Atomos Ninja 2: UPDATE (from Atomos with corrections on new pricing)

ntouched

Well-known member
Received this update today from the Atomos sales team!

Hello Troy,

The current cost of the Ninja 2 is $795. This Ninja 2 includes the following:
Ninja 2 $795
- Ninja 2 Hard Carrying Case
- Ninja 2 Unit
- Two Batteries
- Docking Station
- Two Drive Caddy's
- One dual battery charger

At the end of May we will have a Ninja 2 for $695 which will have the following:
Ninja 2 $695
- Ninja 2 Unit
- One Battery
- One AC Adapter
- One Single battery charger
- One Docking Station
- Two Drive Caddy's
 
Received this update today from the Atomos sales team!

Hello Troy,

The current cost of the Ninja 2 is $795. This Ninja 2 includes the following:
Ninja 2 $795
- Ninja 2 Hard Carrying Case
- Ninja 2 Unit
- Two Batteries
- Docking Station
- Two Drive Caddy's
- One dual battery charger

At the end of May we will have a Ninja 2 for $695 which will have the following:
Ninja 2 $695
- Ninja 2 Unit
- One Battery
- One AC Adapter
- One Single battery charger
- One Docking Station
- Two Drive Caddy's

That's just bloody sad. What a turn-off.
Instead of giving people a break for old technology, they are going to make more money by offering less.
And who is not going to buy a second battery for instance?
I have changed my mind. I will go with another manufacturer to compliment my Samurai.
 
That's just bloody sad. What a turn-off. Instead of giving people a break for old technology, they are going to make more money by offering less.

What are you talking about? Old technology? You're going to get a ProRes LT/422/HQ AND AVID DNxHD SSD recorder for less?
 
That's just bloody sad. What a turn-off.
Instead of giving people a break for old technology, they are going to make more money by offering less.
And who is not going to buy a second battery for instance?
I have changed my mind. I will go with another manufacturer to compliment my Samurai.

I already have some Sony L series batteries & charger. If I was going to get Ninja or Samurai I'll take extra batteries, but if I can save money & pass on additional things I already have & don't need, then I'm happy to save money.

Who else are you going to go with? $695 is extremely cheap for a ProRes recorder IMHO. Blackmagic is cheaper, but doesn't have a monitor, built in battery mount, or doesn't have as many recording options (although it does have HDMI & HD-SDI which is crazy for the price). Anyone else is going to be almost 3x more expensive (Sound Devices Pix, NanoFlash, ...someone else?).

Now each of the recorders offer their own positives, so it is great for us, the consumers to have such variety. But I really think the Ninja is king of the hill for the cheap price.
 
The discontinued Atomos Ninja 2 Kit are still available at a the reduced price of $795 compared to last weeks price of $995.

As a dealer, I'd rather stock the cheaper Ninja 2 without the extra Sony battery & case at $695 since we're going to sell more due to the lower price point.

I don't see how this isn't a better deal.



That's just bloody sad. What a turn-off.
Instead of giving people a break for old technology, they are going to make more money by offering less.
And who is not going to buy a second battery for instance?
I have changed my mind. I will go with another manufacturer to compliment my Samurai.
 
The discontinued Atomos Ninja 2 Kit are still available at a the reduced price of $795 compared to last weeks price of $995.

As a dealer, I'd rather stock the cheaper Ninja 2 without the extra Sony battery & case at $695 since we're going to sell more due to the lower price point.

I don't see how this isn't a better deal.
Very well stated Terry on the Ninja 2! $795 and $695 are great price points! By the way, I'll send an email to you this evening, when I'm home from the office. Will be placing my C100 Kit order with you at Texas Media Systems tomorrow!
 
That's just bloody sad. What a turn-off.
Instead of giving people a break for old technology, they are going to make more money by offering less.
And who is not going to buy a second battery for instance?
I have changed my mind. I will go with another manufacturer to compliment my Samurai.

What's up? Bit grumpy lately. For those of us shooting features this year NAB has been a bit disappointing because not much of it looks like it will ship in time to test and put in to production.

I don't want the hard case anyway, it just says "steal me". Those L batteries are only $20-$30. I checked the measurements of the smallHD EVF, it looks like it might fit the Ninja with a bit of modification, I just don't know if it's worth it. Someone really should make a loupe for the Samurai blade (Steve are you listening?).

I don't get why they haven't made a Ninja blade, I suspect they have a lot of Ninja 2s they want to offload first. They should just send them to Jannard for crushing and write them off on tax.
 
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Who else are you going to go with? $695 is extremely cheap for a ProRes recorder IMHO. Blackmagic is cheaper, but doesn't have a monitor, built in battery mount, or doesn't have as many recording options (although it does have HDMI & HD-SDI which is crazy for the price). Anyone else is going to be almost 3x more expensive (Sound Devices Pix, NanoFlash, ...someone else?).
.

Hyperdeck Shuttle 2.
I don't need a monitor because we have now seen that we keep the LCD viewing ability on the 5D. The monitor on the Ninja is not good enough anyway. It is dim, less color accurate than even the LCD on the back of the 5D and does not show enough detail to do proper focusing with. The Hyperdeck is half the price at 350 USD and provides cross conversion HDMI / HD-SDI. The Ninja only does HDMI. It has a "Rechargeable built in lithium-ion polymer battery", so it does not need a battery mount, and frankly you are just plain wrong about it not having as many recording options. It can do Uncompressed RAW, Prores and DNxHD. The Ninja does not do uncompressed. So which has less options?

Lastly the least Atomos could have done was create an eyepiece like SmallHD for their DP4, so that DSLR users could at least have a pseudo EVF. Did they bother? NO. So easy. "We are not going to do anything with out product this year, so let's just drop the price a little bit and take away a few options...."

Why in heavens name has not a single manufacturer created an EVF/recorder for this market? It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out this need which people have been asking for, for the last two years. I would snap it up in a minute. That is what makes sense for so many 5D users. But this, this is just laziness and it is disingenuous to announce as they have in every video with them at NAB this year that they are dropping prices to 695 USD, when in fact they are merely taking things away from previously offered packages, (on tech that is already 2-3 years old I might add).
 
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I don't need a monitor because we have now seen that we keep the LCD viewing ability on the 5D.

An LCD that remains in a fixed position. That's why I have a 60D, and used an external monitor all the time on the others that don't have that.

The monitor on the Ninja is not good enough anyway. It is dim, less color accurate than even the LCD on the back of the 5D and does not show enough detail to do proper focusing with.

Which is why you use the tools (peaking). Why are you eyeballing for color anyway? The 5D monitor isn't perfectly accurate either. Plus, I've found the Ninja-2 to actually be decent from what you see on the screen to what you get in the footage. But, again, not that I'd ever eyeball anything.

frankly you are just plain wrong about it not having as many recording options. It can do Uncompressed RAW, Prores and DNxHD. The Ninja does not do uncompressed. So which has less options?

First, the Ninja does ProRes 422 LT, 422, 422 HQ, AVID DNxHD 220x, 220, 145, and 36. That is 7 formats to choose from. You don't always need the highest version of ProRes...sometimes LT is perfect for my needs.

Second, "Uncompressed" is not Raw (Raw is not an acronym). It is merely uncompressed, and is, essentially, a complete waste of disk space to shoot in uncompressed. It is still 4:2:2 8-bit. It is not Raw.

Third, every single Canon HDMI connection outputs 24p over 60i with 3:2 pulldown. For PAL-land, this will be 50i with 2:2 pulldown for 25p. The Shuttle 2 doesn't do any pulldown removal, where the Ninja-2 does both 3:2 and 2:2. That alone was worth the extra money. It's not so hard to remove 2:2 pulldown for 25p, so that's probably not going to be an issue, but for 24p, removing 3:2 pulldown is a huge PITA. I would prefer for the Ninja-2 to do it for me rather than either run all of my footage through a dynamically linked comp via After Effects or transcode all of my footage. My time is more valuable than that.
 
An LCD that remains in a fixed position. That's why I have a 60D, and used an external monitor all the time on the others that don't have that.



Which is why you use the tools (peaking). Why are you eyeballing for color anyway? The 5D monitor isn't perfectly accurate either. Plus, I've found the Ninja-2 to actually be decent from what you see on the screen to what you get in the footage. But, again, not that I'd ever eyeball anything.



First, the Ninja does ProRes 422 LT, 422, 422 HQ, AVID DNxHD 220x, 220, 145, and 36. That is 7 formats to choose from. You don't always need the highest version of ProRes...sometimes LT is perfect for my needs.

Second, "Uncompressed" is not Raw (Raw is not an acronym). It is merely uncompressed, and is, essentially, a complete waste of disk space to shoot in uncompressed. It is still 4:2:2 8-bit. It is not Raw.

Third, every single Canon HDMI connection outputs 24p over 60i with 3:2 pulldown. For PAL-land, this will be 50i with 2:2 pulldown for 25p. The Shuttle 2 doesn't do any pulldown removal, where the Ninja-2 does both 3:2 and 2:2. That alone was worth the extra money. It's not so hard to remove 2:2 pulldown for 25p, so that's probably not going to be an issue, but for 24p, removing 3:2 pulldown is a huge PITA. I would prefer for the Ninja-2 to do it for me rather than either run all of my footage through a dynamically linked comp via After Effects or transcode all of my footage. My time is more valuable than that.

Fourth, the peaking function sucks on a monitor that does not resolve highly enough. You will be fooled, because it will pick out contrasty areas that are out of focus. The monitor is virtually useless.
I have a Samurai, I know this already.

They should have created a Ninja Blade. They are not going to beat Hyperdeck on the price vs quality equation, even by getting rid of a few overpriced plastic pieces.
 
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For $700 though the Ninja makes more sense matched with the 5D, the pulldown means another transcode. The internal hyperdeck battery runtime is short so that's another expense plus you have to spend more on an SSD reader, $100 for a fast one. It's easily worth an extra $200 in the time saved transcoding but I reckon they will bring out a Ninja blade in a few months so it's probably worth waiting for the better display, I tweeted Tonis and suggested he make a loupe for it. I was already prepared to pay $1000 for one because the hyperdeck doesn't do pulldown.

I was testing the 5D and the D5200 in bright daylight and even at low ISOs the 5D IPB codec produces an incredible amount of artifacts while the 24Mbps H.264 on the D5200 is very clean. The 5D will really benefit from an external recorder.
 
What would be the best external recorder to use with a Nikon D7100, considering I am in PAL land and I mostly shoot at 25p.

Thanks
 
What would be the best external recorder to use with a Nikon D7100, considering I am in PAL land and I mostly shoot at 25p.

Thanks

Ninja 2. Atomos appear to be more on the ball with support for different cameras than Blackmagic.
 
Fourth, the peaking function sucks on a monitor that does not resolve highly enough. You will be fooled, because it will pick out contrasty areas that are out of focus. The monitor is virtually useless.
I have a Samurai, I know this already.

Well, I can't speak for your experience, but I routinely use the Ninja-2 to focus via peaking and it hasn't bit me yet.
 
Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 and Canon 1DC

Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 and Canon 1DC

Recently I tried to record footage in Hyperdeck Shuttle2 from the HDMI Out from Canon 1DC. There is no audio recorded in the SSD only Video is recorded. Can anyone help pls
 
Recently I tried to record footage in Hyperdeck Shuttle2 from the HDMI Out from Canon 1DC. There is no audio recorded in the SSD only Video is recorded. Can anyone help pls

I think the 1DC is the same as the 5D mk3 - sound is not sent through hdmi.
Check out this video for a workaround using the Ninja 2 which is probably similar to the Shuttle2.
https://vimeo.com/m/65471795
 
Is Atomos working on a newer Ninja? I though the Ninja 2 was the latest? Excuse my ignorance, I was set on getting an AC7 LCD with Extreme Pro SD cards for my GH2, until I saw the price of SD cards.
 
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