- All right, so today we're
talking about a brand new camera
from the Arri, the Arri
Alexa Mini LF, hands down
If I had a magical credit
card with no limit,
I'd go straight and just buy this.
And for those of you who haven't heard
of an Arri Alexa camera,
I basically call it
Hollywood's favorite camera.
For example the last three movies
I happened to see in
theaters was "Honey Boy",
"Joker", and "Ford versus Ferrari."
All awesome movies, by the
way, highly recommend them,
but all shot on Arri Alexa's.
But Alexa's are basically
a whole family of cameras.
Let's start with "Honey Boy",
that was shot on an Alexa Mini,
and that is relatively small.
It's still kind of a big
camera, but it's small
relative to a full size Alexa.
This is without a lens or a battery,
this thing gets massive,
and the smaller footprint
has been something that people
like so it shot "Get Out",
"A Star is Born", the latest "Jumanji"
that I can't stop seeing ads for,
so it's been a popular camera.
Now "Ford Versus Ferrari" use Alexa LFs,
LF stands for large format,
so they have a larger sensor.
It's actually two of the standard sensors
kind of put vertically and
put next to each other.
So you get that big sensor.
Now that is an amazing
super powerful camera,
but it's also very heavy.
And then there's "Joker"
that's shot on the Alexa 65,
which not only has two
sensors, but three sensors
next to each other, and
that thing is a beast.
I think there's only about 70 ish of them
in existence and they're
literally just hopping between
the biggest movies to the biggest movies.
"Avengers Endgame", "The
Revenant", "Bohemian Rhapsody",
I mean the list goes on basically just,
it's too much camera for me.
So now we have the Alexa Mini LF
which takes the large
format sensor from the LF
and puts it into a body that's
basically the size of a Mini.
So we're starting to see
cameras that have more power
at a smaller size, yes please.
They're still so new and hard to come by
you could probably imagine my excitement
when they reached out
and asked if I wanted
to come and hang out
in their creator space
for a couple of days.
Yeah, I mean that is
straight up Christmas for me,
I mean, I don't need to hear
another Christmas jingle,
I don't need to hang socks over fireplace,
now that we're talking,
is that a fire hazard?
Definitely not trying to
sit on Santa's lap, right?
I'm chill, just I'm a simple guy,
just let me play with Arri cameras
and I could die a happy man.
So let me start off by showing
you a few clips that I shot
with the Alexa Mini LF
and we'll come back and
talk about the camera.
(intense music)
Now that footage came out
looking awesome, right?
Now, one of my favorite
things about the Arri Alexa
is that it has an insane
amount of dynamic range,
and what I consider to
be usable dynamic range.
Here, let me show you what
I mean. So check this out.
We have Justin sitting here all by himself
in a really dark place,
all lonely and sad.
And then we have a gate open over there,
so that's letting in a lot of
that super bright sunlight.
So we kind of have all
kinds of exposures here,
bright, dark, and then bright again.
Here's the shot from the Alexa
exposed to Justin's face.
We have some direct sun
coming into the background
which is obviously overexposed,
but if we want to recover some of that,
that latitude is there.
Now this is my vlog
camera, and it's not really
an apples to apples test,
different lenses and settings
and all that, but at least it'll help
demonstrate what I'm talking about.
Everything outside is
completely blown out,
which is pretty expected, remember,
we're talking about direct sunlight here.
It was overexposed by one stop,
so now we're doubling the
amount of light that comes in
and it looks a little bit
hot on here, not terrible.
On the Arri, it looks
perfectly fine still.
It barely even looks overexposed,
but now it's go two stops in.
This is where you realize
you kind of messed up.
Notice how skin tones
really start to suffer
when they start to get blown out,
and then let's go three stops over.
Now let me know if this sounds familiar,
you blew out your shot and you're trying
to recover some of the
highlights on skin tones
and it looks terrible, oh no!
Very very unpleasant when you
blow out skin tones like that,
and gets even worse as
you try to correct it.
But let's see how the Arri does.
Let's dip that back down, looks amazing.
Let's go four stops over on the Arri.
I mean, four stops over is pretty bad,
like you're supposed to be
shooting at an F stop of 11,
you actually shoot at an F 2.8,
I mean that's how much you have to mess up
to get four stops overexposure.
But with a little bit of correction.
Look at that, whoa.
Okay, that looks great.
I mean honestly, look at this shot,
that's four stops overexposed, corrected.
And compare that to the
properly exposed shot
from the vlog camera, I mean,
I think this looks better.
It's almost like you
don't even need to know
what the (beep) you're doing anymore,
still get a pretty good shot.
And that's something to take note of
when we're looking at
some of this fire footage.
I mean, fire is obviously very bright,
but notice it looks very clean, pleasant,
and organic opposed to any
sort of harsh clipping.
And if you've ever tried to
film anything fire before,
you know how difficult
it is to expose the fire
and your subject evenly.
And get this, this is my favorite part
of that whole fire sequence you saw.
That is with zero color
grading, straight out of camera
with the rec 709 conversion on it
so it looks nice and colorful,
and that is what you are looking at.
I mean gosh, this is some
of the best looking footage
I've ever shot, and I
didn't even color grade it.
Of course, if we want a color grade it,
we can peel back that 709 lut,
and you an see how much detail there is
in the highlight of the fires
and detail and the dark hair,
nothing is really clipping in the shot
in either direction, so that is amazing.
Now there is the whole argument of,
"Oh it's not about the
camera, it's how you use it."
Which I very much agree with it, you know,
as long as you learn how
to control environments
and shoot in certain ways,
like you can do a lot
with very little.
But let me know if this sounds familiar,
you go out shooting, you realize
the lighting's not really
where I want it, let's
just wait a couple hours
for the sun to set a little bit.
And we can get the shot I want.
That's a great game plan,
I do that all the time,
take a couple hour break
in the middle of the day.
But the bigger your film set gets,
the harder that becomes to do.
When you have 100 people
working on your set,
you can't just be like,
"Eh, let's just come
back in like four hours,"
"Everyone just chill."
But I mean that's just one example, right?
I mean, I always find myself walking away
from shoots going like,
"Man if I could have only
done that one more thing,"
"If I could have set up that 12 bi-silk"
"or that ultra bouncer, or
that m-18 out the window."
You know, there's always
these little things thats like
could have made the show
a little bit better.
In some situations, you
can't even put up stands
because you'll see it in the shot,
especially if it's a very wide angle.
Or if it's a long one
taker like "Birdman."
He's going from room to room
switching different lighting situations,
and they shot that on
the Arri Alexa as well.
So you usually don't get to
set up everything perfect, you know?
So the Arri Alexa kind
of gives you that leeway
where even if the lighting is
perfect, it still looks great.
I mean come on, this shot
is four stops overexposed
and corrected this is nuts.
Just imagine how good my vlogs would look
if I shot it on an Arri Alexa.
People say you can't
vlog on the Arri Alexa,
pssht, not with that attitude.
Oh this is heavier that I thought.
(groans) See?
Today we're gonna go to
Disneyland, let's go!
Say hi to the squad.
They're gonna be doing some yoga for us.
I've been told not to
call you yoga people,
because that's what I kept saying.
And he was like no call them Yogi's
or else they're gonna be pissed.
How's the footage look, though?
Does it look pretty good?
- [Man] It looks amazing.
- [Woman] Fantastic.
- [Man] Even in the shitty lighting.
- Oh my God, look at
the highlight roll off.
You look so good right now.
- Dude, you actually look great on here.
- Look at this, yeah.
- Yeah, look at this.
- But I'm turning red though.
It's not because of the
camera, it's because
(laughs) my arm is about to fall off.
Okay so maybe not the most convenient
vlog camera in the world, but
when used as a Cinema Camera,
it just, it looks so good.
It's interesting, right?
Cause like in photography
full frame sensors
have been around for a while,
I feel like majority of
photographers prefer it,
but APS-C sensors are also very popular.
In the cinematography world
it's been kind of the opposite
cause it's been Super35
for the longest time
which is, again, somewhat close to APS-C,
just little bit bigger.
But now the trend seems to
be going towards large format
or full frame size
sensors in cinema cameras.
Now for YouTube, my primary camera
is a full frame mirrorless camera,
and I shoot a lot of video on this.
So when I started shooting on the Alexa LF
it felt very familiar.
Bor those of you who are
coming from a Super35 sensor,
you're going to notice
everything just getting wider.
Roughly your focal length
will be about two thirds
of what it would be on a Super35.
All right, so today we got
the Arri Alexa Mini lF,
and we are going to shoot that.
Okay, I didn't see this underneath you,
and I was like, wait a second.
This doesn't make sense.
- Like I'm floating.
- I thought, I swear I did not see that
and I was like.
- No, I'm stretching my back.
- She's a demon.
(intense music)
We just shot that on the
47 millimeter, but again,
we are shooting large format
so it felt a lot wider.
It felt almost like a 35,
or even a little bit wider
than that even.
But you still get that 50 millimeter look,
just at a wider angle so shots
like this, it's a wide shot,
but you're still getting
separation from the background
to the foreground.
- You look like a superhero
with the weirdest superpower.
- I'm Scorpion boy.
It looks really heavy though, right?
But actually these lenses,
these signature primes
are made out of magnesium,
so they're actually
just as strong but really lightweight.
Let's try a tight lense,
that might be kind of cool.
How much does an Arri signature
prime 150 millimeter cost?
This one here is $32,400.
Yeah for $32,000 you can
get one focal length,
150 millimeter.
Now, this is a perfect
example of the large format.
Look, just look at the background
and how soft everything
gets, and also the way
the focus rolls off so gently.
Now, this is really thanks
to those large format
signature prime lenses
that are nice and fast,
but also really that large format sensor
to really get this look.
And then on the other hand,
if we throw on the 18
millimeter, which is super wide
on this. LF sensor,
but the signature prime
is good at giving us
very little distortion,
even at the super wide angles.
I quit.
I can't, what am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to be with this?
I'm done.
I'm gonna do acro yoga.
- Put your hands in front
of you, yep, lean forward,
yep, lean forward, lean forward.
- Oh my god, whoa.
- Push your chest up, push into my hands.
Lift your chest up.
Yep, there you go.
- What?
Look, look I'm flying.
I felt like I was in the Matrix.
Wow!
- Dude, you were just
(bleep) melting, too.
You were like, "all right."
- I was like, okay, I'm
just gonna trust you.
- Dude, good choice.
- Wow, you are the man.
- Good choice.
- I didn't even have to do any balancing,
you just know exactly like,
there's the center of gravity
just put your foot there,
twirl me around.
- That's it dude, that's
the science, you crushed it.
- You did yoga!
- I did yoga.
I'm actually a yoga expert.
- Now Arri was very
clear that large format
doesn't necessarily mean
better than Super35.
It's more of an artistic decision
and not everyone wants super
shallow depth of field.
But what's awesome about that LF is that
you don't have to use
the full large sensor,
you can just crop into that
Super35 millimeter area
of that sensor, you're going
to lose some resolution there.
But you can still use your
favorite cinema lenses,
even if they don't have
full frame coverage.
I was using signature prime lenses
which cover that full large
format sensor without a problem.
So, I was shooting at full 4.5K,
but you can also crop
them part of the way,
not large format, not Super35,
right there in the middle
and that will give you a
4k or Ultra HD readout.
So if you need to deliver
4k to someone like Netflix,
you can do that without
going all the way out
to large format.
Now, the signature
Prime's that we're using,
I mean that's gonna require its own video
because there's a lot to talk about there.
But they use the brand new LPL mount
that Arri just developed.
They develop the PL mount, long time ago
during the film days, but
the LPL is the newer one,
shorter flange distance
and better optimized
for digital sensors.
Now with the LPL mouth,
they have a PL adapter
which literally just
goes into the LPL mount,
you lock that in and
now you have a PL mount.
I did also ask if they are
coming out with an EF mount
for the Mini LF, and they
are, which you'll be able
to just replace very easily
with a couple screws.
So if you have a huge EF mount collection,
don't worry, they've got you covered.
And we already talked about dynamic range,
now let's talk about
colors which is something
that Arri does an incredible
job at reproducing
very naturally and organically.
Now, Arri's root started
all the way back in the day,
over 100 years ago in the film days.
And they've kind of
came from the film world
opposed to the digital camera world.
So when they first made the
Arri Alexa a digital camera,
they didn't want it to
look like a digital camera,
they wanted to look like a film camera.
And one of the things that they told me
that I found pretty
interesting was that in video,
as image gets brighter,
it gets more saturation
and more colorful, opposed to film,
which is actually kind of backwards,
the brighter it gets you
actually lose saturation
and gets more desaturated.
And when he told me that I was like,
that makes a lot of sense,
because in a lot of video
cameras, I find myself personally
over exposing a little
bit just to get the colors
to look like as saturated
and as clean as I want them.
But on the Arri Alexa,
even if I underexpose it,
it looks really nice and rich.
And you know how we were talking
about dynamic range earlier
where yeah, all the
cameras look pretty good
when it's properly exposed.
But even when you go to the
edges of the dynamic range,
the Arri Alexa, it's very usable still.
The Arri does that in dynamic
range but also colors.
Like even if you take
an intense color light
and put it on skin tones, a lot of cameras
that can start to look very blotchy,
you lose a lot of the texture,
you lose that depth and dimension.
But the test this out on the Alexa LF,
luckily they gave me access
to the Arri lights, as well.
Can you try like a peacock blue, or?
One of the coolest things
about having a Sky panel
is that it's full RGB,
so when you end up with a white wall
which is really boring, right?
Throw a sky pannel at it, and essentially
you have a bunch of
different colored backdrops.
Look at that, want red?
Done.
Purple, blue?
As long as you have a
controlled environment
that you can get really dark,
you can essentially get the
background of any color.
And on camera looks like
a blue backdrop right now.
So we got an Arri sky panel right now
and it's got a flame effect,
so you can actually see that
it kind of dims a little bit
and we are going to have some fire.
So it's gonna kind of match in with that.
This is going to just feel
like there's more flames
in the atmosphere, right?
We got another one up
here, greenish bluish thing
to just kind of add a
little bit of something
to the background so it
just doesn't completely
dip to black, and this is pretty sweet.
Over here, this is the orbiter.
Super excited to be one of the first ones
to be able to play with this orbiter.
There's only four in the world right now.
They said if I touch it,
they'll chop my hands off so,
but look at it.
Part of what makes this
light really special is that
it's very modular, it's almost like
one of the last lights you'll ever need.
But you can switch out the heads.
Right now we got a 30 degree
open face reflector on there
but you can switch that out.
You get like a soft box and
all those things come in.
One of the things I think is really cool
is it's got a sensor on the top
so you can have it continuously adjust
to the environments lighting,
so maybe if you have it
outside and it gets cloudy
at a certain point it
will adjust to that color.
As golden hour is coming through,
it'll kind of adjust to that lighting.
- Its like when you're on set
and no one wants to use a Mini
because normally people are freaking out,
they're like, what, Alexa Mini?
Fire!
- No this is the only place
where like, people are
like, "Oh, it's the Mini."
I don't even know if we turned it on.
They're just like, oh yeah, it's here.
- They're like, the Mini? Pssht.
- Yep, we got a little
bit spoiled being there
for a couple days, just
access to all the cameras
I can dream of.
But clearly Arri does
a few things very well.
Colors, depth, dynamic range,
how do they make this happen?
We're going to get a little bit
nerdy here, but don't worry,
I won't go too crazy on you.
Now Arri has a very unique
approach on building cameras.
Most people want the most
impressive spec sheet,
but Arri has always been focused on
what our human eyes can perceive.
Here's an example, resolution.
Remember when HD came
out, we were all like,
whoa this is so much sharper.
It was very impressive,
and it was very conceivable
because our eyes can recognize,
whoa, that's sharper.
But at a certain extent,
our eyes can no longer see
more and more resolution.
For example, this table right
here, this is fake wood.
It's a piece of paper.
I can see very closely at it
and see that there's pixels.
It's just printed.
But you guys can't really tell
because of the distance the
camera's at and all that.
So to you guys doesn't really matter
that this is like a fake
table, see check it out.
I just ruined this.
See I can look at this
and this is all pixelated,
but you guys can't.
At this point what matters more
than the number of pixels
on this piece of paper,
is the contrast and color.
That is something that
you can clearly see.
Now colors and contrast is something
that our eyes are insanely sensitive to,
so that really is what Arri focuses on.
I mean come on, you're
probably watching this
on 720P or something, you can still see
that the quality out of
the Arri Alexa footage
is incredible, right?
You're not seeing the 4k at all.
What you are noticing is the accuracy
in colors and contrast.
So to capture all that it all
starts from the lens, right?
So that's got to be its own video,
lens video coming eventually.
From there it hits a bunch of photo sites
which eventually get turned into pixels.
But Arri makes their
photo sites very very big.
You probably noticed that
over the last couple of years,
camera phones have been
getting really good.
Big part of that is because their sensors
have bigger photo sites now.
They're getting so big to the point where
maybe one to two microns now.
I mean that's pretty impressive, right?
But the Alexa Mini LS photo sites
are over eight microns in size.
As far as I know, that's like the biggest.
Most cinema cameras are
four, five, maybe six.
But you know Alexa 8.25.
So now you have that light
hitting those big photo sites,
you have to now convert
it to a digital signal.
Most of the time that conversion
just happens right there
on the sensor, but Arri wanted that sensor
to be as clutter free as possible,
so that it can just
focus on absorbing light
that they disconnected that processor
and put it in a different
part of the camera.
He's the one that teaches
me all this by the way,
like I don't know any of this stuff
until he tells me, and
then I re-say why he says
to make me sound really smart.
Also things can get a little squirrely
when you have a temperature
shift on the sensor.
So they have this, I
think they said it was a
rare earth element that
they put up against it
or it's, don't quote me on this,
but they run electricity
through it in one direction,
it warms up the sensor,
they run it through the other direction
and it cools off the sensor.
Something like that, so they
have very very good control
over their sensors temperature
so that's probably why they have
a very wide operating temperature.
I mean they build these cameras
to go to the coldest places on earth
and the hottest places on earth and film,
this probably sounds
like a sponsored video,
is not sponsored at all.
I'm just a really big fan,
I've been a big fan of
their cameras forever, so,
just super stoked to be working with them.
But anyways, now that these photo sites
are capturing so much
information from the light,
it actually gets split up
into two different processors
so that it can achieve 16 bit color.
It takes that 16 bit color and repackages
into whatever format that
you're decided to record in.
Think about that, that's crazy.
Because I right now I'm
shooting in eight bit right now,
which works for this kind of environment
with an external recorder I can get 10 bit
which would be nice, 12 bit you can find
in some professional
cameras, and 14 bit like, 16!
Now 16 bit, and just like, what?
That's overkill, right?
But it's interesting because 16 bit
is around what our human
eyes can see and conceive.
So again, we're focusing on stuff that
we can actually recognize, opposed to
getting a crazy amount of pixels.
Oh my god I'm out of breath,
how long this is video?
Holy crap, I better wrap this up.
It's been over 20 minutes,
I'm surprised you guys are still here.
But huge shout out to
Arri for having me there,
and also Mika and Julio for coming out
and showing us some acro yoga.
I must say that was quite the experience,
and also Kassty and Loree
for coming out as well.
You could go show them
all some love on Instagram
and let's wrap this up by
reading a few comments.
"Damn such a romantic spot, a
gene is talking about drones."
Yeah, Kari's very understanding,
I think she's gotten used to it by now.
"I have to keep yelling
cancel out my echo"
"throughout this video."
Yeah, anytime I make an Alexa
video, Alexa Alexa Alexa!
I just pissed off a bunch of people.
LittleFilip says, "I'm sure
I'll start a fire here but,"
"Ari, not Arri."
That is a huge debate, Ari or Arri.
I asked Arri themselves
and they said, Yeah,
since you're an American just say Arri.
Jonathan Gilbert says, "Who needs a house"
"when you got this."
If you missed out on the episode
where I bought this camera,
basically Kari wants to buy a house,
I obviously want to buy cameras,
so we met in the middle
and we bought a camera.
Matthew says, "I think Kari's fine"
"with getting the camera
instead of the house,"
"at least the camera won't float away."
(light hip hop music)
