Leaderboard

Yeah, the cinematography and moody grading overcame the lack of resolution. https://www.eoshd.com/lens/kendy-ty-t2i-one-guy-amazing-things-5-year-old-dslr/ But we still feel the need (myself included) to pixel peep. I suppose it's a hobby if anything - whether it has any real creative use, is open to debate... In some way it is relevant, but it all depends on what serves the content and story, and the lighting and cinematography. Sometimes, that demands a Hi8 camcorder!

I'd be confident that I am capable of making any camera - irrespective of price - look absolute garbage... Ergo... it's not just the camera.

Still kind of amazing that the notion of buying your way into image quality with a camera is a thing these days. What others have said. Don't ignore the craft. Swap out an ARRI with a GH1 in certain production environments and you'd be, like, "Holy shit! That looks awesome!" Three or four stops of DR does not a good image make. It helps, but it doesn't make it. A decade ago a bunch of cinematic heavyweights, Coppola and the like, did a popular test screening of hybrid camera tech at the time. They were more than pleased with what the products, like a 5dII, were delivering. If it was good enough for them in 2010's, what the heck are we worried about? Also, who remembers that one talented dude guy filming in 720p on a canon rebel? I think his name started with a "Z"? Beautiful stuff because he knew how to use it. Would it have been better if it was an ARRI? Of course, but would that really affect the narrative? Anyway... And then, yeah, add in a bunch of YT knobs playing with the gear without any deep wisdom about gaffing, camera moves, and storytelling --of course the video examples of hybrids'll end up looking like crap. Here's an anecdote: I'm currently editing a documentary with a decent budget. The cinematographer on the shoots sucked balls. He filmed with an ARRI and two different REDS along the way. The ARRI has a look. It comes out of the cam with a lot of "thickness" to use, you know? Regardless, we recently had to hire a different guy to do a half day of pick up shots and he used his lowly GH5. He knew how to find the right light, frame an interesting composition, and (thankfully) knew how to hold a mother-f'ing-shot longer than 2 seconds. Grrrr. Guess which footage looked better and was more useful? We can (and should!) chase the tech if that's what floats our boats, but real creatives don't really give too much of a rip about the tech. "Is it working? Good. Let's tell this story." They make it happen with what they got.

I just checked eBay. Yes, you can get an original Arri Alexa for less than CAN$5000 including the viewfinder. We live in the golden age of cameras, Kids. Go make your movie!

My mistake! I didn't realize you were limiting the pixel shift comments to it being processed in-body. Last I checked, it still needed to be done in post. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Just because you can doesn't mean you should and I understand why the big production houses do what they do, but if the camera type was undisclosed, no one other than the folks who worked on the production would ever know! 99.9999999999999% of the consumer population do not peak behind the curtain because they have zero interest what is behind the curtain. (It's a little old man in a green jacket playing an ARRI organ. Or could be an S5II/FX3/iPhone 17 organ).

Back in the 1080p days, we had line skipping and it wasn't really 1080p in a lot of cases, so a full pixel readout was needed and that's why 4K was so attractive as it would overcome the binning, downsample to whatever resolution you wanted and looked great at 1080p in most cases. Now we have a similar situation with 8K vs 4K because a lot of 4K is pixel binned from a higher resolution sensor, and 8K is a way to get that coveted full pixel readout again. Funny how history repeats itself. Just like with fascism. Anyway where was I... The current debate around specs leaves out the creative side, and that's fine... as the two can be talked about independently and are relevant to the art of cinema. What bothers me about the current state of play though is social media influencers passing off the grading or camera matching work as somehow relevant to what the camera is doing, when actually RAW can be any look you like. I also see a problem with overkill. A lot of people obsess over resolution and then go out and shoot some boring advert for Instagram. There's a lack of critical thinking there, and maybe a bit of ego.

Are you talking about a higher-resolution mode using sensor shift? Fuji does this too, at least on the GFX 100 series. Though if the Olympus/Panasonic/Pentax implementations support doing it handheld, that's an improvement over Fuji's which requires a very stable tripod. The original Canon R5 could do it too - no idea how well it worked, but I think I read that they removed the mode from the R5 II in favor of "AI" upscaling... a place where "progress" isn't.

Yes his work was great, I much liked his earlier work with the t2i vs the new camera that he is using now though.

Very true. I've long said that most of us don't even have a television large enough to make the most out of 4K so the push for high resolution is kind of pointless. I agree in principle, THOUGH I do think the ALEXA still has more advantages than just dynamic range. People I know who work with it always tell me it's the easiest to get the grade they are looking for and for my eyes there is something about the image that feels more organic. I am, though, open to the idea that there is a level of bias when looking at footage you know is from an ALEXA.

Actually it's the camera from 2021... the sony a1. We have peaked!

As others have said, for the most part, proper lighting and grading is often more important than the image straight out of the camera. Though with that said, Alexa is still the most flexible image that you'll find coming out of a camera, That's followed by Burano and V-Raptor and most recently, apparently, Ursa Cine (still needs more time for user tests to confirm/deny, but the tests on paper are impressive. If you're shooting a film with a big budget, your A camera is almost definitely Alexa. Why? Because it's the most flexible image. Because your high-end gaffer will automatically know how to light well for it. Because your high-end editor and colorist will instantly know how to push the footage around and probably have pre-defined workflows for working with it. Is it still the best image? Arguable. If you're shooting a decent budget indie flick, you're more likely to find Burano/Venice or V-Raptor? Why? Similar things to the above, but you're paying less than Alexa. If you're shooting lower budget than that, it's a complete crapshoot. It'll probably involve the letters F, X, and 6, but if it's a run and gun documentary, it might involve C300 and/or C70. From what I've seen, if you want to penetrate the bigger productions, you're better off not trying to compete with Alexa for A camera, but to aim to make secondary cameras that fit in places where it doesn't. Civil War, for example, famously used the Ronin 4D for a bunch of the handheld stuff because it's a quick/easy gimbal camera with decent autofocus. I hear they're making inroads on other productions too for similar reasons - and on other stuff because, like, the 4d flex is great for tight spaces and/or car-to-car shots. The most recent Mission Impossible and the upcoming one use Z Cam E2-F6 as crash cameras because they're cheap (for Hollywood), make a great image, and are reliable (no overheating, you can basically hammer nails with the body all day and then go record some video at night). That footage of Tom Cruise flying off a cliff on a motorcycle? Nearly all Z-Cam. Anyway, the point is that the image SOOC on high-end cameras should look good. Should it look THAT much better than a mirrorless camera in the hands of a proficient operator? Nope. Just a few weeks ago, Kye posted some stuff that he shot in Korea using, if I remember right, the original BM micro studio camera from like a hundred years ago. Looked great. You could project it in a cinema as part of a feature and the audience would be none the wiser to the camera used.

There's a massive problem with all these tests. In the old days of GH2 vs RED, obviously the gap was pretty big, but you could still light a scene for the GH2's limitations, and fool Coppola into thinking it's a cinema camera. Now everything is 10bit LOG or RAW. So in these sort of tests you are basically watching a grading test and a test of the editor's ability to match the cameras. I mean the difference with the ALEXA is clearly there, but had you exposed for the window on the FX3 and lifted the shadows, it would be a lot closer. The difference between the BURANO / FX9 and FX3 is so small as to be practically zero, yet the price difference is many thousands of dollars / pounds. Besides, I also think that the way we watch these tests makes a further mockery of it all. Aside from being mega compressed, YouTube has no facility to download the original files, and now the original files are so enormous in 8K RAW or whatever... It doesn't even make sense to look at the original files other than to crop really close in and pixel peep. 99% of us don't have a display technology in our home to do justice to the source material... either not big enough, or not bright enough. So in a nutshell... Difference between $3k (even some $1k like used S1H) cameras and $25,000 has never been smaller in terms of image quality. The ALEXA still has a dynamic range advantage, but it's only a few stops and not noticeable in every use case. An X-H2 10 bit LOG 8K image for $1.5k is likely overkill for your display without pixel peeping or cropping. When engrossed in a movie it's unlikely an audience will even see a difference between the BURANO or a $1k mirrorless camera, yes even on a cinema screen.

Especially the case if you use expensive lenses, filtration, and have a good post house handle the color

I mean it's not really fair to compare an Alexa to any of these more affordable cameras. It's an Alexa for a reason. When you buy one you aren't just paying for the camera itself, you're paying for the decades of research and development that went into the image processing and color science that gives it that Alexa look. That's what you're paying for when buying any of those higher end cameras. The other part comes down to the sensor, too. Higher end cameras have sensors that are specifically developed for them. That's a huge difference. While these lower end cameras have software and processing that is tweaked to work with sensors they buy, the higher end cameras use sensors that were designed specifically for those cameras. Finally, there is a Luca Forsyth video that compares several cameras, ranging from the FX3 all the way to Alexa 35. His results were pretty surprising.

That's where sensor and processing comes into play. I would be curious to see this night and day difference though. While I am pretty nerdy with this stuff, these days advantage from high end cameras seems minimal when using the same lenses, lighting, grading pipeline etc. I for sure can see a difference, it's just not that stark.