How come expensive camera's look so much better?

[IronFilm]

15 hours ago, MrSMW said:

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!

The point I was making, is that if a production runs into even merely just thirty minutes of overtime, or/and has a very slight increase to post production costs, then those additional costs to production would totally wipe out any "savings" they might get from renting a cheaper camera than an ARRI/Sony/RED/Varicam.

13 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

Another thing the DOP told me he liked about the Alexa is that the viewfinder shows you beyond the recorded image. This way you could anticipate, say, an actor about to enter the frame.

I love this feature as a Boom Op and Sound Mixer!! (nothing to do with an actor entering the frame though, I mean for our purposes)

13 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

He also said the menu on the side panel was fast and easy to navigate. Another time saving on set.

Huge time savings having an ARRI on set vs "random Camera X" that nobody has ever worked with before. 

5 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

On the other hand, if you're shooting a feature film with a budget of 200 million dollars and the cost for several Alexas is about 0.2% of your budget (as IronFilm pointed out), you're probably not thinking in terms of value, but about the "best" tool to create the image.

Similarly, you'd be crazy to buy a 12-18 million dollar F1 racecar to commute to work.  It's a terrible value compared to like, a Toyota Camry.  But if you show up on the track at Interlagos on race day driving a Camry...

A great analogy.  (to carry on this analogy: you'd save time using a F1 over a Camry at the race track, but you'd lose time if you used the F1 for a shopping trip. Ditto cameras, it could be "fast" or "slow" to use, depending on the type of set it's being used on)

Now excuse me while I go do this week's grocery shopping in a F1....

[Django]

On a pure IQ level, mirrorless has definitely made significant strides wether in DR, color science, resolution, rolling shutter etc. And more importantly now with chunky internal RAW/ProRes/10-bit/Log files the gap towards high-end cinematic imagery has definitely narrowed significantly. RED/ARRI still rule in highlight roll off, DR but all the extra mileage you see on an image is indeed mostly lens, light, color grading related.

On a related note, with CST in Davinci you can transform your log footage to RED/ARRI Clog and apply their LUTs & look files. Results may vary but the gap isn't as big as you'd think.

[ND64]

Its like 18-55mm kit lens situation. Everybody thinks its a junk lens, because they've seen photos taken by that kind of lens, and most of them are not impressive; so they thought its a lens problem. But in reality, the proportion of amateur photographers who were still trying to learn and explore, in total users of that lens, was very high (because it was a kit and shipped with their first DSLR), so what others were seeing wasn't the lens problem, it was users' skill problem. The small group of people who use $30,000 camera, are the same people who know how to extract as much as much as possible from their gear, know how to get perfect lighting, and how to color grade. So when you see a Alexa footage, there is big chance you're seeing a team of elites performance.

You see a discipline among elite groups, and its that when they find a winning formula, like the combination of attributes we call "Arri look", they stick with it. Thats how they made us addicted to it; as we were seeing that formula over and over again in many different movies, to the point that we collectively call it "cinematic", like any other formula is either inferior or not legit. 

[Tim Sewell]

11 hours ago, ND64 said:

as we were seeing that formula over and over again in many different movies, to the point that we collectively call it "cinematic"

I've said for a long time that the look generally accepted and desired as 'filmic' is, in fact, 'Arri'.

[Danyyyel]

On 2/9/2025 at 9:25 PM, newfoundmass said:

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.

 

Apart from the Alexa DR advantage, their is no huge difference in sensor from a Sony FX3 and a Venise ii. You just have to watch the test from CineD. In fact the likes of the Nikon Z9 (Sony based sensor), is better than the Venise ii in the true DR test, That is the latitude test. My guess because they privilege's speed over Noise/DR. 

[JulioD]

On 2/12/2025 at 12:28 AM, Tim Sewell said:

I've said for a long time that the look generally accepted and desired as 'filmic' is, in fact, 'Arri'.

Well to be fair they basically had done their homework on what film looked like because of the work they did on the Arriscan. In its time a revolutionary film scanner.  
 

The sensor in this ended up being what went into the first Alexa.  

The color science work was already done one way   They just reversed it  

 

[zerocool22]

On 2/12/2025 at 9:28 AM, Tim Sewell said:

I've said for a long time that the look generally accepted and desired as 'filmic' is, in fact, 'Arri'.

I think you are right. I just watched this video on youtube,and I said wow this looks nice, Wanted to see what lenses and camera they used. And offcourse it was an alexa with lomo anamorphics.... Allthough you have to take in consideration of the lightning, set design, talent and crew (people who use this type of gear usually have more experience overall).