Why we bought a £20k RED Gemini Cinema Camera...

From my humble beginnings of shooting weddings and corporate video content on a Canon 550D to scaling Dead Pixel Films with Kieran Edwards to now being a RED Gemini 5K owner has been one hell of a journey (even more so during a global pandemic). That said I thought I'd outline some thoughts behind the purchase that we made and why we made it.

1. Image Quality

An obvious one I'm sure, but if it's good enough for David Attenborough's film crew then it's good enough for us. Our RED package shoots 5K 100fps, super crisp and detailed imagery and has been an industry standard setup for high end commercial content for many years.

There's bags of resolution allowing for re-frames of all our projects. It's very common for our clients to ask for a 1:1, 4:5, 9:16 and 16:9 version of everything.

The skin tones look stunning with beautiful highlight roll off. The camera is easy to use and gives huge scope in post production to deliver different looks. The RED line up has been used on big films, show and commercials such as Peaky Blinders, Captain Marvel, Birdbox, Money Heist and I wanted to be a part of that.

2. Stepping up from the Sony FS7

I bought the Sony FS7 approx 6 years ago when it first came out and served as a great tool when I was a freelance camera operator. Honestly, it's been an absolute work horse of a camera. I've hiked up mountains with it, hung out of planes and dunked it underwater (in a waterproof housing of course). Owning and understanding the cameras capabilities has opened many doors and helped excel my career over the years. It was originally bought as a 4 year purchase as technology moves quite quickly and has paid for itself several times over.

The Sony FS7 still has it's place on our kit shelf and will be used on upcoming projects until it finally packs in. That said it was time to accept that I've pushed the image quality and the look that comes from the FS7 to it's limit and was ready to push onto the next level.

"After all, if you're not pushing yourself, you're not learning" - Quote unknown, maybe myself...

3. Time to invest

We've rented this exact camera from local hire companies or friends for the last 6 months and knew it's capabilities. In fact we shot >10 foodie ads in the past few months for the likes of Oxo, Bisto, Ambrosia and Sharwoods using this exact kit.

Rental costs can be around £500 per day for this camera package including batteries and memory cards (lighting, lenses and tripods are all extra - yes film-making is an expensive industry to be part of).

For us, the cost of renting a camera like this is always factored into the budget of a project and becomes part of the production costs. It was an obvious calculation to work out that instead of renting the camera off someone else, we should essentially rent it off ourselves and use it as a working asset.

Spending such a large amount of money should be a calm, calculated decision with targets for return on investment. Eventually there comes a moment where it's more cost effective to buy the camera out right (potentially on finance) and use that rental fee that had been budgeted for to pay off the asset or add extra profit to the margin of the project.

It is a large amount of cash to spend but when you think how much you can spend on a car that immediately looses 20% of its value in VAT when you drive it off the forecourt thus becoming a depreciating asset until it finally packs in. This camera is an investment into the business that will pay for itself in the next 1-2 years and everything after that is profit.

How many cars can do that?

4. Being responsive

Now that we own the camera it means we're in the position to use the kit all day, every day on any project. Not every project is a commercial commission either.

We occasionally get to scratch the creative itch by producing a short documentary or charity piece purely for the love of it. We can now do so with the best camera at our disposal.

(Netflix documentary here we come)

5. Brand Association

It's a bit of a sad reflection sometimes but most people understand that working with certain levels of equipment and being associated with that brand can actually help generate work.

This works across multiple industries and isn't just the case for film-making.

Our RED camera will be used as a marketing tool to attract more clients looking for a premium product and service. They may not know the intricate technical details of the camera (they don't need to) but they know the name and that they want to be associated with it also.

As a final side note, we've now owned the camera for 12 days at the time of writing and have used it on 4 large video productions. At that point it's an absolute no brainer.

I hope you enjoyed that honest look into why we chose to invest in this particular camera setup. Whilst you're here you might as well watch our fun little product reveal below (ironically shot on the Sony FS7)

• Author - Cal Thomson