Hey Red, you’re late!

Some of you may recall my drooling over the much anticipated Scarlet Mysterium Monstro FF35 – sure it looks like a Lego camera, but this thing seriously had tech spec cred back in October of last year!

Of course, the existing HDDSLR players were going to be nipping at Reds’ heels with their big budgets and massive global R&D efforts, and the Canon HDDSLR offerings (particularly the 5D MkII) has shown that hardware cheaper than Red (or Alexa) can produce some pretty impressive results!! However, Jim Jannard of Red was less than complimentary of HDDSLRs in general, and struck a chord with Vincent Laforet with this little throw-away line:

Can you make OK images with a line-skipping 1080P camera? Sure. Should you be embarrassed? Yes.

Vincent wrote a blog post of his own on the topic, where he concluded:

Every camera has it’s place. Every camera excels in some things – and fails in others. Every end user has specific needs, quality standards, and budgets…

In the end – learn all of the tools (if you can) – and use the best tool for any given job.

Fair call, I happen to hold the same view – people have heard me say before “I’d rather give a box brownie to a pro than a ‘blad to a hack” – it’s not about the tools (although we all recognise the benefits of having NICER tools!!). As Chase Jarvis always says: “The best camera is the one that’s with you“.

Jim posted a follow up, which contained the most interesting line yet:

We have taken a lesson from Apple. We will no longer discuss what we are doing until we are done

My biggest gripe all along with Red was their constant over-promising and under-delivering – I was convinced the Scarlet would be released before the 1Ds Mk III, and here we are still without the Scarlet with probably only months before we see a 1Ds Mk IV!! Apple seems to have nailed the surprise release of awesome, here’s hoping the same approach helps Red!!