I just took a crash course on the new Alexa camera from Arri. This thing is amazing. Here are some of the highlights:

- It has a base sensitivity of 800EI, giving incredible low light ability

- It can record all standard frame rates between 1-60fps

- It records, natively, all flavors of Apple ProRes, including 4444 to Sony SxS cards

- The menus are incredibly intuitive, with most major items like frame rate, white balance, ASA, etc, just a single button push away.

- There are new features on this camera that have not appeared on other cameras before that show Arri has designed the camera to be used on stereoscopic production, from simple things like the ability to easily assign a “left” or “right” ID to the camera’s metadata. There is also a mysterious “EXT” port on the back of the camera that some people are speculating will be used to connect two camera bodies and will allow both cameras to be controlled by one body.

- Finally, the camera has an ethernet port (it’s about time). Beyond allowing you to connect your camera directly to your computer for easy firmware updates and such, ethernet is such a standard protocol that you can transfer all sorts of data through it, allowing many uses, including remote control of the camera, tethering, slate syncing, and more.

Arri did it right.