Blackmagic Design announces URSA Mini 4.6K and Micro Cinema Camera now shipping

Thomas Smet said:
Why are people so hard on their gear? Nothing gets more fragile than a DSLR and I'm pretty sure the Ursa Mini is a bit more robust than a DSLR. I tend to take very good care of my gear and a friend of mine does an even better job keeping his gear clean and handles it with care. I mean he doesn't wear a face mask and white gloves when he uses his stuff but he isn't an ogre beating the record button with a mace either.

A crash cam I expect to be robust or cheap enough to be expendable. A camera like the Ursa needs to be treated with love and care and treated like a fine machine and not a punching bag. If one is prone to dropping cameras I think that person really needs to take a step back and figure out why they keeping dropping their cameras like that. Would they drop their baby on its head? Thats pretty much equally devastating.
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But it isn't a DSLR, is it?

It is a cinema camera, designed to be used in a production environment.

Just saying that the prevalence of users who actually bought one from B&H weren't thrilled with the build quality.
 
mcgeedigital said:
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Sorry not buying it. If you think "indy" crews are any LESS hard on their geqr, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
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I don't think you got me. I was talking about guys who buy the cameras to make their own movies or guys who are the director, DP and operator all in one. Not indie as in $5,000,000 indie movies. Those guys baby their cameras. They can't afford not to. I think Blackmagic is geared towards these types of shooters. Not the people who shoot Alexa, F55 and F65. By the way I was agreeing with you that the Blackmagic Ursa is not so well built.
 
Sending bodies to reviewers is very expensive, among other things because if you use their time and they can't show the product or share their thoughts they are much less likely to collaborate with you the next time around. They must have found something nasty that they think they can fix in firmware before they actually ship.
 
I think an issue with the camera isn't the camera itself but when shooting raw ( features ) is it's data footprint , terabyte an hour I think, maybe someone can correct me. Eitherway this does add to it's running cost by the time you factor back up HDs etc. etc. so watch out long form projects.

Unlike P2 cards which slug you upfront this system will be bigger $$$$$ every time you shoot and would eventually outstrip initial proprietary SSDs or Cards investments.

Having said that with the continual dropping of price to capacity of HDs maybe this will not be a problem in the future ?

PS be interesting to see what offload times are like .
 
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Surf it Mike said:
I think an issue with the camera isn't the camera itself but when shooting raw ( features ) is it's data footprint , terabyte an hour I think, maybe someone can correct me. Eitherway this does add to it's running cost by the time you factor back up HDs etc. etc. so watch out long form projects.

Unlike P2 cards which slug you upfront this system will be bigger $$$$$ every time you shoot and would eventually outstrip initial proprietary SSDs or Cards investments.

Having said that with the continual dropping of price to capacity of HDs maybe this will not be a problem in the future ?
Ghost
PS be interesting to see what offload times are like .
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I have seen Seagate 8TB low speed archival HDDs go for $210. Storage is not a real issue.
 
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Surf it Mike said:
I think an issue with the camera isn't the camera itself but when shooting raw ( features ) is it's data footprint , terabyte an hour I think, maybe someone can correct me. Eitherway this does add to it's running cost by the time you factor back up HDs etc. etc. so watch out long form projects.

Unlike P2 cards which slug you upfront this system will be bigger $$$$$ every time you shoot and would eventually outstrip initial proprietary SSDs or Cards investments.

Having said that with the continual dropping of price to capacity of HDs maybe this will not be a problem in the future ?

PS be interesting to see what offload times are like .
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You do realize that it has 3 different types of raw right? 3:1 + 4:1 compressed raw, uncompressed raw, and if thats still not to your liking theres Prores 444 HQ, prores 422 and on and on, so theres really no issue.
 
mico said:
You do realize that it has 3 different types of raw right? 3:1 + 4:1 compressed raw, uncompressed raw, and if thats still not to your liking theres Prores 444 HQ, prores 422 and on and on, so theres really no issue.
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If space is a concern, ProRes444 isn't a good choice; it's likely to be bigger than anything but lossless raw. For 4K, the most efficient is probably going to be 4:1 raw, which will probably be more than enough for anything other than heavy-duty VFX work.
 
philiplipetz said:
I have seen Seagate 8TB low speed archival HDDs go for $210. Storage is not a real issue.
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Seagate's target on HDD is "20 for 20" (20 TB's for 2020). It's a bit of a promo campaign but there are all sorts of innovation in the "old style" HDD technology.

Of course, Intel and Micron are promising to ship X-Point (Cross Point) based SSD drives later this year that promise a giant leap forward there.

IMO, storage is jumping forward in capacities faster than the CPU/GPU tech these days. Pretty soon, a lot of the mid-to-high end cameras should include internal SSD's, given their form factor and performance.
 
My guess is not, though if the reason was heat, then it's possible. I'd expect it to end up being a v2 4.6K sensor feature instead.
 
Gary W said:
So does the full size Ursa 4.6K still have a global shutter?
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The BMD Web site still mentions the global shutter for the full-size Ursa 4.6K, but the 120-fps 4.6K frame rate announced in April 2015 is nowhere to be seen.
 
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