Street Price for SR-R1?
 

Any word on what the price will be for the R1?

About an hour into the Rule F3 presentation video, Peter mentions that the price will be surprisingly affordable. Of course that may be partly in comparison to what the current costs are for a SR field recorder.
The other question is of course the cost of the memory cards. Think about a card that holds about 15x as much data as a 64GB SxS card, and is four times as fast. What cost multiple would you expect? I can't venture a guess.

I think the pricing will be in the context of all relatively well known and existing field recorders, not just the SR recorder for Sony's SR series cameras. Surprising affordable in my books would be $6 to $8 grand for the recorder and $12 grand when you thrown in a reasonable amount of memory cards. A few things to keep in mind that should be playing into their pricing. One is the total cost of a usable kit in relation to a RED One camera package. Two against the cost of the F3 paired with a third party recorder like the Cinedeck which comes with a large feature list and is showing up more and more on sets. Third will be the new entrants that come into the market in April which is why Sony will be holding their cards very close to their chest (in my estimation) until NAB is fully launched in April.

My question for the SR recorder is whether the data will be a downloadable file or will you still need to record it uncompressed through playback like the current SR tape. If the latter, then I don't see any benefit to using it over other recorders.

Mr. Crithary spoke of a coming QuickTime HDCAM SR codec, which implies that HDCAM SR will soon be as easy as XDCAM to ingest and work with.

For that codec to be of any use, you'd be bringing in the fils straight from the card, etc etc.

my 2 cents ...
 

$3,000 U.S.or less .... why you may ask ... because Sony has got a plan and that plan is geared toward killing the scarlet or red ligh as it's now calledt!!!

In another post someone mentioned he had been told sub 20K at a trade show I think. I suppose 3 K is sub 20 K but Sony has never been really known for 'affordability' in the traditional sense. They used to sell Qualia headphones for $ 2500!!

I wish it were $ 3000 but hmmmm I doubt it will be sub 10 K. It will be potentially in the same ballpark as the Cinedeck Extreme and that's around 10 K for the high end version but shooting to the venerated SR codec. If they are too expensive many may run to Cinedeck - Cinedeck gives so much more. LCD, Touchscreen, direct to edit capability with Cineform and much more flexibilty with codecs etc. If I had the budget Cinedeck is a no brainer if the SR-R1 is in the upper regions.

Or - get a Blackmagic Decklink HD extreme 3D and do a DIY job with a laptop and magma chassis ( or pci express to expresscard version 2 adaptor cards ) for about $ 3000. That will give you all that these guys give with slightly less portability.

The F3 is an amazing camera. Making me possibly even change my mind even about a RED Epic cam. I have compared all the available clips of the AF100, had some online footage of the F3 and even downloaded the RED Epic stuff newly released. I have graded them all in Cineform Firstlight and speedgrade and the F3 has something going on that is just magical that the others seem to miss. Clean, high resolution and the colours are just spot on. Paired to the SR-R1 recorder - I am sure that this will make many people very happy.

Sorry Dean but that is hokkum. I'm reliably informed by a Sony rep (not related to the above post) that the price is closer to $20K.

peter ...
 

Don't know about hokkum ... highly likely wishful thinking ... but I'd keep Peter Crithary's suggestion in mind that the price will surprise us. $20K ... bit much!

$3.000 U.S. will not be enough to buy one 1T media for SR-R1 , as for recorder itself for less than $3000 - not possible, I think it'll be where thay say it'll be - sub $20K.
good luck with that, fixed scarlet will outsell F3 and AF100 together; 2/3", powered zoom, 3K at 120fps RAW, under $10K - to kill that you need to offer something if not better, but at least comparable for less;
sensor size IS important, but it's not everything.

There is no way either the Sony or Red will outsell the AF100 in the US. You just can't beat the Panasonic's price. The pre-sell numbers for the AF100 were huge.

I suspect the 2/3" Scarlet is aiming at very different markets. It'll be attractive to those documentaries that were traditionally shot on 16mm neg and more recently Digibeta and HDCAM, but are now under a lot of budget pressures.

The price may attract some of those productions that have been filming on 1/3" cameras, although the RAW post may prove an issue for those productions that shoot everything that moves. The Canon XF 300 series may prove a big draw for them.

First to market is important as we have all witnessed over the years. Don't forget Sony will be issuing mid-year what is presently called the S35 NXCAM. This will be a competitor for the AF-100 and will have some decided benefits over it, not the least of which is a 10bit 422 HD-SDI port and a full S35 sensor, the same one that is in the F3. Things can change but Panasonic will certainly have a lot of momentum by then with the AF-100 (it already does).

I'm with you Brian. Outside of the fanboys, I'm not sure exactly where this camera fits. I can see the need for some nature folks, but the documentary crowd normally wants the shoulder mounted form factor, easy to ingest codec, and a variety of servo driven lenses. Or they put a bunch of easy to use, often fully auto enabled small cameras out in the hands of interns. And they want formats that are ready for broadcast. I have an EX1, it's a great camera for what I used it for, and I don't think clients that just discovered HD, will care if I have a a 3K or not. For narrative/commercial work the large sensor cameras will continue to rule. I'm all about the right tool for the job, and I'm just not sure where exactly the Scarlet is needed. Probably wrong on this one, maybe hundreds of people are waiting to get the slightly larger sensor and RAW recording. No doubt it will be a beautiful camera, and the price is nice, but what are we going to do with it?

Andy

Only time will tell