What happened to Scarlet X?
December 2nd, 2011 RichNovember 3 was a big day in filmmaking. Canon announced their C300 camera followed by Red announcing the Scarlet X — well, trying to announce. Their website crashed under the load of visitors.
There seemed to be a lot of Red fans telling everyone how much better the Scarlet was than the Canon. It was a real 4k vs. Canon’s 4k chip that only gave 1080p. And it was cheaper, less than $10k.
At first, I was caught up in the hoopla. Then I started counting how many pennies I would need. The $10k camera was just the brain. It couldn’t shoot any video by itself. That required the $14k package. But that really didn’t get you very far. You probably need to spend more like $20k, about the same as Canon’s C300 list price. But Scarlet’s $20k was probably on the extreme low side, not what you would be comfortable shooting with.
Oh, I forgot about lenses. Add that to the total and I’m sweating. But Scarlet or Canon, it would be the same.
Shooting 4k also sounds like giving great quality. But what would it cost on the post side? You’d need huge amounts of data storage. Then double that. You want backups, don’t you. And there would be a very high-end computer to push the data through. This under $10k camera could easily cost me $30-40k (before lenses).
Then Canon dropped the price of the C300. Last I heard, it was $16k but if that was list, it would sell for less. And I would only have to deal with 1080p so no change in post. I was breathing a bit easier.
But what about quality?
Some Red users have commented that they felt like beta users with their Red cameras. Things didn’t always go planned. If you needed a camera that worked all the time, every time, you might want to look elsewhere.
What about shooting 4k? I’d be losing quality. And that’s when I realized that I’m shooting a TV series not a feature film. In fact, it’s nearly impossible for an independent to get distribution for a feature so why bother? If consumers cannot display greater than 1080p, why am I worried about 4k?
After the videos I’ve seen shot with the C300, I’m impressed. I’ve seen a video shot on the Scarlet and it looked embarrassing. That could have been the filmmaker. But that’s all I’ve seen. What happened to Scarlet? Why don’t I see video being posted? Why aren’t more people talking about it?
What happened to Scarlet? It seems to have disappeared. To me, not a good sign. Or maybe I’m not in the market they are trying to reach? It seems strange. I’m hearing more about $100k cameras. Where is Scarlet?
– Rich Pulham