Almost everybody who’s into video dreams of one day shooting on an ARRI Alexa. But actually owning one is pure fantasy for most of us. Not for Adam Harig, though, who spotted an eBay auction for five ARRI Alexa cameras on eBay one day and put in an offer. There was only one snag, these ARRI Alexa cameras weren’t working and were in various states of… deconstruction, with a part missing here and there. After chatting with the seller and feeling reasonably confident that he might get a single working camera together between them, the seller accepted his offer of $1,250. It was a big gamble if he couldn’t get one to work. And even if he did, this wasn’t going to be his only expense, as he later found out. Owning an ARRI Alexa is not cheap!
As well as detailing his initial adventure acquiring the ARRI Alexa cameras and trying to make some sense of what he had, he also posted a complete uncut teardown of the ARRI Alexa Classic EV on his second channel, just to satisfy those curious minds who’ve always wondered “what exactly is inside one of these things?”
After posting his initial video, it was a few weeks before he managed to figure out how to combine everything from multiple cameras to get a single working camera, but he finally posted an update a few days ago explaining what he did, where he goes from here and includes some sample footage.
The footage he manages to shoot with it once he got it all assembled is pretty sexy, although it’s not perfect. There are a handful of what appear to be dead pixels that he’ll need to figure out how to deal with and a couple of things do seem to be presenting errors on the display still, but for all intents and purposes, he’s managed to put together a complete working ARRI Alexa Classic for very little money – compared to just buying a working one. Not to mention the fact that he has a whole bunch of spare parts available in case things break or die on him. Even if we can’t all find deals like this one, it’s a great series of videos to see the entire project come together and produce the final working camera. I’m sure this won’t be the last we see from Adam about his new adventures with his ARRI Alexa and I can’t wait to see what he shoots with it once he gets used to it!
