I have a wonderful electronic invention I want you to see it looks something
like you
so last year in April I saw the Blackmagic URS mini 4.6k for the first
time and I was surprised by what Blackmagic was attempting to achieve in
a lowbudget production camera so can the UR mini live up to all the hype
surrounding it since release or is it another Blackmagic release late and
buggy it's definitely one of those things let's find out if it's both
cooler Masters Master Cas maker 5 features their free form modular system
allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link below
to start things off black magic has essentially taken their original Ursa
form factor and shrunk it down to in my opinion something that is much more
sensible for the Target and user at the back the Ursa has a lanc connection an
STI out an STI in time code in a 4 pin
XLR port for power and a headphone jack moving to the right of the camera we
have a second sdio and four pin XLR Port made specifically for use with black
Magic's electronic viewfinder an optional accessory then on the top of
the camera we have two 3 pin XLR ports for audio along with 4420 mounting
points for accessories such as black Magic's top handle at the very front we
have a much appreciated Blackmagic staple a built-in mic for Scratch audio
on the left of the camera we meet the 5-in 1080p capacitive touchscreen which
opens up away from the the camera camcorder style directly to the right of
the monitor we have the audio dials and other controls as well as two dual cast
2.0 slots a tough decision that Blackmagic made with a lot of pros and
cons let's start with the cons seast 2.0
cards which may be the wave of the future you can learn more about them here are not cheap right now a 64 gig
card one card runs north of $200 making
matters worse that 64 gig card gets you about 6 minutes of record time at 24 FPS
in the ARs Minis highest prores recording setting and even less in
uncompressed raw before you even need to offload my solution has been to use the
atos c2s a cfast SSD adapter that allows
you to seamlessly use ssds in place of cfast cards without getting into too
much detail my experience was usable at
best you you can't close the LCD many ssds even ones that should probably work
are detected inconsistently and The Upfront cost of the box is frankly
ludicrous but I would still recommend it or something similar over loading up on
cast cards at this time because ultimately I didn't lose any footage and
I did find some drives that worked well and thanks to the much higher available
capacities of ssds Samsung's 3.84 TB
pm863 worked really well for me I didn't have to constantly be concerned with the
dreaded countdown timer with that out of the way let's get into what makes this
camera really special that wonderful super 35 4.6k sensor so let's shoot some
resolution charts right no black magic
also boasts that the Ursa mini delivers a whopping 15 stops of dynamic range and
if you're not sure why that's important you can learn more about that here so
instead I took the Ursa out on a date in the real world covering lighting
situations from harsh Noonday sun to Sunset along the water and look at this
from the darkest Shadow to the brightest highlight nothing in this image is
clipped I love our daily driver the a7s2 but compared to its roughly 12 stops of
dynamic range the Ursa Mini's capabilities are noticeable as much more
than a spec sheet on paper and when reviewing the footage after each day I
was truly astonished by some of the results black Magic's color science this
time around has taken a huge leap forward compared to their previous
cameras which always had strong green casts in their film setting making it
much more difficult to grade them and this is not the case with the Ursa mini
viewing the footage in re 709 while shooting in the camera's film setting
was a pleasure skin tones for me in particular really came to life and gave
the footage a really natural feel something that has been much more
difficult with our current staple of Sony cameras usability is a solid point
for this camera you'll need to find your own battery plate and batteries either
vlock or gold Mount and like a lens but
it's basically grab and go from there when recording you can choose between a
wide range of options with every flavor of prores from their 444 xq down to
prores proxy as well as compressed 3:1
and 4:1 raw recording though looking over the footage I could not tell the
difference visually between raw and prores 4444 so you can't really do wrong
either way it is a shame that in order to access the camera's full 4.6k
resolution you are required to shoot in one of the raw recording options but
this is a minor complaint in my eyes considering how good the UHD image
already is even the built-in 5-in monitor is pretty darn good the touch
interface is both responsive and simple to use almost to a fault as it hides
fairly basic camera controls Beyond aperture behind two button presses and
takes over the entire screen making previewing your adjustments a bit of a
pain the two mapable buttons on the side of the camera will hopefully help with
this but in the current frameware that I'm using they don't do anything so I'll
just keep waiting black magic but for the best results I'd still recommend
something a bit better to make judging exposure easier black Magic's evf while
pricey at $1,500 was an absolute treat to use if you shoot Outdoors a lot but
the built-in monitor really is very good and i' considered an upgrade to be a
nice to have not an absolute need to have but that's all fine and good
tooling around downtown Vancouver by myself how does it hold up in more
realistic Cinema style applications where I have a decent sized crew I
wasn't sure so I gathered a few friends and we shot a short on Saturday to my
surprise the camera held up very well once I found the right combination of
rigging Parts I was able to keep focused on the content of the short instead of
thinking about any technical issues of the camera High Praise indeed and the
monitor showed us its strength when we put it up on the jib in the middle of
the day without a second monitor use allowing us to get this shot and the
praise keeps coming initially when I heard the URS mini would include up to
120 FPS slow motion I didn't give the feature much thought but after trying it
out damn in the past we've always had to use external devices and media to record
slow motion continuously rather than only in short bursts the Ursa handles a
60 FPS recording at 3:1 compressed raw and up to 120 FPS at 2K with a windowed
sensor to internal media what is even better is the fine control that you have
over frame rate we use 35 fr per second on a recent Channel Super Fun Shoot to
get the desired effect and the fact that it records audio why doesn't every
camera do this however it's not perfect at 1080p with a Windows sensor exposing
at 800 ISO the image gets a bit too noisy and soft to be usable but if you
can avoid shooting at higher isos in this mode specifically there is a lot to
love here and on the subject of high isos Blackmagic designed the URS need to
be used with lighting or ample natural light this is not I repeat not intended
to be a low light camera which is how I plan to convince lonus to get me to keep
the a7s2 fs5 and this new toy different
jobs need different tools Linus wouldn't use an iFixit kit to repair his car
would
he maybe he would which brings me nicely into my conclusion Blackmagic has been
changing the camera industry since 2012 their style of delivering unheard of
features and performance at unbelievable price points have made their customers
Linus Media Group included forgive some of their fault and none of that changes
today the URS mini 4.6k is a camera that to me unlocks creative Avenues I never
would have dreamed of possible at a price point under $10,000 from the
improved color to the reasonable size to the excellent codec support I think QC
issues aside and I've got a little post under the video with my experiences with
that Blackmagic has a true winner of a camera on its hands and going forward
once we get our own unit to keep the LTT Studio has its new a camera it's just
such an astonishing image to work with
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