Stock Video Explosion?

One of the events we were very thankful for at iStockphoto was the release of the Canon Digital Rebel in late 2003 (US$999, complete with an 18 - 55 mm lens). It was one of those watershed moments for us, as the D60 was about $3,000 - $4,000, and point-and-shoots were only 2 or 3 MP. At 6.3 MegaPixels, the Canon Digital Rebel produced photographs that were good enough for printing 8 x 10 images at high resolution. It enabled our photographers to spend more time producing great images, rather than developing film, scanning slides, and dusting images in Photoshop. As a result, both the quality and the number of images really started to increase.

Now, Engadget reports:

With a release set for "early 2007," Red Digital Cinema just took the important step of outing the price list for the range of RED gear which could hit as early as May 31st.
Intent on keeping both wedding videographers and indie film makers
happy, it all starts with the $17,500 RED ONE base system (center).
From there you can add your choice of the $1,250 Basic or $2,750
Premium production packs (top right and left, respectively). But don't
stop now, go ahead and throw down for a $1,650 RED ONE Power Pack
featuring 2x RED BRICK 140Wh batteries and charger, a $1,950 RED
Electronic Viewfinder, and the $1,700 5.6-inch LCD. Optics accessories
include a $3,500 B4 lens adapter and both Canon and Nikkor 35mm photo
mounts costing $500 each. There are also several RED branded media
accessories for CF, SATA disk, and something called the "RED RAM 64GB"
for $4,500 -- extortionate if that's just a RED-branded SSD in an external housing. But hey, no one said that a 4k resolution and 60p frame rate would come cheap.

It's not quite the "everyman's camera" that the Canon Digital Rebel was, but the Red Digital Camera will be an amazing tool towards the development and maturation of the stock video market. Content from Red Digital Cameras will start showing up on stock video sites like iStockphoto and ShutterStock, and the technical quality will be markedly better than all the existing content on either site. As the price of these super-high quality cameras continue to fall, the proliferation of stock video could mirror what happened in stock photography.