Nikon, Red, and Nothing

Instruction Set, 2024/3/11

Welcome back to Multicore. This is Instruction Set for the week of Monday, March 11th.

I meant to put up my review of the Oppo Find X7 Ultra this weekend, but I got derailed by the arrival of... another camera-adjacent device that I’ve had to test under time constraints. That review will go live later in the week, and the other will be up around the same time.

Kind of a slow week news-wise, but there’s still some fun stuff. Let’s get into it.

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Nikon has agreed to completely buy out Red, the American maker of high-end cinema camera equipment.

Here’s what Nikon had to say about its plans for the new subsidiary:

This agreement was reached as a result of the mutual desires of Nikon and Red to meet the customers’ needs and offer exceptional user experiences that exceed expectations, merging the strengths of both companies. Nikon's expertise in product development, exceptional reliability, and know-how in image processing, as well as optical technology and user interface along with Red’s knowledge in cinema cameras, including unique image compression technology and color science, will enable the development of distinctive products in the professional digital cinema camera market.

This is just a wild acquisition. Nikon’s great photographic rival Canon has been attempting to make inroads into digital cinema cameras for more than a decade, attempting to compete against the likes of Sony and Arri. Now Nikon has instantly become relevant in the space overnight by acquiring Red, a company that was trying (and ultimately failing) to sue it for alleged video compression patent violations less than a year ago.

Another wrinkle is that much of Canon’s cinema business involves selling RF-mount lenses to owners of Red cameras. In fact, Red is the only company allowed to make RF-mount cameras other than Canon itself. Red also has cameras with Sony’s PL-mount and Nikon’s own F-mount, but the latter is designed for DSLRs; Nikon doesn’t actually make any cine lenses right now.