RED Addresses the "DSLR Market"
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 10:51AM “If people are not stunned by the specs and design, I will retire… truly.”
Jim Jannard of RED had cryptically mentioned that they would be creating a product to address the “DSLR Market.” Last night on REDuser.com he expanded on that announcement a bit:
We believe, and are developing for late 2009, a replacement for DSLRs. Currently, we call it a DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera).
While (insert code name) is not a replacement for Epic or Scarlet, it is strategically targeted at the DSLR space. As Nikon and Canon release their 720P and 1080P, respectively, DSLRs with video capture… RED has a more advanced view of the future. We look forward to rapidly pushing the “big guys” along in feature sets and capabilities.
RED firmly believes in higher resolution, higher S/N, higher DNR, higher frame rates, smaller bodies, more system flexibility, and many more options as we move forward in camera development.
The strength of RED is in our sensor development program, REDCODE, and having no legacy platforms to deal with. That left us free to explore, develop and prepare to deliver a new platform. DSMC.
We think all our customers already know what the future will bring. They are just afraid to wish for it for fear of disappointment. Fear not. Sleep tight. RED is awake.
Jim
Jim’s enthusiasm-trumps-accuracy grammatical stylings are oddly representative of his company’s engineering efforts. As Fred Johnson pointed out on TWiP 46, RED is a lot like Apple entering the cell phone market. It takes an outsider to start over from scratch and shake up the assumptions that the staid players hold dear. But as an outsider it’s very difficult to just get the basics right. RED One was both groundbreaking and revolutionary, but in many ways it is still catching up with the things the “big guys” do in their sleep. Just like the iPhone.
Jim didn’t say that RED is building a DSLR. He said he’s making a replacement for DSLRs. I love my DSLR but I do have the sense that much of its design is based in a legacy that no longer applies. Jim also said on CML that “We also believe that the future is a ‘still & motion’ camera world. Just at much higher quality levels [than the D90].”
What makes up the user experience of a DSLR? To me it’s more about lens choice, a big sensor, instantaneous shutter release and a raw workflow than it is about mirrors and Through The Lens viewfinders. It’s about insanely good autofocus and lenses around which one feels compelled to form a religion. It’s about ergonomics that make you forget where your hand stops and your camera starts.
Add motion to that mix and you get to list off more personal priorities. The Nikon D90 has been amply tested by many folks and the verdict is just as I predicted: The images look great as long as you don’t look to close, and motion is fun but too much turns into jello-vision. Nevertheless, the D90 got us all thinking about what it would mean to dip our SLR chocolate into our HD peanut butter, and for my part at least I couldn’t think of a good reason not to do it. If RED or anyone else can develop a raw motion workflow in a body that not only shares my SLR lenses but can do the job of my SLR, then Jim is not wrong in saying that “‘revolution’ applies more to this than the RED ONE did to cinema.” I mean, except for the grammar.
But while the “big guys” in the SLR market may be set in their ways and unlikely to revolutionize without competition from someone like Jim, I hope Jim realizes what he’s up against. I think he should, because he’s an avid photographer. He’s going down a whole new path now, competing with well-loved players instead of the rarefied few in the digital cinema world. Canon and Nikon compete viciously on features, price, and technology. It’s a heavyweight bout where the spectator is the only clear winner.
There is a theory that in order to shake customers away from an existing product, your product must be ten times better. In the digital cinema space RED One was seen by almost everyone as being ten times better than anything at its price point. What happens when RED’s SLR-killing autofocus is just a hair slower than Canon’s? Or only a tiny bit better?
Good luck Jim. I’m sure I’ll want whatever you make. But I do hope you’re as busy making things as you are dreaming them up. Remember the 4K projectors and displays you mentioned two NABs ago? It would delight me to no end if you were as enthusiastic about refining your existing products as you are about announcing new ones.
Cameras, Filmmaking, Photography, RED, Scarlet
Reader Comments (14)
"As Nikon and Canon release their 720P and 1080P, respectively, "
So someone seems to know that the 5D mkII will support video and that it'll be 1080p then?
Where did you see that quote Jim?
I've heard it both ways, that a 5D successor will have video, won't have video. These rumors are getting exhausting!
In his 2nd Paragraph, that you quoted.
And yeah, it is getting tiresome, but I just know whatever they come out with it's going to make me want to replace my 5D!
Having not long got a Letus adapter, all this news is making me think I should maybe have held on. This new RED device sounds a little odd though, as attractive as the Scarlet is, it would take something pretty special for me to desert my Canon glass.
Either way, there's some tricky purchasing decisions ahead.
Heh, oops—I missed that nod to the 5D MkII rumors. I'm sure Jim doesn't know any more or less than anyone else in that regard.
Just find it strange that he'd differentiate Nikon's choice to go with 720p and Canon's 1080p when it's all still speculation. Time will tell.
Stu
I had to walk away and rant to the dog for a few minutes till i could write this.
what if...
1. Lightroom starts to support a tweening capability
2. Lightroom gets a timeline
3. DSLR's do 24 frames a second not that 23.97 stuff which means how does audio capture change.
4. SONY/PENTAX/NIKON/PhaseOne intro's a 70mm sensor with a body that has a backwards compatible lens mount. Like Nikon does with their DSLRs. If the rumors are true that Nikon is going to introduce a 48 mm sensor on a rangefinder camera,
Wow!!!! and shoots HD!!!
5.Raw capture at 24/48 frames per second, not a video or some other codec but raw uncompressed capture.
6.What if a new acquisition system consists of only a Directors viewfinder, all info is sent either by a light pipe or wireless to a storage medium.
What I am getting at is NIkon has shot a salvo across the bow of not just the other DSLR makers but to the high end lens makers/ Movie Camera Companies. I can get a weird old Nikon lens put it on my DSLR D(insert number here) and run with it!!! Plus the High end filters and matte boxes you will not need, gone!!!
7. Hypothetical; I shoot 9 fps on a NIKON D3, change to a D90, use a mo cap system of some sort for both takes, then turn around and with some sort of software mumbo jumbo combine the 2 for a high quality image output to HD and wham!!! LIke what those students at a University in Washington are doing. But wait, this is all predicated on Nikon/ Canon not giving us a "Single does it all" acquisition device. We know that in 3 years this whole argument is moot. If Red survives its because they gave us some thing better and cost well under 1,000 dollars.
This is where it all comes to, uncompressed raw at high frame rates. ( OPEN Raw format please) NO weird video codecs, no proprietary output formats.
AND!!! Your old lenses are mount compatible!!!
If I was COOKE, or ARRI, I'd be thinking of how to get lenses on to these new DSLR's, with out the price. I can see the Japanese camera wonks working overtime to best each other. Crazy.
Sorry for the rant Stu, but the denial of access mantra I have been going on about since the early 1990s is beginning to swing open.... I as an end user will benefit. Interesting times.
Be careful not to call out a person's grammar when there are at least two spelling errors in your post. ;-)
Great post Stu!
I believe RED is a fantastic company and that Jim is a genius. I also have the sense that much of the built of DSLRs no longer applies so I welcome a replacement.
In regards to your personal note to Jim... let the guy dream man! He is the visionary, that's his job; to come up with this new stuff and find someone from his staff that can pull it off. Kinda like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. (not that he shouldn't follow up on what he has already promise... i would love a 4k projector)
Grammar is language. Spelling is pedantry.
pedantry: guilty... :-)
Probably a valuable trait in a plogrammer. :)
Does anyone else think that maybe Red is spreading itself too thin? They still haven't dominated the high end video market and now they're going to take on a tougher DSLR market.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming big, but there's also something to be said for finishing what you started first before trying to tackle another project. (just playing devil's advocate here)
Jessel
http://vertigoeffect.com
I'm thinking this is in reaction to something that every chip maker faces. that is what to do with the chips that aren't up to the specs required to do the heavy lifting jobs. this is the exact reason why Intel and AMD have a processor line ranging from 2.0 to 2.8 for example. it's simply not cost effective to only have a high end product and throw away 60% or more of what you grow. this is the nature of making processors. defects happen because of a lot of reasons: impure silicon, errors in the lithographic process, uneven distribution of material, and magnetic variations due to lack of sunspots.
I would imagine that these big chips have an alarmingly low yield. let's say 20%. by making a product that could use the the chips for some other purpose you get the yield to 70%. which would be acceptable given the price points that RED is hitting.
there is something to take away from Stu rant. and that is the part about Legacy. I have been on a few shoots where the client lost it because I had a camera that didn't look "professional" enough. even though the camera was very capable to do the job I was doing.
if you want to really understand this phenomenon just look at the way the RED looks. it's very BIG hollywoo looking camera. it's got a big lens, a mount of for the lens, and all the inputs are big. when it's all setup it has this appearance of a complicated octopus. thing is, does it really need to be this way at all. but because the legacy dictates they way things "worked" this is the way that it is.
so it's no surprise that DSLRs look and work the same way that their old film counterparts worked. photographers (and filmmakers for that matter) want to have that "look" of importance to go with their craft. because if it doesn't look big, impressive and complicated how the hell are we going to charge the boatload of money we need to charge?
Isn't RED improving?
I mean, there are continuous releasing firmware builds, audio circuitry upgrades with no charge, ipin upgrades.
What else are they supposed to do? Ask everybody to ship back their Ones and upgrade everything .. but what else?
Scarlet is really revolutionary camera, look at what it can do. Look at the price.
Epic is One on steroids, looks better in every aspect, even non-imaging ones.
RED has 4 main products, all focused on digital image capture.
RED One was a strong move. Scarlet looks like a solid move as well.
We'll see about Epic and RED Ray.
And later we'll see about DSMC.
My opinion is they are FAR from thin.