I don't think the Red Raven camera is exclusive to Apple Stores.
It is exclusive to Apple for now. Dealers might be able to get one for you in the future... (Interesting exchange: "Why is Raven also not available in the RED store? I don't understand that. Jarred Land -Read the title of the post.. had to give , to get " - the title of the post is "Sometimes you need to Give to Get. ") They (Red) are barely catching up with the pre-orders that happened more than a year ago and now they are ready to ship from Apple - wow.
Jarred Land (CEO of Red) said that Apple was able to get this from Red because of the new Mac Pro - he kind of implied that he'd seen the plans for it or even a prototype and said that Apple is finally back on the Pro train. (Found it: "Apple
gets Raven only because of their new investment into their Mac pro
hardware program. That was the deal. Sometimes you gotta take one
for the team to push for a much bigger cause. I hope everyone can read
between those lines and congratulate apple for putting some skin back in
the game that so many assumed they just abandoned.")
Remember when Red announced an android phone? The $1200 modular Hydrogen with holographic display? The only phone I've ever seen that would make me give up iPhone?
Maybe that never happens and instead there's a RED edition iPhone 8...
I had a few thoughts about the Hydrogen being the iPhone X... that would be cool.
Red has loved Apple throughout the years. But lately they've had to look at PC crap because of the lacking CPU and GPU support in Apple boxes. The first time I met Jim (founder of Red) was at an Apple event in Vegas right before the reveal of the Red One where he turned the cinema camera world upside down. I've been an advocate ever since.
Interesting comment in the Red forums:
"Reuben We just got a bunch of them at Glazers Camera in Seattle, It looks like they are going with Apple and Specialty dealers. That kit is a hell of a deal though, We can't come close to match it -_-"
I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about the whole Red system, but I do know lenses and I don't understand why Red is putting such an inferior lens with that body. There are so many vastly superior lenses out there. Nikon, Canon are so much better. Even some of the Sony lens are pretty good. You could even go crazy and look into Leica? But thats just nuts. Unless something has radically changed over the last few years, Nikon and Canon have always been fighting it out for the top position. Now maybe Nikon or Canon wouldn't license their particular mount? That might be the reason for using the Sigma? If the Sigma lens family is the only one usable, count me out. Any camera is only as good as its weakest component and in this case it's the lens.
Even uglier "in person" than in the preview stills. I think that thing is fugly. What're everyone's thoughts?
You need to think of it in terms of functionality. This isn't being made for glitter-case kids. As Marques Brownlee related what Jim Jannard said,"this can and will be the future of small form factor cinema".
I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about the whole Red system, but I do know lenses and I don't understand why Red is putting such an inferior lens with that body. There are so many vastly superior lenses out there. Nikon, Canon are so much better. Even some of the Sony lens are pretty good. You could even go crazy and look into Leica? But thats just nuts. Unless something has radically changed over the last few years, Nikon and Canon have always been fighting it out for the top position. Now maybe Nikon or Canon wouldn't license their particular mount? That might be the reason for using the Sigma? If the Sigma lens family is the only one usable, count me out. Any camera is only as good as its weakest component and in this case it's the lens.
Sigma makes some of the best lenses now with their Art series lenses. The 18-35mm f1.8 is a uniquely fast zoom great for video or stills. So is the 50-100 f1.8.
The Raven uses the Canon EF mount and there simply isn't any Canon, Nikon or Leica lens that matches the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 Art.
The recent Sigma Art 85mm f1.4 is rated as sharper than the legendary Zeiss Otus according to DxO who called it "one of the best performing 85mm full frame lenses we've ever seen".
"There’s no need to beat about the bush: the results are simply brilliant, no matter where you look. In the centre of the frame, already at the maximum relative aperture, you get a sensational value exceeding 42 lpmm. What’s more, the previous resolution record belonging to the Otus 1.4/28 the Sigma managed to beat at three next apertures, examined by us so f/2.0, f/2.8 and f/4.0. Officially the highest result – that of 49.7 ±0.4 lpmm - was reached by f/2.8 and it becomes our official new record for the sensor of the EOS 5D Mark III."
Regarding the "inferior" 18-35mm f1.8 Lenstip writes:
"What can be written in the summary of this chapter? Perhaps only this: never in our wildest dreams had we thought that the resolution results of this lens would be so sensational. We thought that a new construction, difficult to design, would be full of compromises, sometimes necessary to swallow if you want to own an f/1.8 zoom lens We are happy to announce we were wrong. When it comes to the resolution there are no compromises almost at all and the lens provides you images of great quality practically for every combination of focal lengths and apertures."
"What nobody quite anticipated, ourselves included, was that Sigma could conceivably deliver a lens with optics this good. The 18-35mm isn't just sharp for a fast zoom; in terms of outright image quality, it's a match for many fast primes, even when shot wide open. Obviously, the restricted zoom range will have helped, but even so this is a considerable achievement on Sigma's part. The lens can more-or-less replace a set of primes across its range with minimal compromise in image quality."
While there were some AF issues it doesn't apply to video use where the pros largely don't use AF and manually pull focus. The only better lens in this segment is the Sigma 18-35 Cine lens but that's $4K vs $800.
Instead of exposing your ignorance to the world why not just google for 30 seconds? Because you obviously don't "know lenses". At All. Sigma has been banging it out of the park since 2012 (35mm f1.4) with their Art series.
Even uglier "in person" than in the preview stills. I think that thing is fugly. What're everyone's thoughts?
You need to think of it in terms of functionality. This isn't being made for glitter-case kids. As Marques Brownlee related what Jim Jannard said,"this can and will be the future of small form factor cinema".
If it's for "cinema" why put it into a phone. I think other companies like black magic have a far more realistic grasp on making useful tools for indie film makers. Just because someone said it don't mean it's true.
Even uglier "in person" than in the preview stills. I think that thing is fugly. What're everyone's thoughts?
You need to think of it in terms of functionality. This isn't being made for glitter-case kids. As Marques Brownlee related what Jim Jannard said,"this can and will be the future of small form factor cinema".
If it's for "cinema" why put it into a phone. I think other companies like black magic have a far more realistic grasp on making useful tools for indie film makers. Just because someone said it don't mean it's true.
Meh...the BMPCC was a little big to "always have with you" unless you had the smallest pancake. A high end smartphone camera system is probably more in line with the objective.
Raven vs Ursa Mini 4.6K is probably personal preference. Below this price point you're in GH5 territory.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about the whole Red system, but I do know lenses and I don't understand why Red is putting such an inferior lens with that body. There are so many vastly superior lenses out there. Nikon, Canon are so much better. Even some of the Sony lens are pretty good. You could even go crazy and look into Leica? But thats just nuts. Unless something has radically changed over the last few years, Nikon and Canon have always been fighting it out for the top position. Now maybe Nikon or Canon wouldn't license their particular mount? That might be the reason for using the Sigma? If the Sigma lens family is the only one usable, count me out. Any camera is only as good as its weakest component and in this case it's the lens.
Some Sigma lenses, particularly those in the “Art” series are considered to be equal to the Canon and Nikon offerings, occasionally, even slightly better. A couple are thought be equal to the equivalent Zeiss Otus models. They now have announced a series of video lenses which look real good. They aren’t cheap. At about $4,000 per lens, but still below Canon’s.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about the whole Red system, but I do know lenses and I don't understand why Red is putting such an inferior lens with that body. There are so many vastly superior lenses out there. Nikon, Canon are so much better. Even some of the Sony lens are pretty good. You could even go crazy and look into Leica? But thats just nuts. Unless something has radically changed over the last few years, Nikon and Canon have always been fighting it out for the top position. Now maybe Nikon or Canon wouldn't license their particular mount? That might be the reason for using the Sigma? If the Sigma lens family is the only one usable, count me out. Any camera is only as good as its weakest component and in this case it's the lens.
Sigma makes some of the best lenses now with their Art series lenses. The 18-35mm f1.8 is a uniquely fast zoom great for video or stills. So is the 50-100 f1.8.
The Raven uses the Canon EF mount and there simply isn't any Canon, Nikon or Leica lens that matches the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 Art.
The recent Sigma Art 85mm f1.4 is rated as sharper than the legendary Zeiss Otus according to DxO who called it "one of the best performing 85mm full frame lenses we've ever seen".
"There’s no need to beat about the bush: the results are simply brilliant, no matter where you look. In the centre of the frame, already at the maximum relative aperture, you get a sensational value exceeding 42 lpmm. What’s more, the previous resolution record belonging to the Otus 1.4/28 the Sigma managed to beat at three next apertures, examined by us so f/2.0, f/2.8 and f/4.0. Officially the highest result – that of 49.7 ±0.4 lpmm - was reached by f/2.8 and it becomes our official new record for the sensor of the EOS 5D Mark III."
Regarding the "inferior" 18-35mm f1.8 Lenstip writes:
"What can be written in the summary of this chapter? Perhaps only this: never in our wildest dreams had we thought that the resolution results of this lens would be so sensational. We thought that a new construction, difficult to design, would be full of compromises, sometimes necessary to swallow if you want to own an f/1.8 zoom lens We are happy to announce we were wrong. When it comes to the resolution there are no compromises almost at all and the lens provides you images of great quality practically for every combination of focal lengths and apertures."
"What nobody quite anticipated, ourselves included, was that Sigma could conceivably deliver a lens with optics this good. The 18-35mm isn't just sharp for a fast zoom; in terms of outright image quality, it's a match for many fast primes, even when shot wide open. Obviously, the restricted zoom range will have helped, but even so this is a considerable achievement on Sigma's part. The lens can more-or-less replace a set of primes across its range with minimal compromise in image quality."
While there were some AF issues it doesn't apply to video use where the pros largely don't use AF and manually pull focus. The only better lens in this segment is the Sigma 18-35 Cine lens but that's $4K vs $800.
Instead of exposing your ignorance to the world why not just google for 30 seconds? Because you obviously don't "know lenses". At All. Sigma has been banging it out of the park since 2012 (35mm f1.4) with their Art series.
Ah, I didn’t get to your quite thorough post before I answered him. I completely agree. I’ve got a number of Canon L lenses, and a couple of Otus as well. I’m considering looking into some of the more recent Art lenses.
Even uglier "in person" than in the preview stills. I think that thing is fugly. What're everyone's thoughts?
You need to think of it in terms of functionality. This isn't being made for glitter-case kids. As Marques Brownlee related what Jim Jannard said,"this can and will be the future of small form factor cinema".
If it's for "cinema" why put it into a phone. I think other companies like black magic have a far more realistic grasp on making useful tools for indie film makers. Just because someone said it don't mean it's true.
Well, you know, $15,000 for this kit is pretty cheap if the IQ is there. Even most Indie filmmakers can drudge up the cash for this
I don't think the Red Raven camera is exclusive to Apple Stores.
It is exclusive to Apple for now. Dealers might be able to get one for you in the future... (Interesting exchange: "Why is Raven also not available in the RED store? I don't understand that. Jarred Land -Read the title of the post.. had to give , to get " - the title of the post is "Sometimes you need to Give to Get. ") They (Red) are barely catching up with the pre-orders that happened more than a year ago and now they are ready to ship from Apple - wow.
Jarred Land (CEO of Red) said that Apple was able to get this from Red because of the new Mac Pro - he kind of implied that he'd seen the plans for it or even a prototype and said that Apple is finally back on the Pro train. (Found it: "Apple
gets Raven only because of their new investment into their Mac pro
hardware program. That was the deal. Sometimes you gotta take one
for the team to push for a much bigger cause. I hope everyone can read
between those lines and congratulate apple for putting some skin back in
the game that so many assumed they just abandoned.")
That's really the most newsworthy part of the deal.
This implies one of two things. Either it's out of gratitude for Apple investing in a new Mac Pro or Apple is only investing in it because of this. The iMac Pro release along with the delayed MP suggests the latter. Maybe the profit they make on the camera units will be enough to cover manufacturing. It cost $100m to bring the Mac Pro manufacturing to the US. RED cameras must have a pretty hefty margin, maybe they will get as much as $5k profit from each sale. Around 10,000 sales could be enough to cover production. Apple can afford it no problem but they have long roadmaps that they know will obsolete a lot of these things anyway and they'd have to run the production at a loss at some point.
Jarred Land made a custom Mac Pro enclosure already, the blur makes it look smaller than it is but the RED Dragon is on the left for comparison:
"Nvidia just released Mac drivers for all of it's new cards and instantly the old 2010 twelve-core Mac Pro Tower becomes the fastest, best Mac that you can no longer buy.
There's nothing crazy about the setup, it's not like there's 4 GPUs hanging off it. The cylinder MP supports 128GB RAM and already has USB 3, has 7TFLOP GPU vs 11TFLOP (iMac Pro is getting an 11TFLOP GPU). It's about getting NVidia GPUs (and just a 1080ti at that, not pro cards), internal RAID and his own proprietary RED decoder, which you can get over Thunderbolt:
RED just needs systems that allow them to work with their own footage. AMD was at an event last week and Jarred Land was there talking about upcoming solutions around 1:00:00:
Their Radeon Pro SSG card ($7k) with 2TB SSD processes 8K RED footage in real-time and they worked with RED to get their proprietary codecs to perform well. The RED Rocket cards are GPUs like AMD's/NVidia's with special functions for media decoding. AMD was showing up NVidia there comparing AMD's $2k GPU with NVidia's $7k GPU at 1:12:00 with their new memory caching. RED Rocket is a $7k GPU that only does media decoding.
These companies all want expansion partly because they all have really expensive products to sell people. There are much cheaper ways to achieve the desired outcome. AMD can build the same RED custom decoding into high-end AMD GPUs to save people buying a RED Rocket decoder and it'll do it more efficiently and machines with dual GPUs will get two decoders. They can sell expensive options with 64GB of video memory if memory is an issue and/or build some out-of-core memory system to shuffle it to system memory or stream it from fast on-board memory and/or some real-time run-length encoding.
If a computer manufacturer built a machine designed for this purpose alone, it would be much cheaper than a system buying separate parts from 3 high margin manufacturers. Jarred Land says that GPU advances will likely obsolete his custom card:
"As for the RocketX and Helium.. as you know we have been focusing our efforts on GPU decode for the last while. So yes Rocket-X plus a good GPU is gonna get you around 24fps Full 8K on Helium. But you can also get close to that full 8K 24fps with a new Titan-X GPU and Intel's largest core Xeon in a dual cpu box without the Rocket-X.
I love you Rocket-X but in a year or two I think we should be at the point where GPU + CPU puts you out to pasture. Nvidia is just dominating right now and their GPU's are advancing so quickly it's the horse I would bet on."
That was before he saw the Radeon SSG demo. In 2019, the iMac Pro will be able to get a 22TFLOP GPU. You can plug a 60TB SSD in over Thunderbolt and you'll be able to edit 8K on it no problem, maybe even this year's model. As time goes on, more of the higher-end use cases will be satisfied by lower-end hardware and this makes it cheaper and more accessible for everyone. It's good that Jarred cared enough about it to do a deal like this instead of migrating to a PC solution. It will be interesting to see what the result looks like, the above box doesn't look a million miles away from the cylinder.
An upgrade program would keep the units selling too e.g $1k up-front plus $99/month and upgrade any time in 2 years, then Apple sells the old ones for half or offers them on a lower tier. That would keep the GPUs being refreshed.
Comments
"Reuben We just got a bunch of them at Glazers Camera in Seattle, It looks like they are going with Apple and Specialty dealers. That kit is a hell of a deal though, We can't come close to match it -_-"
The Raven uses the Canon EF mount and there simply isn't any Canon, Nikon or Leica lens that matches the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 Art.
The recent Sigma Art 85mm f1.4 is rated as sharper than the legendary Zeiss Otus according to DxO who called it "one of the best performing 85mm full frame lenses we've ever seen".
https://www.dxomark.com/Reviews/Sigma-85mm-F1.4-Art-lens-review-New-benchmark
Lenstip states:
"There’s no need to beat about the bush: the results are simply brilliant, no matter where you look. In the centre of the frame, already at the maximum relative aperture, you get a sensational value exceeding 42 lpmm. What’s more, the previous resolution record belonging to the Otus 1.4/28 the Sigma managed to beat at three next apertures, examined by us so f/2.0, f/2.8 and f/4.0. Officially the highest result – that of 49.7 ±0.4 lpmm - was reached by f/2.8 and it becomes our official new record for the sensor of the EOS 5D Mark III."
Regarding the "inferior" 18-35mm f1.8 Lenstip writes:
"What can be written in the summary of this chapter? Perhaps only this: never in our wildest dreams had we thought that the resolution results of this lens would be so sensational. We thought that a new construction, difficult to design, would be full of compromises, sometimes necessary to swallow if you want to own an f/1.8 zoom lens We are happy to announce we were wrong. When it comes to the resolution there are no compromises almost at all and the lens provides you images of great quality practically for every combination of focal lengths and apertures."
http://www.lenstip.com/374.4-Lens_review-Sigma_A_18-35_mm_f_1.8_DC_HSM__Image_resolution.html
DPR wrote:
"What nobody quite anticipated, ourselves included, was that Sigma could conceivably deliver a lens with optics this good. The 18-35mm isn't just sharp for a fast zoom; in terms of outright image quality, it's a match for many fast primes, even when shot wide open. Obviously, the restricted zoom range will have helped, but even so this is a considerable achievement on Sigma's part. The lens can more-or-less replace a set of primes across its range with minimal compromise in image quality."
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigma-18-35-1-8/6
While there were some AF issues it doesn't apply to video use where the pros largely don't use AF and manually pull focus. The only better lens in this segment is the Sigma 18-35 Cine lens but that's $4K vs $800.
Instead of exposing your ignorance to the world why not just google for 30 seconds? Because you obviously don't "know lenses". At All. Sigma has been banging it out of the park since 2012 (35mm f1.4) with their Art series.
Raven vs Ursa Mini 4.6K is probably personal preference. Below this price point you're in GH5 territory.
Ah, I didn’t get to your quite thorough post before I answered him. I completely agree. I’ve got a number of Canon L lenses, and a couple of Otus as well. I’m considering looking into some of the more recent Art lenses.
Well, you know, $15,000 for this kit is pretty cheap if the IQ is there. Even most Indie filmmakers can drudge up the cash for this
This implies one of two things. Either it's out of gratitude for Apple investing in a new Mac Pro or Apple is only investing in it because of this. The iMac Pro release along with the delayed MP suggests the latter. Maybe the profit they make on the camera units will be enough to cover manufacturing. It cost $100m to bring the Mac Pro manufacturing to the US. RED cameras must have a pretty hefty margin, maybe they will get as much as $5k profit from each sale. Around 10,000 sales could be enough to cover production. Apple can afford it no problem but they have long roadmaps that they know will obsolete a lot of these things anyway and they'd have to run the production at a loss at some point.
Jarred Land made a custom Mac Pro enclosure already, the blur makes it look smaller than it is but the RED Dragon is on the left for comparison:
https://www.cultofmac.com/267445/creator-red-camera-redesigns-mac-pro-looks-awesome/
Inside that he put a cylinder MP plus a Redmag card reader on the front it seems and an 8TB RAID. Recently he posted about the older MP here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154583868090415
http://www.doddlenews.com/news-room/reds-land-says-nvidia-driver-update-makes-older-mac-pros-fast-again/
"Nvidia just released Mac drivers for all of it's new cards and instantly the old 2010 twelve-core Mac Pro Tower becomes the fastest, best Mac that you can no longer buy.
Nvidia GTX 1080-Ti. Internal Red Rocket-X. Startech Internal USB-C 3.1 card. 40TB internal Raid. 128gb ram"
There's nothing crazy about the setup, it's not like there's 4 GPUs hanging off it. The cylinder MP supports 128GB RAM and already has USB 3, has 7TFLOP GPU vs 11TFLOP (iMac Pro is getting an 11TFLOP GPU). It's about getting NVidia GPUs (and just a 1080ti at that, not pro cards), internal RAID and his own proprietary RED decoder, which you can get over Thunderbolt:
http://www.maxxdigital.com/mobile-thunderbolt-redrocket.html
SSDs allow bulk storage internally, there's a 60TB one here so you don't need a RAID any more:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/worlds-largest-ssd-revealed-as-seagate-unveils-60tb-monster/
RED just needs systems that allow them to work with their own footage. AMD was at an event last week and Jarred Land was there talking about upcoming solutions around 1:00:00:
Their Radeon Pro SSG card ($7k) with 2TB SSD processes 8K RED footage in real-time and they worked with RED to get their proprietary codecs to perform well. The RED Rocket cards are GPUs like AMD's/NVidia's with special functions for media decoding. AMD was showing up NVidia there comparing AMD's $2k GPU with NVidia's $7k GPU at 1:12:00 with their new memory caching. RED Rocket is a $7k GPU that only does media decoding.
These companies all want expansion partly because they all have really expensive products to sell people. There are much cheaper ways to achieve the desired outcome. AMD can build the same RED custom decoding into high-end AMD GPUs to save people buying a RED Rocket decoder and it'll do it more efficiently and machines with dual GPUs will get two decoders. They can sell expensive options with 64GB of video memory if memory is an issue and/or build some out-of-core memory system to shuffle it to system memory or stream it from fast on-board memory and/or some real-time run-length encoding.
If a computer manufacturer built a machine designed for this purpose alone, it would be much cheaper than a system buying separate parts from 3 high margin manufacturers. Jarred Land says that GPU advances will likely obsolete his custom card:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?147028-The-Update-Thread&p=1653504&viewfull=1#post1653504
"As for the RocketX and Helium.. as you know we have been focusing our efforts on GPU decode for the last while. So yes Rocket-X plus a good GPU is gonna get you around 24fps Full 8K on Helium. But you can also get close to that full 8K 24fps with a new Titan-X GPU and Intel's largest core Xeon in a dual cpu box without the Rocket-X.
I love you Rocket-X but in a year or two I think we should be at the point where GPU + CPU puts you out to pasture. Nvidia is just dominating right now and their GPU's are advancing so quickly it's the horse I would bet on."That was before he saw the Radeon SSG demo. In 2019, the iMac Pro will be able to get a 22TFLOP GPU. You can plug a 60TB SSD in over Thunderbolt and you'll be able to edit 8K on it no problem, maybe even this year's model. As time goes on, more of the higher-end use cases will be satisfied by lower-end hardware and this makes it cheaper and more accessible for everyone. It's good that Jarred cared enough about it to do a deal like this instead of migrating to a PC solution. It will be interesting to see what the result looks like, the above box doesn't look a million miles away from the cylinder.
An upgrade program would keep the units selling too e.g $1k up-front plus $99/month and upgrade any time in 2 years, then Apple sells the old ones for half or offers them on a lower tier. That would keep the GPUs being refreshed.