<story><title>Nikon to acquire RED</title><url>https://www.nikon.com/company/news/2024/0307_01.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cfr2023</author><text>I started following the RED story before those folks ever released a camera, and I liked their spirit and mission.&lt;p&gt;Some time passed and ultimately it was Black Magic Design that accomplished what RED said they wanted to do.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kkukshtel</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;just buy on B&amp;amp;H&amp;quot;) - it was huge.&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that the camera market and the concept of &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really like normal &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; end stuff. High-end digital camera &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; stuff has different purchase cycles that traditional &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; things like iPhones don&amp;#x27;t have. Camera Operators&amp;#x2F;DPs typically buy these huge cameras and then rent them out or bill their cost back into their day rate.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;Consumer&amp;quot;, but IMO none of that would have happened without RED paving the path.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nikon to acquire RED</title><url>https://www.nikon.com/company/news/2024/0307_01.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cfr2023</author><text>I started following the RED story before those folks ever released a camera, and I liked their spirit and mission.&lt;p&gt;Some time passed and ultimately it was Black Magic Design that accomplished what RED said they wanted to do.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stephen_g</author><text>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.</text></comment>