Interesting news out recently for digital cinematography aficionados or anyone who has ever heard of the RED Scarlet camera. Originally announced at NAB 2008, the 3K (censor) Scarlet was to bring RED’s high-end digital cinema technology to the consumer market at the very reasonable price point of around $3,000. Now, it appears that the Scarlet that we were introduced to in 2008 will never come to market. Instead, RED’s founder Jim Jannard is making the decision to add features, raise the price and attempt to only compete with the Scarlet in the professional market. With the incredible advances in dSLR technology in the consumer and prosumer spaces over the last two years, I think RED likely saw a very difficult competition climate – one that they did likely not see very profitable. Read the rundown of all of Jannard’s comments here at EOSHD.com.
Red 3K Scarlet camera
Some excerpts below:
Originally Posted by Jim Jannard:
“The concept of RED was to build a camera with as much capability as possible… for the professional market. Then we thought we could extend it down a bit to the prosumer level. Apparently, that was a mistake.”There it is then, in quite candid terms. Scarlet was a mistake. Just as Gerald Ratner made ‘crap’ jewellery, RED produced a ‘mistake’ of a camera. For those who would have liked a prosumer RED camera (and priced accordingly) it must all be very disappointing. They must be bawling their eyes out over at DVXUser. Should RED finally release the fabled Scarlet, Jannard has spent the last 2 weeks prepping customers for a price hike and the abandonment of any kind of prosumer pretension.
RED are currently justifying Scarlet’s latest $1000 price increase with the addition of a high dynamic range post processing feature (in real-time) called HDRx. This already exists (the EPIC has it). So many will now wonder – what is the difference between Scarlet and EPIC especially now both are aimed at the same market?
