Arri AMIRA Pricing Released

NewsCameras

by Tim FokJanuary 30^th, 2014

Arri’s announcement of the AMIRA back in September at IBC raised a few eyebrows. With every major camera manufacturer pushing 4K acquisition through their flagship lines, Arri announces a brand new camera capable of recording at a maximum 2k.

With a price range up in the air, it wasn’t clear just where this would sit in the market (although with a name tag like Arri, most of us had a pretty good idea). This morning, Europe retailer CVP has just revealed a 3 tier pricing system for the AMIRA.

The AMIRA is an ALEXA on a strict diet, it shaves off nearly half its weight and girth, loses it’s raw abilities and is designed for single user operation; this is evident by the rotation of the controls on the operating side (the ALEXA utilizes the better known dumb side for it’s primarily configuration for ease of use with an assistant). I attended a local presentation of the AMIRA hosted by Arri, to see what the camera was like first hand and to understand the reasoning behind Arris investment in another sub 4K camera.

Their answer to the latter was simple – 4K output is still in a very premature state, it will be years before it’s properly implemented into the public domain.

4Ks current best use is to improve Full HD acquisition, by form of sampling, downscaling and correction. This is why Arri chose Full HD/2K as the resolution choice for the AMIRA, which in parallel with the pricing and ergonomics gives you a good idea of where they want this to sit in the market.

Arri are targeting TV broadcast, specifically drama and documentary where a lighter footprint than the ALEXA is required; I’m sure as a result the AMIRA will out price many people’s realistic wish list.

With that said, here are CVP’s pricing tiers. As these are initial prices, I predict them to be lower by the time they come to market, specifically the US market (with them being European prices).

Arri AMIRA package 1 – €25,980

Arri AMIRA package 2 – €28,980

Arri AMIRA package 3 – €32,980

Click on below thumbnails to enlarge.
In a brief summary, the initial tier offers an AMIRA package capable of shooting ProRes 422 up to 100FPS. The second tier extends the FPS to 200, with the addition of the unlimited looks functions, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and ProRes 422 HQ and Log-C capture. The third tier provides up to 2K resolution capture in ProRes 4444, and import of custom 3D LUTs.

For a summary on the specification of the AMIRA, please visit our initial article from IBC. In addition to this, I can confirm Arri are planning an in-field removable lens mount with PL, Canon EF and 2/3″ (via glass adaptor) compatibility.