This is a very expensive system to outright purchase.  It looks like you hire an outside shooter with the equipment and just direct.  Is that the case?

 Hi SJ,

 Yes not so much because of the price although it is pricey but we joined with a motion group called Royal Galactic because they can run the stuff and racking focus well is a real skill that I don't have. It is fun to stand back and direct over the camera and since we don't need sound I can holler all day at the cast and help direct action while we are shooting. I am most interested to see how the stills are received by Getty and the rest. We did a split with the crew on returns as we both learn each others skills. Seems to be a win-win situation and we were really lucky to find a team that knows what they are dong and the best part was we all fit like a family from the first shoot. That was just dumb luck.
  I will keep you posted on the results from the stills. The Scarlet coming out this month has a much larger selection of sensors so we will be able to make 50 mg tiffs in vertical at that point. Just can't get the operators to turn that expensive toy on it's side with the Red One : ) The Scarlet will also be priced much lower depending on the sensor size you purchase. They have a sensor for the Scarlet that is the size of a 645 and even bigger they have the 16:9 sensor HUGE but the price is high.
 Toughest part for me is seeing everything in horizontal and not being able to shoot the verticals yet.

Best,
Jonathan

And I thought that shooting microstock with Hasselblad was like trying to kill fly with a cannon ;-)

thanks for sharing.  Things certainly are going to change and merge in the next years.

double post sorry.

The still captures are from the same camera the Red One, so there is no changing cameras or lighting we pull the still frame from the motion clips in post. We pull the Tiffs from the Red One, that is what is designed for.
 If I want to shoot with my Mark 3 for the stills the lighting is controlled through my ISO settings and shutter speeds so I can use the aperture I want for the shot. We are shooting with continuos light  (Kino's ) so I am not quite sure what you mean by having to re-light.

That's what I mean if you were to use a normal camera you'd have to adjust the ISO to gather enough light to use the amount of light you'd use for video, so how does this red one capture enough light for a still shot using the same lighting that you are using for video?
Also if you're pulling the stills from the motion footage does it mean that each frame is 12mp in size, at 30fps that must use a lot of memory.
I had a look at the Red site and it doesn't mention much about the stills side of the camera.

I'm kind of curious to hear what returns you are getting from these shoots.

As a professional I assume you are doing shoots like this one on a daily basis to pump out lots of fantastic material.

Since you mentioned that the royalties will be split amongst the team it's still a cut off a 20% commission from Getty.

Like I said I'd love to hear more about you're future plans on where to submit this material and in what quantities.

Obviously we microstockers look a little lost, watching a team like yours pulling off such a shoot.

Thanks for posting. Very interesting material. Keep up the good work.

I believe you're prepared for success the way you talk about your plan. And I think you and your team will make it.

First and foremost I envy anyone who moves ahead taking a risk (which can be minimized by knowing what you're doing) financially to get your own library to a substantial size. I 'm super hesitant with re-investment as my cashflow just keeps me in the plus every month. With such a huge step forward in professional equipment I wouldn't be sure how and when I will break even again. But I guess different people have different approaches to that feeling and just either go ahead or get scared like me.

The numbers you mentioned on a monthly basis I'd say sound solid and the revenue stream should be leveling at a "regular" level within six months to a year. The internet distribution of imagery and video can work so fast especially since footage got a big kick in the last couple of years that I believe a lot of buyers are already rubbing their hands for your type of content. I can't see why they would wait two full years until you see the reward for your efforts.

Shooting on a Red system is a dream for me. Maybe one day...

Thanks for the suggestions Jonathan.

I'm also playing around with footage and needless to say in micro I do see quick returns. However, for macro you do need more than just a good camera even if you rent it. Paying models and locations put you on a tight spot so I gotta hang in there until I can go there. Don't have the experience either so I have a lot to learn.

Hopefully stock in any form will still be there in 10 years...

Hi Rt,

 With high end video you are almost always using some level of neutral density filter in front of the lens to keep at a wider f stop for that motion picture feel, we shoot a lot at f1.4 on video that's why the focus racking is such a skill to stay sharp with a moving subject at F1.4 that let's the foreground and background fall off. The problem with most stock footage that is shot on lower end systems is everything stays in focus not much control of depth of field, although there are some new inventions that are changing that problem for middle range video as well ( $10,000 dollar cameras can now offer a much shorter depth than they used to be able to due to new products available ). Besides the Red One as any high end motion camera loves lots of light not low light at all. Although it will handle low light, the more the better. Then controlled with neutral density. The higher up the histogram we can keep it the better the color range and detail then re-adjust in post. Just like still raw files they also show more noise in the blacks if you under expose the original as apposed to shooting it brighter then reducing the brightness in your Raw processor in post you get a lower quality finished product.
  I am throwing 3000 watts of daylight onto our sets for video so when and if I shoot with my Mark 3 there is plenty of light. The raw software is very similar to using the raw software in PS just not quite as many sliders. Nothing for chromatic aberration yet so you do have to spend a bit more time on lighting for the motion once that is done I can step in and shoot stills with less post production than my sloppy stills lighting approach of old. Can't fix frames if there is something not right in the capture like a logo without doing it to a thousand frames, no retouching for stock to expensive on the back end.
 Yes they are 12+ mg frames each and it does eat memory but it is designed for just that and comes with the storage to handle the workflow. We shot for 10 hours one day last week and it had no trouble ever keeping up. Never had a down time that cost us a shot. The Scarlet I believe will take several SD cards and you can get 320 gig SD cards now so you can shoot for a long time. Remember each clip is only 10-30 seconds in length so to get 50 clips out of a day is not using as much space as you would think.
I hope that helps make things clearer.

Best,
Jonathan

 

Hi Jonathan,

I asked a pro video cameraman my question, in short he explained that video requires less lighting because the depth of field required for high quality video is less than high quality stills and for high quality video they actually try to get less dof and use selective focusing , he was aware of the Red One although it's still being viewed as a gimmick in the pro video world albeit an interesting one.
Although he's never seen a still from this camera he did wonder how much dof the stills could produce and what the quality is like, he also suggested that at the low level of lighting required for the video they'd probably be a considerable amount of blur in any still image.
Apparently the biggest complaint from still photographers on film sets is that there's not enough light and that they have to increase the ISO to get the aperture they need!

So can I ask what are the stills from the Red One like if you have no control over the dof because you're having to use the same lighting for the video.

Hi Jonathan,

I appreciate you're not a cameraman and neither am I which is why I asked a pro about it, my interest lies in your initial posting and the fact you mentioned you've taken stills from it.

Still photography is a whole world away from motion and still photography and is something I do know a lot about, the still shots you've produced are as I've now discovered just frames from the footage, what my friend told me is evident in your shots even at the small size you've posted, they contain a lot of blur and shallow depth of field, and that is what I referred to when I said it was a gimmick, all the top dslr's shoot HD video and the quality is fine for certain usages but I very much doubt they'll be shooting the next hollywood blockbuster using one, the same applies for this Red One it might be a good video camera but the stills side is still in it's infancy and as it stands is just a 'gimmick'.

Getty and Corbis are only interested in the same way I am, and that is because it's technology which whilst still in the early stages is something I'm sure they'll keep their eye on. Still photography is all about quality both in terms of lighting and composition, you might be able to get a shot that looks well lit using the same lighting as you do for video, however if that still has a very shallow depth of field and motion blur on shots that aren't intended to have motion blur then it's usability as a still is not as good as video in which things are meant to be moving!

Try not to confuse the amount of light you can see with what is required for still photography, but yes I have been large film sets and they're all well lit, but try and remember what the eye can see is not the same as what a stills camera requires especially when you take into account depth of field and shutter speeds.

Don't get me wrong the Red One I'm sure is a fantastic motion camera, and yes people in that industry are using it with great results, but it's the stills side I'm interested in and in that respect at the moment it doesn't 'cut the mustard'. My friend is one of the biggest advertising shooters in the industry certainly in Europe anyway, he doesn't use a Red One because as he pointed out if they need stills they get a stills photographer.

I have a vision that in the future we'll all be using one camera for both stills and video that produces either stills or footage at a quality level suitable for whatever industry you're in, Red One obviously have the same vision and hopefully they'll get there.

As a side note my friend mentioned that a lot of the top companies are using more and more stock footage these days which are edited into commissioned shoots to save on costs, maybe we should all learn to shoot footage.

Good luck in your experiment.