ALEXA MINI LF OUT :)

[luigivaltulini]

Well sold alexa mini and bought the mini Lf.
I wanted to buy a Ranger but unfortunately it's not for sale.
However, having a large format today allows you to have 2 cameras in the same body s35 and Full frame, much more profitable than using only one s35.
Mini LF is practical and will be as practical as the normal Mini, surely it will be used more than the normal LF, lighter and easier to handle, and above all with integrated NDs, which gives a huge advantage at this time, otherwise it would not be explained that its sisters are still on shelves and for sale at 1/5 of their price.
Many are waiting for Netflix and have been satisfied.
Regarding color and DR the only competitor is Monstro at this time.
But many people do not approach RED is always seen, even after many years, as a camera difficult to manage, even if it is not true and this is still the thought of many ignorant people or who do not want to change their horse for fear or other.
In many of these years the people next to me have begun to appreciate RED because I spent time teaching them about the many possibilities that this eco-system allows you.
Maybe RED will go out with a new camera at Cinegear at 12k in a new dmsc3 body, this train is running and will happen soon. Well come, but ....
I don't know if it's good, of course once again the cameras you have will devaluate and maybe some of us won't be very happy, even if there will be an upgrade option.
If you think that a mini Alexa is 3-4 years old and its value of used has dropped slightly and brought you much more money in the rental part it is difficult for you not to buy it another time even if it has specifications lower than RED .
I'd like to see RED with Monstro improved a bigger hair with internal ND, record a prores 4444xq even at 4k, a tools zoom that doesn't take 4 seconds to enter and exit, the same to view the clips, a remote type wcu-4 made from RED .... I know I'm boring but customers would like this I'm sure, otherwise the modularity is unbeatable.

For all the rest they are tools to be known.

 

[Phil Holland]

I am sure it will be great but i don't understand the comments about it being cheaper than Monstro.


Alexa Mini LF body only is $58,760 (per newsshooter)
Monstro Brain is $54,500


1TB Codex Drive: $2200
960 GB Redmag: $2950

Codex Card reader: $650 lol

DSMC2 EVF: $4150
MVF-2: $6500


Either way a shootable package is $70-80. Pretty much a wash.

Yep, basic shooting packages are in the $80K realm for the Mini LF, giver a take a few squeezes depending on direction of the kit.

The crazier thing on the media side is the larger SXR Capture Drive Dock for the LF, which is $5K. Arri doesn't make their media which is part of that. Even crazier a lot of houses have the TB2 readers and erm.... well.

UHD 4K (3840x2160) on the LF Mini nets you about 53 minutes per 1TB Codex Drive. REDCODE RAW 8K 5:1 (highest quality you can get currently) gets you about 1 hour per 1TB Mini-Mag. That's an interesting one. 5K HD 3:1 is shy of 2 hours per 1TB Mini Mag, about 3 hours at 5:1. Wild when you think of that.

Mini-Mag is indeed slightly more per mag, but who knows, maybe RED will adapt their pricing.

The EVF/MV-2 price difference I don't think is insane as they are fairly different devices.

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

Arri dominated market heavily with only SINGLE sensor since last 10 years.And they are still making new models with 10 years old sensor.

 

[Björn Benckert]

People will bitch about framerate, media storage needed to shoot raw, difficulty rigging, the lack of battery mount, the problem with lens coverage, difficult to get it shoulder balanced. Still I think it will be the standard for a few years forward.

The LPL will also become a standard, makes it shit more easy to remount / house still glass and also jump between PL none PL lenses on set. Red should adapt it.

Funny to see that it kind of looks like a half way morph between the old mini and a dsmc2. The media slot on the side, the big logo on there and the little recorder button etc. It's just the skull engravings that are missing.lol.

I really find it odd that they did not make the heat blow out on the blind side so they could get a flat surface for a battery plate or such on the back. But then again it's actually quite convinient to have all that gak on rails.

It's going to be fun seeing all the arri users getting into the the stops lost when trying to get enough dof. Having problems with zooms that does not cover. Trying to match s35 with LF to realize that even in HD the difference in quality will stand out.etc, etc. After a while I think they might come to the conclusion that possibly it was not red that was problematic. But simply having options does not always make things easier.

Arri dominated market heavily with only SINGLE sensor since last 10 years.And they are still making new models with 10 years old sensor.

True it's nuts to think of how many camera models has been made around it during those 10 years. Classic, studio, M, XT, Amira, Mini, Mini LF, LF, XL. I probably forgot a few, and then all the upgrades and licenses and things like external codex recorders that was quickly followed by internal recorders etc.

 

[Marc Wielage]

For better or worse, the Mini LF is going to be everywhere. As will the Venice. Especially on larger productions.

We always say: it doesn't matter. Giving DPs more choices is a good thing. You can make absolutely stunning pictures on Alexa or Sony Venice or Red, even film... not being lofty about it, it's all about the artists. The choice of camera is just one of many creative decisions. That's just one line item on a budget (and it's usually a rental for most network TV shows and studio features).

And to poke a hopefully dead bear, all this crap about resolution not mattering over and over again from the Arri purest (a group who honestly has attacked me too hard over the last few years) has little to no value and I'm still coming across people who occasionally bring that up. Remember Arri makes a 4K laser recorder, scanner, and even have written white papers on resolution before any Alexa existed. It's part of their DNA, but more importantly it was also part of film's DNA. Companies like RED picked up on that and more or less tuned into that concept a bit sooner to the tune of a decade ago.

Comment from me: I've talked to the people at Arri/Burbank several times, and not once have they ever bad-mouthed Red (and if they ever did, it was in private). If anything, they've acknowledged the need for 4K and said that the competition keeps them on their toes, and that they have great respect for Canon and Red and Sony and their other competitors (even Blackmagic at the low end).

I think Arri stopped making the 4K film laser recorders some years ago, though they still support them and have all the parts. That's pretty much a dead business at this point, ancient history. Same with the scanners. The prices on all that stuff just fell through the floor. (Note the scanners are still used and are important in preserving film libraries -- it just that the hardware is not a growing market anymore.)

Kodak told us back in 2002 that 2K was the "effective resolution" of what a theatrical print could reproduce in theaters, but that was through several optical stages. But they confided to me that they felt in a best-case scenario, 35mm negative could capture 6K (in terms of line pairs/mm). Actually reproducing that was another matter. Note that Glenn Kennel was responsible for a lot of that research at Kodak... and of course, he's the guy running Arri Inc. now, and he's been with the Alexa project for over a decade.

 

[Phil Holland]

People will bitch about framerate, media storage needed to shoot raw, difficulty rigging, the lack of battery mount, the problem with lens coverage, difficult to get it shoulder balanced. Still I think it will be the standard for a few years forward.

The LPL will also become a standard, makes it shit more easy to remount / house still glass and also jump between PL none PL lenses on set. Red should adapt it.

It is fascinating watching the reaction to this announcement online from every corner of the ring. People are thrilled, people are angry, people are disappointed, people are confused with this Mini LF announcement. It's a roller coaster. Saw a whole bunch of people pull the pre-order trigger today. Also so a whole lot of "no more of this". Some interesting chatter on Facebook from every perspective and that's been interesting to observe.

As for the LPL, to quote Yoda, there is another. While it's a good effort, down the line something around 26mm mark is actually where the optical goldilocks zone will be, both from a design perspective as well as an adaptability one. That said, there's stuff shallower already and there's never going to be a perfect answer.

Comment from me: I've talked to the people at Arri/Burbank several times, and not once have they ever bad-mouthed Red (and if they ever did, it was in private). If anything, they've acknowledged the need for 4K and said that the competition keeps them on their toes, and that they have great respect for Canon and Red and Sony and their other competitors (even Blackmagic at the low end).

Kodak told us back in 2002 that 2K was the "effective resolution" of what a theatrical print could reproduce in theaters, but that was through several optical stages. But they confided to me that they felt in a best-case scenario, 35mm negative could capture 6K (in terms of line pairs/mm). Actually reproducing that was another matter. Note that Glenn Kennel was responsible for a lot of that research at Kodak... and of course, he's the guy running Arri Inc. now, and he's been with the Alexa project for over a decade.

Me and Arri are cool and have been since the 2000s, that's not where the friction has come from. It comes from a very specific audience and it's shocking occasionally.

Not to go too off track of the Mini LF thread, but some fun.

Super 35mm doesn't quite get 6K if shot perfectly at slower speeds, though there is an intermediate stock that does rather well in the laser recorder. When we replaced Will's 4K scanner with the Northlight 6K and chose it over the 8K S35 Imagica scanner a great deal of testing and study was done in relationship to this. That was the mid-2000s though. The general story that spawned out of all of that was scan S35 4-perf at 6K and downsample to 4K and Kodak themselves were pretty solid with that. Which is why my data on my formatCompare tool reflects that.

As a filmmaker with that film background, that's my general good place to start in terms of resolving potential per format. 2K for Super 16, 4K for Super 35mm, 6.2K for VistaVision, 8.6K for 65mm 5-perf, 11.5K for 70mm 15-perf. However, the caveat here is 70mm 15-perf in particular as generally those cameras have a decent amount of vibration while running and though the potential is there for a 11.5K of resolving power, you often end up in the 6.5K realm of resolution typically.

8K as a medium has been a real treat for me on a personal and professional level. It's not even about having a lens that resolves that, but rather a medium that captures all the good funk a lens has to offer. For the RED ecosystem and pretty much how I've worked from Dragon on, I like to capture at 5K or above for a 4K finish, at the moment 8K for 8K. Though I've gone rogue a few times stitching to hit 12K and 16K mainly for an 8K finish, but that's also about tapping into the larger virtual format size a bit too, around 60x40mm or 80x40mm.

Anywho, back to LFing around

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Arri dominated market heavily with only SINGLE sensor since last 10 years.And they are still making new models with 10 years old sensor.

But don't forget RED. RED is known for pushing the envelope, but the EPIC, even today, is a potent camera. That's from 2009, which is ten years ago. Those old sensors still work! Not as much DR as the Alexa, obviously. But, depending on how you cut it, twice the resolution. The Alexa Mini was barely conceived back then.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

But don't forget RED. RED is known for pushing the envelope, but the EPIC, even today, is a potent camera. That's from 2009, which is ten years ago. Those old sensors still work! Not as much DR as the Alexa, obviously. But, depending on how you cut it, twice the resolution. The Alexa Mini was barely conceived back then.

Epic came out a little later than that didn't it? I thought the MX sensor was what came in around 2009 and that was using the Red One body at the time before they put that sensor in the Epic. My memory is a little hazy but I do remember that they used this camera (The Red One MX) for the Social Network and that movie came out in 2010.

 

[Misha Engel]

Codex High Density Encoding (HDE) uses sophisticated, loss-less encoding to reduce ARRIRAW file sizes by around 40% during downloading or later in the workflow. This lowers storage costs, shortens transfer times, and speeds up workflows, which translates to a direct 40% saving in time and money.

Is there a new patent case in the making?

 

[M Most]

Is there a new patent case in the making?

No, because it isn't being done in camera.

 

[Andy Jarosz]

As for the LPL, to quote Yoda, there is another. While it's a good effort, down the line something around 26mm mark is actually where the optical goldilocks zone will be, both from a design perspective as well as an adaptability one. That said, there's stuff shallower already and there's never going to be a perfect answer.

Do you really think the industry will tolerate that? I was excited for the LPL announcement, but there are a LOT of people that are very upset by all of their lenses potentially not being usable anymore.

I fear that if in 5 years another, shallower mount is introduced, that nobody will adopt it as they "wait for the next one."

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Why are they not useable?

 

[Remington Chase]

Wish it would have had ProRes Raw on it.

 

[M Most]

Wish it would have had ProRes Raw on it.

This is an Arri product, not an Apple one. The Prores files are even being recorded in MXF wrappers, not MOV. Arri has Arriraw, a hugely successful and almost universally supported format, and unlike the base Mini, it's included in every Mini LF. I think they have their bases well covered.

 

[Misha Engel]

No, because it isn't being done in camera.

It looks pretty much in camera to me

 

[Rodrigo Violante]

This is pretty interesting, it has almost as twice of MB/s vs the RED Monstro, 260 vs 500, not sure how is that on image quality at the end, but I'm sure that has to be an advantage vs the RED Monstro.

https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/29/dig...arLJm917uCeVlQiyIMMkYs24RUXONMCWMyO8i7cFi1Tww

 

[Adrian Jebef]

All Arri Alexa variants record uncompressed arriraw internally. The new Codex HDE implementation allows for lossless compression of the .ari files into .arx during the downloading stage. So record time to codex media in camera is based on uncompressed data rates but storage/archive via HDE is 40% smaller.

 

[Mike P.]

Personally, I think there is huge value in 8k VV with 6k S35+ on Monstro, but try convincing the pundits of that.

Conversely, I also believe Arri handily have the best DR/Colour/ease of use/bulletproofness, which is clearly (given the success of ALEVIII) more important than any other specs/functionality (and totally understandable/reasonable). Which is kinda my point with the Mini LF; it's the LF... just 6lbs. There is no questions of gamma spaces and IPPs and OLPFs and IR or mixed lighting handling or green/magenta tint or ideal compression ratios or best colour temp or black shading or ISO recalibration or DEB etc. etc. to maximize the image. Just "expose/meter for ISO800 like always" and you're set.

Put another way, like Phil alluded to, Arri have no reason to release new sensor tech when they're 2010 sensor is still as good as (arguably better) than everyone else's 2018 sensors (Venice, Monstro, et al.)

Wish it would have had ProRes Raw on it.

True. That would've been a great addition! (maybe it'll be in the "Amira LF")

This is an Arri product, not an Apple one. The Prores files are even being recorded in MXF wrappers, not MOV. Arri has Arriraw, a hugely successful and almost universally supported format, and unlike the base Mini, it's included in every Mini LF. I think they have their bases well covered.

I think he means a way of keeping files sizes manageable and playback easy, while still maintaining raw functionality. Sure, it's not an Apple product, but they gained a lot of their early success merely by having prores in there initially (actually it was all that was available for a while).

 

[Phil Holland]

Do you really think the industry will tolerate that? I was excited for the LPL announcement, but there are a LOT of people that are very upset by all of their lenses potentially not being usable anymore.

I fear that if in 5 years another, shallower mount is introduced, that nobody will adopt it as they "wait for the next one."

Why are they not useable?

What Jake said, shorter you can adapt to, hence the reason LPL goes to PL easily. At the moment the only lenses on the market at all that more or less require the LPL Mount are the Signature Primes, which are fine lenses. However, even they don't "need" the mount. Arri has the right intentions, but it's the today effort and not the all the way effort that worries me. The Flange Focal Distance is 44mm for LPL, identical to Canon's EF standard. We've already "been there" as an industry.

I think it was 2012-ish where the chatter among camera manufacturers and lens manufacturers starting happening about a new PL standard, PL has a 52mm FFD and mostly that was inspired by film gates. I've been part of those conversations early on as has literally everybody who's been around. I think around 26mm is where the sweet spot is, but at the moment camera design variation and intentions are a bit broad. A standard in that realm provides freedom to not step on the modern mirrorless stuff, most of which lands in the 18-20mm FFD range and is still adaptable to a wide range of glass. But camera design the sticky widget here. 30-something mm has been tossed around as well.

Personally I wouldn't worry about any of this just yet. PL is PL, EF is EF, F is F, M is M. Right now mirrorless lenses are pretty much impossible to use on anything other than the Venice. But everybody has their own goals and intentions here.

Wish it would have had ProRes Raw on it.

This is an Arri product, not an Apple one. The Prores files are even being recorded in MXF wrappers, not MOV. Arri has Arriraw, a hugely successful and almost universally supported format, and unlike the base Mini, it's included in every Mini LF. I think they have their bases well covered.

What Mike said. It would also be a shocking move to compression as that's been a hardcore variance between ecosystems. I think there's more codec stuff happening however.

Epic came out a little later than that didn't it? I thought the MX sensor was what came in around 2009 and that was using the Red One body at the time before they put that sensor in the Epic. My memory is a little hazy but I do remember that they used this camera (The Red One MX) for the Social Network and that movie came out in 2010.

Correct, Mysterium-X came to RED One first, then Epic followed rather rapidly as a body-type opening up the DSMC concept. Dragon was also in DSMC, then was also part of obviously DSMC2 when that time and technology evolution occurred. Subtle improvements to image quality due to the optical path and better hardware in the newest body-types.

 

[Nick Morrison]

So the Mini LF ONLY shoots uncompressed Arriraw?

And doesn't shoot Prores?