Below is an email from Neil Fanthom, who clarifies the ALEXA/ARRIRAW position for current projects.
Pure Digital has been involved in the beta testing for ARRIRAW and has been working with v3.0 ALEXA RAW since the end of 2010. Having worked now with a number of Productions and helped create a full ALEXA/ARRIRAW workflow Pure Digital is pleased to announce full ARRIRAW v3.0 support for 2011 and has full workflows from camera to post ironed out.
Pure Digital Systems - Jan 2011 ARRIRAW full support capabilities
"To clarify where we are at the moment - ALEXA with ARRIRAW is Beta testing successfully world-wide for several major Feature and Commercial productions, most of which are due to enter principal photography in the coming weeks. The various camera crews, DoPs and Cinematographers involved in testing are extremely happy with the reliability of the Beta software, and the quality of the ARRIRAW footage they are capturing is of the highest standard.
We are convinced that ALEXA™s ARRIRAW recording capability will offer a dependable digital solution for the Commercials and Features market and will position itself as the uncompromised, uncompressed RAW recording format of choice.
More news about ARRIRAW performance, certified recorders, workflow options and the full extent of the ARRIRAW partner/post-production support program will be posted early in February when the ALEXA v3.0 software update is formally released ... so please bear with us until then and in the meantime, if you are Beta shooting ARRIRAW, thanks for your commitment, support, and feedback".
Neil Fanthom
Head of Global Strategy,
ARRI Digital Camera Systems
I get very confused and, frankly, irritated by all the pronouncements about ‘K’, bit depth, latitude etc.. In the past it was often stated to me by visual effects supervisors that there was no noticeable difference between a 2K scan and a 4K scan of the same negative. Does film really have a dynamic range of more than 13 stops? What film stock would that be and under what conditions? I don’t see it.
In the final analysis you can only judge picture quality by eye and make a personal decision as to what you like and what you don’t like. Perhaps some people really can not see a difference between a 2K scan and a 4K scan of the same negative and I am sure some people really do prefer the look of an image produced by the Red Camera to one shot on film. The choice of a camera system is no different than the choice of a lens set, a camera position or where to put a lamp.
on Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:30 am
