Arri Rumor

[Sanjin Jukic]

Anyone who wants to play in the digital camera business has to make their own sensors.

It's not quite that simple or true.

Supposed to be that only Sony makes HD & 2/3 sized sensor(s) for its line of CineAltas,

all others more or less are buying its sensors from many different vendors.

Panavision claimed that has own sensor development but is not so clear how is that connected with Sony sensor R&D.

Also Jim bought Mysterium from one sort of mysterious source.

Now he bought M-X upgrade...

Arri had a deal with Cypress Semiconductor Corp. from San Hose for Arri D20 and 2K Arri film scanner.


First Use Of Arri's New 800 ASA Sensor Design:

Arri's new ALEV III captures Renaissance masterpieces in 'no lights allowed' Sistine Chapel

Arri's new ALEV III sensor tested in Rome.


"The sensor demonstrator of ARRI’s next-generation digital camera system was recently put to use on its first professional production.
Claiming a base sensitivity of 800 ASA and exceptional latitude, the 35-format CMOS sensor is named ALEV III and has been developed
for three new ARRI digital cinematography cameras that will be released in 2010.

Ciro Cappellari, the acclaimed Argentinean-born director, cinematographer and writer, utilised the new ARRI sensor for selected sequences of 'Habemus Papam',
his latest documentary feature. “We needed some representative shots of Rome, because our film explores the influence of the Vatican on the city,” says Cappellari.
“For these shots we wanted a very high picture quality and a dramatic look, so we were filming at dawn and also at dusk. We did some shots of the sun coming through
clouds onto St. Peter’s Basilica with at least ten stops of latitude and it was no problem for the ARRI camera.
I had the feeling that I was working with a 35mm negative when I saw the pictures.”

The sensitivity of the ARRI sensor demonstrator proved useful for interiors at the Sistine Chapel, where the production was forbidden from using any lights.
“We were filming the architecture and the frescos,” continues Cappellari. “The light in the chapel was exactly the same as when those frescos were painted:
a very low light that comes from windows at the top. It was beautiful to be able to film in that same light with the 800 ASA ARRI camera.”

For Andreas Berkl, a support specialist from the ARRI Digital Workflow Team in Munich who provided on-set support, the shoot was an invaluable element of
the exhaustive R&D work that ARRI is putting into the new digital cameras in advance of their launch next year. “The system is still under development,
so this was an excellent opportunity to test it in the field,” he says. “We were keen to use the demonstrator on a real production and we learned a lot.”

The sensor’s combination of sensitivity and image quality again proved useful for interiors at St. Peter’s Basilica.
“It was important to have high resolution and sensitivity for some POV shots of the children in our story entering the basilica for the first time,”
says Cappellari, who is currently editing the film. “Although we’re not editing in full resolution,
I can already see the incredible quality of the pictures from the ARRI sensor.” Producer Norbert Preuss concludes that “it all went fantastically well.
The images we got are absolutely great and the camera performed very well in extremely low light conditions.”"

LINK>>>

 

[Irmeli R]

in the end not only resolution will decide what camera will be chosen for a shoot but the reliability / sturdiness of the camera / system.

we will definitely buy a scarlet or epic, but we'll shoot 90% in studio situations. for outdoor shoots i fear how well sealed all these modules are and how many connection cycles these high frequency/density connectors can handle before they start to fail.

i think red sometimes rushes things a bit - i mean the red one accessories are really sub standard, probably never tested via FEA. never had an issue with ARRI's accessories though.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

My big issue with Arri that started this thread is the fact that they are selling a 2K finish camera when they have a secret 3K camera waiting in the wings. That is what really is bugging me.

With all due respect - huh ? What would you expect ?

For Arri to sell a 2K finish camera and to start developing another one at some period in time when they get the impression customers are fine with that ?
Do you think companies don't start developing new models ASAP, or that RED will start working on 645 next year ?

That's fine to be in the Chris Nolan camp, or the David Lean camp for that matter. Just realize that 90% of the filmmakers, producers, and studio heads out there are not in the Chris Nolan or David Lean camp, whether or not they should be. Besides, does the next Meryl Streep / Amy Adams romantic comedy really need to resolve 4K? Does the next Adam Sandler movie? Does the next indie kitchen sink handheld life-on-the-streets movie? Do small films like "Up in the Air" or "Juno" really need to have the same resolution as a "Batman" movie? I just saw "The White Ribbon" and wasn't particularly feeling that it simply wasn't high enough in resolution.

Most definitely 2K will be more optimal for certain movies/shows/projects in general. However, I don't see why would this have to keep Arri from developing higher resolution cameras.

 

[Jim Retar]

Regarding the initial post... might it not be the case that they will announce a 4k cam at the end of the year and not release one. It might also be the case that they meant a 4k finish cam and not a 4k sensor?

I can vaguely see why people might be annoyed at that kind of a announcement after they have just purchased a 2k finish cam.... but they would have to be naive to think that a higher spec cam wouldn't be announced within 2010.

There are two ways release products... RED's way (announcements and dates that are transparent but change and move) or ARRI's way (announcements close to the release date that are pretty solid). Both have upsides and downsides.

With RED you know their rough plan, so it is easier to pinpoint which product you need.... but the goal posts change alot.

With ARRI, you run the risk of buying too early in a product cycle... but have solid specs and release dates to work with.

I don't see why people cry when a new technology comes out after they just purchased a product... that is the nature of technology, especially if you jump in quick..... on the flip side... I also don't see why people cry when RED move the goal posts, they clearly state it will happen and it is part of their marketing and philosophy.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Shows like "CSI", "NCIS", "Vampire Diaries", whatever, do not need to be mastered to 4K. (Not to mention commercials for those shows.) And there is a market for cameras to shoot these shows that Panavision, ARRI, RED, etc. can and do supply.

My wife's a fan of those shows... and we can watch in the living room on a 52" screen in perfect pristine digital over the air HD or in the bedroom at analog SD from maybe the worst cable company in the country.

Guess where we watch...

I shoot mostly nature stuff where future proof resolution has long term importance ...

...but the truth is the vast majority of consumers don't much care, and as you point out, most of the productions that have "real" budgets for crews, equipment rental, etc. are those where 1080P IS "future proofing" and higher resolution will make no difference whatsoever in their long term financial outcomes. So for those productions the rental cost for a camera package, whether it is 2K 3.5K 4K 5K that costs $50K or $150K (or even that purchase price amortized over several years), won't make much difference to the overall cost of producing a show.

Even in features, it seems that the post workflow is dictating resolution needs, so until 4K 6K 8K post production is as fast as 1080P/2k is today the transition to higher resolutions will be slow.

As far as having 2.5 3.5 and 4K sensors almost simultaneously - it seems to work in DSLR market where for instance Canon has models at 10; 12; 15; 16; 18; and 21 megapixels, with their newest, higher priced model at 16 which is lower than the 21MP older model (but with higher sensitivity)

Seems like we are going to have a wide range of cameras to choose from (OK I'll say it "horses for courses"). I think RED's upcoming Epic/Scarlet will hit a powerful "sweet spot" in the market where it is affordable enough for independents to purchase and sophisticated enough to grab a good share of the "real" budget production market. But I suspect Arri will be around for quite awhile too.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

It's not quite that simple or true.

Its never that simple or that true. But even if you are sourcing a sensor from a third party, you want to be competitive. So, you'll probably have a proprietary aspect to the design. But no one will be able to compete in the rarefied air of 35mm Movies by buying off the shelf sensors that everybody has access to.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

This lens looks like its for a 2/3" sensor. The Sensor Demonstrator indicates that this is still prototype phase.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Anyone who wants to play in the digital camera business has to make their own sensors. It's more about the sensor than it is about who's been in business the longest.

In your post you sort of argued against yourself. Arri generally works with the highest end of the market. In the still world that is equivalent to the Hasselblad and Mamiya cameras where they buy their sensor from Kodak or whoever has the best sensor.

In reality it isn't even clear what it means to "make" your own sensor since I don't think any of the companies we normally talk about on REDUSER except Sony and Canon actually manufacture their own sensors. FWIK RED has sensors manufactured to their own specifications where that particular design is exclusive. But we don't know if that is much different than what ARRI does or even if it is necessarily superior to being able to just pick and choose from whoever seems to have the best sensor on any given day - since the sensor manufacturers are all pretty serious about motion these days whether for cell phones or 20+MP DSLRs. In fact, it is becoming hard to see why there will be any still only sensors anymore other than say the 50 megapixel plus market.

So, you'll probably have a proprietary aspect to the design. But no one will be able to compete in the rarefied air of 35mm Movies by buying off the shelf sensors that everybody has access to.

Didn't everybody have access to 35mm film?

Basically the technology always levels out between companies pretty quickly and within a few years everyone will have extremely high resolution, high dynamic range sensors. Arri will likely still feature that famous German engineering, extremely well thought out and delivered - whether that will be enough to sustain them nobody knows, but I suspect it will be a variety of market forces that determine it - I doubt if the sensor will be the deciding factor.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

In your post you sort of argued against yourself. Arri generally works with the highest end of the market. In the still world that is equivalent to the Hasselblad and Mamiya cameras where they buy their sensor from Kodak or whoever has the best sensor.

I'm only referring to the narrowest niche: the high-end 35mm+ motion picture market. The last hold-out to go fully digital as the norm. I don't speak towards the DSLR world, which is encroaching into a broader spectrum on both the high end and the low end.

The market that I comment on is the one I feel is most relevant to RedUser: High end movie cameras. While Arri is the traditional high end player here, they outsource their sensor manufacturing like most everyone else. When I say that a company has to "make their own sensor" I mean that in the proprietary sense, not the literal sense.

Arri has a specific set of characteristics that they build into their spec that makes their sensor unique, just as Red has their own spec, and Panavision theirs. I'm not saying that Arri has to build a chip factory. I'm saying that there is no sensor factory that makes all the sensors and you just go buy one and you can compete in this market. All the sensors currently in play are proprietary and will be for the foreseeable future.

 

[Scott Crawley]

The NTSC standard was adopted in 1953 and remained the standard until 2009, when ATSC became the new standard. [URL="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC][/URL]

With that in mind, I'd say that a 1080P finish is a very safe bet for a broadcast delivery. Even if you were to were to halve that number you still would have 28 yrs. to get a full ROI, which is more than enough.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the number of productions that are bound for the small screen outnumber theatrical productions by an order of magnitude. I've read dozens of stories in the last nine months of TV productions moving from Arri to Red, so I'm guessing that is where Arri's sights are set. The current trend for production budgets of all kinds is downward, so what is so wrong with laying out an 18 month roadmap that might include a price cut in the 1080P finish area?

They know what sensors are currently available, as well as what is on the horizon. What is so wrong with laying that info out for their customers? "Transparency" after all, is en vogue right now.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Didn't everybody have access to 35mm film?

Basically the technology always levels out between companies pretty quickly and within a few years everyone will have extremely high resolution, high dynamic range sensors. Arri will likely still feature that famous German engineering, extremely well thought out and delivered - whether that will be enough to sustain them nobody knows, but I suspect it will be a variety of market forces that determine it - I doubt if the sensor will be the deciding factor.

Yes, but there was no alternative to using 35mm film professionally. There were different manufacturers, but they all dominated their respective, isolated geographical markets. Kodak had the Americas, Agfa had europe, Fuji of course had Japan and much of Asia. This was pre-globalization. The workflow was universal. The workflows are similar now, but they are not identical to each other anymore.

Arri still has that famous "German Engineering" but historically it has been focused on moving someone else's imaging medium through its transport mechanism. That expertise no longer applies to a digital camera as robustly as it did during the age of film. Arri has deep pockets and I'm sure they'll be fine. But I don't think they will stomp any of the current players in the digital camera (high-end movies) market any time soon. The slate has been cleared and the playing field has leveled.

The sensor is a huge factor, if not the most important. It certainly is not the only one, as you correctly point out. But at this moment in history, sensor is critical. It may not be this way in the future, when sensors may be commoditized to a greater degree than they are now.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

The NTSC standard was adopted in 1953 and remained the standard until 2009, when ATSC became the new standard. [URL="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC][/URL]

With that in mind, I'd say that a 1080P finish is a very safe bet for a broadcast delivery. Even if you were to were to halve that number you still would have 28 yrs. to get a full ROI, which is more than enough.

But we're no longer in the analog world where standards mattered more. The pace of innovation in the digital world is an exponential curve, not a flat ramping curve. The timescale your betting on will be eclipsed rapidly. 1080p finish is a safe finishing format for most content, because most content has a finite window of economic relevance. We watch it, its over, we never go back to it. Most TV shows, virtually all sports programming and advertising content fall into this category. Movies, Documentaries and a few special TV shows and news events have an economic life beyond the window of the current broadcast standard that has been proven again and again.

 

[Steve G]

This lens looks like its for a 2/3" sensor. The Sensor Demonstrator indicates that this is still prototype phase.

It is not a 2/3 rd inch lens. It is an arriflex variable prime lens for pl mount cameras. Not sure about the focal length, but there are 3 different ones.

http://www.amaranthine.tv/files/arri_variableprimes.pdf

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Certainly the change from film to digital changes the players and the playing field. I acknowledge that in an all-digital market, ARRI can easily go from being the dominant player to just one of a dozen. On the other hand, many post houses use ARRI scanners and film recorders, so it's not like ARRI has been out of the game in terms of digital sensors and image management.

Ultimately, what matters is the quality of the images created by the product, and how much it costs. Who actually makes the sensor, etc. -- well, it's all fun for us to know such things, but the majority of users just want the camera to work well and don't care to know what's under the hood, so to speak, as long as the thing is working.

This is a market, so if you don't like what ARRI is selling or how they are selling it, you can vote with your pocketbook.

But this whole rumor feels a bit like corporate sabotage, trying to kill a line of cameras before they even hit the market. It doesn't make sense to release a line of cameras in the summer and then announce their replacement by September and then have their replacement out by December (it doesn't even seem possible). That would mean that they know they have to sell all of their units within two months. What's the point when they could easily hold-off on the replacement for a year? What's the point of pissing off almost their entire customer base within a tiny time frame? ARRI generally doesn't handle things like that. Look how they handled the long roll-out of the ARRI D20/21, mainly because they didn't want to piss off their customer base by selling a prototype camera that would be replaced soon with new technology. They don't have a mass-production / high volume mindset or capability that dumps large numbers of units on a market, sells them quickly at low cost, and then has a replacement product ready in a few months.

 

[Scott Crawley]

But we're no longer in the analog world where standards mattered more. The pace of innovation in the digital world is an exponential curve, not a flat ramping curve. The timescale your betting on will be eclipsed rapidly. 1080p finish is a safe finishing format for most content, because most content has a finite window of economic relevance. We watch it, its over, we never go back to it. Most TV shows, virtually all sports programming and advertising content fall into this category. Movies, Documentaries and a few special TV shows and news events have an economic life beyond the window of the current broadcast standard that has been proven again and again.

Sure I get that The material has a longer lifespan than the tech, it has always been that way. It's the nature of tech. But let me ask you this: What 58 year old plus programming are you currently watching, and how does that material compare visually to current productions?

 

[Steve G]

Arri, I suspect, will make most of it's profits from lights. How many film/tv/commercial/corporate/pop video shoots don't have at least one arri light ? Very few, I suspect.

 

[M Most]

at Red everything is subject to change, but the difference is i trust red,
hey i have the roadmap for the next 3 years with epic28k coming...

Perhaps. But "trust" is a strange term. As I recall, Red announced Scarlet with great fanfare, CG renders, specs, and an anticipated shipment time frame. Many months later, as they were nearing that shipment time frame, they completely scrapped the product they had shown and started from scratch to do a new one, which delayed the shipment for at least 1 1/2 years and possibly close to 2 years from the original anticipated shipment date on the original product - which they had now obsoleted prior to manufacturing it. I don't see how this is significantly different from what people here are "accusing" Arri of doing, and Arri hasn't even talked about it yet.

Roadmaps are just goals, but with the current pace of technology any roadmap that is more than about 6 months out is guesswork, both because one can run into unanticipated problems with complex technology (as Jim has admitted Red has) and because newer technology will come along that can make a better product in an only slightly longer time frame (as Red has taken advantage of).

 

[Peter Strietmann]

I shot a feature on a D20 three years ago. The Arri laser has been around for some time now. Arri is still genius, analogue and digital.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

let me explain the trust
i trusted in the red one...and did get more than i have expected when putting down my deposit.
when i had to wait...they told me.
when there were problems...they helped me in a way which is more than service.
arri is great...but reality is their designers are getting frustrated because of the CEO`s... well, when something like this is reality something is going wrong at the company. i will not name which designers from Arri, this is a matter of trust

arri shouldnt worry about RED, different customer base inmho...i dont think that they will sell 7000 units...maybe 500-750 to rental companys and another 100-200 to individuals.
they should be worried about the aaton penelope and their upcoming 6k digimag imho.


its getting cheaper and cheaper to produce...the regular working horse will be a sub 12k usd S35 camera (scarlet, maybe something form another vendor) and some special rigs (phantom etc.)...post worklows will get damn cheap wihin the next 5 years...and dont forget at some point something is good enough.

producers are happy to put the money infront of the lens and into talent...

( iam not talking about the next 200 mio dollar batman, i am talking about the 1 - 10 mio projects)

 

[Stephen Williams]

With all due respect - huh ? What would you expect ?

For Arri to sell a 2K finish camera and to start developing another one at some period in time when they get the impression customers are fine with that ?
.

Excuse me but MX not yet on sale and there has been talk of Monstro its replacement for more than a year now. With future proofing in mind 35mm film still would seem like a good option.