My Opinions on Nikon’s RED Acquisition

9 Mar

Written By MJ

Just a couple of days ago a surprising announcement appeared in the late afternoon here - Nikon has acquired 100% of the cinema camera maker RED, making RED a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nikon.

Most of us definitely did not see this coming, so the news caught a lot of us off-guard, but in a very good way - it brings confidence to users as it shows Nikon’s commitment to improve and diversify their product lineup by expanding into the high-end movie making market and bring new video technology into their products.

I personally have not used RED products as I am not into video shooting, let alone high-end movie making, so I do not have any first hand experience or insights on RED products.

But the impression I had of RED was that they were a brand primarily associated with high-end videos and movies, with technologies such as global shutters and compressed RAW to improve quality and workflow of such productions.

Granted that the patent lawsuit (which was ultimately dismissed) a while back between RED and Nikon regarding the RAW video recording of the Z9 did somewhat paint a slightly negative image of RED, they do own rights to other technologies and have an established team of experts and technical specialists which would definitely help with development of Nikon’s video capabilities.

As I mentioned earlier I am no video shooter, and this acquisition in all honesty does not impact me directly as of now, but I do am quite intrigued with how things will turn out from this point on:

I am sure adding a Z-mount to RED cameras is already in the roadmap, so it comes down to whether there will be a new line of Nikon Cinema lenses developed to accommodate them?
RED currently holds a license to create cameras with RF-mount. Though highly improbable, going forward would we be able to see official RF-Z mount adapters?
I am pretty sure RED’s video technology would trickle down to the Z-system cameras. Seems interesting to see how RED RAW and N-RAW could be further developed or integrated together.
The access to RED’s global shutter sensor design could bring global shutter to the photography-oriented cameras sooner than anticipated.
Focus-by-wire has improved a lot compared to the past, and has opened up new options and possibilities such as employing multiple focus groups working in tandem without complicated mechanical couplings or large increases in physical size, eliminating focus breathing in the process too. Moving forward I am eager to see how else it can be innovated which will be beneficial to both stills and videos.

Any form of healthy competition between manufacturers would definitely bring about new innovations, and as end-users of cameras I am certainly looking forward to seeing new technology or workflow improvements brought forward by Nikon or other manufacturers due to this acquisition.