Nikon to acquire RED and make it a subsidiary

[sanj]

Amazing news. Who would have expected this?? I feel that this will be good for Nikon.

 

[jam05]

It's okay. I still wuv you. On another note, this likely came out of the RED-Nikon patent lawsuit and was not something that happened organically or with great thought and effort on RED's part. Both Jim and Jarred LOVE Canon and have a personal history with their products, so I suspect they would have loved to have sold out to them, but the two companies never sat down and talked about anything as far as I know.

Well it appears you may not know everything.

 

[jam05]

I had thought RED and Canon had some arrangement where RED gets to use Canon’s mount and protocols while Canon gets to use their in-camera raw compression. I wonder what this will mean for Canon’s arrangement with RED. This seems like a pretty big shake up.

Maybe your assumtions were incorrect.

 

[jam05]

The biggest news is that Canon will likely lose RAW video capture capabilities.

I guess it means that
1) Nikon has license to the RF mount.
2) RED will switch to the Z mount ASAP.
3) Canon is going to sell fewer RF lenses.

Absurd

 

[jam05]

The biggest news is that Canon will likely lose RAW video capture capabilities.

Fake news. And most likely not. As if RED is the only RAW video capture technology on the planet.

 

[jam05]

Now all the cinema "know it alls" will come out from beneath the rocks and weigh in with their assumptions, speculations, and false information.

 

[John Wilde]

It's time for Canon to hire away key employees from RED.

 

[Brikna]

Switching from Canon to Nikon or Sony is often mentioned and is a frequent topic and threat on this forum, but this is shocking - the entire RED company has switched from Canon to Nikon!!!

Canon is doom... Canon je osuđen na propast!

 

[landon]

Good for Canon video users. Canon don't need to hold back on their cheap cine camera any more. Release your box camera, cheaper cine to complete with Komodo and Fx30.

 

[landon]

Yellow and Red, are they Orange now?

 

[Anon]

Now all the cinema "know it alls" will come out from beneath the rocks and weigh in with their assumptions, speculations, and false information.

Of course. It is a rumors forum after all. Where else would we share assumptions, speculations and false information if not here?

 

[landon]

I can see Canon users offloading their Komodos on the used market. Nikon users can get them for cheap

 

[3kramd5]

Makes me wonder . . . will Nikon go to RED sensors / global shutters in the stills arena and get themselves out from under the Sony limitations?

Why wouldn't they?

Cost, maybe. Whomever manufactures the sensors in RED's cameras (some say Forza) doesn't do it at nearly the scale of Sony Semiconductors.

 

[LookingThroughMyLens81]

RED doesn't really do sensors like people think they do. All of their so-called sensor tech is from third-parties in the semiconductor industry who hold their own R&D, while RED puts together the imaging software and camera designs behind the sensors and takes all the credit for the final product. RED cherry-picks the sensor designs and features they want to shoot for in a sellable product and their in-house techs try to make it work in a camera body that uses off-the-shelf computing hardware and their own secret sauce image processing software and codecs, which is why their cameras ended up being so inexpensive and took the market by storm, as they were not using the same rulebook or methods as the big names. The RED branding and design mystique was exposed some years back, when they got into a pile of lawsuits with a bunch of companies (ARRI, Apple, Nikon, etc.) and a guy who was making unauthorized RED accessories - mostly media - that outperformed what they were forcing customers to use, which led to a later program of authorized accessories that RED owners now enjoy. This acquisition is all about getting RED's video codec and image processing patents, along with some cross-licensing stuff that enables Nikon to move forward into the video marketplace.

 

[Navism]

Good for Canon video users. Canon don't need to hold back on their cheap cine camera any more. Release your box camera, cheaper cine to complete with Komodo and Fx30.

I think Canon has some sensor issue for cinema lineup. They released R5C in 2022 Jan. Then they have not released any cinema cameras.

 

[jaygould]

I’ll admit I don’t really know the professional cinema camera market, but I’ve heard of RED, and I’m familiar with Nikon. From what little I do know about both companies, this sounds like a deal that could benefit Nikon, but it’s less clear to me how it will benefit RED.

The shareholders get rich.

 

[Dragon]

Product intrigue aside, I think this a wait and see what happens situation. The track record of Japanese companies buying American companies is not all that great. I had good visibility of Sony's adventures into the American business market for many years, and their biggest successes were with service companies. Product related acquisitions seldom went anywhere.

There is also the business model of the film industry to consider. Filmmakers seldom actually buy equipment, but rather rent it for the duration of a production with Panavision being the the big dog in the rental business for that market. Clearly, more and more content is being made outside of Hollywood, but if a production is venture based, the business model may well be similar, with the exception that places like Lens Rentals may pick up a bigger share of the business than they would with a Hollywood centric model.

The bottom line is that broadcasters buy equipment but for the most part, movie companies do not, so Red's business model is likely selling the majority of their products to a relatively few rental companies. How that squares with Nikon's business model remains to be seen.

 

[Mistral75]

It will be interesting to see if and how the graft will take hold, between a rather bureaucratic and conservative Japanese multinational on the one hand and a Californian quasi-sect on the other, with:

• its guru, Jim Jannard, soon to be 75, founder, majority shareholder and former chairman & CEO, who has been gradually retiring since 2013, mainly for health reasons, but is still chairman of the board,
• its deputy guru, Jarred Land, 48, CTO then CEO and finally President & CEO since Jannard's gradual retirement, and
• its disciples, not only RED's 220 employees, but also its thousands of users/followers.

 

[neuroanatomist]

It will be interesting to see if and how the graft will take hold, between a rather bureaucratic and conservative Japanese multinational on the one hand and a Californian quasi-sect on the other, with:

• its guru, Jim Jannard, soon to be 75, founder, majority shareholder and former chairman & CEO, who has been gradually retiring since 2013, mainly for health reasons, but is still chairman of the board,
• its deputy guru, Jarred Land, 48, CTO then CEO and finally President & CEO since Jannard's gradual retirement, and
• its disciples, not only RED's 220 employees, but also its thousands of users/followers.

First, they all have to figure out if it's pronounced N-eye-kon or N-eee-kon.

 

[davidhfe]

While recent RED cameras can produce world-class results, the amount of operational management required to achieve such output is significant. In comparison, cameras like the FX3 or R5C are considerably easier to manage.

Seems like this would be a good fit then—Nikon's ergonomics and general operational approach seems second to none