Crying tears of Red

Those that have been following my site (yes, both of you) will recall my drooling over Red cameras across the last few years (August 2010, June 2010, October 2009). To bring the rest of you up to speed, Red is the mad creation of Jim Jannard, founder of Oakley sunglasses and all round complete camera nutter! Jim had a simple idea – no camera existed that did exactly what he wanted, so he decided to create one! From scratch…

That was back around 2005. I heard about Red in late 2006, with their plan to build and release the Red One, a digital cinema camera. I didn’t get REALLY interested until some of the possible specs for the Scarlet FF35 were released end of 2008 (now on the Wayback Machine, Red has removed the original pages from their website!). The Scarlet FF35 was going to be MINE, and the planned prices looked almost tolerable (if you took a really deep breath, and reminded yourself you only live once!).

Skip ahead, and you’ll notice that my previous posts on this subject all have a similar theme – Hey Red, where’s the Scarlet? Delay, silence, change, delay, more silence – to be fair, Red has always said they commit to nothing and specs are always going to change given how bleeding edge everything in their space is! But still, the last update I saw last year had the Scarlet delayed 3 MORE YEARS! *sigh* That’s OK, I’m patient (and Canon hasn’t exactly been tempting me with their new 1Ds Mk IV – medium format apparently?

Until yesterday, when I stumbled on an article regarding the Scarlet completely by accident. Kurt Lancaster wrote a brutally objective round up of the Red state of play, and why film DSLRs are winning despite all of their perceived technical shortcomings…

Red state of play?? Scarlet S35 is basically no more, now called the Epic-S, with a new (high) price and everything. Scarlet is listed on the Red website as “coming soon”, but the reality appears to be that a DSMC intended to realistically compete with Canon and Nikon is not REALLY on the road map in the short to medium term future. Their plans to deliver other sensors and variants of the Epic-S and Epic-X put a FF35 (Mysterium-X) FF35 squarely in the “unlikely” bucket, and a FF35 (Monstro) Epic variant in the “probably, but not soon” bucket.

And that’s basically where my interest in Red is going to end, at least for the time being – it becomes a cost game, pure and simple. While a Scarlett FF35 based on a Mysterium-X was going to cost only marginally more than the best of Canon or Nikon, I was interested. It would be a camera with far more options than a DSLR, for similar or less cost than the far less flexible medium format gear (such as the H4D entry level ‘blad I like the look of!).

But if the FF35 release of an Epic (or Scarlet further down the track) was going to be Monstro based and cost much more as a result, the equation is less interesting! At that end of town, I don’t need the technical edge that such a Red camera would provide. As Kurt pointed out in his article when comparing the test shoots done with a Red vs Canon 5D and 7D:

My heart beat faster. What? Professional image makers couldn’t tell the difference? I mean, haven’t scientific tests (as [Ted] Schilowitz [No 2 at Red] mentioned in his interview) been done?

Yes folks, some of the best filmmakers around couldn’t pick which camera was used in the comparison films, not even Schilowitz himself. Which means paying the extra money for a Red is only worthwhile if you need that “final mile” of perfection, of quality. Or you plan to make movies to be watched in the future, when cinemas roll out 4k projectors. For the rest of us, the bang is awesome but no longer worth the buck!

Kurt makes a really good point in his article, talking about Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (winner of 2010 SXSW Narrative Feature Film Award and shot on a Canon 7D):

…the story’s good and the 7D delivered a strong cinematic image (despite all the published information about its weaknesses with moire, rolling shutter, chip charts, blah, blah, blah, to quote Blanchard from Lucasfilm). The movie delivered, because it had a strong story and I didn’t see any weaknesses in the cinematography, despite it being shot on a $1700 camera. The camera can deliver a cinematic look in the hands of a good cinematographer.

It turns out that film is the same as stills – it’s the talent that produces the awesome, not the gear! Good gear helps, but for most of us the difference between good gear and “seriously awesome zOMGWTFBBQ” gear is not worth the dollars it costs! Film festival winners are using 5D and 7D kit, or Nikon, or small pro-sumer handhelds, or whatever – we aren’t all advanced film makers and most of us won’t derive the benefit from the additional cost.

Much like still photography, I’m not a Jarvis or a Grecco. And I’m no Peter Jackson with my film making. So I need to accept that the Red offerings are interesting, but overkill for what I basically need and no longer really a viable alternative while the prices are increasing. If the Scarlet is announced for only a few thousand dollars, you might see me interested again. But I don’t expect that to happen any time soon!

So, Canon, how’s that new 1Ds looking?? …*chirp chirp chirp*…