I keep hearing about people touring they have a rig that can lift an Alexa and so forth...but has anyone actually ever flown one or seen a video of it?
I've seen all those videos of Rigs with 12 u11 motors and their potential lifting capacity, but has anyone flown an Alexa yet?
The question is directed to James but I want to answer this also. Red Epic(M,X, Dragon, Carbon Dragon) with a decent lens and filter weights around 3.5kg. If you use Zeiss Distagon series, which are lighter but yet very high quality, you are down to the 2.8-3kg. You add M10 to this setup and you are at 5kg upper limit. I know lots of guys who downsize the weight of Epic much more than this. This weight can be even handled by mid heavy lift motors (U5, 4014XF). So, this is not scary to lift if you trust your copter. And you get one of the best results out there. But if you add another 5kg to a copter, it's totally another league. Extra weight coming the copter is not only limited with the camera weight; you put two times bigger motors; ESCs, you double the battery capacity, more rigid frame. You jump from 12kg copter to 22-25kg copter. The components will be stressed more, you will be stressed more, the risk you're taking is at least doubling. And do we have a gimbal to fly an Alexa? So, the effort you have to make is a lot. And the quality of the footage?
Ozkan and I are of like minds on this subject. Two years ago we built a single rotor heli to carry the Alexa. Once it was done we thought, this doesn't make any sense. The lightest we got the Alexa down to was 22 lbs. The Epic is under 10 lbs with a small prime and the heli can handle it all day long without overstressing anything. Besides, we haven't had a single person not accept Red footage as "B" aerials on any Arri filmed project, even Roger Deakins!