RED Digital Cinema CEO Keiji Oishi tells Televisual that Nikon is considering lens development for cinema, as a part of their strategic plan to enter strongly into the cinema market.
Nikon’s plan for the cinema market
Hiroyuki Ikegami, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Nikon’s Imaging Business Unit, together with RED Digital Cinema CEO, Keiji Oishi, of Nikon’s Imaging Business Unit, told Televisual Nikon’s plan regarding the penetration to the cinema market. This plan is now possible after the full acquisition of RED Digital Cinema by Nikon. Although it will take several years of development to release cinema products, the knowledge exchange has started in full swing. Here are Nikon’s action items for the cinema market:
- Expanding the professional digital cinema camera lineup
- Developing distinctive products in the fast-growing professional digital cinema camera and broadcast market
- Developing lenses for cinema
Developing cinema lenses
One interesting ‘action item’ is the desire of Nikon to produce cinema lenses, as stated: “We are actively considering lens development for cinema, and we are aware that many of customers use the old NIKKOR”. The production of cinema lenses differentiates Nikon from Canon (for instance), and Nikon will definitely reduce that gap. These statements derived from the RED acquisition demonstrate Nikon’s intention to penetrate deeply into the cinema market. Again, it will take years for the first product to arrive (camera or lens). Meanwhile, Nikon will help to sell and serve the current RED Digital Cinema DSMC3 and Komodo lineup to customers and consumers. As explained, the exchanging knowledge process has begun and will also take some time. We assume that RED will cease to exist in 3-4 years, and Nikon will deeply get into cinema competing with ARRI and Sony. By that time, we’ll see a cinema camera flagship by Nikon.
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YOSSY MENDELOVICH, listen, Nikon has no intention of ending RED, you’re clear!
Nikon has made cine lenses before for smaller format film cameras:
https://richardhaw.com/2021/09/10/report-nikon-museum-cine-nikkor/
My first thought was wondering if they’re tempted to just get Kenji Suematsu at UniqOptics to dust off the old RED prime lens designs and start stamping them out again for RED fanboys, but I thought “nah” they can and will make some good ones on their own.
Nikon could honestly excel in the tele cine lens area. No one really makes a great one past 200mm. I have actually seen cinema-rehoused Nikon telephoto lenses out there. Imagine the compression.
I am curious to see how they’ll do the branding on their cine line. I think the obvious choice is to use the same Nikon logo as on their Z bodies except filled with red colored paint. They can leave all those pseudo-military graphics and fonts that Jarhead loved in the past. The Alexa’s functional industrial design doesn’t need “BLAST ZONE STAND CLEAR!!!” plastered on every corner to let you know it means business.
Now with Tower fab delivering “dual gain” or whatever pixel tech in the last couple RED models, Nikon can jump into the cine cam market on par with their rival Canon’s DGO sensors and not need to spend a decade catching up. I am excited for the future innovations this new competition with bring.