I 100% agree on the correlation of price and reliability in the professional video world. My experience is in live event production and while Blackmagic has revolutionized the accessibility of high-quality production it does come with a non-dollar price. I've never had a Ross router, switcher, or other auxiliary gear go down during a show. I have experienced multiple show stopping failures of Blackmagic devices. I once was on a show where the BM router locked up fight before showtime. Doors were open and power cycling was not an option. All existing routes were passing signal just fine, it was just control that was gone. We just had to make do for the event, fortunately there were no critical audience facing changes that we needed.

For some clients the savings are worth the risk. For others they absolutely are not. With live you get no chance to shoot it on another day or go back and fix it in post. If there's thousands of people outside the room watching you better make sure that signal chain is rock solid.

After spending my career in supply chain and logistics, I am now at the interface of design and support for complex systems. So, reliability, or rather the full Reliability-Availability-Maintainability-Testability-Supportability, RAMT(S), is really important for my work.

It is quite fascinating, that besides the overall performance and capabilities of a system, pros care about RAMT a lot. Regardless of the field. Nice to see that confirmed, in yet another field I knew next to nothing about.

When folks talk about reliability of these cameras, what are we talking about? Like, the camera longevity, or ruggedness? Or like they reliably produce a consistent output, versus producing different results under the same conditions where one would expect consistency?

I work as a director of photography and own an Alexa Mini.

Reliability in this context means that the camera will record and the footage will not be corrupted on the media.

Film sets are very rough on equipment and things break all the time. Sometimes one films in very harsh conditions that anre either very cold or very dusty and hot. Often you don’t have the luxury of being able to repeat a moment or you have travelled to very remote locations so having gear that will continue to work is worth paying a huge premium for.

The Arri sensors and imaging pipeline also offer the best overall image quality. This means it can handle very high dynamic range scenes better than all other cameras. For example the new Alexa35 sensor can record 11f stops of information above middle grey. Most prosumer video cameras can record above and below middle grey around 12 stops total with most of the information in the shadows.

It also means consistent image quality in different shooting environments. Arri has very sophisticated cooling to keep the camera sensor within a specified temperature for consistent noise performance.

Because Arri make more than just cameras it also means that the camera fits into the whole professional eco system and synergises with other pieces of filmmaking equipment like the Arri wireless focus systems, camera remote heads etc etc. Meaning you can focus on the hard bit which is creating amazing stories.

Thank you, this was exactly the sort of elaboration I was looking for.

The Alexa does not have 11 stops of info above middle grey. More like 6-7 at most.

Speaking for lighting: all of it. ARRI stuff is expensive AF but worth every penny if you have the need for it.

Is this different in some way from the still photo world where you have like Broncolor that’s unreasonably expensive and no one can explain why?

Broncolor is expensive just because they're old and entrenched, and some people are always in the mindset that more expensive must equal better.

If reliability is a concern, you can easily buy multiple Godox units of approximately the same specifications (or better) for the same price as one Broncolor.

> If reliability is a concern, you can easily buy multiple Godox units of approximately the same specifications (or better) for the same price as one Broncolor.

I got burned enough, once even literally, by cheap Chinese speedlights that I am now a firm subscriber to the philosophy of "buy once, cry once".

Broncolor is “buy once, cry once, then cry again when you need an attachment, and also cry when you need to replace a bulb.”

I mean, a Godox V1 is $200. The Profoto A1 is $1,100. They're very comparable apart from price. I have 6 Godox speedlights of different tiers and only one broke, apart from some screws that just needed to have some Loctite put on them (which they fixed with later models).

Obviously don't go for the $30 plastic wonders.

In my judgment ARRI fixtures are not unreasonably expensive. Yeah they are pricey, but you get what you pay for, the engineering, including the elctrical engineering is stellar, the reproducability amazing.

Now whether you actually need those things is another question, but my opinion on ARRIs stuff is that it costs exactly what I would expect it to cost on that level of quality (and that isn't true for all manufacturers).

In the end it's reproducibility for both - you know that when you have a specific setup, it will look exactly the same.

> The thing is, sure ARRI is expensive, but depending on your production losing a day might be more expensive than buying a whole new camera.

This is generally true when purchasing equipment for personnel. If you have to purchase three new €2500 family MacBooks because of a burst pipe, that’s mighty expensive. Even for a small IT company, that’s just half a month’s wage per developer.

I know that with expensive camera gear we’re talking about €250 000 per camera or whatever, but you rent those.

Thanks! Totally get the point of price being relative. After all, if you use gear professionally, as in earning money with it, the calculation of cost is different.

Edit: Nikon is generally doing a decent job on those "pro" aspects if cameras, ergonomics, buttons, reliability and so on. Should be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out.

> Generally my experience is that a lot of the price of high end gear goes towards reliability, this is true for most other fields of tech as well.

Great point. I have this in non-professional settings the first question people ask is why this stuff is so expensive. Because if things work with little bit of fidgeting that's good enough.

FWIW "every surface needs to be covered in buttons" is exactly how a Canon person™ once explained to me why they are not a Nikon person. So that checks out wrt this acquisition, at least.

The only thing more hilarious than the pointless Canon vs. Nikon quabble are when you throw in Leica shooters into the mix.

Are there any? I think 99.9% of them are Leica “owners” rather than “shooters”. You can’t even properly manually focus on a 60mp sensor with a rangefinder.

I think we shouldn't go there! ;-)

I'm a Nikon person™ because my Canon printer once refused to scan because it was out of yellow... When it came time to buy a DSLR I chose Nikon and honestly I haven't been disappointed.