Arri is the new Adobe

[FHDcrew]

RIP us actually getting to use what we own lol.  Yes Arri is amazing, yes the Alexa 35 is wonderful, yes these prices are totally fine for large film groups or people renting.  But now Arri is putting some features as "upgrades" such as Anamorphic desqueezing and ArriRAW support...and yes, they offer these in weekly/monthly subscription models...hoping this does not trickle down into future cameras that are much more affordable.  Sick of subscriptions.

[FHDcrew]

Obviously paid firmware upgrades have been a thing since the Gh4 days...but a subscription model is so annoying.

[MrSMW]

I’m not sure how much of this ARRI log C3 is over-hyped…

Having looked at some of the footage shot side by side with standard log, very little difference and with some samples, I prefer the standard log.

And anyway, the Phantom LUTS by Joel F are designed to ‘mimic’ various versions of ARRI. I’m more than happy with those and think they look better than the standard log…which itself to me looks better in most cases than this new cost option download.

None of these things will turn your $3000 mirrorless into an actual ARRI camera, but then how many can afford, never mind need an ARRI 35?

Not a fan of subs either.

Pretty sure it’s not for me.

[eatstoomuchjam]

I only made it about 5 minutes through the video before I got bored with it so maybe he addresses some of this after that.

But I'm not sure why it's news that Arri give people an option to buy the full camera or a base model that disables some features until they're enabled.  That's been a thing for a long time.  When one buys the base model, there are options to pay to  enable those features on a temporary or permanent basis.  It's one of the reasons that when you see used Arris for sale, they'll frequently say things like "includes high-speed license" or "includes raw license."

Speaking for myself, I kind of hate subscriptions in general for this kind of thing, but that is very much mitigated by having the option for a permanent license.  I still don't like it a lot since (in most cases), it's not really reducing the camera price.  In the case of things like the GH4/5, it's not like Panasonic would have needed to charge more for the camera if they just threw in vlog-l.

In Arri's case, I suspect that the decision was pushed by big rental houses - if I'm a rental house, a reduced cost base model lets me buy more cameras.  Add a license to enable certain features and I can just tack that onto the price of the rental.  Renting for a week?  X dollars.  You want raw on that rental?  Add Y dollars.  Camera reaches end of service life, the buyer can turn on any feature they want on a permanent basis.

I don't love it, but it's not terrible.

[Ilkka Nissila]

On 7/6/2025 at 4:47 AM, FHDcrew said:

Obviously paid firmware upgrades have been a thing since the Gh4 days...but a subscription model is so annoying.

In Arri's case they offer (1) Alexa 35 with all features included in the purchase price, (2) Alexa 35 base model with the most commonly used features enabled, and (2a) subscription to optional features that you may need for a specific project, (2b) permanent licensing of those features that you want to keep, so the subscription is just one option and permanent licenses to those features are available if you want them. 

 

I don't understand what the issue is. Having more options in how the payment is made is good and means more people/companies will be able to afford the stuff. No one is complaining that leasing or renting cars (or getting a taxi ride) are available in addition to the option of purchasing and owning a car. Public transport tickets are available on a single trip, load value, or pay for use for a period of time basis. Again no one is complaining about the existence of these options. Why then is subscription software or firmware as an option a problem?

 

I think people are complaing about these things because they don't understand that software development costs money and if you want to continue developing a particular piece software in the future you probably need to keep those same people who developed it continuously employed so that you can do it efficiently in the future. If you have to let the people who developed something go, to add features, the cost is multiplied because no one new initially understands the existing code. The subscription model works best for software because it enables continued employment so the knowledge of how the software works internally is not lost.

 

Today since operating systems are continuously changed, the applications software also needs frequent maintenance. So for Adobe the subscription model works best. They are able to maintain broad hardware support and have a huge library of cameras and lenses that are supported in terms of raw processing and lens corrections. The subscription cost is really low for the (still) photography software kit (LR + PS) and while the other stuff is kind of expensive, it was always expensive even in the then-thought-permanent license era. And as there are free or inexpensive options available for the tasks which Adobe prices expensively (Davinci Resolve instead of Premiere Pro), there is something for everyone available in the market. 

 

What would be much worse is that people rely on a particular product and have a lot of material made with it and suddenly those files could not be opened or edited as a result of the company making the software ending their operations or support of the product.

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

I think people are complaing about these things because they don't understand that software development costs money and if you want to continue developing a particular piece software in the future you probably need to keep those same people who developed it continuously employed so that you can do it efficiently in the future. If you have to let the people who developed something go, to add features, the cost is multiplied because no one new initially understands the existing code. The subscription model works best for software because it enables continued employment so the knowledge of how the software works internally is not lost.

I was with you on "it's OK to have a license as long as there's an option for perpetual," but this is the part where you're losing me.

Subscriptions, as currently implemented by companies like Adobe, are actually extremely consumer-hostile.  You're right that it's good to have an ongoing source of revenue, but you're completely ignoring that they now have no impetus whatsoever to build features that people actually want.

If I have Lightroom 5 and Adobe release Lightroom 6, I can look at the features that were added.  If none of them are something I want, I keep using Lightroom 5.  If Adobe completely misses the mark with customers, few or no people buy version 6 and they are forced to course correct or go out of business.  If they go out of business, the copy of Lightroom 5 that I have keeps working forever.  Maybe eventually it won't run on a new computer, but I have virtual machines or my old computer as options still.

In a subscription world, I pay Adobe every month to keep using the software that I already have.  They can waste as much time and money as they want on shitty new features that I don't want or care about.  I still have to pay for them.  They want to spend 1000 hours developing an integration between Lightroom and a stock photo site so they can pull extra revenue through a deal with the stock photo company?  I don't care and I'll never use it.  But I'm still paying for it.  The company spends a bunch of time integrating their own cloud service which would charge me even more money to store my files?  Don't want it, probably will never use it, still funding the development.
If a competitor has different features that I want, I can certainly move to their software, but unless the interface is identical to what I'm used to, now I lose time and effort re-training on how to use the other software.  They know that a lot of people aren't going to take that time and effort so the money keeps flowing in.  Plus maybe I've spent hundreds of hours in something like the Lightroom catalog rating and tagging things or doing some other activity that isn't necessarily stored in the XMP sidecar (not sure if ratings and tags are) and moving that to another software package would eat a ton of my life.
Stop using the software for a while?  Sometimes subscriptions are easy to pause or stop, but a lot of times, they are a pain in the ass to stop.  Once again, extra money keeps flowing in because people forget the subscription or give up on cancellation because they'll probably need it again sometime in the future.

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

What would be much worse is that people rely on a particular product and have a lot of material made with it and suddenly those files could not be opened or edited as a result of the company making the software ending their operations or support of the product.

You are arguing against yourself here.  If I own the software and it doesn't have to check a central license server every time it starts up, I can open my files in perpetuity.  Virtual machines are a thing and allow running older software basically forever.
On the other hand, if I had a file created in some version of Adobe's software in a format that isn't supported elsewhere (not sure if this exists) and I don't pay a ransom to Adobe, those files are now dead to me.  Also, if Adobe decides to stop supporting that software because not enough people are paying the subscription, those files can never be opened again.  Go offline for a month because you're traveling in the middle of nowhere and/or don't want to pay for a local sim?  Sucks to be you, you won't be editing anything after a few days because the software can't phone home.

This is increasingly a concern in the gaming industry as well - there's even a petition and a movement within Europe about it at https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Companies intentionally build their games to require an online connection and if it's gone, the game stops working.  Meanwhile, eventually most people stop playing and it costs money to run/patch/maintain the servers so the company turns them off.  Wanna play that game that you loved a few years ago?  Too bad.  Even if you have it still installed on your computer, it now serves no purpose other than to waste disk space.

Anyway, Adobe announce record profits all the time.  I'm still using Lightroom about like I was 10 years ago.  I should probably try Capture One again.  I have kind of hated it every time I installed it, but at least their model is less offensive - option for a perpetual license or subscription, and if converting from subscription to perpetual, some of the subscription costs are prorated toward the purchase.

[ND64]

Its been a standard practice in telecom industry for decades. You want to provide service to 2x wireless users? You need to upgrade your license: X dollars. But that works pretty well for them because its an enterprise world and the hardware they're selling is not something you could buy an alternative from Amazon. Arri is selling a device that is surrounded by rapidly approaching sharks that already ate its lunch in commercials, music videos, and documentary segments of the market. And I don't buy this cliche of "but studios afford that". Did you see what they used for f1 movie? Studios have a lot of money to spend, but they're not stupid. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

6 minutes ago, ND64 said:

Did you see what they used for f1 movie? Studios have a lot of money to spend, but they're not stupid. 

I thought/assumed that the choice of cameras for f1 were similar to the reason that studios have been using Ronin 4D for a bunch of stuff - and why the last couple of Mission Impossible films used Z Cams for the stunts - because there's no Arri that could possibly fit in the places where they put the custom Sony cameras (just as there's no Arri that can be usable on a gimbal as quickly as the R4D can be ready and because there's no Arri that can fit in a lot of the places that the Z Cam does).

It's not to say that the Venice line isn't really good, it certainly seems to be, but on a movie with a budget of $100,000,000, the difference in price between shooting on Alexa and shooting on Venice is basically a rounding error.

[KnightsFan]

As much as subscription models suck for us individuals, they are often preferable for businesses, even regarding software like Adobe. Obviously Arri's target market is rental houses, and the comment earlier about a rental house passing those temporary upgrades to customers is quite likely the intent.

It's worth spelling out the difference between subscription editing software and camera upgrades, though. With Adobe's product, if you stop paying, you can't open your old projects. In Arri's model, if you stop paying, you can presumably still open files shot with those upgrades. Losing access to the creative work that you've already done is a big difference.

[maxJ4380]

17 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

I don't understand what the issue is. Having more options in how the payment is made is good and means more people/companies will be able to afford the stuff. No one is complaining that leasing or renting cars (or getting a taxi ride) are available in addition to the option of purchasing and owning a car. Public transport tickets are available on a single trip, load value, or pay for use for a period of time basis. Again no one is complaining about the existence of these options. Why then is subscription software or firmware as an option a problem?

Your right, you don't understand. Some background for you, i have owned the commodore vic 20 with the datasette, the atari 1040st and a dx2-66 when they came out. when you bought software for them you owned it. No subscriptions back then. so for 40 years, give or take, companies developed software and made money. Some companies lots of money.

Having companies give you more options to "pay" for for something you dont own, isn't much different to taking a sharp knife and stabbing yourself and wondering how many more ways can i do this, until i bleed out ?

Sure the subscription model works best for Adobe because its based on greed.. sure it may be cheaper to "subscribe" for 6 months or so maybe even a year. But ultimately it will cost you more. What a way to reward your loyal customers. Lets face it none of these companies have their backs against the wall and have kids dying from malnutrition (well not the ceo's or higher anyway) and if they do, its not a funding issue.

There's still plenty of software to buy out there that doesn't have a "subscribe" component, probably the vast majority of software, that is still regularly updated. So your argument is baseless.

Cars are great.. you know why ? because it keeps the horses of the street. Do you know how much a horse can crap ?  although its a biological action, and to be expected from any organic lifeform. It attracts flies, lots of flies, not to mention crap doesn't smell anything like perfume. Less flies, less disease. Simple as that. Mind you, cars are not cheap either.

Thats why you see bags of horse crap outside of stables for sale. their trying to recoup some of the money they have spent on feed. If they try to dump it, it will cost them more money to dump at a tip / dump. 

Personally i'm of the opinion that anything that we involve ourselves in, is in one form or another is a revenue stream. Cars, taxi, buses, even buying a camera. It will cost you for the privilege. Public transport  or anything to do with government no longer covers costs. Now it has to make money.

   

[Andrew Reid]

Surely the main point is that if you can afford to shoot ARRI Alexa 35 you are not quibbling over software licensing fees over the week(s) long duration of a shoot.

Whereas with Adobe they scavenge £ from grandmothers and students for years and years.

[Ilkka Nissila]

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Surely the main point is that if you can afford to shoot ARRI Alexa 35 you are not quibbling over software licensing fees over the week(s) long duration of a shoot.

Whereas with Adobe they scavenge £ from grandmothers and students for years and years.

So if there was a permanent license available, the grandmothers with 20 or 30 year old licensed software would install old operating systems in virtual boxes to run these outdated software and all the while doing so, make sure that the old OS's notorious security flaws are not attacked by hackers and the computer's security violated? I can see some highly competent technical people doing this (in fact I have a couple of Windows XP laptops for running old software but I don't in practice use them except in emergency if it should happen that there is no other way) but for the majority of regular users of cameras, this isn't really the best option. Instead, updating key software regularly to keep it up to date security and OS compatibility wise, and gaining valuable new features (AI subject selection makes selective edits massively less time consuming than manual drawing of masks, new noise-reduction algorithms and raw conversion algorithms have also improved greatly since Adobe went into the subscription model) and all the while keeping the software industry healthy is the best way to go for most ordinary users. Getting regular software improvements without separate expensive purchasing decisions is a great benefit.

And there are tons of alternatives to Adobe software, some are free and some cost a lot of money. IMO Adobe now is among the best value software for still photography, not so much for video. In the perpetual license era most of their software was too expensive to justify financially.

[eatstoomuchjam]

6 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

And there are tons of alternatives to Adobe software, some are free and some cost a lot of money. IMO Adobe now is among the best value software for still photography, not so much for video. In the perpetual license era most of their software was too expensive to justify financially.

Is the last sentence intended a a joke?  Lightroom-only subscriptions are $12/month.  That's $144/year.

In 2017, Lightroom cost $150 and you could use that copy of Lightroom for as long as you wanted.  If Adobe released a new version with features that you didn't want or need, you didn't need to buy it.  And this might blow your mind, but... about 95% of the "features" that Adobe have added since going to the subscription model are things I don't need, want or use.  

https://fstoppers.com/apps/creative-cloud-it-time-ditch-adobe-200441

Unfortunately, the version from 2017 has no chance of opening any files that I take with my modern cameras.  Previously, I would have probably bought a new version of Lightroom every 2-3 years, as needed, to support my new camera.  Now I have to spend 3 times as much to continue using my photo editing software.  And again, many of the features that Adobe add are completely disjointed from what I would want.

Making me pay 3x as much to keep using the software to support the development of features that I don't want is not a consumer-friendly practice.  I'm not sure what malfunction you're having that makes you think that Adobe wouldn't have developed things like better denoising and debayering algorithms if they released new versions of the software that people had to pay for.  In fact, they might have spent more time on those things.  And if they released a new version that didn't improve that and only added, for example, AI object insertion, I could punish them by not buying it and continuing to use the software I already had.  Now, punishing them is also punishing myself because I have to learn to use entirely new software, transfer 20+ years of images in a catalog, and find new plugins (which sometimes don't even exist, such as SRDx which I use to clean up dust from film scans and only works with Photoshop).

Do you work for Adobe?  You seem really motivated to say how paying more for their software so that they can develop features that many users don't want is somehow good for the users.

[maxJ4380]

 

 

3 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Is the last sentence intended a a joke?  Lightroom-only subscriptions are $12/month.  That's $144/year.

In 2017, Lightroom cost $150 and you could use that copy of Lightroom for as long as you wanted.  If Adobe released a new version with features that you didn't want or need, you didn't need to buy it.  And this might blow your mind, but... about 95% of the "features" that Adobe have added since going to the subscription model are things I don't need, want or use.  

https://fstoppers.com/apps/creative-cloud-it-time-ditch-adobe-200441

Unfortunately, the version from 2017 has no chance of opening any files that I take with my modern cameras.  Previously, I would have probably bought a new version of Lightroom every 2-3 years, as needed, to support my new camera.  Now I have to spend 3 times as much to continue using my photo editing software.  And again, many of the features that Adobe add are completely disjointed from what I would want.

Making me pay 3x as much to keep using the software to support the development of features that I don't want is not a consumer-friendly practice.  I'm not sure what malfunction you're having that makes you think that Adobe wouldn't have developed things like better denoising and debayering algorithms if they released new versions of the software that people had to pay for.  In fact, they might have spent more time on those things.  And if they released a new version that didn't improve that and only added, for example, AI object insertion, I could punish them by not buying it and continuing to use the software I already had.  Now, punishing them is also punishing myself because I have to learn to use entirely new software, transfer 20+ years of images in a catalog, and find new plugins (which sometimes don't even exist, such as SRDx which I use to clean up dust from film scans and only works with Photoshop).

Do you work for Adobe?  You seem really motivated to say how paying more for their software so that they can develop features that many users don't want is somehow good for the users.

 Pardon my ignorance, cant you use adobes dng converter to change raw file to dng's ? you can then do anything you want. Well thats how i get my raw files into photoshop cs3 and that has to be older than 2017 lol. I guess there's probably some sort of image loss going on in any conversion however my 58 year old eyes don't notice it.  

[Ilkka Nissila]

7 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Is the last sentence intended a a joke?  Lightroom-only subscriptions are $12/month.  That's $144/year.

In 2017, Lightroom cost $150 and you could use that copy of Lightroom for as long as you wanted.  If Adobe released a new version with features that you didn't want or need, you didn't need to buy it.  And this might blow your mind, but... about 95% of the "features" that Adobe have added since going to the subscription model are things I don't need, want or use.  

I can't work with LR alone, I also need Photoshop to do any meaningful editing and finishing of photos. 20 years ago Photoshop cost about $700 which in today's money is $1150. If you don't need a new version in five years then the permanent licenses for PS and LR would have been roughly on par with the subscription cost (as the photographer's bundle), but I certainly want key software that I use updated more often than once in five years. And if you occasionally need Illustrator, Acrobat, Premiere etc. but not on a regular basis, the subscription makes access to those much cheaper as well (the full suite as a permanent license cost $2500 which would in today's money probably over $3000). Thousands, in any case. With subscription pricing you could just pay for a month or two and get the work done without having to purchase the lot.

 

Although these programs have a lot features I don't need or use (since it's not only used by photographers but also various kinds of graphic designers and artists), I frequently see Adobe improve the software in ways that are meaningful to me. I obviously do not work for Adobe. My point is just that for me and others that I know, the subscription pricing made Adobe software accessible while previously it was not. My guess is that Adobe likely went with subscription pricing because they had a huge problem with pirated software as a lot of people chose not to pay but used cracked copies of the software, basically stealing.

 

For video editing it makes a lot of sense to use Davinci Resolve since a lot of people prefer it to Premiere on its own merits, but it can be used for free (if you don't need certain features which require the paid version). It also supports Nikon N-RAW. However I suspect that eventually the free version disappears and this software will also become something you have to pay to use since software development is expensive.

[eatstoomuchjam]

9 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

Pardon my ignorance, cant you use adobes dng converter to change raw file to dng's ? you can then do anything you want. Well thats how i get my raw files into photoshop cs3 and that has to be older than 2017 lol. I guess there's probably some sort of image loss going on in any conversion however my 58 year old eyes don't notice it.  

I hadn't thought about that, but if that's an option, I guess I could have done it.  Though at this point, I doubt I have an installer around for the old version.

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

I can't work with LR alone, I also need Photoshop to do any meaningful editing and finishing of photos. 20 years ago Photoshop cost about $700 which in today's money is $1150. If you don't need a new version in five years then the permanent licenses for PS and LR would have been roughly on par with the subscription cost (as the photographer's bundle), but I certainly want key software that I use updated more often than once in five years.

Yes, for someone who needs multiple or many Adobe products, the current pricing is somewhat advantageous vs the old pricing.  A lot of people, me included, are not that person and use Lightroom almost exclusively.  The only time I use Photoshop is when I need to run SRDx.

 

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

And if you occasionally need Illustrator, Acrobat, Premiere etc. but not on a regular basis, the subscription makes access to those much cheaper as well (the full suite as a permanent license cost $2500 which would in today's money probably over $3000).

The current cost for the entire suite is $70/month - over 3 years, that's $2,520.  So... wow.  That's an additional $20 in cost over $2,500.  So it doesn't seem "much cheaper" to me.  It seems to be "the same cost."

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

With subscription pricing you could just pay for a month or two and get the work done without having to purchase the lot.

 

This is the pitch that is made for subscription software.  It's not applicable to most people.  I use Lightroom often enough that it doesn't make sense to turn on and off my subscription all the time.

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

My guess is that Adobe likely went with subscription pricing because they had a huge problem with pirated software as a lot of people chose not to pay but used cracked copies of the software, basically stealing.

There's no need to guess.  They went with it because it radically increased their profits and gave them a steady predictable monthly revenue instead of an unpredictable spiky revenue that got reduced if people didn't like the new version.  Now it doesn't matter if you don't like the new version.  F U consumer, you are paying for it anyway.

Here are some charts that show the true reason that Adobe went to a subscription model - prior to it, they had a pretty consistent/flat 4-5 billion dollars per year in revenue.  This is plenty of money to develop their software.  It has been on an upward ramp since then and now they are making 20 billion dollars per year.  If it flattens again, expect them to increase subscription pricing to further enrich their shareholders.  This is why subscription models exist - to enrich shareholders, not to make your life better.  I used to work for a major e-commerce company - discussions of subscription billing, etc, were very rarely phrased in terms of the benefit to end users.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ADBE/adobe/revenue

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

It also supports Nikon N-RAW. However I suspect that eventually the free version disappears and this software will also become something you have to pay to use since software development is expensive.

The free version is intended to stay.  Petty said in their NAB livestream that he expects that, at some point, people will be asked to pay for upgrades to the Studio License to fund continuing development of Resolve.  This is, for me, fully acceptable.  My existing version of Resolve Studio will keep working as long as it needs to work and if I find the features in a new version to be compelling, I will pay them for it.  This is a healthy business relationship.