Nikon Is Buying RED Camera! - Here's What It Means For Filmmakers

Nikon is buying the red camera company. And here's what it means for filmmakers. Last year, it made a video titled Nikon in Red just changed video cameras forever, which that's a big take. I know. But the premise of that video was that Red had a patent uncompressed internal raw recording, which prevented other camera manufacturers from including it in their cameras. Nikon said, Too bad, Red. We're going to do it anyways and included raw recording in the Z9 and Z8 cameras. Red sued them. They wen

t to court about it and eventually settled with the end result being that Nikon could then use internal compressed raw recording in their cameras legally. now. A lot of filmmakers were surprised this happened, including myself, which is why I said that the world of video cameras has changed because for the first time we were finally seeing camera manufacturers other than Red be capable of using compressed internal raw video. Well, in the next twist of this story, Nikon recently posted a press re

lease stating that they are now purchasing the Red Camera company. And that's what we need to talk about today. Let's start off with the basics, because I'm sure you may be wondering, how could this happen, Matt? Well, here's my big theory. Back in 2021, a YouTuber, which I have not had the honor of meeting yet, but I hopefully will one day named Sam Newton came up with a music video called Shoots on Nikon with the entire premise of that music video being that Nikon cameras are essentially potat

oes that happen to take photos and videos. My theory is that Nikon took such offense at this that they said, you know what, we're going to make our cameras have the best video quality, including spending millions of dollars taking red to court about their patent and finally, just buying red outright. Yes, Sam Newton made this happen. It's his fault. If you're upset about it, take it up with him. Okay. Joke theory out of the way. Here's probably how things really went down. And keep in mind that

I'm not a lawyer or an expert on these things, but this is just after I've read a lot of things about Nikon and Red fighting. The first thing you need to know is that Red is not a publicly traded company. They do not have shareholders or anything like that. So if they want to sell themselves to another bigger company, there's not really nearly as much red tape preventing that from happening. And if we're talking about bigger companies for context in Nikon's press release, they say that Red at th

e time of the press release has 220 employees. How many employees does Nikon have? About 20,000. In short, Nikon has the size and the money as the bigger fish to easily gobble up red. That leads us to the next question that I'm sure you may be wondering, which is why would Red want to sell to Nikon? Well, here's the deal. We know that camera manufacturing is expensive, especially considering that Red is designing cameras and sensors in-house. That's not cheap. And yes, their cameras cost a good,

healthy chunk of money if you want to buy them as well. But the cinema camera market isn't exactly massive and a lot of it is built up around the concept of renting a cinema camera to film something, not necessarily buying one. And so first of all, Red may not be selling as many cameras as you would think then. Well, I'm sure that Red has been making good money with their cameras Back in 2018. Red also made a mistake, a big error. Do you remember what it was? Red said, Hey, I know we're making

good money from our high end cinema camera business, but it's pretty niche. What if we made something that wasn't niche that everyone would want to buy? Enter the red hydrogen. One phone. Do you remember this? I feel like we all just collectively tried to forget it. But yes, Red tried to make a phone. It was expensive. It was a delayed release. It had big bezels. It weighed almost as much as a brick and it was essentially dead on arrival. I had so many friends talking about pre-ordering this pho

ne because in their words, they said that it would be cheaper to buy a phone like this and use it as a monitor for their red camera instead of actually just buying a red camera monitor. It was actually cheaper. But regardless, whenever this phone released, it felt like Red dropped it faster than you could drop a potato. And yes, that is a callback to the previous joke about Nikon being potatoes. Okay. Anyways, my point is that red sunk a lot of money and a lot of development cost into trying to

jump into this market. But they learned just like Amazon did with their fire phone, if you remember that, that it takes more than just a cool camera gimmick to make people want to buy something like a phone and they failed. my theory is that Red has been hurting for money for a while. Remember, they're not a publicly traded company, so there's no reports that they legally are required to release about how much money they've made. But whenever you factor in the failure of a phone with all of its

development cost plus having to spend money on a court case with Nikon as well as other camera manufacturers, can you imagine how appealing it may be if suddenly Nikon comes to you and backs up a big truck full of money, say, hey, we would love to just buy your company, We have the funds and the engineers and the resources to support you and help you grow. And you can still keep making high quality cinema cameras. And clearly Red said yes, because here we are and Nikon is buying red. What does t

his mean for the future, though? Well, there's a ton of exciting stuff. This could mean that we need to talk about. Here's the first thing you need to know. Red as a camera company is not going away. in Nikon's press release, they say that Red is going to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Nikon, so they have no current plans to dissolve red or change the badging of their cameras to say Nikon or even better change the camera company name to yellow, because get it because red is a color and the Niko

n uses yellow in their branding, they're not going to do that. It's a dumb joke. Okay. At least for now, Red is going to keep on making cameras just like they have been. But that said, things do have to change. Right? And here are some ways that they could change. First, red does have lenses that they have made. They're called red Pro primes and they came out in approximately 2009. I think you can tell me it might be earlier than that. Does Nikon make lenses? Yes. But do they make cinema lenses?

No. But what if they did? Nikon just made a big leap into the cinema camera space by buying Red. Can you imagine them creating high in cinema lenses for red cameras? Can you also imagine them putting their autofocus technology into those lenses? That'd be pretty darn cool keeping on this lens trend here, we need to also talk about something controversial, and that is currently that Red sells a decent number of cameras that use the Canon RF Mount, who is Nikon's biggest competitor again? is it C

anon? Yes. And one of the weirdest terms of events by Nikon buying red. Nikon is now going to be the manufacturer of cameras to use one of their biggest competitors. Lens mounts. Interesting. How long do you think that is going to go on for? And more importantly, how long do you think we have before Red introduces a camera that takes a Nikon lens? Mount To be clear, I'm not really concerned about Nikon coming in and canceling all the RF Mount Red cameras and saying sorry to anyone who bought the

m by a new Nikon Mount Camera. I'm betting that they're going to continue to support all of Red's previous cameras, at least for a while. But that said, you have to imagine that changes are coming. Speaking of changes, we have to talk about sensors for a second, because for a while now, Nikon has not been fully designing and manufacturing all their sensors in-house. Instead, they've been using sensors, at least partially designed or manufactured by Sony, but hold up because Nikon just purchased

Red, who make all of their camera sensors in-house. So is there a chance that Nikon could take this sensor technology and start doing more internally and not going to Sony for sensor designs? There's definitely some potential there to think about. Not to mention, we also have to talk about internal raw recording as well, because that's also been a very hot topic for years by Nikon buying Red. They're getting access to all of Red's patents on internal, RAW and Nikon already had the right to use c

ompressed internal, raw and all of their future cameras thanks to their settlement with Red in court last year. Suddenly now, Nikon has found themselves being the ones in control of those patents. It's no secret that Red has been very quick to sue literally any company that has implemented internal RAW. They sued Sony. They sued Apple. They sued and lost to Nikon. And it's looking like they probably made some sort of deal with Canon where they would get the rights to use Canon's RF Lens mount an

d they would let Canon use some form of compressed straw in their cameras. But the big question is, how is all of this going to change with Nikon being in charge? Are they still going to be willing to sue other companies to use internal raw, or is there a chance they may see an opportunity to make significantly more money licensing out their raw technology to other companies, companies like Sony and Apple? Now, in a perfect world, I would love if Nikon did this. And it's not just because I use a

Sony camera and an iPhone, but because it feels like compressed, internal raw recording should be a technology that is not patentable. Just like how all manufacturers of cameras have some form of raw photos available with their cameras. I would love if they all have the ability to have some form of raw video as well, which is currently not possible because of that red patent. So it really remains to be seen either Nikon could hold on to Red's patents, continue to sue anyone that attempts to cir

cumvent them and probably make a boatload of cash because filmmakers may consider switching to Nikon just to get raw video. Or maybe nikon's accountants will crunch the numbers and realize they can make more money by licensing these raw patents. Remember, it's all about money. All these companies want to do is just make money. And that's really what Nikon acquiring Red comes down to. At its core, just like any acquisition, it's all about money. Nikon saw that Red was hurting after a failed phone

and years of lawsuits. And if it wasn't obvious from the Z8 and Z9, they're clearly trying to push into the high end filmmaking space. And so here we are. It's not April Fools, all red filmmakers are becoming Nikon filmmakers, and we'll have to see how all this pans out in the coming months. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this deep dive into red inquiring Nikon and you want to see more videos like it in the future about the world of filmmaking in technology, please consider subs

cribing. And if you're a filmmaker that's wondering about what gear you should buy because I know we just talked a lot about gear in this video. I've put together a filmmaking gear guide that's going to show you all of the equipment that I recommend that you purchase for filmmaking. And spoiler, There is no Nikon or Red cameras on this list, but maybe I should add them. You can download this gear guide completely for free at the link down in the video description. Thanks so much for watching and

have a great day.