Killer DSLR or DSLR Killer

There are a few good things that happen in November that are noted on my calender. The obvious one being Bonfire night…but 20 days on and you hit my birthday, followed very closely by one of my younger brothers’ birthdays as well.

But this year, anyone interested in film making should have the 3rd of November stamped firmly into their diaries…Why? Well many of you are familiar with the huge DSLR boom in film making and mainly the contribution of Canon with their ‘game-changing’ (a phrase that is used far too much these days) 7d and the revolutionary full frame 5D.

 

While Canon has some how become a beacon for the Indy film makers and accidentally fallen into the market of film making, they never fully intended to create a DSLR that would be used to make films. So it was some-what of a shock to find the ‘stills camera’ being adopted and used in this way. Naturally filmmakers like the beautiful image the full frame sensor creates, the array of accessible glass, the weight & size and more importantly the price… and all this at 1080p…it is understandable why the DSLR revolution was embraced by the low budget film maker, TV Commercials, TV series and music video industry alike.

The only problem with the DLSRs is that they were never really intended to be film cameras and so to use one correctly, you needed to have a host of add-ons and attachments in order to make it more like a traditional film camera.

So it has been greatly anticipated that now Canon have cottoned-on to what people want (and discovered this new market), they will make their next generation DSLR with the film maker in mind. So for the past few years, there has been great speculation about what this camera will be able to do and what it won’t…will it still have the rolling shutter or will it be a new mirrorless camera? There has been even more speculation about what it will be called…the Canon 8D or the Canon 5D mark3!

Well it seems like the wait is finally over. Canon have said that they have a very significant global announcement to make on November the 3rd http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=8026 So could this be the unveiling of their new camera? The forums are a blaze with speculation and now it is just 2 weeks till we all find out

So that is that…or is it?

 

Well as if that wasn’t a big enough announcement to make on that day, it seems that RED digital cinema also have an announcement of their own to make on the 3rd of November…is it a coincidence that two of the big power-houses are making announcements to the industry on the same day or is there a fierce marketing strategy going on here? Who knows…but what I do know is that it will be a day to keep watching and see what these two great heavy weights have to say because the only winner here will be the filmmakers.

Many are speculating that RED will be announcing the release of the RED Scarlet which is the little brother of the RED Epic.

It has a slightly smaller 3k chip but still boasts some very impressive statistics. This would certainly be a camera that would be competing with the DSLR market and probably hoping to coax the Indy market to take a step up in quality from the DSLRs and it will have a very aggressive price point to match…but is that really all that RED are going to announce?

This camera has been announced for quite some time and to simply announce that the camera is ready to ship is hardly breaking news. RED have a tradition of breaking the mould and being way ahead of the competition so I would suspect that when they make an announcement it is worth sitting up and taking note as they will probably blow us all away with what is to come.

So on the 3rd of November we could be seeing Canon’s new killer DSLR and then right after that we might witness the release of the ultimate DSLR killer, either way it will be worth watching this battle…Remember the 3rd of November…and then the 25th for my birthday!