RED pricedrops: Scarlet-X gets $1800 off, RED ONE for $4000

This weekend RED cut down the prices on all their camera bodies. The Scarlet-X’ price has been reduced to $7950 and the Epic now costs almost half. Is this a result of Sony’s massive camera announcement last week?

RED’s Jim Jannard doesn’t seem to call Sony’s announcement the cause for their pricedops. About the F5 and F55 he says: “These two camera announcements are significant. While I do not see them as a threat to EPIC or Scarlet… I do see them as a threat to the conventional and outdated thinking of the industry that tried so hard to cling to “1080P and 2K are good enough”.”
and says that they have lowered their “assembly costs, found better suppliers and fully paid off our NRE.” (…) “Since our costs are now significantly lower we are re-pricing our cameras as of now.”

The timing of RED’s price drops is still an interesting one and raises some questions concerning how well RED is armed against the wave of competitive large sensor cameras that are flooding the market right now.

Here are the exact price changes:

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NAB 2012 – Zacuto’s recoil rig & tornado – focusing done right!

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What gear was used to record this video? Take a guess in the comments, we’ll reveal later.

It’s unfortunate that the experience of trying the new Zacuto Tornado remote focus cannot be shared online. I had a chance to test it on a Recoil rig at the Zacuto both and like some other news shooters I was quite impressed.

The Tornado is a really revolutionary device. Just like the also awesome new Redrock thumb focus it allows you adjust focus on your lens while resting your hand on the rig handle. This makes for much more control and long lasting and accurate handheld shooting. Add to that the well balanced Recoil rig setup and you have a really good setup for “large” cameras like the C300 or Scarlet-X.

Is it hard to focus with the Tornado remote focus, does it have play?
No. The translation from your hand movement to the lens is really a direct one. It works pretty good. It’s the device I’ve been asking other companies to produce for years and Zacuto has done it right.

There was one moment when I had an important question for Zacuto product designer Patrick Fee: “The Tornado works great on that Canon lens, but Canons focus ring only has very low resistance, what about focus rings from lenses like Zeiss’ that need to be worked stronger?.” His answer calmed all worries: You’re actually using a Zeiss with that Tornade right now.

Zacuto’s recoil rig is $1306:

The Tornado will be $??? and I also don’t have a price for the extremely useful C300 grip relocator yet.

The first lightweight rigs for Scarlet-X and C300 are here

Some time has passed since we’ve started looking for a useful Scarlet-X rig. If you’re serious about working with a camera like the RED Scarlet-X or the Canon C300 you’re in need of a rig that will fully support and make use of the ergonomics of the short form factor that you know from HDSLR.

If you’ve been working with these cameras you might have come to the conclusion that not any rig will fit them. In fact it’s pretty hard to find a configuration that would put the camera’s weight on the shoulder instead of the front of your body. Even RED thinks that in front is ok (link).

Most HDSLR rigs are built in a way that the camera body is at your front. One reason for this is probably that there was a time when you had to get that LCD screen in front of your face, that was the time before EVF’s, another reason could be that a lightweight HDSLR doesn’t pose that much of a weight burden.
When the camera setup gets heavier it becomes necessary to balance that weight on the shoulder and extend the handles back to your hips. Of course eventually that’s all a matter of preference, but in theory this is what we’d need and so far we haven’t seen much of it.

If you’re looking for lightweight and affordable Zacuto now brings a solution that is looking really good. They’re selling their new “Recoil” handheld rig package for $1375 (excluding the viewfinder and viewfinder mount). link

The good thing about it is not only its lightweight and simple design, but also that it can be used for the Scarlet-X AND the C300 and of course HDSLR as well (with a riser), and if the trend continues we will see more cameras with the HDSLR form factor coming along.

I have seen very few rigs that abandon the HDSLR typical “in front of your face design” and go back to how cameras should be shouldered and I think this development is a very good thing.

Keep in mind that the RED Scarlet-X does not incorporate the 15mm rail standard as described here. You will need a LWS adapter such as this one which is currently the best affordable one I know or use a 19mm rig.

more Information on Zacuto page

RED Scarlet-X – test short film

I might be mistaken but I believe this is the first short shot on a RED Scarlet-X.

We shot this on the same day as the car chase test. It started out as an acted scene test to put the new RED Scarlet-X into real life, shooting intense, on-set conditions, but in the 3 hours we had it turned into a small short film.
Hence there are several mistakes in it which we were not able to flat out because daylight was gone.

In the following I will describe how the Scarlet performed under these conditions, what worked, what didn’t work. I’ll call this a field report:

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