FS7: Upgrading to an amira from fs7?

[Bern Caughey]

Awhile ago we tested the AMIRA against the F55 & the ARRI clearly showed better highlight wrangling, & dynamic range.

 

[Gene Sung]

Why not a Red Weapon, or Scarlet-W?

The thing I love about the new Red DSMC2 bodies is how easy and minimal they are to rig.

it’s the easiest, most minimal (yet effective) rig I’ve done. So light and easy to deal with. While Arri might have the image edge, Red really killed it on the DSMC2 body design. Small and you can do so much with it.

 

[Donny 123]

FS7 and most other Sonys have adjustable gain amplifiers which are available in Custom mode as opposed to CineEI where gain is locked in favor of software EI adjustments, Canon has adjustable gain beyond ISO850, Panasonic Varicam has two gain settings. Arri Alexa does not, but it does have dual gain pathways which allows for quite a wide but fixed dynamic range.

You don't think Arri highlight handling is any better than an FS7/F5/F55/F65? Sony specifies base ISO as having 6stops of highlight DR (and most people using F5/FS7 usually rate even lower to avoid noise) and Arri specifies at least 7stops. And then every stop of gain you increase to match the shadow performance reduces highlight DR even more.... My statement about losing as much as 4-6 stops of highlights was more in relation to Canon where at base you already have about 2 stops less in the highlights and then you can increase gain/ISO as high as 12800 or more but lose up to another 4 stops in the highlights to clean up your shadows for low light shooting.

Ok thanks got it.. yes the Canon log1 is more of a hyper gamma curve than log..

 

[Donny 123]

FS7 and most other Sonys have adjustable gain amplifiers which are available in Custom mode as opposed to CineEI where gain is locked in favor of software EI adjustments, Canon has adjustable gain beyond ISO850, Panasonic Varicam has two gain settings. Arri Alexa does not, but it does have dual gain pathways which allows for quite a wide but fixed dynamic range.

You don't think Arri highlight handling is any better than an FS7/F5/F55/F65? Sony specifies base ISO as having 6stops of highlight DR (and most people using F5/FS7 usually rate even lower to avoid noise) and Arri specifies at least 7stops. And then every stop of gain you increase to match the shadow performance reduces highlight DR even more.... My statement about losing as much as 4-6 stops of highlights was more in relation to Canon where at base you already have about 2 stops less in the highlights and then you can increase gain/ISO as high as 12800 or more but lose up to another 4 stops in the highlights to clean up your shadows for low light shooting.

An Amira now costs a little bit more ($2k?) than what I spent on my F55+finder in Jan of 2013.

I agree with the Amiras weight. When I first got it, it didn't bother me so much, and honestly, the quality of the images and ease of use every time made me say "Well, it's heavy, but it's worth it". Batteries, eh, I dunno. I get 1:45 out of a Dionic 90, doesn't kill me. Later I realized the weight changed how agile I am in doc situations, but it was not a deal killer.




Minor point, but they replaced all those EVF optics, most of them for free. New Amiras and Minis don't have that prob.



It could be argued if you're only looking at spec sheets. In practice both Prores 444 LogC and Arriraw make better images. I shot a lot of raw on my F55, not missing it.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just see a bit of hearsay and bordering on misinformation on Arri gear in this forum, and since I was very early on in the F55 experience, and F3 before that, I can speak a bit honestly about Sony vs. Arri. Arri is not perfect by any stretch.

p.s., most folks turned off by the Amiras weight are just going Mini now, like I did. The Tilta cage sys (Tilta, believe it or not!), is currently about the best system out there to turn a Mini into an Amira functionality-wise without it being a mess.

Ok thanks Nate.. Im glad the VF has been up dated..minor but annoying as minor things can be.. isn't the Amira up around $50K with all the licenses .. interesting the mini is taking buyers from the Amira .. I wonder if Arri ever saw that coming.. end of the day what ever works best for you is best !.. its a great camera and the color space is the holy grail pretty much.. although pretty much nothing is delivered in 4K.. I would have missed jobs or had to rent for some that will stipulate 4K 17-9.. or non up res UHD.. I wonder if Arri will put out a "4K" Amira one day.. Im in total agreement that it the Amira UHD is more than fantastic.. but production managers and dir unfortunately do only look at numbers .. its like the old Varicam /HDX900 thing years ago.. I would get work with my HDX900 up res to 1080.. but the better camera,the Varicam wouldn't as it was 720p.. made no sense at all.. but thats what happened..

 

[Gene Sung]

although pretty much nothing is delivered in 4K.. I would have missed jobs or had to rent for some that will stipulate 4K 17-9.. or non up res UHD.. I wonder if Arri will put out a "4K" Amira one day.. Im in total agreement that it the Amira UHD is more than fantastic.. but production managers and dir unfortunately do only look at numbers .. its like the old Varicam /HDX900 thing years ago.. I would get work with my HDX900 up res to 1080.. but the better camera,the Varicam wouldn't as it was 720p.. made no sense at all.. but thats what happened..

For me since I'm always a 2K finish, Arri's native 3.2K is perfectly fine. One thing I do like on the Red is being able to shoot 4K+ on 60fps. So nice to be able to shoot 120fps in 4K going to a 2K / HD finish.

That's great Nate. Congrats on the Mini. If I had to choose between the Amira or Mini, I would definitely go Mini; but I ain't that baller. Maybe someday.

 

[JPNola]

Just want to say that this discussion is amazingly informative. Hats off to all participating!

"but I ain't that baller." lmao Love that!

 

[Grug]

With Sony doesn't that depend entirely on your LUT? Or were you testing the ISO to the actual SLOG2/SLOG3 spec? Sony can be weird since they set odd middle grey values so their ISO2000 looks like the ISO1000 of another camera because their ~42IRE values are the same, but Sony SLOG2 for example is spec'd with middle grey at 32IRE. Makes very little sense but it's always a good reminder than ISO and middle grey are meaningless unless you fully understand the way the systems operate and how it affects exposure and post. That said Sony's specs seem like wishful thinking on any camera besides the F65/F55/A7SII where you get good results even at "base ISO" with 6EV highlight DR. Pretty much all the other Sony cameras need to be pulled a stop or more relative to the Sony spec to avoid noisy footage...

Yeah if you look at pretty much any test between Arri Alexa/Amira against all the other digital cinema camera competitors it quickly becomes clear that it has some really special stuff going on even for low light. Granted you can shoot in lower light with some of the adjustable gain cameras but then you're loosing as much as 4-6stops of highlight range in a camera that already couldn't keep up with Arri's highlights...

Nope, nothing to do with any LUTs. A lot of folks are overexposing Sony footage needlessly, and both reducing their highlight latitude and tonality by pushing details higher up in the log gamma curve, where they're more compressed.

You can see the tests/methodology on my website: www.dreamsmiths.com.au/blog I was testing to the SLOG2/SLOG3 middle grey values on a waveform.

The sensitivity of the sensor may be the better part of a stop under what the manufacturer specifies, but exposed properly (at 1125 ISO), there are ZERO issues with noise, and you still keep your 6 stops of highlight latitude.