Ryan Patrick O'Hara
Veteran
Last night I attended Arri's launch party for the new ALEXA digital camera at the Directors Guild of America HQ in Hollywood. It was an amazing time and there were around six Alexa cameras with MasterPrimes or Elura lenses that were available to be played with and tested.
After food and drinks, we all moved to the theater where the CEO of Arri announced the Alexa camera, and I believe the head developer of the camera walked us through it's stats. The camera looks to be absolutely something else! At 800 iso standard, the camera can be pushed to 1280 with relative ease and little grain. The camera can be pushed much further, but grain levels accelerate. We were shown some shots from a feature film test which had clips at both ISO's and although the clips went by at a normal to fast speed, my eye couldn't see a huge difference!
My only complaint was that for a company that just dropped a huge load of money on R&D, publicity, and the launch party... all the the projected demo's of the camera seemed to be rushed or simply ok. In my opinion, they should have either produced or reached out to DP's a bit more ahead of time and gotted a much more professional and wide ranged compolation of footage.
After the presentation, the CEO of Fujinon Inc, took the stage to announce two new zoom lenses which Fujinon and Arri have developed in partnership. These Elura lenses look pretty cool with the first being an 18mm-80mm and the second being a 45mm-250mm. Both at a 2.6!
I'm loving seeing these new lenses (like the new 2.8 Cooke Panchros series) coming out with a decent stop. Sure we all love to get those 1.2's, 1.3's, or 1.4 super fast lenses, but with these new cameras being rated at 600, 800, or 1280 iso.... the future is telling us that we may not need those fast stops (unless you like focasing between either the actors ear or eye
). A f/1.4 lens on a typical 320iso red would have the same exposure as a f/2.8 lens on an Alexa shooting 1280iso. Sure the 1280 iso is gained, probably the equivalent of when we all push the standard red to 400 when we need to, but none-the-less, my point is the future of camera sensitivity has ensured that we may use top of the line lenses and we can save money, lens size, and our 1st AC's sanity by using 2.8 lenses. No need to worry about exposure.
Also revealed at the debut party is a NEW Arri MasterPrime lens! A 12mm.... yes 12mm MasterPrime at an f/1.4!!! They have it made already, but are adjusting the build as NAB rushes upon us. Hopefully a working and final version will be on display.
Last but not least, for all of us here who are not familiar with Arri-Raw compression or may not have the means to follow such a workflow, the new ALEXA speaks to the indie filmmaker by having the option to record straight to SxS cards in the Apple ProRes codec! This means if you don't have a large post house or the personal time to color grade and transcode the industry leading RAW compression that is Arri-Raw (a topic for another time ) you can simply record to cards just like an EX series camera, and dump straight into FCP via a MacBook Pro express card slot. No transcoding footage, no waiting. Just straight into the computer.
This will be great for many people, although personally it would pain me as a DP to be shooting a feature on a camera such as the ALEXA and decide to NOT take advantage of the Arri-Raw format, as they are superior in quality and offer the best image the camera can produce. But sometimes there just isn't the time or money to massage the footage through the post workflow, so this lesser but still professional option of ProRes is pretty great.
Those are my thoughts for now. I'll come back and perhaps add other thoughts later. Hope this was informative.
After food and drinks, we all moved to the theater where the CEO of Arri announced the Alexa camera, and I believe the head developer of the camera walked us through it's stats. The camera looks to be absolutely something else! At 800 iso standard, the camera can be pushed to 1280 with relative ease and little grain. The camera can be pushed much further, but grain levels accelerate. We were shown some shots from a feature film test which had clips at both ISO's and although the clips went by at a normal to fast speed, my eye couldn't see a huge difference!
My only complaint was that for a company that just dropped a huge load of money on R&D, publicity, and the launch party... all the the projected demo's of the camera seemed to be rushed or simply ok. In my opinion, they should have either produced or reached out to DP's a bit more ahead of time and gotted a much more professional and wide ranged compolation of footage.
After the presentation, the CEO of Fujinon Inc, took the stage to announce two new zoom lenses which Fujinon and Arri have developed in partnership. These Elura lenses look pretty cool with the first being an 18mm-80mm and the second being a 45mm-250mm. Both at a 2.6!
I'm loving seeing these new lenses (like the new 2.8 Cooke Panchros series) coming out with a decent stop. Sure we all love to get those 1.2's, 1.3's, or 1.4 super fast lenses, but with these new cameras being rated at 600, 800, or 1280 iso.... the future is telling us that we may not need those fast stops (unless you like focasing between either the actors ear or eye
). A f/1.4 lens on a typical 320iso red would have the same exposure as a f/2.8 lens on an Alexa shooting 1280iso. Sure the 1280 iso is gained, probably the equivalent of when we all push the standard red to 400 when we need to, but none-the-less, my point is the future of camera sensitivity has ensured that we may use top of the line lenses and we can save money, lens size, and our 1st AC's sanity by using 2.8 lenses. No need to worry about exposure. Also revealed at the debut party is a NEW Arri MasterPrime lens! A 12mm.... yes 12mm MasterPrime at an f/1.4!!! They have it made already, but are adjusting the build as NAB rushes upon us. Hopefully a working and final version will be on display.
Last but not least, for all of us here who are not familiar with Arri-Raw compression or may not have the means to follow such a workflow, the new ALEXA speaks to the indie filmmaker by having the option to record straight to SxS cards in the Apple ProRes codec! This means if you don't have a large post house or the personal time to color grade and transcode the industry leading RAW compression that is Arri-Raw (a topic for another time
) you can simply record to cards just like an EX series camera, and dump straight into FCP via a MacBook Pro express card slot. No transcoding footage, no waiting. Just straight into the computer. This will be great for many people, although personally it would pain me as a DP to be shooting a feature on a camera such as the ALEXA and decide to NOT take advantage of the Arri-Raw format, as they are superior in quality and offer the best image the camera can produce. But sometimes there just isn't the time or money to massage the footage through the post workflow, so this lesser but still professional option of ProRes is pretty great.
Those are my thoughts for now. I'll come back and perhaps add other thoughts later. Hope this was informative.
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