ARRI Forum

Hello,

I’ve recently started using the Alexa 35 after a long time with the Alexa Mini, and I’m having some issues with the false color display.

With the Alexa Mini, when lighting a face, the image would look well-exposed on the monitor, and the false color display would show the expected green and pink pattern on the face, meaning the monitor and the false color on the EVF matched.

However, with the Alexa 35, whenever I light a face, even though the image on the monitor appears well-exposed, the false color indicates underexposure. I tried increasing the lighting to get the false color to match what I was used to on the Alexa Mini, but by the time the false color reached the familiar pattern, the image looked overly lit on the EVF monitor.

So last shoot I placed a gray card in front of the camera, even when it’s correctly exposed with the lightmeter, it doesn’t show up as green in the false color display.

I watched a YouTube tech talk where the Alexa Mini showed green for a gray card while the Alexa 35 did not. The video suggested that this might be due to the camera shooting from a different angle, but the angle difference seems minimal. I’m attaching some images from an ARRI video where you can see that the mid-gray appears green on the Alexa Mini but not on the Alexa 35.

The video also mentions that there’s no difference in the first four zones of false color between both cameras, but in practice, that’s not the case—they behave differently or am I doing something wrong?

Note: I view the false color through the EVF using the EXP button.

Dear PSil001,

I can only comment on the screenshot from the video here: Harald mentions "The cameras had a slightly different angle ....".
Which perfectly explains the tiny differences of the False Color overlays and demonstrates the extremely fine "resolution" of False Color.

The differences seen here are probably around 1/10th of a stop, a precision that is high enough to produce irritation when the actual differences seen by the eye are measured by a light meter is hardly recognizable.

> but by the time the false color reached the familiar pattern, the image looked overly lit

How much (in stops) is the difference here? Does it actually look "overly lit" or are you measuring a tiny difference of much less than 1/3rd of a stop?

Next time I have the camera I can take a measure but visually is a big difference and it only happens with this camera so I was wondering if there is a chance the EXP in the viewfinder may be set to show the LOG false color?

If so, is the middle grey different for the LOG false color and rec 709 false color?

False color on Alexa 35 is only Log. Some have asked for False color with LUT applied like previous Alexa models.