Those of us who are excitedly waiting for the eventual release of the URSA Mini 4.6K will have to wait a bit longer it seems. Despite the ‘expected’ release time of July 2015, it’s safe to say (where we’re only a few days short of the year end), that it won’t be released until sometime in 2016. Bummer.
What we do know is that it looks to be pretty epic – check out our URSA Mini 4.6K – A Closer Look article – and that at least a few people have been lucky enough to get their hands on one for testing.
There’s been a variety of clips shot on the Mini uploaded online, some shot in RAW and some with a little grading on them. We thought it’d be fun to take a look at some of the clips.
First up, is Roman Alaivi who shot his in ProRes UHD. Roman did a review of the Mini and discusses some of this process on the BMCUser forums, here.
Roman’s first impressions:
“The new Film log is something else. Gone are the days of needing a LUT just to “correct” your footage in order to get it where it needs to be. There’s enough contrast / saturation built into the log to get your images looking right in just 1 or 2 nodes. But there’s a ton of flexibility. I’m able to dig a little deeper into the shadows, reach a little higher in the highlights and bend the image like I’ve never really been able to before.
Dynamic range is pretty significant and feels like no less than 2 full strong stops over the 2.5K. It’s a little jarring to see so much information in both the shadows and highlights at the same time. It kind of made me want to crush some of the shadows and create “hard stops” to what we can see, because otherwise it just keeps going…
IR / Infrared: I don’t think I’m really noticing any, or at least nothing that made me want to use the IR cut filter; none of the footage here had the IR Cut.
Noise / Low light: I have 2 night shots (the last 2 night ones in the video) which were at 1600 ISO. I decided not to use neat video or reduce the noise so you could see what that looks like. At 800 though, it’s amazing and so contained it becomes a HUGE sigh of relief knowing I can go under by 1-2 stops, bring it up and see about as much noise as the 2.5K exposed properly @800. When exposed properly, it goes from good to perfect. Like… the noise is so well handled that adding in extra grain might be attractive for some (but it sure doesn’t need it). In the video, there’s quite a number of underexposed shots that I brought up 1-2.5 stops without doing anything to reduce noise and it was still looking solid.
Aliasing / Moire: If there is any, I haven’t seen it anywhere.
Image: The image is amazing. The video here doesn’t even begin to show or do the camera justice, like I’m sure other footage will soon do. The color, weight, richness… just general mojo is fucking awesome. I’m really overly satisfied with the what’s coming out of the Mini 4.6K.
Hardware: This thing is a tank simply put. Absolutely solid through and through. The shoulder kit, EVF and camera meld together to form such a tight, compact and cohesive unit I shudder to think about having “put-together” rigs on my shoulder ever again.”
Roman’s Clips:
Next up we have Oddio Works, who has shot his clip in RAW 4.6K, going the whole hog.
Oddio Works Clip:
Lastly, we have a couple of clips from Camp Comet, which are a mix of 4.6K and UHD.
Camp Comet Clips:
Final Thoughts
As you can see, BM looks like it has another solid performance camera on its hands with the URSA Mini 4.6K. And we like that the company is releasing the camera off-the-shelf without a sensor, to allow for those on a microbudget some time to save for the upgraded sensors.
The only issue it seems for those wishing to purchase the 4K sensor (with the Mini), is the fixed pattern noise and limited light sensitivity that was so annoying in the BMPC. Although, BM has gone some of the way to fixing this, there are still plenty of users too shy to invest serious money into what many consider a flawed sensor.
It might be worth skipping the 4K sensor completely, and going straight to the 4.6K – particularly in light of Roman Alaivi’s experience with no moire or issues in low light.
PRICE AND AVAILABILTY
The URSA Mini 4.6K can be purchased with either the EF-mount for AU$7035 or the PL-mount for AU$7755.
Also available is the URSA Mini 4K with either the EF-mount for AU$4235, or PL-mount for AU$4925.
As to availability, well, your guess is as good as ours. Hopefully we won’t be waiting too much longer to get our hands on the Mini 4.6K. Come on BM, release it already!
