I just ran into J. Jannards quote on reduser and all the comments after that. Well, maybe he meant the manufacturers and not us users, we will see. First off, I won’t rant about RED or DSLRs or anything, I just wanted to point out how I think about this:
The most important thing about limitations of cameras: will the client notice it? Did you ever have a client saying: „Pls let us shoot with a camera with more latitude and of course not the ones with rolling shutter“? No, clients are more like „it has to look fantastic, cinematic… I want to have a grungy/lovely/dreamy/whatever look. It has to be finished by tomorrow and of course I can’t pay more than 5$“.
…well bit exaggerated but it is like this, isn’t it?
I shot a live gig for a client two weeks ago and finished it yesterday. I took some opening shots with the 5D for their intro and put them together in FCP. Just a little classical music, Magic Bullet Mojo and good framing. The first thing he said was: „yeah, THAT looks cinematic!! That’s what I wanted!“. I was a bit surprised because I shot about 10min and only some stuff like people standing around, chairs, flowers etc all with a 24-70mm 2.8, faderND and the 50cm Glidetrack or just on a Monopod.
I asked him what he likes and what he means with „cinematic“ or „filmic“ just to hear it from a different perspective. He said: „well, I don’t really know. I think it’s the colors and the movement. It looks dynamic… and I love the blurry background. It looks like moving pictures of my old 35mm SLR camera“.
Did he say: „I noticed the rolling shutter and also the color space is less than awful“ … nope, he didn’t. I took the right framing added some movement and was glad he liked it that much. He didn’t notice that there was 1 shot with the „wrong“ shutter (1/60 at 25fps).
- Would I be able to create even nicer images with a RED Scarlet? Maybe.
- Would I be shooting that stuff with the basic Scarlet model? Absolutely.
- Would you shoot in 4k if you’d be able to? … well.
And why didn’t I shoot with that camera? Because it is not released yet!!
Instead of shooting that video, finishing the job and receiving the money, I could wait until it’s released and show the clients some 3D renders of the Scarlet or Epic body. „That’s the cam we’re shooting your vid in 1 year. You cannot imagine how gorgeous your video will look like. It’s unbelievable!“
Honestly, we all are shooting with what’s available and what fits our needs to finish a gig. Vincent Laforent (Canon 5D user #1) shoots with a RED One too, because they went the “safer” way, not the cheaper way. (read his blog about his latest commercial here)
Why the hell should either one of you be embarrassed about which camera was used? For god’s sake, it doesn’t matter! Jim Jannard should know that! If I could afford a Fijian Island, I would totally built my own dream camera instead of buying a Canon 7D at Amazon.com.
What I wanted to say is: no one can judge your film on which camera it was shot. The biggest problem about RED is that they reveal specs, tell people how awesome the images look like and that they should be patient. Everything is subject to change.
And that’s going on for about two years now…
Create a Epic or Scarlet Reel, show demos, let Peter Jackson work with it, close down reduser or whatever. It would definetly help us to believe in that company instead of making jokes about all the delays and quotes. It is great what they did and I’d buy the FF Scarlet or even a EPIC (if I could afford it), but for now I’ll work with what I got. And maybe rent the RED One for a couple of shoots. Waiting is no solution. It never was.
I hope they will write a statement to clarify that situation they ran into. And of course I hope they will find that firmware bug and finish those cameras as soon as possible.
*Update*
Jim Jannard (RED) posted a response at reduser
2 Responses to “DSLR users should be embarrassed?”
You’re basically saying what I was thinking – talking about specs of a product that nobody has ever seen and complaining about the very real but cheap competition is what I call “camera wanking”.
But in the end, you just have to put a sober perspective on the subject: Jannard is a businessman and needs to sell his product. Even if he thinks that DSLRs are a great tool in many cases, he would never dare to say that. He has to cater his audience, like others cater their own audiences. Imagine he said that DSLRs are a viable option – the uproar in the RED community would be enormous. He’s basically just staying within the official company line and repeats what his very own Ted Schilowitz kept repeating over and over again when he did his PR marathon (look at http://www.freshdv.com/nab for instance).
Absolutely! the main problem about his post: he did not only ciritcize the DSLRs, he incorporated the whole community. It could harm their image and at this point (another delay, no prototypes, no working samples) those comments could be more harmful than ever before. I love competition but only if it raises the bar to create better products. “camera wanking” won’t help anyone of us. Let’s hope they will show some sample footage the next months. I want to finally make my personal opinion, not Ted Schilowitz’