Nikon, RED, Black Magic

No pretty pictures here as I don’t own any of the above (well strictly that’s not true I have an ancient Nikon film camera) but as I start to contemplate new tech I find myself faced with a conundrum. Aside from the obvious and somewhat glaring issue of how I’m supposed to actually financially acquire any of this new tech there is the elephant in the room that is Nikon’s acquisition of RED.

RED have always been somewhat of the naughty boy in the class, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and with a cavalier attitude to the corporate, suit like mentality of some of the other camera manufacturers such as Canon and obviously Nikon. RED offered their camera systems with an EF or RF mount and that seemed to be the go to for most Natural History documentaries as far as I can tell looking on YouTube. BUT now it’s unlikely that Nikon will offer an RF mount and certainly not an EF mount on any new gear they make, so this begs the obvious question of what now?

Of course Nikon will push their Z mount and this could be interesting as new glass will be made to cover cinematic work, but at what price? For sure if you are a production company you can weather the added expense (maybe) but as an indie…. no frickin’ way. Even Nikon stills glass is actually, for the most part, more expensive than the White stuff, which brings us to Black Magic. They offer a cheaper alternative to RED but they face the rolling shutter issue which could be problematic with fast paced wildlife action pans.

Living here in New Zealand or should I say this part of New Zealand, there doesn’t seem to be much scope to rent these various cameras to put them through their paces. I would dearly love to pitch one of the RED cameras against the Pyxis camera to see what issues might occur, but I can’t see that happening easily at this point.