What will make Nikon the most money in 4,5 years: Try to sell Nikon gear with internal compressed RAW or make a few dollars for every camera sold with compressed internal RAW in the same time period...

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?msg=RED.com%20RAW%20patents%20expire&p0=840&ud=2&year=2028&month=4&day=11&hour=0&min=0&sec=0&fromtheme=party

Japanese company Nikon has announced the acquisition of RED Digital Cinema, a well-known American manufacturer of digital cinema cameras, including the popular RED One 4K and V-Raptor X models in the film industry. Nikon's press release states that RED Digital Cinema will be its wholly owned subsidiary. The value and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Nikon plans to use the deal to enter the professional digital cinema camera market, building on RED's "expertise in cinema camera production, including unique image compression technology and color science." RED cameras have been used to shoot many popular movies, including "Guardians of the Galaxy. Part 3" and "Captain Marvel," nature documentaries such as "Planet Earth 2," and TV series "The Squid Game," "Mindhunter," "Sharp Trump," "Queen's Gambit" and more.

RED was founded in 2005 by Jim Jannard, who also founded Oakley, which developed a number of unique lenses and specialized in sunglasses and sporting goods. RED currently has about 220 employees.

The deal comes less than a year after a court dismissed RED's lawsuit against Nikon alleging that it illegally used its patented data compression technology in a firmware update for Nikon's Z9 camera. In response to RED's lawsuit, Nikon challenged the legality of RED's patents, and the case was dismissed last April.

Good news.

Nikon is in a position now to do a massive price dumping in semi-pro market by selling all Red tech for say current A7S/GH6 audience. Since they don't have the conflict of interests lacking pro video department. It's a great opportunity to sell yesterday's pro tech at a lower price point.

The pro and semi pro markets are shrinking. Wedding videography is dying. Zoomers don't go outside and don't have sex. Who needs wedding videography these days? Footage stocks will be dead soon because of AI overtaking that market. Vloggers is the future. That's the only viable large audience for feature reach cameras. Well... Before they create AI avatars with no need for a camera at all.

That's the audience yesterday's pro toys could be targeted at now. Replace you phone with an inexpensive cinema camera. That the strategy Blackmagic is trying to play. The same thing has already happened to pro audio, when $3K mics and expensive audio interfaces has been washed away by the flood of inexpensive Chinese manufactured options targeted at bedroom producers.

Will Nikon see that opportunity or will they stick to old school ways by creating a pro video department and trying to acquire a niche in that ever shrinking market? That's an interesting question.

@zigizigi

I have big issue with vloggers market. Most of this guys are now similar to musicians, who work in some shitty job and put money from it into gear, living on false home of future success.

Youtube is now mostly unsustainable. Companies want you to work for pennies (delivery guys here make around 2-3x compared to pro camera man who is also journalist, if not in Moscow).

https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Meinung/Plant-Nikon-eine-REDCODE-RAW-Offensive-zur-NAB-2024---REDCODE-RAW---interne-Nikon-Aufzeichnung-mittelfristig-u.html

Is Nikon planning a REDCODE RAW offensive for NAB 2024?

Of course, this could all be a coincidence, but since the announcement of RED's acquisition of Nikon, a few seemingly trivial things have been accumulating in the RAW world that may soon form a coherent picture.

So would it perhaps even be conceivable that Atomos would announce REDCODE RAW in its recorders at NAB? REDCODE RAW for all Nikon cameras that enable RAW recording with Atomos recorders. Direct, proven interaction with DaVinci Resolve - out-of-the-box. And it can actually be implemented in a comparatively short time using the FPGA technology in the Atomos recorders.

https://www.atomos.com/2024/03/11/atomos-welcomes-nikon-acquisition-of-red/

“I can’t wait to see what the combined talents of the two teams comes up with,” added Young. Nikon’s expertise in image processing and optical technology, along with RED’s understanding of compression technology and color science, can only be good news for digital cinematography. I’m sure this acquisition will create an entity that is greater than the sum of its parts. NAB will be an extremely exciting event this year. Of course, we hope to play a small part in generating that excitement too.”

Also rumours about Adobe Premiere is dropping support for NRAW, despite earlier promises to include it in the NLE.

Is Nikon ready to end NRAW in favour of some sort of Redcode RAW support in their cameras?

Will Atomos recorders soon do recording in Redcode RAW? Like Jeromy Young seems to suggest in his welcome piece.

Will Nikon try to elevate Redcode RAW to a universally supported RAW format across a lot of brands? It makes sense so they could get a small license fee from every device sold until 2040 or something when the pre-emphasis patent for DCT based Redcode RAW expires. If a lot of competing internally compressed RAW formats emerge once the basic patent expires in 2028, this will not be possible.

Watch for possible announcements at NAB 2024 (April 13 - 17).

No they will not follow red path.

Nikon with all the lenses knowledge and their film and color know how it’s a matter of principles for them, they are Japanese. They will come with something amazing and special. They have now all the sauces to make the dish taste better than many other complete camera company’s as canon arri and Sony, nobody else has camera and sensors complete range.

They can make this magic work.

Maybe I have to much faith but if those two hippies from California are still around managing this red stuff things anything I imagined will not come through as I though and well Nikon will cash as if red never ended.

But I have a hint that this two hippies will retire with some good money on their hand and most probably burn it in next new tech adventure.

already spending their money LOL