GEAR URSAMINI PROG2
BLACKMAGIC URSA MINI PRO 4.6K G2 EF
The new Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro G2 will put a spell on you with its fast frame rates, Raw shooting and affordable price WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH SUPERNATURALSTUNNER!
T ake a great-value camera capable of shooting Raw, speed it up so it has frame rates to embarrass just about anything else on the market, add some of the very latest spec and colour science but keep the list price the same. That’s the formula that means the new Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K G2 is one of the best- performing, most affordable cinema cameras you can buy. It shares the same user-friendly controls as the older-model Ursa Mini Pro, but this next-generation model benefits from fast new electronics and a new Super 35 4.6K HDR image sensor that gives up to 15 stops of dynamic range. The old data-hungry and largely unpopular CinemaDNG Raw has gone, to be replaced by the faster Blackmagic Raw. And best of all, this allows the camera to shoot in up to 300fps – faster than anything else on the
can’t do it in ProRes422 HQ, only in its weaker internal codec. It’s while using Blackmagic Raw that the camera really comes alive, unlocking the highest frame rates and also the highest-quality images, extensive metadata support and highly optimised GPU and CPU accelerated processing. You can edit it on a MacBook Pro laptop, especially if you plug in one of Blackmagic’s eGPU accelerators which start at £599/$699. Other manufacturers make similar products. Blackmagic Raw allows you to retain the advantages of working in Raw, such as the flexibility to adjust white-balance and rescue highlight and shadow detail as well as controlling sharpening precisely. But while many Raw formats choke up workflow as they are very large, the Blackmagic solution is to make the formats very easy to ingest and edit in the free full version of
market apart from super-exotic cameras that just do fast frames and very little else. It probably comes as no surprise that 300fps isn’t available in the full 4.6K resolution, even though there is now a new USB-C expansion port for direct recording to external SSD drives as well as the internal dual CFast 2.0 cards. For full sensor 4.6K images you can go as high as 120fps, while windowed 4K DCI and 4K maxes out at 150fps but windowed 2K DCI and 1080 HD gives the headline 300fps, all while shooting in Blackmagic Raw. When recording in ProRes 422HQ, this drops to 4.6K 80fps, windowed 4K at 120fps and HD windowed 240fps. That HD speed of 240fps is as fast as cameras like the Sony FS5 which is universally praised for its high-speed work and is a favourite of sports and wildlife shooters everywhere. But the Sony
ABOVE The new Ursa Mini Pro G2 is fully implemented with BRaw and offers some useable high-speed options
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PRO MOVIEMAKER AUTUMN 2019
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