Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Arri Alexa and Mysterium-X...

Status
Not open for further replies.
David Battistella said:
This 80K number is exagerated for the ALEXA.

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency-c...=USD&submit=Convert#from=EUR;to=USD;amt=50000

It's like 63K in USD.

People need to relax and the price point comparison between ARRI (anything) and other products is getting redundant.

IE: Comparing camera's, is like comparing ARRI glass or ARRI FF to competitors, ARRI is always more expensive and they would not apologize for that. People pay for quality (or perceived quality)

Anyone might consider anything from a lens to a Follow focus expensive.

I don't see DP's on here saying that ARRI glass is two expensive compared to an RPP set.

ARRI has a reputation for building quality film equipment and customers have paid full price for some of the finest gear used in motion pictures.

Any price comparrison until the products (EPIC and ALEXA) are in the open marketplace are mute because in my opinion price is more than a featues comparrison.

David
Click to expand...

I didn't mean 80K for a camera - $80 was just a random high number.

I think one can question the high cost of many Arri products vs. competition. For example, their follow focus has some lash - my $1150 Cinevate does not, not even a single degree of it.

Building "quality equipment" doesn't mean much here. It either has a certain dynamic range or it doesn't, or it has some special look or it doesn't, etc. Durability would be a factor, but Red seems to be very nice about warranty issues, so we can in practice call any Red "durable".

Still no hard facts, not even one, other than a Prores 1080p recording feature, to make the claim that Alexa outperforms a Red with MX. An Arii logo on the side is not a feature.

Again, I really would love some straight answers. Maybe I am should be planning on shooting with Alexa soon for real reasons, but I won't unless I hear some.
 
Barend Onneweer said:
Well, neither camera is currently available to the public, nor have they been fully finished yet. Once they're out in the field you can count on many comparative tests being done. What you're asking is "why is this restaurant priced higher than that one", without having dined at either.
Click to expand...

i have dined at Red+MX - it was delicious.
 
Oh come on...

You haven't worked with an Alexa yet. Maybe it's overpriced. Maybe it's not. You can't know. And by the tone of your posts you've already made up your mind about how MX and Alexa compare.
 
The exchange rate might tip our decision once our Epic is ready, since we are in Europe. Plus, Arri offers service right around the corner, while I need to go through horrible customs protocols to have a RED sent back and forth…
 
Andrew said:
The response is:
“There will be more information about the technique with ALEXA when the camera is out”
If Michael could elaborate on this subject he would. He is just working there, he is not the owner.

http://www.arridigital.com/Bravin

Arri is not and never was a company open to its own equipment users. (old school)
Click to expand...

Yes, it's rather dissapointing to be avidly following this thread, just to be met with a non-answer at the end of "wait and see". On the Arri forum, Michael Bravin says:

"White Balance is not "baked in" if what you mean is you choose white balance and you have not "control" over it in post,"

which is basically saying "video cameras bake in white balance, but you can always re-balance in post, so I'm going to define not-baked-in to mean something different to the usual definition of not-baked-in".

And I thought we were looking for a simple yes/no answer! This is pretty basic stuff by reading the fascinating technical discussion going on in this thread.

If I'm doing the prores proxy / record raw out to a DDR workflow, I'm certainly going to want the white balance set so that the viewfiner and the proxies are balanced. At that point, what is happening to the raw data I'm recording out the HD-SDI. Is it still raw, or has it been manipulated? If I'm just recording raw over HD-SDI, does the recorded raw get manipulated if I choose a viewing white balance? I mean, they are pretty basic workflow questions of the kind people ask here every day and generally get pretty straight answers. What meta data gets recorded for white balance?

Albert
 
Guys, it's starting to get a little too personal in here.

As for the whole discussion about WB, I think we'll have to wait and see. The answers are pretty muddy at this point. I have other questions about ARRI RAW where I received no definite answer at NAB and I have seen conflicting info here or even confusing commentary from Michael. But I'll wait until the official information comes out.

I said it many pages back, but the Alexa seems to be a fine camera. I spent quite a bit of time with one at NAB. We are going to be seeing a lot of the Alexa in the months and years to come. Any AC, DIT, etc.. would do well to learn the Alexa.
 
Jannard said:
Dwight... all cameras have a native color, the one where they are happiest. But with RAW you have the chance to change it to whatever light source you are shooting without consequence. Color science is fundamentally based on a proper WB setting. With RAW, you can change that. Baked is... not so much.

Jim
Click to expand...

On the show I am currently on, they choose to shoot long scenes where the light goes from indoor to aoutdoor and maybe back again.

This is going to work just fine. With baked WB... Not so much...
 
Álex Montoya said:
Lol, Stephen, you are not pro-film, you're directly anti-RED.
Click to expand...

Not at all, exchange rates have made RED seem incredibly cheap in the UK & Europe, when Red first started shipping the £ was worth around $2, it's now under 1.50, (had a low of around 1.35) exchange rates change, get used to it.
There were threads about the end of the USD a year - 18 months ago, that seems rather odd now, I commented that the Euro was overvalued & could possibly fail, of course everybody thought that was absurd at the time, I sold £ to buy USD, when the $ is worth more than a euro or £0.9 I will switch again.
 
Albert Armes said:
If I'm doing the prores proxy / record raw out to a DDR workflow, I'm certainly going to want the white balance set so that the viewfiner and the proxies are balanced. At that point, what is happening to the raw data I'm recording out the HD-SDI. Is it still raw, or has it been manipulated? If I'm just recording raw over HD-SDI, does the recorded raw get manipulated if I choose a viewing white balance? I mean, they are pretty basic workflow questions of the kind people ask here every day and generally get pretty straight answers. What meta data gets recorded for white balance?

Albert
Click to expand...

Albert

I think you are referring to a Look or Lut applied to the monitor or proxy or uncompressed HD. ARRIRAW ONLY comes out as Data using the same connectors as dual 1.5G or dual 3G. With Alexa we allow you to choose to apply a Look or Lut to the video outputs and Pro Res independently for viewing or permanently to carry a look created on set to post. These Looks and Luts are NOT applied permanently to the ARRIRAW data which is what I understand as baked in.
I understood Jims (and other's) question to be about WB, i.e color balance of the sensor data (tungsten or daylight). I explained that you DO choose AND SET the WB of the system with D21 and also said that there are tools that allow you to adjust it in post. We do not handle white balance in the D21 as RED handles it as metadata.

I also said that our approach was different with Alexa and said we would share that when the camera comes in June.

I'm trying to be clear, I hope I am being clear I don't mean to give an unclear answer.
 
Wow while I won't comment on your camera experience your financial advisor must have been on a day off when you made that decision as a long term investment.
 
Michael Bravin said:
Albert

I think you are referring to a Look or Lut applied to the monitor or proxy or uncompressed HD. ARRIRAW ONLY comes out as Data using the same connectors as dual 1.5G or dual 3G. With Alexa we allow you to choose to apply a Look or Lut to the video outputs and Pro Res independently for viewing or permanently to carry a look created on set to post. These Looks and Luts are NOT applied permanently to the ARRIRAW data which is what I understand as baked in.
I understood Jims (and other's) question to be about WB, i.e color balance of the sensor data (tungsten or daylight). I explained that you DO choose AND SET the WB of the system with D21 and also said that there are tools that allow you to adjust it in post. We do not handle white balance in the D21 as RED handles it as metadata.

I also said that our approach was different with Alexa and said we would share that when the camera comes in June.

I'm trying to be clear, I hope I am being clear I don't mean to give an unclear answer.
Click to expand...


Michael.

Thanks a lot.

This is very clear. You are looking for the "right" choice for the Alexa, whatever that will be. Looking foreward to seing your final decissions implemented.

Cheers!
 
Jay Gannon said:
Wow while I won't comment on your camera experience your financial advisor must have been on a day off when you made that decision as a long term investment.
Click to expand...

I don't have a financial advisor, I make my own decisions, being over 30% up on those transactions I don't see a problem. I never mentioned anything about long term investment , my definition of a long term investment is a short term one that went wrong.
 
Michael Bravin said:
Albert

I think you are referring to a Look or Lut applied to the monitor or proxy or uncompressed HD. ARRIRAW ONLY comes out as Data using the same connectors as dual 1.5G or dual 3G. With Alexa we allow you to choose to apply a Look or Lut to the video outputs and Pro Res independently for viewing or permanently to carry a look created on set to post. These Looks and Luts are NOT applied permanently to the ARRIRAW data which is what I understand as baked in.
I understood Jims (and other's) question to be about WB, i.e color balance of the sensor data (tungsten or daylight). I explained that you DO choose AND SET the WB of the system with D21 and also said that there are tools that allow you to adjust it in post. We do not handle white balance in the D21 as RED handles it as metadata.

I also said that our approach was different with Alexa and said we would share that when the camera comes in June.

I'm trying to be clear, I hope I am being clear I don't mean to give an unclear answer.
Click to expand...

Thank you Michael. Actually, thank you very much for your nice
and clear comments.

I am hoping that the Alexa is designed so that even if the current
firmware does bake in the WB, that later firmware builds will not.
 
Michael Bravin said:
I also said that our approach was different with Alexa and said we would share that when the camera comes in June.

I'm trying to be clear, I hope I am being clear I don't mean to give an unclear answer.
Click to expand...

Thanks Michael. I've been trying to get my head around the red approach where everything is metadata, and with my experience with DSLRs, I follow and appreciate that concept.

There is a lot of work and learning to do moving from the old 2/3" video background to this new way of doing digital cinema. It used to be you just bought the best Sony you could afford. Things are different now. I'm sure I'm going to be using Alexa and Epic in the future, and I'm going to need to know which to use for what situation. And now we're all learning more about how images are made. Cameras are no longer the black boxes they used to be. The subtle details of making images are becoming increasingly important.

Albert
 
Martin Stevens said:
Thank you Michael. Actually, thank you very much for your nice
and clear comments.

I am hoping that the Alexa is designed so that even if the current
firmware does bake in the WB, that later firmware builds will not.
Click to expand...

I suppose you could just assume that the native sensitivity of the Alexa sensor is near 5000K like the Red and shoot near that, then what's "baked in" is not really being pushed in any direction. It just means that you'd have to use a LUT or something to correct the color for the monitor and for dailies.
 
Having WB completely changeable in post is clearly great, but, even as a dedicated Redite, I have to admit it's only necessary if you really get it wrong while shooting. If Alexa workflow requires a selected white balance that's baked, most shooters who know their light source and how the camera reacts are going to get it close enough to be happily fine tuned in post. And it sounds as if Arri has designed a suite of tools to make that work.

I'm much more interested is Red's ability to over-sample, both for current resolution and future proof shelf life. But, as I have said earlier, for fast turn-around episodic TV, that's not as important. (Yes, I remember Welcome Back, Kotter; a good friend wrote it). If Red wants more of that market, make a DNXHD module. If Arri wants more of the feature market, they'll find a real 4K solution. (like 5K, which de-Bayers to real 4K)
 
Michael Bravin said:
...I understood Jims (and other's) question to be about WB, i.e color balance of the sensor data (tungsten or daylight). I explained that you DO choose AND SET the WB of the system with D21 and also said that there are tools that allow you to adjust it in post. We do not handle white balance in the D21 as RED handles it as metadata.

I also said that our approach was different with Alexa and said we would share that when the camera comes in June.

I'm trying to be clear, I hope I am being clear I don't mean to give an unclear answer.
Click to expand...

Hi Michael,

Thanks again for your presence here and for clearing up how the D21 works.

That being said, I'm confused as to why you haven't been able to comment on the question of whether WB is meta data or baked in on Alexa. It seems as if it either is or is not. I'm guessing right now, that it's possible in firmware to do both, and the company wants to choose one direction or the other. Perhaps by not answering, ARRI is using this as an odd way to get feedback on what users would want?

It seems that this would be out in the open now, so people could be planning their productions that are already in the works and are considering which Camera is right for them moving forward.

I'm sure that Alexa will be a fine Camera and in use on many projects in the coming years. This just seems like a strange approach to introducing the specs.

I'd love to know one way or the other, or both, but I don't see why you have to wait until the Camera is released to comment on this.

Again, I am definitely a huge admirer of RED and what they have done, but I always remain open minded, and ARRI has always had my respect.

Thanks for any additional information you can provide to the community. And if you have already answered this, and I somehow missed it in the many pages of posts, my apologies.
 
Just another point in addition to the Dual-Gain disucssion.

Michael said they have rolled off highlights.
Alexa specs say they record to 16bit (even though they only have 13.5 stops of dynamic range. That means they have 2.5 bits of excess storage to store that headroom in.

If they apply analog gain through their dual-gain system and the top gain has a roll off on it so that it never clips then theoretically even though it is baked in you still have all of the data without clipping. Think of it like FLUT exposure. You apply gain non-linearly so that it doesn't clip and you still increase exposure. It sounds like that's what Arri is alluding to but not admitting outright. With their software then they could reconstruct the white balance and let you adjust it (without losing any dynamic range) but still bake in the analog gain.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top