The expected is confirmed: Arri introduces the ALEXA Mini LF

ARRI has confirmed all the recent rumors about a Mini version of the ALEXA LF, which it introduced last year, by officially announcing the new ALEXA Mini LF, which will go on sale this summer.

It’s basically what the name itself says about it: a camera with the large-format ALEXA LF sensor inside an ALEXA Mini body.

It comes in a bit heavier, as the company has made some changes to the original shape of the ALEXA Mini, mainly related to temperature management. This has been ARRI’s headache, finding the formula to achieve the best heat dissipation for a body as small as that of the ALEXA Mini.

So, apart from being a camera with an LF sensor in the body of a MINI, what else is new?

For starters, it is the first camera to feature the new Compact Drive codex recording support, which records MXF/ARRIRAW or MXF/Apple ProRes in a variety of formats and aspect ratios on 1TB drives. It comes with a USB-C compact drive reader and a compact drive adapter can be used in any dock that accepts SXR capture drives.

It also introduces Codex High Density Encode (HDE), which uses lossless encoding to reduce ARRIRAW file size by approximately 40% during download or later in the workflow. HDE is free for use with Codex Capture or Compact Drives, which is openly shared and apparently quite fast. The company says ARRIRAW Open Gate 4.5K can be encoded at 24 fps on a modern MacBook Pro.

A new and improved MVF-2 viewfinder, featuring the same high-definition HD OLED screen, identical color reproduction and ARRICAM eyepiece as in the ALEXA LF EVF-2 viewfinder. It also features a large 4″ flip-down monitor that can display the image or the camera control menu. It can be used on either side of the camera and connects via a new CoaXPress VF cable that has a range of up to 10 meters for those remote camera operations. It includes an eye heating system, which prevents fogging, as well as headphone connection.

As with previous ALEXA models, it will continue to work remotely with the StarliteHD-m Transvideo monitor, the only device on the market that allows access to exact vignetting data, geometric distortion maps, inertial data or tables with the exact illumination circles for each focal length of the compatible lenses.

In addition to the major improvements mentioned above, other enhancements to the body of the original Mini include some additional connectors, including regulated 12V and 24V accessory power; a new 6-pin audio connector; built-in microphones; and improved wifi. In addition, there are now six user buttons on the left side of the camera, and the camera and viewfinder each have their own lock button.

In short, the new ARRI ALEXA MINI LF comes to become a model between the ALEXAS MINI and LF, trying to combine the best features of both, but the question is… will it manage to unseat the omnipresence of the ALEXA MINI in the market?