most ultra-low budget features (<$50-100k) the end result will suffer by going RED. A C300, F3, or even GH2 is often a much better choice for a low budget, minimal post, time-limited project, and will many times result in a better finished product thanks to a smaller, more mobile camera and more time to devote to the things that really matter, namely lighting, blocking, etc. But RED has all the cachet in the indie world, and trying to argue against that hype is often a losing battle.
 
stefancolson said:
My dislike for RED as a company comes from their attitude. I've never seen a company with so little regard for their customers and such a poor, confrontational attitude when it comes to dealing with actual RED-using professionals. If the head of Canon or Sony was participating in name-calling, asking for paying customers to return cameras for a refund, or any other such nonsense that the RED guys participate in on a regular basis there would be a PR s*%tstorm. There is a genuine, undeniable air of elitism surrounding the company and it's employees/executives, to the point that it becomes difficult to discuss honest-to-goodness issues with the cameras themselves. Some of their accessory pricing (*cough* *cough* media) is also abusive, though to be fair that same statement could be made about all of the major players in this industry.

That being said, the Epic and Scarlet are a joy to shoot with. Great ergonomics, modularity, size/weight, reliability, etc. on top of a stellar image. I have nightmares about the original RED One, and love the image (but HATE shooting with) R1MX. My main beef with the cameras is that they've become too popular for their own good. It's laughable how often I come across jobs where the camera was picked first, based on name alone, with little regard to the needs of the shoot. Shooting RED requires a lot of battery and media, a lot of hard drives, a good DIT, and extra time for post. I'm starting a feature (DP/Editor) next week that will be shot in 12 days on the R1MX with no DIT, no assistant editor, and less than a month to deliver picture lock. If (and I mean if) they give us enough batteries and media to get through full days and the camera doesn't lock up too much, I'll be sitting on a mountain (15tb+ before backups) of unlabeled r3d files with a non-red rocket enabled workstation. *Gulp*.

It's very common for producers to not realize that going with RED (or anything raw) will add costs and time to their production beyond the rental cost of the camera and a dozen hard drives. For most ultra-low budget features (<$50-100k) the end result will suffer by going RED. A C300, F3, or even GH2 is often a much better choice for a low budget, minimal post, time-limited project, and will many times result in a better finished product thanks to a smaller, more mobile camera and more time to devote to the things that really matter, namely lighting, blocking, etc. But RED has all the cachet in the indie world, and trying to argue against that hype is often a losing battle.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.

Except I actually like their company attitude... Oh well...
 
KyleProhaska said:
I think apart of the hate comes from the snarky better then thou attitude you'll find over at Reduser. There's a way to be right about something without being a d-bag. Not saying they all are or anything, but the whole "If you don't use RED then you're just...obsolete and stupid" is annoying. I like what they're doing, love the specs of the cams, etc. but not sure I'll ever own one. That sort of gear needs to be put to work often to make sense.
Click to expand...

I find this one interesting because I see the exact same attitude here and other places from the Red-detractors. Lot of hypocrites there, and I can understand hating the attitude and/or the community, but I don't see hating the tech. Using the Apple example someone else brought up, I've never owned an Apple computer. I realize there's an elitist attitude around them and people buy based on the name, not because they really understand the pros and cons of using a Mac vs a PC or Linux machine, even. I don't use them just because I prefer the way Windows operates, and a lot of the apps I use are Windows only.

stefancolson said:
My dislike for RED as a company comes from their attitude. I've never seen a company with so little regard for their customers and such a poor, confrontational attitude when it comes to dealing with actual RED-using professionals. If the head of Canon or Sony was participating in name-calling, asking for paying customers to return cameras for a refund, or any other such nonsense that the RED guys participate in on a regular basis there would be a PR s*%tstorm. There is a genuine, undeniable air of elitism surrounding the company and it's employees/executives, to the point that it becomes difficult to discuss honest-to-goodness issues with the cameras themselves. Some of their accessory pricing (*cough* *cough* media) is also abusive, though to be fair that same statement could be made about all of the major players in this industry.

That being said, the Epic and Scarlet are a joy to shoot with. Great ergonomics, modularity, size/weight, reliability, etc. on top of a stellar image. I have nightmares about the original RED One, and love the image (but HATE shooting with) R1MX. My main beef with the cameras is that they've become too popular for their own good. It's laughable how often I come across jobs where the camera was picked first, based on name alone, with little regard to the needs of the shoot. Shooting RED requires a lot of battery and media, a lot of hard drives, a good DIT, and extra time for post. I'm starting a feature (DP/Editor) next week that will be shot in 12 days on the R1MX with no DIT, no assistant editor, and less than a month to deliver picture lock. If (and I mean if) they give us enough batteries and media to get through full days and the camera doesn't lock up too much, I'll be sitting on a mountain (15tb+ before backups) of unlabeled r3d files with a non-red rocket enabled workstation. *Gulp*.

It's very common for producers to not realize that going with RED (or anything raw) will add costs and time to their production beyond the rental cost of the camera and a dozen hard drives. For most ultra-low budget features (<$50-100k) the end result will suffer by going RED. A C300, F3, or even GH2 is often a much better choice for a low budget, minimal post, time-limited project, and will many times result in a better finished product thanks to a smaller, more mobile camera and more time to devote to the things that really matter, namely lighting, blocking, etc. But RED has all the cachet in the indie world, and trying to argue against that hype is often a losing battle.
Click to expand...

I agree with most of what you say. I obviously can't comment on Red's customer service. And, I do agree with you about the media and time costs involved with shooting Red and that's often chosen just on name. If I had a nickel for every time I see a crappy short "shot on Red", I'd be rich enough to buy one. There's too many people out there using this camera (and others) because of it's name, not because it's necessary. That said, there are times when I could see it actually being beneficial to the low/no-budget shooter. The first example that comes to mind is having to go incognito. Often times, due to lack of permits, permission, or time, properly lighting a scene isn't possible. I'd love to be able to have 13+ stops of DR, or up to 18+ for HDR when I need it. Now I realize storage costs go up, so that may mitigate the whole idea of using it on low/no-budget. Pros and cons.

I suppose all that can be summed up to what others have said: different horses for different courses.
 
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