GEAR OF THE YEAR AWARDS CAMERAS
For full-sensor 4.6K images you can go as high as 120fps, while windowed 4K DCI and 4Kmaxes out at 150fps, and windowed 2K DCI and 1080 HD gives the headline 300fps, all in Blackmagic Raw. When recording in ProRes 422 HQ, this drops to 4.6K 80fps, windowed 4K at 120fps and HD at 240fps. When Blackmagic launched the Ursa Mini Pro a couple of years ago, we said that, for the money, there’s nothing on the market to come close to it in terms of spec, usability and quality of the footage. The new G2 improves on the quality, adds insane frame rates and costs the same as the oldmodel when it was launched. In the mirrorless category, Sony’s A7 III took the honours, despite it not being specifically aimed at filmmakers. It makes a great camera for video use, with fantastic quality, resolution, tonal range, sharpness and colours that you’d expect from the latest high- tech sensors made by Sony. It evenmakes the videocentric Sony A7S II look underwhelming. As a pure video camera, the A7 III largely outperforms the 12.4-megapixel A7S II just about everywhere, apart from at the very highest ISO where the S model has a slight edge. And for shooting slowmotion at 120fps, the Smodel uses a 2.2x crop, so the A7 III is significantly better and even cheaper. As purely a video tool,
The digital camera is the beating heart of every filmmaker’s kit, and choosing the right one is something that canmake a real difference to not only the quality of your films, but how easy they are tomake. The past year has not only seen some amazing newmodels hit the market in the cinema camera, mirrorless and camcorder categories – DSLRs continue to be a popular choice for the working pro. Pro Moviemaker readers have voted for their clear favourites. For cinema cameras, one emerged as the winner by a big margin thanks to its amazing spec and price, and proof you don’t need to have a full-frame sensor to pack in the latest tech. The Super 35 Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro G2 builds on the older Ursa Mini Pro by speeding it up, so it has frame rates to embarrass just about anything else on the market, adds some of the very latest spec and colour science – but keeps the list price the same. The Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K G2 is one of the best-performing, most affordable cinema cameras you can buy. It has 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, replaced by the faster Blackmagic Raw. This allows the camera to shoot in up to 300fps in some codecs – faster than anything else on the market apart from super-exotic cameras that just do fast frames and very little else.
RIGHT The G2 version of the Ursa Mini Pro sets new standards for Super35 cameras in terms of frame rates
Cinema camera • Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro G2 Editor’s Choice: Canon EOS C200 Mirrorless • Sony A7 III Editor’s Choice: Fujifilm X-T3 DSLR • Canon EOS 5DMark IV Camcorder • JVC GY-HC500
then, the A7 III is a winner, as it borrows heavily from the
Canon’s EOS C200 is the Editor’s Choice in the Cinema Camera class, as it packs the sensor of the far pricier Canon C700 and C300 Mark II into a much smaller and lighter body. This makes for a similarly huge ISO and dynamic range, plus all the regular pro features like dual XLR inputs, built-in ND filters and the tall body style Canon users have become accustomed to. And it can be stripped down for use on gimbals and big drones. But the ace up the C200’s sleeve is that it shoots Raw and records it internally. No need for a paid firmware upgrade or external recorder as it writes to a CFast card. The C200’s Raw gives better results than far more expensive cameras, with its gorgeous 12-bit Raw Light format. Shoot Raw and you are rewarded with the ultimate in quality that you can grade as you please. It’s more work, but you can definitely tell the difference. EDITOR’S CHOICE: CANON EOS C200
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PRO MOVIEMAKER SPRING 2020
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