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Filed under: Cameras •NAB 09 •

NAB 2009 - Saturday Workshop

Arri D-21

Arri’s Bob Lovell updated the workshop on the status of Arri’s digital cine camera offering, the D-21. The D-21, which has been out about a year, follows on the footsteps of 2003’s D-20; indeed, Arri takes D-20s back and rebuilds them into D-21s, with substantial internal upgrades. The Arri cams use a 35mm-sized 4x3 sensor behind a PL mount lens; 16x9 is obtained through cropping, but widescreen is normally shot using anamorphic lenses, like the 85mm Hawk anamorphic fitted to Arri’s demo camera.

Bob Lovell attaches an S.two flash recorder to the Arri D-21 as workshop organizer Gary Adcock and folks from Fletcher Camera watch.

We previously saw this recorder at the HPA Tech Retreat in February.

The D-21 uses a mirror shutter and an optical viewfinder, just like a film camera. Like a film camera, it can be set up with no power applied. Bob also noted that the mirror gives the D-21 the most film-like motion portrayal possible, as the sensor gets exposed exactly the way a frame of film would: no matter whether the sensor uses a global or rolling electronic shutter, the mirror reveals and then covers the face of the sensor just as the corresponding shutter on an Arri film cam would reveal and cover a frame of film.

Bob said that the quality of digital is ever improving, but that film isn’t dead yet: after 30 years in the industry, he’s heard enough reports about the imminent death of film to be skeptical. Today, film is still the winner in absolute image quality, and Bob expects that to be the case for at least the next five years.

Bob also showed some demo clips from the D-20/D-21. Like the clips from the Red One, they all looked just fine. There were a couple of sequences intercutting D-21 footage with film footage shot with an Arri 235; they intercut seamlessly.

Are we at the point with digital cinema, yet, where we can agree that It Just Works?

An overview of the D-21.

With the demise of Dalsa, the D21 is now the only digital cinema camera with an optical viewfinder.

The camera can output raw Bayer-mask data at 2.8K, or 1920x1080 HD, or both.

The raw, uncompressed Bayer-mask image is recorded on an S.two, SRW-1, or other high-data-rate recorder, and debayered in post to yield sharp, alias-free 2K DPX files. Gary mentioned that the real-time preview output applies a random, changing rough debayer, and as a result to live images from the camera have an even more film-like texture, as the randomness both adds a slight “grain” to the image and also causes color handling to roll off in a more filmlike manner.

The Arri’s 4x3 sensor lurks behind its IR and optical low-pass filters.

The D-21 can be thought of as an Arri film camera with the film transport swapped out for a CMOS sensor and its associated electronics. In terms of controls, viewfinding, and operation, it’s much like any other modern Arriflex.

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From the two sessions I attended, I got that impression, too. Have the rest been like that? I’ll pass the message on to Gary Adcock, and maybe next year’s sessions will be better… what sort of workshops would you like to see? (I have my own ideas, too…)

Posted by Adam Wilt  on  04/19  at  02:17 PM

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Until now yes. I would’ve preferred a shoot-out, for example. Explore the different workflows. Or rather have a DP presenting, Silicon Imaging did have a DP for Q&A;.

Posted by Salvador  on  04/19  at  02:56 PM

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Salvador.

The DoP workshop was never intended to be hands-on, and I am truly sorry that you disliked some of the preso’s. If your still in Vegas come by the aja booth and talk to me.  We have had a number of cameras as part of the sessions, the RED, Arri, BandPro/ SI/ Steadycam / Phantom all had cameras and gear that could be looked at and touched.( Panny had camera gear but that was by far the hardest sales pitch)

DP’s like Dave Stump, Mark Weingartner, Robert Starling, Yuri Newman were speaking and available at multiple sessions with other industry luminaries like Adam, Mike Bravin, Ted Schilowitz, Ted White, Mark Choilis, Bill Lovell, and Tom Fletcher.

What about being able to view the First showing of RED’s O9 reel or Arri’s clips via HDCamSR or Thomson showing an uncompressed extended version of the Benjamin Button trailer played from the Stwo OB1 recorded on that Christie 12K DCI projection? you have to admit it looked good.

Come see me- comments are welcome.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  04/21  at  07:36 AM

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Hi Gary!

Thank you for your response. I agree, not all was bad. I enjoyed some of the sessions, mostly yours. And I’m not kissing up. The sessions I enjoyed the most were those that gave us useful tips, like best practices on the set or field: Manipulation of Time, DIT OnSet/AJA, VFX Techniques, RED OnSet. I’m just speaking for the first two days, I ended up skipping most of monday’s sessions.

The reels were actually nice. But when you’re paying around $600 (that’s almost half a workshop at the Maine Media Workshops) for a DoP workshop you don’t want presentations like Panasonic’s or RED’s Update, to name the two worst. We can always look up the specs or models, there are tons of brochures on the exhibit floor.

Rather than just talk about the workflows, having had the equipment there it would’ve been nice to actually execute them.  Will drop by the AJA booth tomorrow.

Posted by Salvador  on  04/21  at  10:14 AM

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