ARRI has released SUP 4.0 — a suite of helpful new updates for ALEXA LF cameras.
Download the Release Notes here ( 310 KB PDF)
Download the ALEXA LF SUP4.0 User Manual here (8.17 MB PDF)
Our favorites:
New Anamorphic Desqueeze ratios: 1.8x for Cooke Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lenses
and 1.65x for Panavision Ultra Vista Full Frame Anamorphic lenses.
Also: support for the new ARRI Operator Control Unit OCU-1, Master Grips, cforce mini motors, etc
One of the interesting updates is LBUS Support, and I honestly didn’t think the ARRI engineers were going to pull these rabbits out of their hats so quickly or elegantly. It opens the world of lots of accessories for the ALEXA LF. LBUS is the high-speed data protocol used in cameras and accessories. It’s a similar system to the electronics used in many automobiles.
– When you connect a Lens Control System LCS-LBUS cable (Cable K2.0007318) to one of the two LCS connectors on the ALEXA LF, most of ARRI LBUS accessories will now work on the ALEXA LF.
– LBUS devices can daisy chain together.
– LBUS accessories are compatible with ALEXA LF:
- cforce mini lens motors
- cforce plus lens motors
- cforce mini RF lens motors
(Required: cforce mini RF SUP 1.1, planned for Q4 2018. The cforce mini RF motor must be set to “client mode”. Then it works like a cforce mini motor without the RF, which is already built into the ALEXA LF.)
- Master Grips
(Requires Master Grip/OCU-1 SUP 1.1.2 or later. For override function, requires Master Grip/OCU-1 SUP 2.0, planned for Q4 2018.)
- Operator Control Unit OCU-1
(Requires Master Grip/OCU-1 SUP 2.0. The first OCU-1 units will be shipping with this anyway, planned for Q4 2018.)
- LCUBE CUB-1
(With the CUB-1, you can connect an ARRI Ultrasonic Distance Measure (UDM) to the LBUS connector. While a different cable can also connect the UDM directly to the ALEXA LF EXT connector, the CUB-1 option might come in handy if the EXT connector is in use otherwise (e.g. for sensor sync).
- LCUBE CUB-2
(The CUB-2 allows an ARRI LBUS device, for example Master Grips or Operator Control Unit OCU-1, to control the internal motors in ENG lenses, as well as a cmotion pan-bar zoom, cmotion steady zoom, or cmotion cfinder III.
Note: for OCU-1 override function, the Wireless Control Unit WCU-4 needs WCU-4 SUP 3.2 (planned for Q4 2018). When using cforce motors with ALEXA LF, separate power must be provided to the cforce lens motors from the other side of the daisy chain, for instance from an LBUS to D-tap cable (LBUS – D-Tap – K2.0006758) connected to an on-board battery. This is because the power output from the ALEXA LF LCS connectors do not provide sufficient power to the cforce motors.
Additional SUP 4.0 updates
- EXT Sync: sensor sync – for example to sync 2 ALEXA LF cameras for 3D work.
- Magnify: Each of the three sensor modes now has separate magnify values for EVF and MON OUT 1, 2 and 3. For example, this lets the operator zoom in on the image to check focus, without chanigng the director’s monitor.
- Project Frame Rate: changing the menu item “Project frame rate” will set the project frame rate, the sensor frame rate, and the frame rates of the three MON OUT SDI outputs to the same value.
- Improved dynamic defect pixel correction
