Blackmagic Design Announces New URSA Mini Pro G2 Camera

NorBro said:
It obviously looks great...but the threshold just hasn't been broken yet, IMO.

At some point, they all start to look the same [also because all of these are coming from Note (Lightform Film) the grades may be similar, naturally].

Pocket 4K - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX79TSu1394

UM 4.6K - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bsKlA-pwSQ
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Haha thanks :p
To me, it allows for a certain unity across the lineup—all the cameras are great as A/B and so forth cams.

I'll try a different style very soon. Maybe pushing some more extremes.
 
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Streaming services need to offer a secondary audio track of popcorn munching, cell phone notifications..and lack of a pause button for piss breaks.
 
markfpv said:
Back on topic... does it strike anyone else odd that in only a few short years BM has already replaced the sensor in their original design? Perhaps one other reason not to buy... they may be worse than any other mfg at this point in continuously coming out with "better". If I were invested in the older model... I wouldn't exactly be thrilled it's replacement has already been announced.
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It is the "same" 4.6K sensor as in the original URSA Mini, but they're just refining it. This is perfectly normal for a manufacturer to do
 
Gweilo66 said:
Streaming services need to offer a secondary audio track of popcorn munching, cell phone notifications..and lack of a pause button for piss breaks.
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This joke holds a lot of truth. I think the lack of pause and other playback controls is the biggest appeal of movie theaters: you just have to commit to spending that time looking at the movie, with no breaks, no phone calls, no messages, just the movie. It's the only thing I like about going to movie theaters. Apart from that, my home screen is better, my home sound is just as good, and I can actually control who sits around me. I won't turn off my phone at home, though. It's weird, but it's ME that's "ruining" my home movie watching experience.
 
IronFilm said:
It is the "same" 4.6K sensor as in the original URSA Mini, but they're just refining it. This is perfectly normal for a manufacturer to do
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Blackmagic claims it's a new sensor which makes sense to me given how much more sensitive it's supposed to be. I have no inside knowledge but it would seem reasonable that it is an enhanced iteration of the previous UMP sensor.

URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 is a more powerful second generation camera with entirely new electronics and a new high performance image sensor
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https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursaminipro
 
My not-really-informed guess is: new sensor, just like the old one but with some tweaks that allow it to work at twice the MHz. I think the technical term would be "a metal re-spin".

(I base my guess on the fact that the rolling shutter is twice as fast and the frame rates are doubled, but everything else spec-wise is exactly as it was)
 
My guess would be the same sensor but better electronics around it, allowing it to work up to its original specs, whereas G1 was, if not crippled, then de-tuned.
 
TheDingo said:
When you look at Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" with a production budget of more than $300 million, and you see the names of 600+ CGI artists in the credits, you would expect that the CGI would be pretty good.

Not really an "apples to apples" comparison with GoT.
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Infinity War had lots of CGI, but most of it looked like a video game. The CGI stood out like a cartoon, which I call the Roger Rabbit effect. It wasn’t bad, but the CGI & live action glaringly didn’t exist on the same plane.

The CGI in GoT blends into the live action near flawlessly. The only Hollywood film that impressed me with its CGI was the last two Planet of the Apes. Most Hollywood films don’t blend the live action and CGI in a convincing way, at least not to my eye.
 
Samuel H said:
My not-really-informed guess is: new sensor, just like the old one but with some tweaks that allow it to work at twice the MHz. I think the technical term would be "a metal re-spin".

(I base my guess on the fact that the rolling shutter is twice as fast and the frame rates are doubled, but everything else spec-wise is exactly as it was)
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I would guess you are correct. The reason is that the basic photosite readout is on a the same die as the photosites. If it was just some electronics behind the CMOS circuit board, then they mightoffer an upgrade to previous owners (either trade in or refit). It is probably mostly the second generation of the imager with a few small tweaks to the camera body and post imager electronics. Lots of processors have come and gone in the time frame so I would expect the general processors inside the camera have gotten faster. I'd also think the FPGA's inside the G2 are faster and possibly more transistors which also yields more speed. Just little incremental things that add up to the whole being a "better" camera. If you like the form factor, there is certainly no real reason to change it. And aside from shoulder work it looks like the form factor for a single operator is pretty decent.
 
Bob Loblaw said:
Infinity War had lots of CGI, but most of it looked like a video game. The CGI stood out like a cartoon, which I call the Roger Rabbit effect. It wasn’t bad, but the CGI & live action glaringly didn’t exist on the same plane.

The CGI in GoT blends into the live action near flawlessly. The only Hollywood film that impressed me with its CGI was the last two Planet of the Apes. Most Hollywood films don’t blend the live action and CGI in a convincing way, at least not to my eye.
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Guess I am a total outlier as I have always hated CGI, it has always looked fake and stupid to me and today, it mostly still looks fake, pasted on, the lighting and physics just don't make sense. It's sad that 90% of popular films today and probably 60% or more CGI. This is at least part of the reason why I think films like Bladerunner (not the new unnecessary 2049 obviously) are a masterpiece and stand the test of time while today's CGI-fests look dated months after they are released. IMHO, if tooday's films didn't just throw up a green screen for every scene and made the time-consuming, expensive investment into huge sets, elaborate production design and had even advanced optical and model compositing and construction, films
would look so much more authentic and organic. Sure, you can defy lots of physics in CGI and I guess that's what today's audiences, addicted to video games, wants to accept as "semi-reality" but for me, there is no comparison to optically photographing real production design in physical space. CGI sucks!

I love Pixar and pure 3D stuff because it's such a beautiful, artistic mimicry of real life but once you mix real actors with it, it totally falls apart for me. Guess you couldn't really tell the stories of GOT, The Hobbit, the insane takeover of comicbook/superhero films, anything in space without CGI but those films are a yawnfest for me anyway. I've really tried, I watched the first ten minutes of Guardians of the Galaxy, then turned it off as I was instantly visually bored. Probably didn't help that I wrote an article and interviewed the VFX team and had all of the BTS footage and shots of how all of it was filmed and how all of the CGI went down. Not saying that any of it is bad filmmaking or storytelling, but for me it's how the image comes across in my brain, I am just instantly disengaged from the story when real human actors are enveloped by CGI.

Get off my lawn.
 
I don’t know how you can really lump 2049 in with other stuff. They did a whole lot of miniature work and didn’t use cgi as a crutch. I can definitely see where you are going when it comes to marvel films and such, but not 2049.
 
Bob Loblaw said:
The only Hollywood film that impressed me with its CGI was the last two Planet of the Apes. Most Hollywood films don’t blend the live action and CGI in a convincing way, at least not to my eye.
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Have you seen "Alita: Battle Angel" ?

If you have, I'm curious what you think of it's CGI.

...I agree about Hollywood not blending live action and CGI, but I'm wondering if this is intentional. ( they generally aren't going for a natural look )

The first Hollywood film with naturalistic CGI that floored me was Ridley Scott's "Gladiator", where I had to watch a bunch of BTS videos to see how much of the image was built with CGI.
 
I thought the composite shots in the "Wolf of Wall Street' were tastefully done and saved a lot of production time and money vs. the live action iteration of the same.

FWIW, as a WWII history buff, the large battle scenes can't be recreated without a quality mix of CGI, miniatures, green screen, etc.
 
Anyone know why UMP’s CinemaDNG (compressed up to 4:1) is accepted by Netflix, but it’s ProRes is not? We have a short project Netflix commissioned, & the Production is hoping to use a pair of UMP they already own, so most likely we’ll capture 3:1.

Also wonder if Netflix has tested BRaw yet, or are they waiting for a big enough Production to request clearance? Seems BRaw would suit their requirements much better than cDNG.

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000579527-Cameras-and-Image-Capture

[EDIT] Realized I missed some of the pages of the “Detailed production guides for Blackmagic cameras”, & ProRes appears to be acceptable, so now I’m even more confused.
 
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Click on the note ('here') below the Blackmagic cameras and you'll see ProRes and more information in the document(s).
 
NorBro said:
Click on the note ('here') below the Blackmagic cameras and you'll see ProRes and more information in the document(s).
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Just saw that. Thanks!

Both times I looked at those pages I was using inflight WiFi on my iPhone, & didn’t realize there were multiple pages to the PDFs.
 
NorBro said:
Nothing to be confused about...ProRes is the standard, everything else came after.
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Our project will require four cameras so the the prospect of recording cDNG was a bit intimidating, but I’m unfamiliar with the data rates of compressed options.
 
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