Nikon to acquire RED

https://www.nikon.com/company/news/2024/0307_01.html

by gaoryrt • 2 years ago

592 202 2 years ago

esafak• 2 years ago

Red was a revolution when it came out in 2007, offering 4K for under $20K! When I heard the announcement of its development I wondered how a guy who made sunglasses was going to pull it off.

pvarangot• 2 years ago

Yeah I thought it was a scam. To be fair some of the most ridiculous things they announced when they put up the website, like the IMAX camera with a sensor that would basically take a wafer end to end to cut, didn't come out.

th0ma52• 2 years ago

I wonder if they will relax scrutiny of use of CinemaDNG, or honestly if Nikon produced CDNG that would be cool.

chaosprint• 2 years ago

first reaction is that in we will see raw inside nikon internal recording soon

hnenjoyer_933• 2 years ago

Z8 and Z9 already record 8K60 12 bit RAW internally, but of course more cameras joining the list is welcome

andy_ppp• 2 years ago

This could actually be pretty interesting, don’t RED have a patent on compressed raw video? I’m amazed that this patent is allowed but I guess we’ll see Nikon cameras with more advanced video features and probably increased difficulty offering ProRes compressed raw for other manufacturers. I hate software patents so much.

dagmx3• 2 years ago

Yeah I think this will be huge for in-body RAW.

I think Nikon is more likely to play patent licensing than REzd and we’ll see more ProRes RAW offerings going forward.

kristofferR• 2 years ago

Yeah, RED tried to sue Nikon over it:

https://petapixel.com/2023/04/27/reds-lawsuit-against-nikon-...

royjacobs2• 2 years ago

I believe so. Although RED was always being super mysterious and hype-y about it their RedCODE codec is ultimately just JPEG2000 so hopefully Nikon can relax this situation somewhat, which would be a benefit to all manufacturers.

dharma12• 2 years ago

Doubtful Nikon will relax it, just use it as a cash cow to get licensing revenue (like Red has) or as a competitive moat if they stop licensing it

unwind• 2 years ago

So uh compressed raw would be just like a regular (loss-less) compressed image format, then? I thought the distinction between raw and non-raw was the use of lossy compression formats like JPEG.

Espressosaurus• 2 years ago

RAW is in linear light. Think spring-fresh, straight from the ADC.

JPEG is in perceptual (~log) light. Out of the tap, terrible.

It's also compressed.

There are lossless and lossy compressed RAW formats.

dagmx3• 2 years ago

RAW doesn’t denote compression, contrary to the name.

In Still cameras, it usually means pre-debayering.

On film cameras, it is a little more muddled but usually just means linear colourspace and higher bit depth.

ryandamm3• 2 years ago

In the case of red’s patents, the relevant issue for RAW compression is that the sensor values are compressed before de-bayering. It’s still lossy.

hnenjoyer_933• 2 years ago

Interesting that some time ago Red filed a lawsuit against Nikon for using a RAW video compression algorithm that Red claimed infringed its patents, but later dismissed it:

https://dpreview.com/news/5338402238/red-is-suing-nikon-for-...

https://dpreview.com/news/9301564383/nikon-denies-red-s-laws...

https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-ag...

7moritz7• 2 years ago

Am I reading this right in that Red has somehow managed to patent the idea of compressing 4K RAW footage on device which holds up the whole industry?

KaiserPro3• 2 years ago

the patent is this one: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7830967B1/en

Which looks like it's patenting debayering. However I'm not a patent lawyer so I don't know.

I suspect that Nikon were using something like jpeg2000 to store raw frames, and thats why RED were getting all pissy.

kamranjon• 2 years ago

It must be a specific implementation because Black Magic has had their own brand of this for years and don’t seem to have been targeted by RED, though I may be out of the loop on something?

bravo22• 2 years ago

Not quite. The claims, in the only one I've seen regarding RAW compression, are for a specific pre-emphasis curve being applied to the raw data, then the raw data being compressed and only cover this being done in a video camera.

When looking at a patent check the "Claims" section. An infringing device would have to perform those steps in the order provided for the patent holder to have a claim.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I've had a lot of dealing with patents.

dharma12• 2 years ago

They settled out of court, Nikon started paying licensing fees. Was confirmed by Jarred on a podcast last year.

Maybe that’s what’s partially responsible for the acquisition - also Red struggling to get market share from Arri Alexa on bigger budget productions, and facing pretty stiff competition from lower priced cameras by Blackmagic, Sony etc

steveBK1232• 2 years ago

Right, its like RED was in the middle market, which is a bad place to be in any product/industry. Too expensive for consumers, but still not able to command premium pricing from top end pros?

hef198986• 2 years ago

Makes sense from a Nikon perspective: I have to pay anyway, over period X that amounts to sum Y, put that next the acquisition price and the estimatebof how long you want to use the tech you are paying for and there is your business case.

Plus, you get new business and a new product range you don't have yet. That alone justifies an acquisition.

th0ma52• 2 years ago

Previous discussion about their legal relationship: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31532285

bayindirh3• 2 years ago

It's good for Nikon, IMO. Canon and Sony both have cine equipment. This will level the field.

While I moved to Sony, I don't want to see dominance, but competition.

dylan6046• 2 years ago

This will level the field? If you think Canon's cine options are equal to Red maybe it levels it. However, I think this tilts the field away from Canon to Nikon's favor while leaning more toward Sony as well than Canon. Maybe Canon can tilt it back in their favor if they were to buy Alexa.

dagmx3• 2 years ago

Canon don’t really care about the same cine market. Their bread and butter is more documentary, indie and news style shoots instead.

They’ve never shown an interest in competing outside of that.

bayindirh3• 2 years ago

RED, Canon and Sony's cine equipment fills different niches, Sony having the broadest spectrum in the bunch. They're an audiovisual company for decades, which can handle/design/build the whole pipeline from acquisition to production to reproduction.

However, from what I see, Canon is filling a very specific niche and they're good at it. RED is the same.

So, it will not level the big three "capability" wise, but Nikon will have a hand (and feet) in cine market, which will provide them great feedback, development avenues and some cash hopefully.

So, they'll be able to compete in one way or another.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 2 years ago

Canon absolutely owns the video market, in many ways. Different context from RED, but you see Canon DSLR video cameras everywhere, especially consumer-level stuff, like streamcasters. Most videos you see, by semipro influencers, and whatnot, are recorded on Canon kit.

Also, the TV and movie industry makes heavy use of Canon DSLR kit for their work.

It’s an interesting acquisition, and I wish them luck. The rub will be cultural clash. I don’t know anything about RED’s culture, but I know a bit about Nikon’s. They are … less-than-flexible. Culture clash has been the fly in the ointment, for most of Nikon’s partnerships.

Keyframe• 2 years ago

Arri, Sony, Red. Canon is not in high end or TV, there's some overlap in prosumer and low budget though. The latter is also where Blackmagic is.

bayindirh3• 2 years ago

As I said below, every brand has their own niche. OTOH, Canon & Sony has their own sensor fabs, while Nikon doesn't have that, either.

Zetobal• 2 years ago

Right years after RED lost it's competitive edge sounds exactly like the thing Nikon would do. The weapon was the last camera with an advantage and it's now 8 years old?

pixelesque2• 2 years ago

Yeah... as someone in VFX who deals with plate footage from major films, in the past five years RED doesn't seem to be used that much these days: it's mostly ARRI/Sony...

I think I've even seen more footage from Panavision (which often do have RED sensors) than RED cameras...

formerly_proven2• 2 years ago

Hahahaha

This means Nikon acquires a license to Canon’s mounts due to the prior RED patent trolling.

peterhull90• 2 years ago

A role reversal from the 1930's - the first Canon cameras used Nikkor lenses!

https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/htmls/...

dboreham• 2 years ago

Depends on the terms of the license. It could be written to exclude this kind of successor rights acquisition, or to apply narrowly only to RED-like products.

justforasingle• 2 years ago

Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. Personally I think RED cameras are overhyped and are a major reason most netflix shows all look and feel the same. I don't think its the colour grading or lenses - its something about the camera itself that just feels shit and doesn't give me the same access to a scene the same way something like sony's HDVS from 30 years ago does.[1]

[0] https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63flkf3S1bE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW26YMe8iUQ

pixelesque2• 2 years ago

That's because Nikon don't have a cinema line of cameras, and the cameras they do have have only very recently added support for higher-end video features like log and ProRes RAW support.

atoav3• 2 years ago

Red cameras are overhyped, but picture quality is not the issue. It is very likely that what you describe is more due stylistic differences in lighting, color grading and editing than due to the camera itself — coming from someone who professionally had to match colors on films shot on multiple different cameras on more than one occasion.

Reliability is the main reason why Red cameras are overhyped, but you get good pictures and specs for the price, just like with black magic cameras but a notch higher. Most DOPs I know would go fo ARRI if given free choice.

hef198986• 2 years ago

As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?

weebull• 2 years ago

Red were kinda the Tesla of the film camera world. New name, new tech, new price point, fashionable branding Vs existing long established players.

Thing is ARRI pivoted and covered the new tech pretty well, and had the existing business links into the rental market allowed them to continue unflustered. Red got the layman hype because they seemed to make high quality available to more people at an achievable (but still high) price point. The industry didn't really care though. They rent cameras, not buy them and they were already affording the old stuff.

_fat_santa2• 2 years ago

ARRI also has their own "picture style", at least the ARRI Alexa. I remember seeing video on YT where the guy bought a really old ARRI Alexa that was used in Hollywood back in 05 or 06. When they showed some of the footage they took with it, it looked exactly like an mid-2000's big screen movie, I honestly didn't realize those movies even had a "look" until I saw his video.

julik2• 2 years ago

This. RED cameras are overhyped for a few reasons:

- They were once the "hot startup" promising acceptable resolution (filmic 4K when nobody needed it, everything was 2K at most). But they oversold resolution at the cost of bizarrely slow-to-decompress proprietary RAW format and some loss to image quality, and stayed true to that. Arri came to market later and they did the right thing - picked convenience and stability over super-duper-extra-super-high-res. - Their cameras would routinely overheat - Cameras would have severe reliability issues with software updates - Some haptics/controls felt wanky at times - They wanted hard to sell you "just the body", for "cheap cheap cheap", but it meant that to have something usable you would need the whole loadout - which would ship in pieces, with periods of delay for availability, and the quality of some components would be meh. Want an EVF? Wait 2 years for one to ship. Want functioning grip? Separate. Want etc. etc.? Separate. I.e. they were very inviting to "now you, as a DOP, can finally own a camera", but owning "the camera and the kit required for it - sans lenses" would be a painful proposition.

This was certainly the case in 2006-2010s, dunno if it has gotten much better lately. It does seem that RED kept to the theme of severely overselling their users extreme picture resolutions, at the cost of having the files super-painful to process, proprietary codecs, and lackings in other areas such as dynamic range.

audunw• 2 years ago

Maybe that's nostalgia.. I personally think the clips you shared look awful compared to any modern camera.

I seriously doubt the average person notices any difference between RED cameras and any other modern camera with roughly the same properties.

jajko• 2 years ago

Not maybe, movies are simply shot in different ways, people expect different things. Nothing in this world is static.

Now its perfectly fine to dislike 'modern' approach, but in digital era that has absolutely nothing to do with some lens/sensor combo and everything how director decides given scene or whole movie should 'feel'.

lightedman• 2 years ago

You can tell the difference between RED and other camera makers just by checking the black levels (because RED has horrid IR filtering and so you get a bit of picture greying.)

It's really noticeable when you fire off a DPSS LASER at 532nm. You can see both the IR beam and the converted visible light beam, making the LASER appear a weird green-purple color.

com2kid• 2 years ago

For the 1990s, that Sony demo video looks amazing. The colors pop, skin pores are visible, brush strokes are visible! The colors and styles are very 90s, but it was the 90s so things are expected to look that way.

Almondsetat• 2 years ago

Any RAW image that comes out of a modern digital sensor can be made to look like anything else, as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated. They look the same because they are lit, edited and color graded the same

archerx• 2 years ago

as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated

I'm interested in this, do you have a link?

nazka• 2 years ago

Yep. This is the correct answer to OP.

kthartic• 2 years ago

I don't know how old you are, but as a younger millennial these look pretty awful to me (no disrespect). I'm sure nostalgia plays a part. I feel the same way about videos/sci-fi shows from the 2000s - none of the modern stuff quite feels the same.

But as another commenter said, I don't think it's the camera itself - it's the stylistic changes in lighting, camera angles, direction, etc. Each decade has a distinct 'feel' - films/shows in the 80s don't feel like the 90s, or the 2000s like the 2010s, etc.

seanw444• 2 years ago

It seems to be too much now to me. Overproduced maybe is the word? Too vibrant of coloration, too much lighting, too much movement. The best way I can put it is that new shows and movies feel "plastic" compared to older stuff.

Applejinx• 2 years ago

Watching all that Sony stuff.

Part of what's giving you that effect is not the resolution, or color accuracy etc: it's that you're looking at what is really a very primitive system. It's the analog vs. digital all over again, but with video. More than that, it's compressed video, versus a more immediate but more primitive analog system. What I'm seeing of RED suggests it's all about sensor resolutions, but compression is always a point of contention and color space is an issue.

If you're digitally compressing data like this and running into an area where there are challenges, you're running into areas where the algorithms get twitchy: they're designed to optimize for certain things and you can throw pathological image sequences, pathological colors, at them.

Some of the challenges inherent in getting really high sensor resolution out of a RED are irrelevant to old Sony analog HD camera technology, apples and oranges.

oven93422• 2 years ago

When the camera pans. I find it unnerving. I don’t enjoy watching that pixelated panning. I blame it on the digital recordings.

It might probably look better if they recorded it on film but no producer seems to be addressing my whimsical preferences

herdcall• 2 years ago

I think what you're seeing is due to bandwidth limitations: when the picture pans the info changes rapidly and places a bigger demand on the bandwidth, so streamed shows will suffer in quality and show pixelation. If this is what you're seeing, it has nothing to do with the content itself, it will be fine if you watch it directly from disk.

kbf• 2 years ago

The Olympics are a live event, delaying the broadcast by days to cater to your niche nitpick about image quality would indeed be whimsical

replwoacause• 2 years ago

Has anyone done an analysis into what gives Netflix shows that strange look? It is uncanny valley like for me, so I avoid them altogether. I assumed it must be a blend of camera choice, lighting, and post-processing, and its just awful.

dfedbeef• 2 years ago

Netflix is the minor leagues. People who do well there don't tend to stay there.

kranke1552• 2 years ago

It’s the rushed post process. You can go on r/colourists and ask. You might be able to find some old posts from people who worked on these things explaining it.

It’s 100% not the camera. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was shot on RED. You can do virtually anything with digital cameras these days. Steve Yedlin proved he could make digital look like film beyond anyone’s ability to distinguish them.

Netflix just rushes everything so it’s all a similar level of not good.

tiffanyh• 2 years ago

Nikon doesn't do video.

Referencing the Netflix approved vendor list is misleading, because they aren't in the cinematic video business.

stephen_g3• 2 years ago

No, why “everything looks the same” is 100% down to lens, lighting and grading choices.

Part of it is that modern lenses are incredibly accurate and much better technically than they used to be - a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts, since they have “visual character” instead of being so clean.

sangnoir• 2 years ago

a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts

Isn't this confounded by who chooses to buck the trend? IMO, it's the very skilled DPs who are not only skilled, have earned enough social capital to experiment and have excellent reasons for using old soviet lenses, or lenses designed for use on the moon or some other exotic origin story. This self-selecting bunch are likely to produce outstanding work regardless of the equipment.

kranke1552• 2 years ago

The RED cameras are perfectly capable of delivering great picture quality and good color science. The "Netflix look" doesn't come from cameras, but from the fact that everything in their cheaper productions is rushed, including the color grading.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire for instance, was shot on RED cameras at 8K. And it's one of the most beautiful digital films ever made, IMO.

saltminer• 2 years ago

I loved that movie! It truly is gorgeous, right up there with Blade Runner IMO. I just wish they'd release it in 4k, I'd re-buy it in a heartbeat.

tomcam• 2 years ago

It appears to me they accept many RED cameras?

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

tivert2• 2 years ago

Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon.

I looked at that list and did some Googling, and it looks like Nikon just doesn't make video cameras like the other vendors. All they make are DSLRs that do a little bit of video.

This Quora answer (https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-...) bluntly states; "Nikon has never sold a dedicated camcorder of any format."

sib• 2 years ago

Nikon also makes mirrorless cameras that do video a lot better than their DLSRs did (especially, for example, the Z9).

But, yes, they don't make dedicated camcorders...

gorkish• 2 years ago

I think you are mistaking stylistic choices for something technical.

Netflix shows look and feel the same because they are shovelware, produced to look and feel the same. This is part of why they have style guides and approved equipment lists, but as far as the sensors are concerned -- any modern sensor is up to the task.

There are no Nikon video cameras on the list because Nikon does not make video cameras, although I guess now they do.

fngjdflmdflg• 2 years ago

Color grading always changes the colors in post anyway. Film movies often looks better than digital to my eyes but i think that is at least partly because color grading did not exist like it does now and there was no push to make every object "pop" by being oversaturated. To me, Film is more likely to give you a single scene in each frame while color graded digital movies often seem to be made of several disparate scenes cobbled together. Movies from the past used less greenscreening in favor of matte paintings which were often included in the scene they were used itself rather than edited in or they were the only shot in the scene. You can make digital film look however you want, even to look like film, but most Netflix shows apparently do not opt for that.

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

Agreed, I hate the way a lot of their stuff looks. It's OK for TV but a lot of their film stuff looks sterile to me. I think that's part of why the Arri digital camera has a lot of fans.

I got my first Nikon camera a few years ago after all previous ones being Canon. At first I was a little taken aback by how things looked slightly smeared when you zoomed into the individual pixels...but I rapidly came to love it. Perhaps their sensors/glass are less 'perfect' but I love more of the pictures I take with it.

m463• 2 years ago

I remember first watching 4k HDR films (I remember gemini man in particular) and it looked different from previous films and I had to adapt.

maybe too high res? Or maybe HDR eliminated artifacts like bloom or something that seemed to make it too perfect.

ryandamm3• 2 years ago

Previously: RED Sues Nikon for patent infringement.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31532285

classified• 2 years ago

Great news, that should help them stay relevant. We will always want to make more movies.

nubinetwork• 2 years ago

I wonder if they will stop selling overpriced SSDs now...

stephen_g3• 2 years ago

They use regular CFexpress cards now (CFast on Komodo)

lvl1022• 2 years ago

RED is a shitty company that relied on patent trolling the entire industry. It’s sad Nikon was basically forced to pay the ransom. RED is a classic example of what’s wrong with our outdated patent system.

mmaunder2• 2 years ago

Makes sense. Blackmagic Design is a serious competitor to RED and got around their raw patent through partial debayering. Also lower price. Canon has been wiping the floor with Nikon this century.

Now you have a legendary cinema brand with some solid fundamental technology to combine with Nikon lenses for a mid to upper market product play.

Joeboy3• 2 years ago

Unfortunately my enthusiasm for BMD is muted by the extreme non-freeness of BRAW.

mmaunder2• 2 years ago

What? It’s free. Perhaps you should read the history around Red as a patent troll, how they price gouge their media, etc.

steveBK1232• 2 years ago

Smart for Nikon as they've been losing relevance somewhat to Sony/Canon, and not had a great video offering. So this immediately makes them a competitor in the space.

Given how the stills & cine markets have contracted and converged, its unlikely Nikon & RED would survive in a healthy fashion as standalone for say the next decade.

neom• 2 years ago

Jim Jannard, truly a brilliant and under discussed entrepreneur, probably because the guy won't let anyone interview him. From what I have managed gathered over the years, the guy is a seriously cool dude who and also a genius.

"The one thing I will say about Jim is, he’s always been one to have a vision,” Takumi concludes. “When you think about people like that, you think about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk — guys like that. I mean obviously, you’re talking about sunglasses and cameras — [Jannard founded Red Digital Cinema in 2005] — but when you have that, really probably the only way to bring it to life is if you have your own hands on it.”

https://www.gearpatrol.com/outdoors/a740060/jim-jannard-oakl...

https://www.oakleyforum.com/guides/oakley-founder-jim-jannar...

cfr20235• 2 years ago

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.

stephen_g3• 2 years ago

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.

cfr20235• 2 years ago

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

ramesh31• 2 years ago

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.

cfr20235• 2 years ago

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.

kkukshtel3• 2 years ago

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.

cfr20235• 2 years ago

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.

treflop2• 2 years ago

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.

closeparen• 2 years ago

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.

cfr20235• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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

tombert6• 2 years ago

It would be kind of cool Nikon is able to bring the price of RED cameras down. I've wanted a truly professional-grade camera for awhile, but I cannot justify spending $10k-20k for something that would fundamentally be a glorified toy to me (since I don't do anything professional with camera).

I was hoping that pro-grade 4k cameras would drop to the sub-$500 mark by now, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Even the comparatively cheaper Blackmagic Pocket Cinema cameras are on the order of $2,000-$3,000. I guess the engineering for cameras that nice has fairly high "minimum cost" that can't easily be brought down by industrialization?

atonse2• 2 years ago

Isn't 10k already pretty budget price for a _professional_ video camera? Like film class.

At least the film ones (like ARRI Alexa) approach 100k and can be rented as a result.

I think the panavision ones were even more back in the day, but not 100% sure.

tombert6• 2 years ago

That's fair, but using computers as an analogy: a professional-grade computer from the 90's (e.g. a Silicon Graphics machine) used in professional films would cost like $40,000, but now you can buy something orders of magnitude more powerful than a 90's era SGI workstation for peanuts; virtually any modern gaming rig made in the last 15 years or will outperform even a top of the line SGI from 1995, because computer hardware prices have benefited enormously from industrialization.

I realize it's not apples to apples, but I first heard about the Red One 4k in 2008, about 16 years ago, but it doesn't feel like prices have dropped in the same way that computer prices have. In fact, it's hard to even get a used one from 2008 for less than a grand right now.

I'm not even claiming that it's overpriced, not everything can drop to near-zero-margins like computer hardware can and make up for it in scale. I just really want to use a pro-grade camera and I don't want to spend $10+k to do it.

Swizec2• 2 years ago

I guess the engineering for cameras that nice has fairly high "minimum cost" that can't easily be brought down by industrialization?

It may be a value thing. Why would you sell a $500 toy to the consumer market who are un-fun customers to deal with, if you could sell the same thing to a professional for $5000 and they won’t even blink because they can leverage that same tool into $500,000 of revenue?

Plus at the $5000 price you can afford to have proper customer support, good service department, and all the other stuff that professionals value. You can make an actually better product even if the tech itself is the same.

And you don’t need to play silly expensive consumer marketing games. Focus on making great cameras and the professionals will market among themselves.

tombert6• 2 years ago

Totally fair, I guess I was hoping it would be like servers.

New servers are also super expensive, and don't directly market to consumer, but their used value is basically nothing. You can buy a used server on eBay, even with relatively nice specs for a consumer, for less than a grand, often substantially less than a grand (mine was $150 for 128gb of RAM and 24 cores).

It doesn't appear that pro-grade cameras fall the same way though.

wmf• 2 years ago

A Canon R100 is under $500 and probably has similar or better image quality to the CineAlta used on Star Wars 25 years ago. A ZV-E10 is slightly better for slightly more money.

pillusmany• 2 years ago

Pro cameras have a volume problem. Too few are sold.

Imagine if Intel only sold 10000 CPUs a year, but the fabs still cost billions of dollars. Do you still think you would have $500 CPUs?

tombert6• 2 years ago

No argument here.

That’s where my analogy with servers falls apart; it’s not weird for large companies like Amazon or Apple to purchase thousands of servers, which they periodically need to upgrade, and thus liquidate the old ones. Simple supply and demand dictates that the more supply we have, the lower the price (generally speaking).

I agree that if intel didn’t sell millions and millions of CPUs the price would definitely be much higher.

crftr• 2 years ago

Precisely. ARRI is only a viable business because they also have lighting and lenses. Sony and Canon imaging subsidize their cine lines with their high-volume consumer products.

ein0p2• 2 years ago

This is great news. As a long time (decades) Nikon user, their video support has been lagging lately even though the cameras and lenses are now the best they’ve ever been. I hope this means an improved, more “professional” video mode on future cameras as well, perhaps even shutter angle, fingers crossed

jiggawatts2• 2 years ago

Something that industry hasn't seemed to have noticed is that Nikon has recently released a couple of camera bodies that are very capable hybrid shooters. The Nikon Z9 and Z8 cameras can record up to 8.3K 60fps RAW video in-body[1], and the shutter speed is fast enough to be very nearly "global shutter". They also inherit features common to stills cameras but rare in video cameras such as eye-detect auto focus.

Some samples I've found online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR5BV1L7tCg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFkgs0GsbpA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3cAwDwvK-M

Notably, these videos were made by essentially amateurs. Even if the shooters are industry pros, they're still taking these shots on their own without a film crew and a professional setup. Just running around with a "normal" camera you can carry in one hand.

I wonder if this is going to be a dead end now that Nikon has acquired RED. I have a sinking feeling that the product lines will be split again, and that the stills bodies will not get any new video features, which will be relegated to dedicated video cameras.

[1] Something I've heard is that perceived video quality is more strongly correlated to the data rate than pixel resolution. These cameras can record at about 6,000 Mbps which is in the same league a "large format" and IMAX style cine cameras.

lvl1022• 2 years ago

Sony’s “affordable” global shutter A9 III likely changed the competitive landscape. For photography Z9’s stacked sensor is superb but videography is a different story.

jiggawatts2• 2 years ago

I don’t see how. That sensor is only 6K and the global shutter makes no practical difference compared to Nikons “very fast” shutter.

The Sony camera can only record up to 4K in-body, and only with h.265 or similar formats up to 10 bit.

The Nikon can record full-frame RAW with 12-bit log, which is far more useful for colorists to work with than anything the Sony can record.

Even the Nikon DX crop mode has more pixels and more HDR range than the Sony!

MuffinFlavored• 2 years ago

https://vimeo.com/1340684

skate - shot on red #1347 - 120 fps

15 years ago

my "introduction" to who/what RED was

KomoD• 2 years ago

Requires a vimeo account

canucker2016• 2 years ago

I just had to enable javascript to view the video.

KaiserPro3• 2 years ago

RED were the future, in 2012.

However, now, not so much.

They promised excellent resolution for a supposedly cheap price. At the time there was an explosion of "HD" cameras, a lot of them coming from modern DSLRs lead by the canon 5D suddenly opened up the world of good enough resolution and colour to the world.

However at the time RED footage was a massive pain to deal with. redraw was JPEG2000, which from memory is wavelet based. In a world when GPUs were for graphics, CPUs couldn't decode rthe frames in anywhere near realtime.

you could buy a $4k super fragile ASIC card that would allow decoding in real time, but it was a dick to use. It might have got better, but GPUs took over.

However, the big problem with RED is that they over promised and under delivered. They had devoted fans who would foam at the mouth for any company or person that dared to be critical.

THey didn't have a global shutter, they were quite noisy, and they were nowhere near as cheap to run as they made out.

THey kept on making new products, but never managed to really execute them properly. For example they were going to make a 4k laser project that would blow cristie or barco out of the water. Turned out that it didn't work, and at IBC/NAB they were using an overdriven barco.

The tech support people were very nice, however part of the cache of working there was "being in the know" so as soon as it came to getting techincal details you needed to make a decision (liek the redray) things went back to vague marketing terms.

Arrl and Sony all make much better cameras, the might have less pixels, but much better dynamic range and optical resolution. moreover the workflow isn't shite and they are reliable.

walrus01• 2 years ago

Sony and Canon have well established and respected, widely used cinema camera product lines.

Nikon, presently, does not. You will not see Nikon cameras (video, not still image) being used for 'serious' film, tv or documentary production use right now.

Acquiring RED gives them this product line and capability.

I would also bet that if Jannard is a majority shareholder of RED, he's now 74 years old and wants to enjoy his retirement, so selling the company for a pile of money seems like a sensible move.

Nikon to acquire RED

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