RED is making news on reddit.com

[Florin Andrei]

Well, it's the article from Wired that got posted, but anyway, congrats, you're on Reddit front page now.

http://www.reddit.com/comments/6xxg2/this_amazing_filmkilling_digital_camera_is_90/

(Reddit = a community-driven news aggregator, accessed daily by a very large audience. Like Digg, but smarter.)

[jimhare]

Great article, I've been wanting to read it. Thanks for posting.

[Matthew Rogers]

Wow. There's allot of totally uninformed (or just wanting to be jerks) posts on reddit.

Matthew

[Thomas Koch]

The comments really show just how much mis-information is out there. But Im guessing most of those commentators are not in the business, or even in the indie business.

[Andrew Walker]

I love it, the Red camera gets a favorable review on Wired Mag and then the haters come out. These are people that are still telling everyone that the camera is fake or some other made up bullshit. Kind of like what was happening at this years NAB.

[Sarah C.]

We were at a party over the weekend and my boyfriend stumbled over that very Wired mag with the Red article in it! I was tickled to hold something so analog describing something so digital... :detective2:

~Sarah

[Gunleik Groven]

Ouch. This post made me rethink my whole strategy, is this really true? :)

The one thing I don't like about the Wired article is that it says that only the Red delivers film-like DoF.

A Canon HV30 records at HD, 24p/30p/60i and costs $800. It's a consumer camera, so you won't get the low-light performance or good DoF, but it's big brother, the Canon XH-A1, is a $3200 camera with 3CCD and records at 24p/30p/60i and since it has three chips, you've got the good low-light performance there.

To get short DoF on either of these cameras, you'll need to mount a lens - for that there are accessories for both the Canon HV20 and XH-A1, for about $1100. Add $50 for a prime lens (meaning you're sacrificing zoom for DoF, or add $400-600 for a zoom lens, and you've got some funky DoF (you do lose some about half an f-stop from the adaptor and whatever you'd lose from the lens.)

And this one made me feel that there is a new Graeme on the horizon:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the RED isn't really, either. It's 12-bit - which means once you get it down to the color depth of the 2k cameras it's competing against, it's a 2k camera, too.

They're pretty cool, don't get me wrong. But they aren't magically delicious.


Analysis, analysis, analysis :)

[laguun]

Gunleik, i like:

-Buying a Panavision film camera could cost you half a million.
oh, did pana recently adjust its business model?

-There is a hude difference between a 4-4-2 and a 4-4-4 or whatever the color sampling is
3-2-1 colordampling!

-Anyone know why digital video recorders up to now forced the whole scene into focus?
Probably because the rotating heads have a very narrow DOF. The proble gets worse if you record to digital video harddisk, as their magnetic head is even smaller and has an even tighter DOF.

-That's must require insane storage requirements. At standard 16:9 aspect ratio at 30 frames per second, the camera would require roughly 21 to 27gigs of storage/second. Each frame being about 700 to 900 megabytes.
Yeah buddy, thats the art of cinematography: Swapping the cf cards every 12 frames without anyone taking notice.

-I thought cuban cigars were forbidden on the land of the free, what's the guy doing with a Montecristo in his hand?
the cigar probably is a scam as well.

[Gunleik Groven]

I really liked the statement that you'll need a lens to get DOF!
The learning curve here is rather steep!

[Adrian T.]

Really funny comments!

- A world-class 'production' lens will cost you a couple of million to buy or probably $17.5K a day to rent if not more.

Wow! :)

- To get that romantic 'filmic' look you need to do shitloads of post processing. Imagine how much fun it is doing contrast and colour adjustment, or even grain emulation, at that resolution. You'll need close to a Pixar render farm to edit the fucking thing - at least super-expensivse hired time at some fancy lab who can cough up a couple of mil for the Avid editing suite.

:sarcasm:

- Also, these digital freaks always only mention resolution in lines and framerates. In film there's resolution-per-line, and scanners keep getting better. As scanner quality improves, so does the end-result of film.

Oh, it's because of the scanners that we don't have more resolution from 35 mm film! :)

[Emmanuel Decarpentrie]

How low can these red-haters go? They don't even spend one second to make a google search... These people are pathetic!

[Pierce Cook]

As much as their ignorance makes me want to make an account and stick it to them, I suppose the high road is to keep supporting RED in spirit and in practice, and know that some of them will come around, others will be embarrassed and fight on anyway, and we'll still have a better solution and a company that keeps making it better for us.

I try to stay level headed when I'm looking at the competition, but it's hard to argue with RED. They keep working to improve things, and they're accessible. That's amazing.

[patrickortman]

Right. Just keep doing the best work we can with the tools we choose to use. Eventually, actions speak louder than words.

[Florin Andrei]

A few observations to put things in perspective:

On a news aggregator, what really matters is that you made the front page.

Inane comments are pretty much a fact of life, even on sites supposedly "smarter" like Reddit (you should see the average comments on Digg if you think these are funny). But only a fraction of the users actually bother to read them. Most of them just click on the top link - in this case, that link took them to the Wired article.

In fact, what most users saw was this:

http://www.reddit.com/

As you can see, that's the front page. It contains only the title of the newsbite and the link. The comments are hidden. That's what the majority of the users see.

So, the bottom line for those not that familiar with user-driven aggregators: don't focus on the comments, focus on making (or not) the front page.

[Chris Christensen]

I even had one guy tell me in the comments that you'll need to buy a $6,000 lens for Scarlet. :)

But yeah, most people don't read the comments. And wish I hadn't either.