ARRI Launches ALEXA Mini LF

DLD said:
He probably gets paid pretty big money as a product endorser. That said, if he wanted ST over 65, that was his choice of the aesthetics. Having watched about an hour of BR2049 a couple of nights ago, I noticed he rarely went for the super shallow DOF.

In terms of the 65m lenses, most are rehoused Hassy (most Panavision 65 glass is with them or in private hands).

And languages get displaced, if you don't use them on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

It does seem like having the Signature Primes is probably what made the difference for him, more so than the sensor size. For Bladerunner I can see how he was more comfortable shooting on Master Primes, especially because there was going to be so much complexity to the lighting and CGI.
 
IanTheM said:
It does seem like having the Signature Primes is probably what made the difference for him, more so than the sensor size. For Bladerunner I can see how he was more comfortable shooting on Master Primes, especially because there was going to be so much complexity to the lighting and CGI.
Click to expand...

I’d agree with that assessment. Seems consistant with mr deakins’ ethos, as it were.

A friend who works with Vitec asked me to show him what i am looking for when i look at a lens, and we happened to be looking down the barrel of a Signature, and it was finny, because i couldn’t show him any of the flaws i normally would pick out on a lens, there wasn’t anything to pick out that was worth mentioning, compared to the average lens. So, there wasn’t much i could say, or point out.
 
Run&Gun said:
Give ‘em a call and ask them, but I'm betting that it’s set up to not work that way, otherwise they would probably be issuing cards with MUCH higher limits. They’re keeping the limits on the cards low on purpose so that people can’t make extremely large purchases that qualify for extremely large “rewards”. They’re banking on people using these cards on few hundred to few thousand dollar purchases and then enough people carrying a balance to cover the rewards/tax. My bet, the program is set-up to not allow you to use the card like that. Remember, it’s not a traditional Visa/MasterCard/etc.
Click to expand...
I haven't called B&H yet, but I did find out that Florida has a sales tax exemption (so zero sales tax) for filmmaking equipment. I simply changed the address on B&H to a Florida zip code and the sales tax disappeared. So, I can just have expensive items shipped to relatives or friends that live there since I used to live there, or perhaps setup a P.O. Box or have it delivered directly to a UPS store in northern Florida. Not sure how delivering it straight to the UPS store would work. Also not unclear on if any of the other perhaps closer (to Atlanta) neighboring states to Georgia also have film sales tax exemption.
 
You should look into taxes for purchasing equipment you use to make income. I'd guess hundreds of thousands probably do purchase products out-of-state to avoid taxes, but not sure that's legal in most places if you're actually using it to make money, FWIW. I guess it also depends on scale and if anyone really cares.
 
Teddy_Dem said:
ARRI have added an article and interview with Roger Deakins about the ALEXA Mini LF, with some interesting quotes:

"The format, to me, feels more like my stills camera,” he says. “I have always been a stills photographer, really, since I was pretty young. So I feel more familiar with that format and that sort of depth of field than I do with regular [Super] 35."
Click to expand...


Did somone else notice the terrible edits in this promo? Each time it started to get interesting there was a cut. Totally ruined it.
 
Last edited:
NorBro said:
You should look into taxes for purchasing equipment you use to make income. I'd guess hundreds of thousands probably do purchase products out-of-state to avoid taxes, but not sure that's legal in most places if you're actually using it to make money, FWIW. I guess it also depends on scale and if anyone really cares.
Click to expand...

The DP on a commercial I just worked on was talking exactly about this. This DP has some gear, three F55s, a few Fujinon Premiere zooms, etc. and he told us that the California State Franchise Taxboard just nailed him on sales tax and penalties for a few hundred thousand dollars of gear he has bought over the past few years from B&H specifically. We didn't have time to go into the details but the take away is, if you use your gear to make money, you really should be paying your state sales tax on it. Or you could get nailed, pretty big time, it's just the cost of being in this business.
 
I talked to a B&H rep today and he said that one, using the Payboo card for an Alexa purchase would not be practical since their limit tends to top out at around $10k, though it was unclear if it would be flat out not allowed, aside from the next part, which is that only half of the Alexa purchase could be paid for with a credit card, the other half would need to be a wire transfer or possibly debit card because B&H did not want to pay that much of a credit card fee.

Also, he said that Georgia has a sales tax exemption program as well, but unlike Florida, you have to sign up for it and you have to be incorporated to do so, according to the B&H rep. I'm currently a sole proprietor, but if I don't want to ship to Florida then becoming incorporated and applying for the tax exemption sounds like a good way to go.
 
Last edited:
Eric re 2020 S35 mini vs. mini LF, are you just going take the the purchasing decision out of your hands and see which one is more popular? Or is it more to do with existing gear combinations that can make the most money, while assuming you'll be busy with either camera?

I thought I heard (zero evidence) the new S35 cam may have more high frame rate options. If true then maybe the S35 cam will be more of a commercial workhorse vs. LF being used for episodic/feature film work.

'Eric C - the ongoing owner/operator case study.'
 
Well the current thought is I'll sell two of my three Amiras and get the Alexa Mini LF. I can probably sell them in the $20-$30k range each, minus Ebay fees if selling them there, and then the Alexa Mini LF is about $80k for everything that is needed, so that's around $40k to upgrade. I haven't been getting as many multi-camera rentals as I'd like with the three Amira bodies so seems like a good direction and the Alexa name has more name recognition than Amira in the feature and commercial world, even though for non-anamorphic (I don't own anamorphic lenses and am not convinced of their benefits for most projects), non-RAW (most of my projects are not RAW but it'd be cool if I could get projects big enough to want it), and non-gimbal (I have Steadicam), the Amira does all that the original Alexa Mini can do. Grug informed me of the image quality benefits (smaller noise pattern) of the Alexa Mini LF, and of course it has various features I was already aware of (such as the improved viewfinder/LCD), so win win there.

Compared to the 4K Super35 Alexa Mini, assuming the look is the same and it just has some added resolution, the LF should still have a better image in terms of finer noise patterns, less distortion, more control of depth of field, higher resolution, and with the firmware that Arri has planned, it can do Super35 too, just at 3.2K, which means all the clients who have been fine with 3.2K and don't want or need large format at 4.5K, can still get Super35 3.2K, which will also then match perfectly for mulit-cam in terms of specs and image with the Amira I already have.

As far as high frame rates, my Amira still can do 200 fps ProRes (same as the original Alexa Mini which maxes out at 48 FPS when shooting RAW), so while a bit of a pain to switch in the middle of a shoot, I could always just grab my Amira body if higher than the Alexa Mini LF's 90 fps is needed. I also would not be surprised if a firmware update in the future enables higher frame rates on the Mini LF. It must have more processing power than the original Mini and Amira which can do 200 fps, so it seems they intentionally crippled it to protect the larger LF which does 150 fps.

I feel the only real risk here is if the new Arri 4K Super35 sensor has other image quality upgrades than just resolution, and then Arri says, "Well, we did warn you it was coming." But one other thing to consider is the 4K Super35 version is said to be released in the first half of 2020, so that would be June at the latest. The Mini LF was announced March 28, 2019, Newsshooter shows that it was supposed to start shipping in July, and here we are in October and the cameras are still on back-order (with B&H saying November or December for shipping "ready-to-shoot" packages, February for body-only packages, and AbelCine saying around February), which means the 4K Super35 version likely would not be readily available until close to a year after the Mini LF is available, and a year is a lot of time to make profits off of a camera.

I also need to make several spec ads and try to break into the commercial world to justify a camera and lens combination that most corporate and doc shoots could not afford. I'm in the script-writing phase of that right now.
 
Last edited:
Eric Coughlin said:
I feel the only real risk here is if the new Arri 4K Super35 sensor has other image quality upgrades than just resolution, and then Arri says, "Well, we did warn you it was coming." But one other thing to consider is the 4K Super35 version is said to be released in the first half of 2020, so that would be June at the latest. The Mini LF was announced March 28, 2019, Newsshooter shows that it was supposed to start shipping in July, and here we are in October and the cameras are still on back-order (with B&H saying November or December for shipping "ready-to-shoot" packages, February for body-only packages, and AbelCine saying around February), which means the 4K Super35 version likely would not be readily available until close to a year after the Mini LF is available, and a year is a lot of time to make profits off of a camera.
Click to expand...

With my limited technical knowledge, as well as from a marketing standpoint, I don't see how they could upgrade the IQ, particularly with stories of fast-tracking the manufacturing just for Deakins. As in, it feels like a flagship they believe in as far as widely accessible large format video (Alexa 65 being more specialized). Except maybe they'll fast rack the S35 camera for Rogers' next feature. I'm interested in finding out how long the LF/S35 shelf lives are. I think if a company like Arri adopted a SONY product cycle philosophy it'd be the beginning of the end. Or the end of the end.
 
Last edited:
rob norton said:
With my limited technical knowledge, as well as from a marketing standpoint, I don't see how they could upgrade the IQ, particularly with stories of fast-tracking the manufacturing just for Deakins. As in, it feels like a flagship they believe in as far as widely accessible large format video (Alexa 65 being more specialized). Except maybe they'll fast rack the S35 camera for Rogers' next feature. I'm interested in finding out how long the LF/S35 shelf lives are. I think if a company like Arri adopted a SONY product cycle philosophy it'd be the beginning of the end. Or the end of the end.
Click to expand...

I think that developing the 4K S35 sensor is probably more than twice as expensive as making the LF. For their large format stuff Arri has only ever used the same sensor with the same pixel sizes, I'm pretty sure. If they can accomplish this without losing any image quality then the next logical step is 6K LF with this new sensor, so that they're in the same territory as the Venice.
 
Sorry to bump this old thread, but wasn't sure where else to put this. CineD finally ran their camera test on the ARRI ALEXA Classic and Mini LF:

ALEXA Classic:
- Dynamic Range (ProRes 4444 at 800 ISO): 13.8 stops
- Rolling Shutter: 7.2 ms

ALEXA Mini LF
- Dynamic Range (ProRes 4444XQ at 800 ISO): 13.5 stops
- Dynamic Range (ARRIRAW): 13.4 stops
- Rolling Shutter: 7.4 ms

https://www.cined.com/arri-alexa-cl...t-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-latitude/

Seeing that they use the same method for all camera's this can act as baseline for comparing the other camera tests they have performed:

https://www.cined.com/lab-tests/
 
That would mean that several of the other tested cameras have only a stop or so less than the ARRI. (And some even closer.)

I know one stop is a lot, but that doesn't seem accurate, at least visually. IDK though.
 
Looking through their most recent tests, unless I missed something, the Panasonic SH1 has the 2nd best dynamic range score at 12.7 stops.

With a quick glance, the overexposure latitude and recovery test is where the ALEXA's really leave all the cameras behind. It is doing 5 stops overexposure and recovery pretty easily while the best from other camera's are barely making it to 4 stops.
 
I have always suspected there wasn’t that much actual difference in DR from the legendary Arri icon. In publishing, as the quote from the news reporter in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance said upon learning the fact of it not being Jimmy Stewart’s character who shot Liberty (Lee Marvin), unceremoniously tears up his notes. Stewart asks of him, “You mean you’re not gonna print that?” “Nope. When legend meets fact print the legend.”
 
Yeah, there are a few others within the 1 stop or close to it, especially if looking at the Mini LF's 13.4 number.

The part I never been able to grasp is how you can accurately account for noise-reduction when comparing results.

Like the G2 scored a 12.6 in PR but then scored a 12.1 in BRAW, followed by this:

"Now, using ISO800 yielded 12.1 stops at a signal to noise ratio of 2 (13.2 stops for SNR = 1). Quite interestingly, this is about half a stop lower than the result we got on the UMP 4.6K tests in December last year.

It seems that BLACKMAGIC decided for BRAW on the G2 to leave the image relatively untouched (whereas in ProRes a slight internal noise reduction seems to be present in the files – this is also the case for the BRAW UMP 4.6K files from last year)."

https://www.cined.com/ursa-mini-pro-4-6-g2-vs-g1-dynamic-range-and-latitude-test/
 
NorBro said:
The part I never been able to grasp is how you can accurately account for noise-reduction when comparing results.
Click to expand...

You can't accurately account for noise reduction when comparing results, but you can infer some things about it from the graph. In other words, NR inflates the DR number. If DR is higher because noise has been filtered, you can't measure by how much when there is no noise to make a meaningful S/N measurement with. A clue that NR has inflated DR is when the measured DR is close to the same at SNR=1 and SNR=2. But the easier way to infer how much NR has improved the measured DR comes in the explanations given by Gunther at various times. At the left side, when the curve slopes vertical, there are no more stops available to recover from NR. But if the curve slopes more horizontally than vertical, it's an indicator there are additional stops potentially recoverable in the noise.
 
Some may disagree with this theory, but I personally think it's more simple than we are making it out to be. Just take a look at this comparison of pixel pitch (surface area of pixel) and sensor size. Notice any correlations between the cameras with the best dynamic range, light sensitivity, and the size of their photo sites???

Sony A7siii - 4k FF
Sensor Size: 35.60mm x 23.80mm
Photosite Pitch: 8.40 μm

ALEXA Mini LF - 4.5k FF
Sensor Size: 36.70 x 25.54 mm
Photosite Pitch: 8.25 μm

ALEXA Mini - 3.5k S35
Sensor Size: 23.8 x 17.8 mm
Photosite Pitch: 8.1 μm

Canon C300iii - 5.9k S35
Sensor Size: 26.2 x 13.8 mm
Photosite Pitch: 6.40 μm

Red Gemini - 5k S35
Sensor Size: 30.72 x 18mm
Photosite Pitch: 6.0 μm

Sony Venice - 6k FF
Sensor Size: 36.2 x 24.1 mm
Photosite Pitch: 6.0 μm

Red Monstro - 8k FF
Sensor Size: 40.96 x 21.60 mm
Photosite Pitch: 5.0 μm

RED Komodo - 6k S35
Sensor Size: 27.03 mm x 14.26 mm
Photosite Pitch: 4.40 μm

Canon R5 - 8k FF
Sensor Size: 36 x 24 mm
Photosite Pitch: 4.38 μm

BMP6K - 6k S35
Sensor Size: 23.1 x 12.99 mm
Photosite Pitch: 3.76 μm

RED Helium - 8k S35
Sensor Size: 29.90 mm × 15.77mm
Photosite Pitch: 3.65 μm

BMUMP12K - 12K S35
Sensor Size: 27.03mm x 14.25mm
Photosite Pitch: 2.20 μm

It is not the number of pixels or physical size of a sensor that equates to a higher quality image but rather the size (absorption area) and quality/sensitivity of each of the individual pixels that really matters....

My guess is the reason Arri is still not producing greater than 4k resolution is because they are not willing to sacrifice the quality and size of their pixels in order to just increase resolution. Arri most likely wants to maintain a greater than 8.00 μm photo site pitch (similar to that of their current cameras) which is not easily achievable when inducing more pixels in order to capture higher resolution.

For example, look at the pixel pitch of the Red Helium a camera that can shoot 8K but has to have small pixels in order to do so at S35 sensor size. Same goes for the Black Magic Ursa Mini Pro 12k which has extremely small pixels in order to offer such high resolution at S35 size. Simply put, more resolution typically demands smaller pixels in order to have more of them, which ultimately equates to less sensitivity.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top