ARRI Alexa joins RED to kill celluloid in 2010
By Thomas Ricker 
posted March 17th 2010 5:52AM
posted March 17th 2010 5:52AM
Until then, check a side-by-side test done by the cats over at Animation World Network pitting a prototype Alexa against a RED One equipped with a new MysteriumX sensor and software. AWN was so enthusiastic by the results of the two cams that it proclaimed, "2010 is the year that celluloid died." Jim Jannard, RED CEO, graciously responded to the test by saying, "We had expected the images to be very similar and it appears that this test confirms that." He then added the following:
Now hit the source links for the full read because the future of film looks set to become historic."We have believed, since IBC last year, that these two platforms would be the ones standing for the future. We are very proud to be in such good company. But for the moment, we tip our hats to Arri."
When I saw the photo I thought the article will be about Unreal Tournament.
RED WTF
@abedinthehouse
FTW*
lols i dnt even knw if u can call that a typo
@abedinthehouse
"lols i dnt even knw if u"
How about all of that mess? Do you post your Engadget comments with a cell phone keypad?
Although I may very well never even see one of these in real life,
DO WANT
It's the Redeemer!
Who makes anything in 4:3 anymore?
@KosherTelephone
Family Guy and American Dad is 4:3.
@KosherTelephone
Exactlly my thought!
@KGB
actually American Dad went HD (16:9) at the start of the year
@KosherTelephone
The Academy 35mm aspect ratio is 4:3. So if you want to use anamorphic lenses designed to work with 35mm you need a digital sensor that is the same aspect ratio.
@roxics
That's a bingo!
@KosherTelephone use the 4:3 sensor with anamorphic lenses to achieve a true 2.35 aspect ratio (aka widescreen)
@Atkins I did to for some reason.
@abedinthehouse NICE!
@KGB They don't use a camera for those...
Someone who has a load of Anamorphic Lenses.
@TheNightPhoenix
Balls, was meant as reply to KosherTelephone
NOTANKS o_O;
Nice to hear a quote like that from a CEO, I tip my hat to you.
@mogadget
yea now if only CEO's from other companies (not mentioning and names ) Google ,Apple could tip their hats off to each other instead of suing.....just saying..
@brolin It just shows the difference between those companies.
Both ARRI and RED are privately held, have a much more engineer- than "business"-driven lead, have customers who know what they want and need. They tend to fight their rivalries more with the quality of their products and technical innovation, than with lawsuits and marketing BS. Ironic when you think that their ratio of really worthwhile vs. trivial patents is probably orders of magnitude higher than that of the aforementioned big companies.
3.5k pixels isn't many at all!
@peterSW
over 3 times the fullHD isn't good enough for you?
@Atkins Of course that's what they mean, but not what they say.
@indeed
The 3.5k is horizontal resolution, so it is only 1.75x the horizontal resolution or 3x the resolution of 1080p.
Kind of a weird resolution, 4k is kind of the new gold standard.
@peterSW I guess that's the horizontal pixel count. Not bad at all.
@KosherTelephone BTW:
"For ARRIRAW data, the images are recorded at the highest resolution and down scaled in post-production,
where various down sampling factors are possible. For example, 3072 x 1728 of the captured active sensor pixels can be down sampled to 2048 x 1152 for a 16:9 2K DI."
So should I buy this or the Red One to record my sleeping dog and post it to youtube?
@Nitesh I think your iPod will be enough for that...
Oh... wait!
All this digital video is harsh and brittle. No way I'm giving up my collection of film... it's warmer and I keeps it real! I also only use oxygen-free lenses and Monster® projector bulbs.
@Releaux
You had me until the Monster mention. Well played.
@NickA, I originally didn't have the last sentence but thought it would be too obscure. I find it really interesting that we haven't seen a corresponding videophile crowd pop up with all the new digital filming going on.
Or maybe they have and I wasn't paying attention. All I know is that thanks to the audiophiles, it's really hard to find an emergency USB or RCA patch cable at BestBuy at 8:45pm that isn't gold plated, adamantium encrusted and $54.95 for 6' lengths.
/grumble grumble damn kids grumble
Kinda nice to see manufactures complimenting each other instead of of suing each other....
Finally Arri is getting into this game....Now I can wish to maybe graze by this unit somewhere in NYC......
Film still looks better. It's visual properties have still never been duplicated to my satisfaction.
@harjon456
Film may still have those little nuances like a vinyl record does for music. Sad for us that most films now days even when filmed with actual film are digitized at some point. One upside is that digital copies don't degrade like film copies do. Have you watched a VHS tape lately? I also remember when Lucas released Star Wars after remastering in the mid 90's. Lucas said that some of the original film was in such bad shape that he was lucky to get a pass out of it and that if he would have let it go a few more years the original film would have been lost.
@harjon456
I agree, it does look better, especially when it comes to color reproduction and dynamic range. But as the gap is constantly narrowed, the cost for film will be harder and harder to justify.
Besides, nobody who is in school (or learning through experience) right now will have the patience for the film workflow in ten years.
@harjon456
i completely agree with this. although the digital revolution is obviously the logical next step, no camera has been able to effectively reproduce the grain structure, color saturation, and uncompressed data stored in film. One argument I hear about digital and the RED systems is that its cheaper, which in the long run is not true at all. Sure there is no processing (10-11 cents a foot, a 400' roll of 16mm, which is scanned at 2k, will run you about $40 to process, and 35mm although more expensive to purchase, will cost less to process), but RED requires SOOOO much extra lighting needs to properly expose the sensor that to create a visual image that looks professional, your costs will either equal out or rise by using RED. I have been on a number of indie shorts this past year that have debated the use of RED vs. 16/35mm, and when the numbers are crunched, the amount of grip and electric gear needed to expose the sensor on RED makes the project more expensive. With a 320 ISO sensor, that just can't match newer stocks from Kodak like the Vision3 500T, which also has 11 stops of latitude from exposure. I have done datacine on films with their key light source 4-5 stops under exposure and you can pull it out to look perfectly fine on film.... can't do that with RED. and I'm glad someone pointed out the ignorance of raising resolutions so dramatically in the sensor chips. as I stated earlier, 16mm scans at roughly 2k, where 35mm scans near 4k. But whats a Blu-ray? Compressed h.264... so in the end it doesn't matter nearly as much as what it was scanned at, because nearly all offline and online edits can't handle the data workflow of anything above 1080p dnxHD36 efficiently. The human eye just can't pickup on higher resolutions as advertised.
I also think film isn't something you appreciate until you shoot a project yourself on film. being able to have a tangible product in your hand, versus data that can be wiped clean due to hardware failure, is an indispensable insurance policy for your movie.
viva la film!
@doafilms
and just to add, Arri is my camera of choice for film, so I would choose it over RED any day
Will look great at porn
I am all for these non-film advances in recoding, but while they are upping the ante on resolution and DOF, but I am even more excited about moving beyond 24fps to 60-120fps and adding additional aspect ratios like 2.20 :1 & 2.55 :1. I don't know how the finished product compare to traditional film, but the only thing they seem to be missing is the latitude and grain that will be difficult to simulate without recording to actual film stock.
@Marc B
When are those aspect ratios used? I thought everything was either 2.35:1 (usually like a .05 variance) or 1.85:1
I can tell you as someone who works in the industry, everything is still mostly centered around a 2K pipeline. While full ap is 4:3 most films go out at 2.40. For film they usually scan at 6k and it is downsized to 2k. If we have a digital push-in we will use a 4k plate or even the full 6k plate but it is rare. Avatar was shot HD 1920x1080 for any live action elements and then 4K for digital fx, think about that when you watch it in IMAX which is 8K how much scaling was done. We have done a lot of work on RED footage with the older sensor and I think it is pretty good. You do not have the latitude of film for exposure, but a good DP knows how to light a scene properly. We have done some work at 4K but it is usually overkill even when seen in a digital theater with 4K projection. So no 4K really isn't the gold standard yet, 2K and 1080p still are.
For the ARRI ALEXA camera test "World Cup" and the behind the scenes, Please visit www.stargatestudios.net/channel