Arri Amira Pricing
- Thread starter Grug
- Start date
Samuel H
Major Contributor
Before anybody goes the nofilmschool way and uses the exchange rate to translate that into USD...
When translating prices of electronic equipment from US$ to euros, you don’t use the exchange rate. Taxes are way higher here in Europe, and there are laws mandating things like warranties and such, which make things more expensive (plus, there’s less competition in retail, which also pushes prices up).
Quick example: cheapest Mac Pro, price at apple.com $2999, price at apple.de 2999eur. Same 1:1 exchange rate with MBP, macbook air, etc
Bottom line: prices will probably be $25980, $28980, and $32980.
When translating prices of electronic equipment from US$ to euros, you don’t use the exchange rate. Taxes are way higher here in Europe, and there are laws mandating things like warranties and such, which make things more expensive (plus, there’s less competition in retail, which also pushes prices up).
Quick example: cheapest Mac Pro, price at apple.com $2999, price at apple.de 2999eur. Same 1:1 exchange rate with MBP, macbook air, etc
Bottom line: prices will probably be $25980, $28980, and $32980.
G
Guest
Guest
Woohoo. 2k is sexy again
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Licenses doesnt strike me as a very pleasant way of marketing, unless the have specific justification (eg pro res licence from apple?)
I can see paying for FW upgrades as continued development needs funding but paying to unlock features, unpleasant.
I can see paying for FW upgrades as continued development needs funding but paying to unlock features, unpleasant.
I agree, it is unpleasant to have to unlock features that are already there in hardware, for extra thousands of euros. Plus, you need to add a mount for another 1000 euros plus, and thousands more for media and card readers, and chargers and batteries.
Out of the box would be nice, at least canon can get that bit right.
Out of the box would be nice, at least canon can get that bit right.
Samuel H
Major Contributor
Really? With a simple firmware update, the C100 could record internal video like the C300. Because it uses the same digic-dv-iii processor... that you'll also find in their $300 video cameras.
It seems to me, Canon is really big on the "differentiate with firmware" front.
Well, what I meant is that all you need to do it pop in an sd card and you can start recording video.
With the amira, you need to buy a whole lot of other stuff to even start recording video.
But I agree, crippling cameras with firmware seems to be a common practice and it sucks.
With the amira, you need to buy a whole lot of other stuff to even start recording video.
But I agree, crippling cameras with firmware seems to be a common practice and it sucks.
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Canon are the worst offenders, if they had put the C500 out at C100+20% money we would not even be talking about the Amera because everyone would have bought the Canon C120
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Grug
Veteran
What is it you think the Amira needs? As far as I can tell all you'd need out of the box is a lens, battery, media and card reader for offliading.
cowpunk52
Veteran
Get used to it. This is the future of advanced technology devices. Hardware is the easy part, and software or firmware will become more and more an "add on" cost for devices.
cowpunk52
Veteran
This is true - you won't need a lot of different things, not more than any other basic camera. But you will need enough of them - it's 50W power draw will chew through batteries at a fair clip, and there's no C.Fast 2.0 pricing yet. That media will likely not be cheap by most standards, and the largest capacity announced right now is 256GB.
Just things to consider.
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David W. Jones
Veteran
The Amira will have an interchangeable lens mount system, so you are not restricted to using PL mount lenses. At this point Arri has mentioned PL, B4, and EF mounts. Recording media will be to CFast 2.0 CF cards which both SanDisk and Lexar manufacture. The camera uses the same sensor as 16x9 Alexa models, and will have internal ND filters, something many folks on this board have been screaming for. The camera will record 2K/1080, in Rec 709 or Log C, in ProRes LT, 422, 422HQ, or 444 codecs, with assignable LUTs. The Amira will also record 4 channels of audio. Plus Arri has listened, and moved the menu access from the dumb side. As far as Arri's licensing model goes, they do it the same way with the Alexa.
Samuel H
Major Contributor
I'm in the camp that thinks that "it's no loner OK for cameras not to give us everything they've got"
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
It is a difficult road to travel.
I feel 'robbed' when I know something is switched off, but also I understand that companies need an income stream and Im also pissed off with buying magnesium and plastic boxes for for thousands.
My EX1 for example is 95% the camera of the PMW200 - I certainly pay (well) to send it in for a 50mbs upgrade, Id pay to get Slog on my FS100, raw out of my F3
Id also pay for I dunno , WFM on all the cameras..
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David W. Jones
Veteran
This is just plain silly on so many levels.
Why do people think they are entitled?
My answer, and I may be off base here, but…. I believe it has to do with a generation growing up with the internet, more and more things being done with software, and technology moving at break neck speed.
Just because a camera feature is part of software code, does not mean that the company which developed that feature did not put countless hours of development into making it work. Should they not be paid for their work? Do you really feel you are entitled to all these features without paying for them just because the camera feature is software activated? Maybe some of you guys should give your clients $20,000 videos for $2,000. After all it's just ones and zeros on your hard drive, and your time.
All the best!
Dave
combatentropy
Veteran
So am I. If I may add one comment on that article, though. I'm perfectly fine with something like an already-debayered, 10-bit log, high-quality compression straight out of the camera, rather than RAW, because that vastly lowers media costs, enables higher frame rates, and simplifies post.
The worry that many here have, which is also stated in the article, is that in-camera debayering will never be as good as on the computer by a patient artist. Now I'm not an electrical engineer, I'm only going by what I've read and the cameras I've used, but I'm pretty sure this underestimates ASICs. An ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is a CPU that has a custom-designed purpose, as opposed to the CPU in your computer, which is a general-purpose CPU, which must handle checking email, surfing the web, running Final Cut Pro, etc. The principle of "jack of all trades, master of none" applies to computers as well as humans. A 10-year-old videocamera like the DVX100 can read its sensor at 60fps, debayer it to 14-bit RGB uncompressed, apply one of those obnoxious in-camera effects that you never touch, like "Solarization," convert that to 4:2:0, and compress that into MiniDV, instantaneously, without fan. If I were to feed the same raw signal into a state-of-the-art general-purpose computer of the time, like a Mac G5, such a process would take several hours to render, and you would hear its big fans blow at full blast.
So whatever fancy algorithm you plan to use in post to superbly debayer your expensive raw footage, theoretically I think could be made into an ASIC and done in camera. Another thing is, those fancy algorithms are really useful only when the resolution of the raw is close to the resolution of the final product. Like if you're using the Ikonoskop and going from 1920x1080 raw to 1920x1080 debayered. A fine debayering algorithm is needed to extract every last detail. But another way to do it is like the Canon C300, where you just smash a 4K raw into HD output. Terribly wasteful, some might say, but it gives you little or no moire even without an OLPF, and the debayering algorithm is dead simple.
But that thing called the Digic III or Digic IV or whatever in Canons, and those close-ups in the Panasonic brochure of some computer chip that they're so proud of but means nothing to us --- that's the ASIC. It's probably the most expensive part of the camera (ASICs are very expensive --- millions of dollars sometimes --- to develop from scratch). They're also partly why independent camera makers like Ikonoskop and Digital Bolex are the ones who do RAW --- because it's actually cheaper!
I'm fine with a camera that puts out raw as long as it also outputs something like ProRes 4:2:2 10-bit log, and I think I can deliver about as good a final product with that, much more cheaply and easily.
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CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
I'd suggest it's a matter of perspective. If one is to look at the premium package price as being the actual price of the camera and the lower tiers as being a way to buy into the camera at a discount, with the option of immediate upgrading whenever you are ready to invest, it may actually start to seem like a positive rather than a negative.