Guys, check out what I have here.
Look at it, it's beautiful!
There's different variations of the Arri Alexa camera, but it was used to film a lot of my
personal favorite movies and TV shows, like Drive, The Revenant, Arrival, Logan, Game
of Thrones, Gravity, Mad Max, Sicario, Skyfall, Wolf of Wall Street, Girls, 21 Jump Street,
John Wick, Ant-Man, Avengers, Get Out, ok I'm out of breath.
What camera do you think Steven Spielberg uses?
Exactly!
The Iphone!
Guys I'm kidding, it's the Alexa.
How much does this package cost?
Dude, like really?
Who's trusting me with this?
This is, you guys know what happens when you trust me with expensive stuff...
Is this the right number of zeros?
And what's funny, is that this is a very minimal set up for this camera, I kind of have it
set up so it's good for solo operation.
Like if you had a proper crew, you could really just keep adding stuff onto this, making this
into a giant, super expensive camera.
So now while we have this camera, we're going to compare it to a camera that you might have
in your pocket, the Iphone 7 plus.
Totally a fair comparison.
So here we mounted the Iphone on top of the Alexa, and went out to the beach to film a
sequence.
The Iphone performs the best when it's all the way zoomed out in a bright environment.
So we're going to leave the Iphone as is, and attach a 24mm onto the Alexa to match
the frame.
To start off, let's watch this short sequence filmed on the Iphone.
And now, here's the same exact sequence, but from the Alexa.
This is where it gets a little bit subjective.
To me, it is a night and day difference.
The Iphone looks like a home video and the Alexa looks like something I would see on
TV.
But some of you may not see a huge difference.
I get asked all the time, "Why do you rent professional gear, when all cameras now are
shooting 4k?
First of all I'm just going to say, 4k is totally overrated, it is important, but, I'd
rather have great HD over decent 4k any day.
I've met the camera operator for Supergirl and I can tell you that even they don't shoot
in 4k, only HD.
I'm not going to go too much into detail, but here's a few things that are just as important
as resolution.
Now let's do a couple of other shoots.
We're at the location for the film shoot, I'm trying to find which house, it's like..
Come on in!
This house is LEGIT.
Oh my god.
So now we're at the nicest home recording studio I've ever seen.
It was decently well lit in there, but obviously not as bright as the sun.
And this is where I think the difference really starts to show.
The lighting is no longer in the Iphone's favor, and we're on a slightly tighter lens.
Now for some low light stuff.
The Alexa looks nice and sharp, and I love the way the dark parts of the frame look.
The Iphone is clearly struggling to keep those details in the dark.
I'm not trying to bash the Iphone, it's a great camera for what it is, and I use it
all the time, but it does have its limitations.
For example, this scene, I feel like the lack of sharpness and grain distracts from the
scene.
With the Alexa the warmth and the smooth contrast really compliments the music.
By the way, I'm using the default color settings on both cameras, I'm not doing any adjustments
in post.
Set up time!
Let's see..The Iphone, very easy.
I'm already ready.
Now, let's go shoot.
This on the other hand needs to be taken apart to be stored, and then transported, and then
rebuilt whenever you arrive to your set, and that kind...
I got it!
It's heavy!
It's heavier than it looks!
Even though it's carbon fiber, if I wanted to zoom, with this set up I would have to
change out lenses.
Boot up time is..still booting.
Alright, here we go!
Here we go!
Now we have some picture.
Now let's see what it would look like to use this camera to film this.
Take this here..
Camera is uncomfortably close to my face.
One of the coolest parts about having this camera is that it actually doesn't look like
this all the time, it actually shoots like this.
It's super flat and what's great about a super flat image is that you can do so much with
it.
If this were a dramatic scene we would probably get a close like this.
Saturated and make it look super dramatic.
Winter is coming!
Planet has run out of water and now we are in the desert...uhh..looking for food.
After I shoot something I really have a lot of flexibility to do whatever I want to the
footage.
For this last test I'm going to crash Gina Canavan's photoshoot with Gothic Tropic.
Gina's got some super creative photography, so go check out her work.
Now here's a great example of the Iphone's limitation of color.
The Alexa sees many more shades of every color.
It's kind of like back in the day when you had that box of crayons with 12 colors in
it, but then there was that one kid with a huge box of 120 crayons.
The Alexa is basically that giant box of crayons.
With the Iphone it looks like her face is either pink or blue.
With the Alexa you can see every shade in between making it look organic and natural.
And if you take a close look at her hair you can really see a big difference in sharpness
and the amount of detail.
By the way, the Iphone is shooting in 4k and I have the Alexa set to only HD.
So remember, resolution is only part of the equation.
And you guys have to check out Gothic Tropic, they have some really good songs on their
upcoming album, I can't play it for you guys, cause it's not released yet, but here's a
song from their last album.