Arri Alexa and Mysterium-X...

[Graeme Nattress]

Matt, for what it's worth if you set RED (M or M-X) to ISO800 (or ISO320) on the current build, and you set your lens aperture according to your light meter, mid grey in the default REDGamma ISO800 (or ISO320) image will appear at the correct value.

Graeme

 

[Michael Hastings]

I think you better check again Everything in your statement above is false.

I and several of my customers are very interested in 3D and I extrapolated from the picture next to the Nikon DSLR. Oops, my bad - I really hate to disseminate bad information.

I have a shoot that is conflicting with NAB, so won't be there to measure. Any chance you can give us some preliminary dimensions for Epic and Scarlet?

 

[Stephen Williams]

Efficiency. Michael - I'm sure that at, or before NAB - ARRI will LOWER the price of Alexa 20% -.

There is a very good chance that the Euro will fall by more than 20%, a dollar used to be worth rather more than a euro, probably will happen during the life-cycle of the 2 products. I bought 'worthless' dollars $2 for a £1 seemed like an obvious thing to do at the time.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Matt, for what it's worth if you set RED (M or M-X) to ISO800 (or ISO320) on the current build, and you set your lens aperture according to your light meter, mid grey in the default REDGamma ISO800 (or ISO320) image will appear at the correct value.

Graeme

Graeme,

Is you light meter calibrated to 12% or 18% Mid grey?
http://www.bythom.com/graycards.htm

Best

Stephen

 

[Matt W.]

Matt, for what it's worth if you set RED (M or M-X) to ISO800 (or ISO320) on the current build, and you set your lens aperture according to your light meter, mid grey in the default REDGamma ISO800 (or ISO320) image will appear at the correct value.

Graeme

Don't take it personally; I'm just exasperated with the anti-Arri sentiment here. It's not like anyone's forcing red owners to buy an Alexa.

I've recently been pushing for the MX on a feature planned for 35mm...although I didn't have any luck. The MX seems to fix all the original red's image problems (from too-aggressive anti-moire to IR filtration to noise floor). It's just that the Alexa looks great, too, and Arri is just the best company in terms of build quality and customer service. (Which comes at a very literal cost, though; their products cost the most and they don't do substantial discounts, even for big rental houses.)

 

[Steve Das]

...This was made up by several folks here on Reduser. We do not have any other cameras besides the 3 soon to be released, ALEXA models and the current D21. This has been clearly stated before, but requires repeating... I guess.

Once you jump in the pre-release waters...you have to swim..

 

[Michael Hastings]

Michael -

As has already been pointed out, the less storage space consumed, the less likely that you will encounter faulty storage. This is a clear benefit of compression.

Also, you are wildy mistaken about your assumption that any cheap storage will suffice for recording uncompressed. The fact is that the data rate required by uncompressed predicates an extremely expensive SSD RAID (assuming that we're talking about high resolutions - SSD may not be required for simple HD, but we're definitely still talking RAID).

As a fellow Red user, you have my support, but please be cautious in the technical assertions that you are making - these two are simply not correct.

- Tim

Tim:

As far as your first statement, I would like to see the analysis supporting that. I'm not saying you are wrong (but I'm from the show me state) but intuitively it seems to me that while compression and therefore fewer drives means less likelihood of total drive failures, my point was about data corruption itself and the greater likelihood that compression would create greater problems.

As far as recording uncompressed, I thought it was obvious I was talking about transferring the data from the camera source drive - just as we do today - immediately from RED CF cards, or REDDRIVES - typically to redundant backup drives at the same time.

So you only need as many high speed source drives as your day's shooting requires.

BTW these weren't cheap drives. I haven't done a historical price check but it seems like cost per gigabyte for any type of storage is about a quarter of what it was at RED introduction - so uncompressed is only 2.5 times as expensive as 10:1 was two and a half years ago. My overall point was that storage capacities have gone up and prices have gone down so much, that even the large files from uncompressed aren't particularly expensive. If normal trends continue, recording uncompressed on Alexa or mathematically lossless on Epic, when they are readily available, will have about the same cost as shooting REDCODE on the R1 when it came out.

I'm not trying to promote ARRI, I'm just trying to promote reasonable attitudes on this board. I will get my Epic as soon as my number 206 comes up and I can't see how the arri would ever be worth it for me, but Canon DSLRs at $1700, and Epic at $28K, and even Arri at $60K probably all have their place and it isn't just that the people that might use the other cameras are just stupid.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

It's a stock Sekonic as used by cinematographers. Not that light meters are all that accurate to begin with. That's why we put in good exposure tools in camera.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

There isn't a person on a set that could care more about the safety of the cans than a writer director.
\

You mean "except the financier/producer" of course

 

[Stephen Williams]

It's a stock Sekonic as used by cinematographers. Not that light meters are all that accurate to begin with. That's why we put in good exposure tools in camera.

With many meters calibrated nearer 12%, it's not suprising that many cinematographers often overexpose film by 1/3-2/3 of a stop!

 

[Chuck Z]

Matt W., your logic and claims against ARRI are pretty appalling. I'm surprised a moderator hasn't shut you up.

If you think quadrupling the resolution of a film will double its box office revenue, then I have a bridge to sell you.

 

[Martin Stevens]

Both of you should be using Real Full Names....as per forum rules.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Michael was referring to the reconstructed image, not the RAW file record. Arri is saying that their 3.5K sensor yields a proper 2K image when reconstructed. The RAW record is, by definition, a value for each of the pixels in the sensor.

I do wish that some people here would have the courtesy and common sense to refrain from jumping to conclusions about products that have not yet been built, and jumping on people for using terminology that doesn't conform to Red's redefinitions of those terms. Production units of the Alexa do not yet exist. Neither do production models of Epic or Scarlet. Until they do, there is little to compare and no conclusions to be properly drawn.

Questions are, by definition, not conclusions. I don't think I'm being unfair to Michael or Arri. I'm simply following the established "rules of engagement" set forth by industry professionals curious about digital cinema cameras in development.

 

[Deanan]

With many meters calibrated nearer 12%, it's not suprising that many cinematographers often overexpose film by 1/3-2/3 of a stop!

It's the spot meters that are at 12% (sometimes 14 and sometimes 10).

Incident meters are what we're aligned with.
Too much inconsistency with spot meters.

 

[Mike Gross]

Phil

Alexa has a 3.5K sensor and outputs 2K ARRIRAW data which is uncompressed off the CMOS sensor (no luck needed).

Since it's coming off the sensor at 14bits, do you record the 14bits uncompressed raw with 14 bit T link? D21 was 12bit T link?

Mike

 

[Alan Zarnegar]

If Avatar, a sub-2k film, made over 2 billion dollars, a 4k film should make more than twice as much from tomorrow's discriminating audiences.

Looking over other parts of your impassioned post, I feel that it is pertinent to comment on the above statement.

Thinking a film like Avatar (ceteris paribus) shot in 4K+ will generate 2x the earnings is quite a fallacy. That is like saying if Titanic was shot on 65mm, it'd bring in double the earnings. See how ridiculous that sounds?

Avatar's earnings have very little correlation to the 1080p resolution the film was shot on. It was more about the 3D technology, facial & motion capture, tied into a film visually unique for many viewers.

Before posting, make sure to keep your head on straight. Right now your logic is illogical. It is hurting any worthy arguments you might have.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Looking over other parts of your impassioned post, I feel that it is pertinent to comment on the above statement.

Thinking a film like Avatar (ceteris paribus) shot in 4K+ will generate 2x the earnings is quite a fallacy. That is like saying if Titanic was shot on 65mm, it'd bring in double the earnings. See how ridiculous that sounds?

Avatar's earnings have very little correlation to the 1080p resolution the film was shot on. It was more about the 3D technology, facial & motion capture, tied into a film visually unique for many viewers.

Before posting, make sure to keep your head on straight. Right now your logic is illogical. It is hurting any worthy arguments you might have.

Uh... I think he was being sarcastic, there. (Although, I have to admit he isn't all that good at sarcasm. It took me a few follow-up posts to suspect he wasn't serious. But maybe I'm the slow one here.) :blink:

 

[Alan Zarnegar]

Uh... I think he was being sarcastic, there. (Although, I have to admit he isn't all that good at sarcasm. It took me a few follow-up posts to suspect he wasn't serious. But maybe I'm the slow one here.) :blink:

If he was being sarcastic, I blame the internet for my misunderstanding, and I apologize.

 

[Matt W.]

Yeah I was being sarcastic, but the level of inane fanboyism here is so high it's hard to differentiate between sarcasm and legitimate delusion. Given the images we've seen, Arri's 3.5k (assuming a decent debayer algorithm) at 800ISO should surpass 5219 in all areas but dynamic range (and even 13.5 stops wysiwyg is preferable to 15+ stops blind in some cases, as both will be compressed for exhibition). How is that not good enough for people who were likely shooting with a GL2 like eight years ago?

I'll edit the post, though; it was in bad taste.

 

[Mike Gross]

Yeah I was being sarcastic, but the level of inane fanboyism here is so high it's hard to differentiate between sarcasm and legitimate delusion. Given the images we've seen, Arri's 3.5k (assuming a decent debayer algorithm) at 800ISO should surpass 5219 in all areas but dynamic range (and even 13.5 stops wysiwyg is preferable to 15+ stops blind in some cases, as both will be compressed for exhibition). How is that not good enough for people who were likely shooting with a GL2 like eight years ago?

I'll edit the post, though; it was in bad taste.

I don't think you can record 3.5k on Alexa.
I heard it's 2880 which resolves to about 2k.
That would beat 5219 which resolves at 3.2k?