Award season is a special time of the year for filmmakers, as the entire industry comes together to celebrate the commitment to excellence that defines the medium. The 97th Academy Awards highlighted what this commitment means to people on every side of the camera, further underscoring the importance of how and what those cameras are capturing.

At the 2025 Academy Awards, winners including “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Dune: Part Two,” “The Substance,” and “Wicked” were all supported by ARRI cameras. In fact, five out of the ten films nominated for Best Picture were shot with ARRI, while three out of ten were serviced by ARRI Rental. Why is it that many filmmakers choose ARRI cameras? What makes their products different, and how is ARRI further committed to enabling this kind if filmmaking excellence?

To find out, we connected with Art Adams, Product Specialist, Cinema Lenses at ARRI as well as Chase Hagen, Product Market Manager, Camera Systems for ARRI. See what they had to say about the opportunities ARRI cameras are enabling for cinematographers, what elements of ARRI cameras and lenses they believe are underutilized, how ARRI supports an entire ecosystem that goes beyond the camera itself, and much more.

ProVideo Coalition: ARRI cameras are utilized by filmmakers across the entire spectrum of production, from major blockbusters to independent projects. Why do cinematographers generally use ARRI cameras? It is more about the creative or technical advantages they provide?

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: We always strive to seamlessly integrate the technology inside our products with the simplicity and ease of use that allows the “tool” to get out of the way of the creative intent. The goal is to allow complete freedom for the creatives who capture stories with images without having to waste a second thought on the technology. The perfect cinema camera delivers beautiful images on demand, no matter the situation or environment.

For example, a few years ago we heard about a huge Amazon show about cars that spent a lot of time shooting in desert conditions, and often in sandstorms. The only maintenance performed by the crew was to blow air through the camera’s ventilation system at wrap. As the cameras are hermetically sealed, there’s no way for dust to make its way into the vital components of the camera body under normal circumstances.

Another production, shooting in temperatures of 116F, on a famous racetrack in California found that, among a few other cameras they brought along, the ARRI camera was the only camera brand that could make it through the 8-hour shooting day without shutting off. One famous behind-the-scenes photo, taken above the arctic circle, showed an ALEXA with icicles hanging off of it.

And, of course, there’s the early ALEXA Classic that was caught in a truck fire and partially melted. It sits in a display case at our Munich office. It still turns on. These aren’t new cameras, either. They were older digital cameras, back to the original ALEXA Classic. Our gear is built to last.

Even more important to most image-makers than just how our cameras perform physically, though, is the images our cameras produce. The gentleman who developed the original ARRI look studied to be a biologist. We don’t come at color from the standpoint of making charts look good. We focus on how humans respond to light and color. At the end of the day, the most important question we ask when developing the look of a camera is, “Do you like this more, or this?” It boils down to very smart people looking at images and making decisions based on aesthetics, not broadcast specifications.

Most of which speaks to the creative aspect of your products, but what else can you tell us about the technical aspects? What can you tell us about your unique sensor design?

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: We often get the question, “When is ARRI going to come out with a dual gain camera?” The answer is, “We did it in 2010.” We just did it differently than many others do today, since we have larger than average photo sites going back to the ALEXA Classic’s ALEV-3 sensor with its massive 8.25µ photo-sites that capture a lot of light, and therefore lower noise, than smaller photo-sites.

We focused on how we could achieve the widest dynamic range we could. We achieved this through the sensor design that takes two feeds off every photo site—a high gain feed for the shadows, and a low gain feed for the highlights—and we merge them in real time into a single RAW image and of course we do the same when you use the in camera ProRes recording which is de-Bayered. Using a custom photo site design is the only way you can get more than about six stops of overexposure headroom above middle gray. The original ALEV-3 captured 7.8 stops over middle gray, or 14.5 stops total. The ALEV-4 in the ALEXA 35 captures 9.3 stops over middle gray, or 17 stops total. It’s very hard to clip our sensors.

We also get asked why we haven’t come out with an 8K camera yet. Since we are reading each photo-site of the sensor for two values at the same time, we are pushing double the amount of data per readout (captured frame) off the sensor. Even our 4.6K ALEXA 35 is pulling the equivalent amount of data as 9.2K of resolution on a single gain readout sensor for every frame (4.6K x 2). An 8K sensor would require 16K per readout. We’re getting there, but it takes time.

When we talk to cinematographers and VFX people they tell us they appreciate sensors with “better pixels” rather than sensors with just more “mediocre pixels.” For us, the best sensors deliver uncompromising color and the highest dynamic range. Resolution is just one aspect of the overall image quality. The best camera has to be a balance of resolution, dynamic range, great color reproduction and robustness.

Art has previously outlined what makes ARRI signature lenses as well as what it means to craft the look of a lens, but can you speak to underlying approach or design philosophy that guides the creation of your products? What do you think makes ARRI cameras and lenses special or unique?

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: The fact that our color is based both on biology and our deep understanding of how film works. We made film scanners and laser recorders for many years and learned during the process how to emulate film. A company’s origins drive an awful lot of how their cameras look, and in our case, our DNA is film, not video.

Also, at ARRI, we have an unwritten philosophy that we adhere to fairly strictly, which is “We take on the hard things. We take on the projects that others can’t or won’t take on.” When it comes to lenses, for example, we try to capture reality as closely as we can, while understanding that lenses have aberrations that prevent them from perfectly reflecting what the eye sees. This isn’t desirable anyway, as there’s a thin line between realistic and boring.

That’s why we’ve undertaken to reproduce reality as pleasantly as possible at the point of focus, while rendering backgrounds as softly and smoothly as possible. This requires a careful blending of optical aberrations, and the Signature lens formulation has never been attempted before. That’s why we had to go to a manufacturer that doesn’t make cinema lenses: they had no preconceived notions, so they made what we asked without question.

One of the goals of cinematography is to direct attention, and the eye naturally goes to whatever appears to be in focus. If the background is free of hard edges that attract the eye, then there is nothing to pull the viewers’ attention away from the subject. A lot of old and modern lenses reproduce out-of-focus backgrounds with hard distracting edges. Our lenses don’t. The combination of natural foreground and ultra soft background turns out to be a winning look that works very well in the digital realm. And for those who want to further customize the look, we make it easy to “tune” our lenses using magnetically mounted rear optics (Impression-V Filters for Signature lenses and Ensō Vintage Elements for Ensō Primes).

Another factor that plays into our lens design is similar to what we do in camera design. We strive to give DPs as much information as possible to work with, so they can then chisel away what they don’t want and leave the look that they do want. In a way, working with our lenses is a lot like working with color correction: you can’t take a rough look and push it in a lot of different directions, but you can take a natural look and push it everywhere. That’s especially important when working with the ALEXA 35, as the dynamic range is so high that most lenses can’t handle it. Our lenses can.

In terms of camera design philosophy, one thing we understand better than any other manufacturer is what a crew needs and expects from a camera to work efficiently. We understand what a 1^st AC needs, what a Camera Operator expects, what a DIT’s workflow is. We don’t design cameras in a vacuum and let engineers put buttons or connectors wherever they want. We don’t let engineers design a confusing menu structure that is a nightmare to deal with for people on set. Our cameras are user focused always.

Filmmakers have strong opinions about their equipment that are often driven by personal preference rather than objective reality. I imagine that results in a lot of, “why can’t your camera do ______” but tell us if that’s accurate as well as what kind of feedback you typically receive from users.

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: We are lucky to have a very articulate and passionate group of users from around the world. When we think of features requested recently that we were able to implement, several come to mind. One of them was the ability to adjust the intensity of a Look (LUT) in the camera quickly and easily. In the ALEXA 35 we added the ability to adjust the intensity of any Look file in the camera by 10% increments, where 100% is equal to the intensity of the Look as it was originally built, and where 0% is a LogC4 image. This allows creatives to quickly dial back the intensity of a Look on set without having to re-build it.

When we launched Textures with the release of the ALEXA 35, many customers appreciated them but almost immediately asked for more “heavy handed” Textures that were more obvious to the viewer. We responded by creating several new Textures, including vintage S16mm and even S8mm film textures, with highly pronounced grain and lower contrast than any previous textures for those who wanted to “get funky”.

One notable user request was to bring faster framerate switching, something like the programable user switch of the AMIRA. In ALEXA 35 we implemented a “FPS Preset” function assignable to any of the camera’s user buttons. This allows customers to assign their desired framerate, down to decimal precision, to any of the user buttons and quickly jump to that preset framerate and back again.

Another requested feature we added to the ALEXA 35 is Custom Color Management which allows users like DIT’s, with expert color pipeline knowledge, to bypass the standard ARRI DRT (display reference transform) and implement their own LogC4/AWG4 conversion to a desired SDR and HDR format. This is a delicate balance of preserving our reputation for image quality while still offering creative control to our users.

We are always listening to users’ preferences when it comes to operating and using our cameras, including those who do not use a viewfinder. One such product is the CCM-1, our 7” Camera Control Monitor with full GUI menu control of the ALEXA 35 or Mini LF, just as you would have on our much-loved MVF-2 viewfinder’s flip out screen. It can be operated by touch or via a joystick. This high brightness 1300-nit, 1920×1200 display is color calibrated to match our MVF-2 viewfinder and connects via the viewfinder interface, leaving your SDI ports free. It can be used on other cameras via SDI. We also designed an innovative mounting bracket for it, the MAC-1, based on feedback that many users dislike the available articulated mounting arms which require two hands to adjust: one to loosen and one to hold the monitor.

Are there certain features or lenses that you think are underutilized and want more cinematographers to be aware of?

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: There’s a misconception that clean or natural lenses are boring. That’s not true at all. A DP recently told me that they had a project where they wanted a clean look, and they opted for Master Primes because Signature Primes were too strong a look!

Signature Primes and Zooms are easy to spot in a lot of productions, and yet they facilitate the creation of thousands of different looks. One thing we’ve heard consistently about our modern lenses is that they make color correction easier because the images they produce can be pushed in so many different directions. There’s something special about how they handle color that pairs well with our cameras and even helps when used with non-ARRI cameras.

Also, our primes and zooms are unique in that they intercut perfectly. That’s really hard to do as digital is very unforgiving. A good recent example of how they intercut is the horror film “Longlegs” where the digital sequences were shot on Signature Primes, but with occasional Signature Zoom footage cut right in. The only way to tell the difference is that the image size is changing in the shot.

On the camera side, we are the first to employ something similar to temporal noise reduction in camera as an option at very low light levels. Our optional ES (Enhanced Sensitivity) mode compares multiple frames in real time to isolate the noise from the actual image data and remove the noise out of the image before recording it. ES mode is supported in ARRIRAW and ProRes. It’s a unique approach that we can leverage due to the speed of our sensor and the processing power inside the ALEXA 35. This approach offers two advantages over the “dual-native ISO” approach other others. There is no loss in dynamic range, which is common in “dual native ISO” sensors; and our approach does not restrict you to shooting at one of two native ISOs for best image noise performance.

The MVF-2 is an incredible viewfinder that has been loved by many since its launch with the ALEXA Mini LF in 2019, and with the ALEXA 35 we take same MVF-2 hardware even further. Users will notice that under the “Image” menu of the ALEXA 35, there is now an option to select “HDR” which displays a real HDR image in the eyepiece of the viewfinder. Color and brightness play significant roles in composition, and the camera operator, once again, they get the best view on set through the MVF-2. Now every production shooting with the ALEXA 35 has at least one HDR display, which is a fantastic asset to have on set where HDR monitors are still not commonplace.

Wrapping things up, the 2025 Oscar winner article that we referenced in the intro also called out how many of these award-winnng films were serviced by ARRI Rental, which hints at how your cameras are part of a larger filmmaking ecosystem. So how does ARRI’s ecosystem, including its cameras, lenses, and post-production tools, contribute to its dominance in the high-end film market? Is that dominance more about the power of these cameras, or how they function in filmmaking ecosystems, or something else?

Art Adams & Chase Hagen: As we mentioned earlier, our brand promise is about delivering maximum creative flexibility without getting in the way. Our sensors are built to capture more dynamic range than was ever possible with film. Our working color spaces are built with colorists in mind, literally: we auditioned several color spaces before we chose the final candidate for the color gamut used in REVEAL, based on user feedback. Our lenses deliver every ounce of color and brightness that our sensors can capture. Our lights are built not just to deliver punch, but to deliver it the only way it counts, with the best color possible. (Our SkyPanel X and Orbiter lights have an “ALEXA mode” that tunes the light to our sensor, for maximum color response.

In addition to building uncompromised products, another aspect that makes us the top choice for the high-end market are the synergies we have developed, not only for on-set production roles but also for the post-production toolsets valued by these high-end productions. For example, we are the only company that builds cameras, lenses, and lens control systems like the Hi-5, therefore we understand how these pieces should work together. For example, our Hi-5 system lets users map any lens with our motors acting as lens data encoders. The resulting metadata travels with the recorded footage all the way through post. VFX creatives appreciate working with the robust ARRI SDK for a fast and efficient workflow. Our CSS (camera stabilizer systems) products like the TRINITY seamlessly integrate with our cameras on movies like 1917 and also work with third party cameras.

We want creatives to create without worrying about the details. Sure, there are technical issues that need to be addressed when working with any digital camera, but most of this can be taken care of in prep. After that, it’s all about shooting, as quickly as you’d like.

Cinematography is a collaborative effort, and we do everything we can to enhance everyone’s performance. If you notice that you’re shooting with one of our cameras—if you need to stop and fix something specifically because it doesn’t play well with our gear—then that’s time taken away from telling a compelling story. We work very hard to make sure that never happens.

No matter whether you’re working on a huge production or a low budget short film, money is precious. You want to see as much of it on screen as possible. An ecosystem that works together well because it was designed to is a big advantage. That idea infuses everything we do, and we very much hope that we are succeeding. So far, all indications are good.