MUNICH, GERMANY — Arri’s (www.arri.com) new Alexa 35 is a 4K Super 35 camera featuring the company’s first new sensor in 12 years. The camera features 17 stops of dynamic range, better low-light performance and richer colors than the original Alexa, which was released back in 2010.
With its Super 35 4:3 native 4K sensor (4608x3164), Alexa 35 can be used with the global inventory of existing lenses — modern and vintage, anamorphic and spherical, Super 35 and large format.
Alexa 35 has low noise and sensitivity settings ranging from EI 160 to EI 6400, making it a “high ISO” camera, states the manufacturer. An optional Enhanced Sensitivity Mode can be applied to settings between EI 2560 and EI 6400, producing an even cleaner image in low light. Sophisticated stray-light suppression in the camera and lens mounts ensures that the full contrast range and character of each lens are captured by the sensor. Together, the increased dynamic range and stray light control make it easier to handle any lighting condition on-set, as well as increase flexibility in post, while also providing the best source for high dynamic range (HDR) projects.
Alexa 35 is the smallest fully-featured Arri production camera to date. Crews will be familiar with the camera’s simple menu structure, support for 1TB and 2TB Codex Compact Drives, and MVF-2 viewfinder, now with HDR. A total of 19 recording formats are available, and the Alexa 35 incorporates efficient in-camera down-sampling and anamorphic de-squeezing, allowing productions to optimize data rate, resolution and other parameters. Mixed reality and virtual productions will benefit from the camera’s ability to record lens metadata in all common standards and output realtime streaming metadata to Arri’s Live Link metadata plug-in for Unreal Engine.
Arri has a line of “production” and “lightweight” accessories available that will expand the camera’s capabilities and ensure maximum speed and versatility on-set. A number of manufacturers are expected to deliver 24V power supplies for Alexa 35 upon its release, with more to come in the immediate future.
Arri also introduced Reveal Color Science, which takes full advantage of the sensor’s image quality. Reveal is a suite of image processing steps used by the Alexa 35 internally and also available through third-party post production tools for ArriRaw processing.
Arri Textures is also new, allowing cinematographers to fundamentally alter the way in which the camera records images, should they wish to. Up until now, Alexa cameras have been pre-programmed with a default texture that determines the amount and character of grain in the image, and the amount of contrast at different levels of detail. For the first time, Alexa 35 provides the option to choose from a menu of Arri Textures, much like selecting a film stock.