BlackMagic - URSA Mini

Very interesting!

Hope they've solved whatever sensor issue they had with the original URSA that caused the purple fringing and spots when pointed directly at a bright light source. Enjoyed DPing on the URSA but it's ridiculous to have that issue on a professional camera of any sort.
 
If it's going to stay at original URSA price (or lower!!) this is going to be huge. There's EVF, LCD and shoulder mount built in!!! That's like... dreams coming true ;)
 
alohype said:
If it's going to stay at original URSA price (or lower!!) this is going to be huge. There's EVF, LCD and shoulder mount built in!!! That's like... dreams coming true ;)
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Sure. Until they realize all the things which are wrong with it. It's Blackmagic after all.
Expect the fix to come on the next camera body, not for your camera.
But hey, don't worry. They are always sure that a third party will step in to solve whatever issues they are not willing to address.
 
yoclay said:
Sure. Until they realize all the things which are wrong with it. It's Blackmagic after all.
Expect the fix to come on the next camera body, not for your camera.
But hey, don't worry. They are always sure that a third party will step in to solve whatever issues they are not willing to address.
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Of course there will be some issues, but year by year, camera by camera they're improving quality. Let's not forget that they were new to the camera side, they have more experience in development now. They've unified firmwares across all the cameras and that will help as well. Their cameras are fraction of the cost of what main manufacturers are offering, one can live with few caveats.
 
Blackmagic has made good on pretty much ALL of its promises via free firmware updates on ALL of their cameras.
The one thing they do NOT do is leave you out in the cold and put the fixes only in some new body.

This camera is going to be extremely interesting.
 
DPStewart said:
Blackmagic has made good on pretty much ALL of its promises via free firmware updates on ALL of their cameras.
The one thing they do NOT do is leave you out in the cold and put the fixes only in some new body.
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"Pretty much...."

Like the serious fixed pattern noise which was supposedly fixed last year on their Production camera, right?
Good luck with that.
Pre-order to your heart's content.
 
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yoclay said:
Oh yeah. Sure.
"Pretty much".
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I'm guessing you're an unhappy owner? As alohype said above, when you jump in with a company that has never built cameras before, you're expectations have to be realistic. From the start I expected it to be a couple of years at least before they figured out their workflow and refined their manufacturing to work out the kinks. And that's exactly why I didn't buy early.

That being said, I think black magic is really pushing to make their customers happy. They're one of the only companies out there trying to give shooters exactly what they want: Pro features in an affordable body. I can respect that
 
ryan brown said:
I'm guessing you're an unhappy owner? As alohype said above, when you jump in with a company that has never built cameras before, you're expectations have to be realistic. From the start I expected it to be a couple of years at least before they figured out their workflow and refined their manufacturing to work out the kinks. And that's exactly why I didn't buy early.

That being said, I think black magic is really pushing to make their customers happy. They're one of the only companies out there trying to give shooters exactly what they want: Pro features in an affordable body. I can respect that
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I think they lack responsibility.
On numerous occasions, they have addressed their problems by saying they felt comfortable with third party suppliers filling in the issues.
They have taken an incredibly long time to address many issues and some of those remain only partially corrected.
They have a culture of taking pre-orders for cameras that are not yet fully implemented and their QC frankly sucks.
They have FPN, moire and aliasing pretty much across the board, except on their original BMCC model and only recently was the "universal" camera software updated to a properly functioning system - 3 years too late. Their cameras are also ergonomic nightmares, in terms of weight and functionality (unless you like cables sticking in your ear in shoulder mounted run-n-gun situations). The URSA for example is designed for a market, that considers alternatives at half it's weight. Duh? Where has BM been? It's as if they know nothing about cameras that don't just go on sticks. It's as if they design cameras in a lab, but have never worked out in the field. Further you cannot have a group of buyers asking when a certain issue will be addressed as promised for months on end with virtually no response from a manufacturer. These are critical investments for many buyers and it is irresponsible to have let things go on as long as they have in the past and most importantly not considered many of these basic issues brought up BEFORE the camera was ever released. In short they clearly are always rushing to market what should have been properly tested before.


This is not PRO behavior. When you have serious clients and must guarantee delivery, this kind of stuff is primordial.
Thus their cameras have essentially gone to the semi-pro and hobbyist/enthusiasts market. Which is fine, but let's not pretend otherwise.
No pros I know would consider their cameras for serious productions and it all comes down to one word (or the lack of) -
R-E-L-I-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.
 
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yoclay said:
I think they lack responsibility.
On numerous occasions, they have addressed their problems by saying they felt comfortable with third party suppliers filling in the issues.
They have taken an incredibly long time to address many issues and some of those remain only partially corrected.
They have a culture of taking pre-orders for cameras that are not yet fully implemented and their QC frankly sucks.
They have FPN, moire and aliasing pretty much across the board, except on their original BMCC model and only recently was the "universal" camera software updated to a properly functioning system - 3 years too late. Their cameras are also ergonomic nightmares, in terms of weight and functionality (unless you like cables sticking in your ear in shoulder mounted run-n-gun situations). The URSA for example is designed for a market, that considers alternatives at half it's weight. Duh? Where has BM been? It's as if they know nothing about cameras that don't just go on sticks. It's as if they design cameras in a lab, but have never worked out in the field.


This is not PRO behavior. When you have serious clients and must guarantee delivery, this kind of stuff is primordial.
Thus their cameras have essentially gone to the semi-pro and hobbyist/enthusiasts market. Which is fine, but let's not pretend otherwise.
No pros I know would consider their cameras for serious productions and it all comes down to one word (or the lack of) -
R-E-L-I-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.
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Everything you just mentioned, minus the third party suppliers fixing issues, sounds to me like growing pains from an inexperienced company. Like I said above.

I'm a professional DP, and I've never used a black magic camera on a pro set for reasons you said. But here's the thing... I've never considered that the cams they're putting out are on that level. Who's pretending? Were you, and then you were let down? They're sub 10K cameras, and there's plenty of issues to work out. If you're looking for a pro camera for a pro shoot, obviously you go with the tried and true cams out there.

Like I said above, again, it sounds like your expectations are/weren't realistic and you wanted it all right out of the gate. If you've used one of their cameras on a pro set, and it happened to fall apart and you lost a client, the person most at fault is you.
 
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