first time shooting on Alexa

[Dev Varma]

Hi Guys,

 

I have to shoot a feature film on Alexa in march, I am open to any suggestion, pros and cons of the camera, I have heard that its the best digital camera but I have not done any experiment and did not have any time left.

 

I'll be shooting on 2.35, I have not asked for anmorphic lenses, but if I do ask and try to use them, how its gonna work ?? anyone??

 

or should I mask it in the post ??

 

thanks for answering

[Phil Connolly]

If your shooting on the standard Alexa - its probably better to shoot with spherical lens's and crop the result in post the 2.35:1.

 

If you did use normal 2x anamorphics, because the sensor in the Alexa is 16:9 you would end up with a frame thats about 3.5:1, so you'd really have to crop the edges a lot throwing away a lot of resolution. So not really worth the extra hassel and cost of anamorphic lens's in that case.

 

If you can find them (they are a bit rare) you could use the Hawk 1.33X anamorphic lens, they would convert the 16:9 image to 2.35:1 without cropping - keeping full resolution. They have some anamorphic artifacts but not as much as 2X lens's.

 

Or if you can afford it, use an Alexa Studio, it has 4:3 sensor so if you use it with 2X anamorphic lens's - you get 2.66:1 - so only need a minor crop to get to 2.35:1. Also, with the Alexa studio you get a nice optical viewfinder.

 

Also, if anamorphic is your thing, the Arri D21 might be worth considering if you could get a deal, as it has a 4:3 sensor as well.

[David Mullen ASC]

Most common approach would be to use spherical lenses and just frame for cropping to 2.35.

[Ted Marcus]

Agreed with the comment above. Alexa is a beautiful camera to be working with btw, as I am sure you're realizing. Best of luck with it