[cfr2023]

I started following the RED story before those folks ever released a camera, and I liked their spirit and mission.

Some time passed and ultimately it was Black Magic Design that accomplished what RED said they wanted to do.

If you say you want to make high end cinema technology, or even just high quality imagery, accessible to the average person, a $17,500 price tag for just the camera body shows that you might have strange ideas about what constitutes an average person.

[kkukshtel]

I think if you know the RED story you know that at the time there were effectively 0 consumer-tier high end digital cameras. We're talking basically the advent of the DSLR revolution, where either you shot on a Canon 5D MK II or... an Alexa? Alexas retail around $50,000 (and weren't out until 2010), so RED offering actual 4K video digital camera with an easy conversion to EF mount glass (Canon) and a body that is literally half the size of an Alexa AND was consumer-purchasable at $17,500 (Alexa purchase process isn't "just buy on B&H") - it was huge.

The other thing is that the camera market and the concept of "consumer" isn't really like normal "consumer" end stuff. High-end digital camera "consumer" stuff has different purchase cycles that traditional "consumer" things like iPhones don't have. Camera Operators/DPs typically buy these huge cameras and then rent them out or bill their cost back into their day rate.

When RED says consumer, they mean that any person with money can buy one. Alexas, Panavision Cameras, Fony F65s, etc. all usually need to be bought by a cinema rental house and then are rented to operators. RED went around that and allowed people to buy cinema-tier cameras directly, which was huge. The market has adjusted since then and I think Blackmagic (and the Sony Alpha line) now more directly serve traditional definitions of "Consumer", but IMO none of that would have happened without RED paving the path.

[treflop]

Yo there were way more video cameras back then than just the Canon 5D and ARRI. News organizations, smaller productions and documentary makers were not just whipping around expensive ARRI’s. Sony and Panasonic made a ton of other professional video-focused cameras. I have an old Panasonic HVX200 right next to me.

But the Red One was definitely still extraordinary because they managed to make a relative-cheap production 4K camera in 2007.

That said, the impact was muted because people didn’t really care about 4K as much in 2007. I don’t think ARRI even released a 4K camera until years later.

[kkukshtel]

ENG cameras had sensors a fraction of the size of Red/5D [1] so the resultant crop factor and CCD sensors paired with not-great glass choices (mostly zoom lenses, fixed focal length rare, etc.) made nice DoF/Bokeh hard to come by, making the output of them not really look like what a lay person would say "cinema" looks like. If you want to talk real Cinema-DV options from around that time (and ignoring punk cinema stuff like Dogme 95/Harmony Korine), you're mostly talking about the Viper, which again is a six-figure camera.

> The impact was muted because people didn’t really care about 4K as much in 2007.

This is just not true. Look at the Wikipedia post here [2] and then also just look for movies shot on the One/MX/Epic. The camera was immediately adapted into hollywood feature productions.

[1] https://therobbcollections.blogspot.com/2019/09/digital-came... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema#Red_One

[johncalvinyoung]

The role of ENG video is not precisely the same thing as digital cinema, though there's some overlap. I remember a lot of indie filmmakers in that era struggling to shoot for cinema with ENG-focused cameras and gear, and often struggling to get what they wanted out of it.

[treflop]

They’re not but there were ENG-style cameras with interchangeable lenses and 422 output too. There were a lot of options between DSLR and an ARRI.

Still are.

[cfr2023]

An insightful post indeed.

I was acutely aware of it, shooting projects on horrible looking mini DV and expensive film stock.

No question they spurred progress, I'd just envisioned that they would continue to carry the torch with all of their piss and vinegar.

Now Black Magic Design produces ~$2000 cameras that produce consistently better images than RED to this day.

[kkukshtel]

The thing you'll hear from any camera pro though is that the actual shooting experience of Blackmagic isn't great. Making Blackmagic's behave for film is its own cottage industry and there's a reasons most people use stalwarts like Arri/Panavision/Sony/Red. If you're an entry level videographer, I'd much more recommend going the C300 route than being enticed by the BM price tag, as there are a lot of other hidden costs to just make things Work Well.

[stephen_g]

The most affordable kinds of cameras at the time that you could realistically use for something going to theatrical release was the (1080p) Sony F900 and then F950, which were in the $250K ballpark… Then the Arri D-21 came out, I can’t even remember what price but same ballpark, it was a bit higher than 2K res. $17,500 for 4K was wild, and it was insane they actually managed to deliver it with the RED ONE.

[cfr2023]

All good points, though following these acts of instigation for the industry, their competitors overtook them in the path to their goal.

[ramesh31]

>If you say you want to make high end cinema technology, or even just high quality imagery, accessible to the average person, a $17,500 price tag for just the camera body shows that you might have strange ideas about what constitutes an average person.

To be fair, their competition at the time was $200,000+ Panavision rigs that were completely prohibitive to independent filmmakers.

[cfr2023]

A fair consideration indeed but a very relativistic use of terminology. $17,500 is not $200,000 that's for sure, but it's also not $5000 or $2500 or $100 (not that I expect $100 cine cameras).

My only point is that their hearts were in the right place, but they may have ultimately done their best work as instigators.

As well, despite my appreciation for their company, I never liked the images from their cameras.

[closeparen]

It’s not a hobbyists’s impulse buy, but it puts a week’s rental at a couple grand - that’s plausibly a group of upper middle class teenagers. It’s also something the equipment lending library in a media studies department can make available to student projects.

Big step up from shooting on iPhones or hacked DSLR bodies, for a relatively small (in the universe of film production) increment in budget.

[cfr2023]

Very fair points. I'm just nit picking about RED's instigation and influence being more valuable to camera industry than the cameras they delivered and the price points they delivered them at.

[porphyra]

Z-Cam has full frame 8K cameras for $6000 and full frame 6K cameras for $3000 which is sort of affordable.