(pop music)
- As some of you know, I'm in Santa Cruz right now,
I'm still here,
super cool place, really nice little town.
I've never been to Santa Cruz before,
but we've been hanging out with One Wheel guys,
reppin' One Wheel here.
I've gotten a lot of hats from different companies
and this is the first hat that I've actually worn.
It's kind of my style.
Anyways, this place is really cool,
but I want you guys to meet someone even cooler.
(dramatic instrumental intro)
- What's up, I'm secret agent. (laughing)
or just, I do the camera, I shoot video
and stuff with camera.
- [Host] Yeah, who are you, what do you do?
- I'm Potato Jet, on YouTube,
but I'm also a cinematographer, DP.
- [Host] What's your actual name?
Your name is not Potato Jet.
- I can't, I'm a secret agent.
I can't tell you guys that. (both laughing)
No, Jean Nagada is my name.
Yes. - Alright.
- I'm really camera shy, I don't know, what am I?
- That does not show in your videos at all.
At all.
- Matt, counting on you to cut out
all the bad parts.
Make me look really cool.
- [Host] Matt's pretty good at the after effects, so.
- Yeah, make me look like Lou Ferrigno,
just holding this camera, cool?
Counting on you.
- [Host] Alright that's a great Segway.
So I thought we would talk about
why you ended up going with this,
this is like a $30,000 package, right?
Around there?
- Yeah, right around there.
Once you get it set up, like,
when you get the brain, you know,
you can get him from, you know, this one,
I think was about $12,500,
but you can go all the way up to $60,000.
But to get it operational, you have to,
get a lot more parts.
This is the RED SCARLET Weapon, or RED SCARLET-W.
It has the 5k dragon sensor,
and this is one of the lower end ones,
because I'm cheap, and it was just like right at the spot
where I thought it would do the job I needed to do,
but wasn't $85,000.
'Cause REDs can get up there, very fast.
- So I did this like two years ago,
where I researched all the cameras
and I tried to figure out what camera is best for me,
so I thought we would talk about why you ended up
with the RED, because I ended up with the Canon C300,
mark II, from the projects that I was shooting.
So I want to hear why you ended up with the RED,
and why maybe you should or shouldn't buy a RED. (laughs)
- Yeah, that is definitely a thing.
- Let's talk about kind of the pros and cons
of owning a RED.
(groan)
Um, so what the heck were you thinking
buying a $30,000 camera setup?
- Ooh, good question.
My business partner and I have a production company
in Los Angeles and we do a lot of projects
where we rent the cameras out,
well we rent the cameras from a rental house,
and we use it for projects we have.
And we were getting to the point where
the jobs were getting so consistent,
that we were spending so much money on renting the gear
and the RED just kind of made sense.
It was, they released this SCARLET-W version,
which wasn't like outrageously expensive,
but kind of gave us the dragon sensor that we wanted
and the look that it produces,
so we did the math on it and we calculated
that as long as everything kind of continues to flow
the way it was going, that within a few years,
it would basically pay itself off,
and then I'd have a free RED camera
to shoot YouTube videos with. (both laughing)
- So the first reason is because it made business sense
and you were actually gonna make more money,
essentially, by getting a free camera,
after a few years of renting it out,
instead of just always renting from somebody else
and then you got no camera at the end of that, right?
- Right, yeah, exactly.
Like, you know, - Business sense.
- It should make financial sense for you to do it.
You don't wanna just jump into it,
and hope it's gonna work out out,
and hope it's gonna make you
into Steven Spielberg. - Do the numbers.
Do the numbers.
But essentially how this works is, like,
you would get a day rate, or a package rate,
for shooting, you know, a documentary, commercial,
whatever, and then you could charge more
for your camera for bringing that camera
onto the production, because
otherwise they would have to rent
so they just, instead of renting it from somewhere,
they essentially rent it from you for the production.
Business.
(muffled conversation)
(smooth instrumental interlude)
That was the most epic intro for anybody, I think.
(Jean laughs) That was awesome.
So one of the things that I at least thought about
when I was considering what camera to get,
and I was thinking about maybe getting a RED,
was the fact that you can kind of future-proof yourself
with REDs, because you can buy all like the peripheral stuff
and then you can swap the brains out later.
Kind of sounds weird, but can swap the body of the camera,
the sensor and everything, later on,
kind of upgrade it, so,
so you end up spending a lot of money
on the different modules in the beginning,
but then you can swap the brain out,
and I think they, do they even give you any kind of deals?
When you? - Yeah.
- Like discounts on the brains or whatever?
Was that a big thing for you, swapping brains
for future proofing, or?
- Yeah, definitely, there is a lot of advantage
to being able to swap out certain parts.
So like I said, when you buy a RED camera, you buy,
most people look at the brain,
but in addition to that brain,
that's still just a smaller portion of the price.
You have to add the back to it, to attach
whatever batteries you want,
if you want HDMI, SDI, signals out of it,
and then of course what kind of lenses you want on there,
and then a cage system,
so you can put on different monitors,
all that stuff is interchangeable with any DSMC2 RED camera
so that's pretty cool,
'cause RED puts out a new brain like every two weeks,
so it is nice being able to just switch 'em out,
when the time comes, and they do always have
these upgrade packages.
So if you do have, like, let's say a SCARLET-W,
which is kind of their smaller brain,
you can always, they'll make it a little bit easier
on you to upgrade to their epics, or their other cameras.
- So RED kind of allows you to future-proof yourself.
It still costs a lot of money to swap the brains,
but for example, for my C300, I can't,
I can't swap the sensors,
I'd have to buy a whole new camera
if I want to upgrade it, so.
So that's one of the benefits of having a RED.
Another thing RED does pretty well is their slow motion.
Was that a big factor for you, or?
- Yeah, I mean these brains are really powerful,
which it's essentially like a small super-computer in here,
so it has the ability to process slow motion pretty well.
So this does crank up,
you can still shoot in raw,
you choose your compression and then your frame size
and frame rate, but there is one big downside
which I didn't even know about
until I started shooting with these,
is when you go to a high frame rate,
a lot of times you have to bring your frame size smaller
and every time you do that,
the frame crops in, so it becomes like,
you start having a crop sensor, so,
for example if you wanted to crank this up
to a high frame rate, all of a sudden,
you're 25 millimeter lens is all of a sudden like a 50 mm.
- So you can get a lot of really good slow motion
on the REDs, but then there is that annoying factor
of it changes the crop every time you change the frame rate
so that's a little bit annoying,
something to keep in mind, you do get a lot of,
lot of, you know, options with the slow-mo,
but a little downside there.
How 'bout, how 'bout dynamic range,
was that, was that a big thing for you?
- Yeah, RED has also a lot of dynamic range
in the sensor, which is great,
meaning that you can record, all this bright sun
coming into the frame and yet,
even if my face is dark and shadowy,
- [Host] Like it is now. - yes.
Like it still evens that out,
so you get that latitude, I mean ideally,
you get good lighting, but sometimes,
you can't find that good lighting,
so you work with what you got,
- [Host] For example right here, it's,
- Exactly.
- [Host] It's all blown up around your face,
- This peasant Canon. - But then your face is,
(both laughing)
Yeah. - I'm just kidding.
I love Canons, okay? (laughing)
Please don't hate me.
- [Host] This camera has way more dynamic range
than this one right here,
and that's gonna make it a lot more cinematic.
(man yelling in distance)
Don't die, don't die.
- This is how Matti likes to work, you know,
everyone's calm,
just like waves crashing - In the danger zone
Okay watch, watch - I'm like,
run for your, - I just stepped in a puddle.
- Oh no!
You got it really wet.
- Aw.
This foot is completely soaked now.
Well, at least it got washed.
That's a bonus, I guess.
One of the reasons, for me at least,
when I was starting to look at these more expensive cameras
is that when you go on a legit commercial shoot
or something, you don't really want to show up
with a DSLR, because you can't build it out,
you can't put in a lot of like XLR mics,
or anything like that, you want to show up on set
with a legit video camera, not a photo camera
that does video also.
What are your thoughts on this, Jean?
- Yeah, exactly.
A DSLR, they're great cameras,
but they were designed for photography,
and they were kind of converted over to video,
and video requires a lot of hands.
Like usually you want somebody manually operating
the focus, and manually controlling the camera.
And one person doing this, one person doing that,
so these are meant to be built upon,
so there could be one person controlling,
you know, certain parts of the camera, and,
- [Matti] And if you had a really small camera,
you would need a crew with tiny hands.
- Exactly.
Little tiny fingers. - Which isn't so practical.
- Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, I mean these already come with all the ports you need
so it's kind of a dream.
Like when you, if you have the crew to support
a bigger production,
all of a sudden everyone can just
start plugging everything in,
and it's already kind of designed for that,
so it really does come down to, like,
the ergonomics were designed for a crew setup,
but again, also another good thing about this,
is that RED, they are professional cameras,
but can build 'em really small,
like I've done right here,
which is why I'm at some random beach,
running away, barely dodging waves crashing,
like that's why we're able to do that.
I wouldn't be able to do this
with a fully rigged out camera.
So there's that modularity, also.
- Yeah, that's one of the, kind of like the problems then,
when you do have these bigger cameras,
is that you do need bigger crews,
because you need bigger stabilizers and stuff,
just like I talked in my doc gear video,
a little bit ago.
Yeah, it makes things a little bit difficult,
but it's really nice that you can pack it down
to a nice small size, again,
one of the benefits, I think of RED,
is that you can kind of build it out big or small,
with the different modules, so that's kind of nice.
Alright so you know, those were the reasons
why he bought it.
I thought we would kinda do a side-by-side
with the 1DX and the $30,000 setup, the RED.
So you guys can see the difference,
if there's any difference.
There might not be.
There probably will be.
Alright, show me what you got, man.
- Okay.
(upbeat electronic music)
- Alright, there we have the side-by-side comparison.
I think the big question remains,
do you regret buying the RED?
- Ooh, I, even though I've had to send it in
to RED service twice for repairs
that shouldn't really have happened
in a professional grade camera like this,
I still don't regret it.
I think we've been able to use it enough,
to make it worth it, and it's made sense,
and it's been a good purchase for us,
in a business standpoint.
And we're still shooting with it,
and the clients love the footage,
and obviously the RED name is just like,
people get really excited,
when you say you're gonna shoot it on RED.
I don't know why, but people love shooting on RED.
It's not necessarily the best camera.
You can always keep that in mind.
Like, the best camera is,
there's always a good camera for the job.
I mean, for example, the C300 mark II
that Matti shoots on, I mean that's an awesome camera,
and we probably get just as many requests
to shoot on that as we do on this,
I mean this, I really like the specific feel
that comes out of it.
It's kind of like a, it's ultra sharp,
but also kind of like a grittier, darker,
like the mid-tones are generally darker,
and it has a certain look to it,
which I think is really cool,
it has super sharp,
but it's not for everything, you know,
sometimes you want like an Arri Alexa,
very vibrant, very saturated look.
Sometimes you want like a documentary look,
C300's perfect for that.
- Yeah, I hired my editor, because he has a RED.
(suspenseful piano)
Just kidding, people actually thought,
people actually thought that I was being serious
when I made that joke.
- [Jean] And you haven't hired me.
Come on, Matti, what's up?
- See, I don't, - I want to work,
- I don't hire everybody with a RED.
Matt was the right fit.
I didn't hire him just 'cause he has a RED.
I hired him because he had a RED.
Yeah, Jean makes a really good point.
There is no best camera.
The RED is not the best camera,
the Arri Alexa is not the best camera,
a C300 mark II is not the best camera,
a 1DX2, 60, none of them are the best camera.
There's only the right camera for the right job,
for the right kind of style.
So figure out what your style is,
what kind of films you want to make,
what genre, what size of camera do you need,
all those things play a part
in choosing the right camera for you.
And don't just spend $30,000 on a RED
because it says RED, and it's expensive,
you think it's gonna be good.
Figure out if it's actually a good camera for you.
These were some of the reasons why Jean bought a RED,
and if you're looking for those same things,
you like those same reasons,
maybe you should buy a RED,
and if you're not looking for those same things,
then don't buy a RED, buy something else.
And test it out before you're gonna drop $30,000
on a camera, because that's really when
you figure out what are the things that you like
and don't like about that camera,
so rent it out first,
don't just buy it right away and spend $30,000.
That's craziness.
Anyways, we're gonna go enjoy the sunset,
and yeah, just hang out here in Santa Cruz.
See you guys.
Oh and go follow Jean.
Potato Jet, I don't know why his YouTube channel
is called Potato Jet, but it's easy to remember,
so go and follow Potato Jet,
I'll link him down in the description.
He's great.
Alright, see ya.
(smooth electronic music)