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PRICE RED Helium Ranger + Monitor: $31,400 URSA Pro 12K + Accessories: $11,500 The new URSA Pro is 37% of the price of RED's comparable offering. SPECS RED Helium Ranger: 8K @ 60p (12:1 Compression) 4K @ 120p (Cropped Sensor) URSA Pro 12K: 12K @ 60p (5:1 Compression) 8K @ 110p (No Crop) ANALYSIS The new sensor technology that allows you to shoot at lower resolutions for higher framerates is arguably the most important aspect of this camera. That and...price. There's really no reason to be in a RED at this point in time. I guess if you hated money you would stick with them? I'm scrambling to find one area that RED would beat BM in and I can't think of one. It was always codec but we might just be there with the release of this new version of Blackmagics Color. Add in the full ecosystem compatibility with Resolve and the fact that it's almost 3x the price. Seriously, if Blackmagic wanted to make a dent on the high end I think they just blew it up. RED is going to have to innovate AND lower their prices (drastically) just to be competitive again. You will have outliers and people that stay loyal to the brand for whatever reason...but if you're unbiased and just looking to make the right purchase, I don't see how RED makes any sense. As of today at least. Seriously a crazy release and few days here. I don't know if I have ever pre-ordered>cancelled pre-order>pre-ordered new camera in a 48 hour window before.

This is what RED should have been doing all along and I guess they started to with 4K ProRes proxies, either way...for me this announcement marks major gap in the armor for RED. Probably not "the end" as they have been silent for a while and probably have something big in the pipeline. The problem is that RED has been chasing the resolution dragon (thank you) almost exclusively. They haven't given us more FPS and they have actually taken functionality away while getting more expensive! The features of this camera are almost...silly. RED would charge $50,000 for a similar camera but an extra $10,000 would be needed for accessories. So yeah...this is a major splash on the high end. Enough to make a lot of RED guys switch? Who knows. Will it test their loyalty? Abso-freaking-lutely.

Wow. I went to bed last night and woke up to this.. I predicted an 8K FF camera as a semi-ridiculous joke, but I had no idea that it would turn out not audacious enough!! My comments in the 1080p thread are interesting in this context though. We are playing the megapixel game, but very few are giving high-bitrates to downscaled resolutions, but if this is giving 4K RAW downscaled from 12K then the image should be spectacular, while not requiring the computer to be able to push 12K pixels around. This would make it a hugely flexible camera - yes you can shoot 12K RAW if the project warrants it, but you can also shoot 4K RAW with no crop at great bitrates and bit depths for projects where post needs to be more cost effective. Also, if the colour science is great, this could put them on the map as a serious challenge to ARRI / RED. Then they'd have to nail the reliability in order to actually take market share, but it's a shot across the bow nonetheless. BM are thinking big - they do it with Resolve every year, did it with the pocket cameras since the OG Pocket, and now at the high-end too.

As there are so many threads on R5,R6 and 1Dx III I thought is better to have a dedicated thread for editing perf. Machine used for the test is a gaming notebook i9 10980HK, 2070 Super Max 8GB Vram, tested with files coming from internal M2 SSD and directly from the CFexpress card (no difference in the result). Resolve 16.2.4, NVidia Studio driver. Very simple grade, 1 node for LUT, 1 node for LGG, 1 node for color boost, saturation and mid tone detail. RAW: 5.5k RAW 30 -> 5.5k 30 timeline realtime 5.5k RAW 60 -> 5.5k 30 timeline realtime 5.5k RAW 60 -> 5.5k 60 timeline 30-35 fps 5.5k RAW 60 -> 5.5k 60 timeline realtime (half res RAW processing) 8k RAW 24 -> 5.5k 24 timeline realtime (half res RAW processing) 8k RAW 24 -> 4k 24 timeline realtime (half res RAW processing) 8k RAW 24 -> 4k 24 timeline 15 fps 8k RAW 24 -> 8k 24 timeline 15 fps but not usable as you get gpu out of memory h265 10bit: 4k 120 all-i -> 4k 30 timeline no realtime 4k 60 all-i -> 4k 30 timeline no realtime 4k 60 ipb -> 4k 30 timeline no realtime 4k 30 all-i -> 4k 30 timeline no realtime 4k 30 ipb -> 4k 30 timeline realtime Observations: - RAW is much easier in perf than h265 10bit, afiak no HW acceleration is currently supporting h265 10bit 4:2:2 only 4:2:0 or 4:4:4 - Thanks that you can set half res RAW (you can even set quarter res) on the decoding setting you can work in real time and then switch to full res for final rendering. - Very strange that ipb can playback in realtime and all-i not, it could be a Resolve issue - You need to disable Intel Quick Sync in Resolve preferences if not you cannot view h265 files, this seems a bug as they could detect that is not compatible with quick sync. - 8k timeline with 8GB Vram is just not possible in Resolve. So even frame grabbing becomes an issue. 6k timeline works for frame grabbing. Did not test the limit here. - It is a very powerful notebook but no where near a powerful workstation... is a tad slower than a i7 9900k 1070 machine. Hopefully both Resolve and CPU/GPU vendor will better support h265 10bit 4:2:2. Bottom-line what you save in storage in not using RAW you will spend in time converting the footage. Would be cool that other reports their experience in this thread and also with other NLEs.

I seriously doubt anybody buying a 12K camera is buying it because they can now show audiences a 12K feature film. 12K opens up other possibilities. I’m getting pretty sick and tired of the pervasive Luddite mentality being displayed on this forum. There is always going to be compromises with gear. It will either work for you or it doesn’t. You give feedback. You move on.

I have been fully in Panasonic's camp since my journey began. Never in my life have a seen a Mike Drop from a corporation so damn brutal in all of my years. But I have one more question. Where do they get these black people with all the gorgeous chocolaty skin from? My skin has never looked that damn good, and I've been black all of my life! LOL If this is BMD putting their best foot forward for inclusion, they certainly did it with class.

Have you even watched the BM video? They are doing in sensor scaling of a 3x3 bayer array. That gives you 4:4:4 4K output from the sensor. The image is as nice or nicer than anything you can shoot with now.

I told the wife about this camera. She said I can get it, but I have to put every other purchase on hold for a long time, I am only allowed to buy $10k worth of storage, and once that's full, I have to go down to 640x480!

I am confident this will deliver 12k and everything else promised. The bigger issue is quality control of course. The camera needs to be shipped on time and without issues. I really love Blackmagic. If their color science and quality control is up there with Arri I think they have a serious shot at making an impact. The URSA was a nice camera but it has a lot of issues. This seems like a completely different beast.

12K is more a marketing meme for the camera. Its real point is that it doesn't have a 2x2 Bayer matrix (as in my avatar on the left), but a 3x3 RGB matrix where all three colors are equally present. That means you will be able to downsample the 12K sensor signal into a 4K signal with no color interpolation by binning 3x3 pixels into one pixel. That's the equivalent of a 3-chip camera or Foveon sensor. Clean 4K with 4:4:4 color sampling and zero debayering artefacts. That's the real point (and news) of this camera. 12K is just marketing fodder for bloggers and influencers.

Y’all should read johnbrawley.wordpress.com it answers a lot of the assumptions in this thread.

I've been in the castle but I'm not royalty. I still have the peasant mindset with cameras. I'm definitely not a camera snob. I generally have insurance on all of my gear, at least if it's over $1,000. I suggest most people do the same actually, Athos insurance is really affordable. A few things to mention here. It seems to be 50/50 with people that want RAW vs people that just want a color graded clip that's ready to rock. For the people that do want RAW...they are hiring high end post houses for grading and they will have no problems since they use Resolve. You are correct that R3D's are more universally adopted than BRAW, but in the high end post world Resolve is more adopted than even R3D's! I don't rent my cameras out and have never had success with it (due to my location). I will be waiting a few weeks...for my order to arrive! Then I will have all of the test footage I need 🙂 I will always remember when I ordered the RED Helium and started planning a shoot. The day it showed up and I went to power it on with the AC adapter only to realize that it didn't have an AC input. I was pretty shocked, even for RED it was bad. I think the "modularity" is just an excuse to charge more money for accessories. It's actually one of the reasons I want out. Blackmagic is doing it the way it should be done. Internal ND, built in XLR with Phantom Power, easy battery solutions and MEDIA...don't get me going on media for RED cameras. For me, it's all about data rates and compression. R3D is great but when you have to shoot 12:1 compression in 60p but you can do 5:1 in BRAW...I would choose 5:1 all day. Once you get into those higher compression numbers with RED files, they REALLY start to fall apart. 8K 60 looks pretty poor when you zoom in. I did some internal tests for a streaming company and they were less than impressed with the Helium at 8K 60. There are two camps. One camp likes things ready to rock and don't care about color grading. They just want it to look great right away. The other camp wants the RAW files but I can always get away with 4444 in Log. The other camp is thrilled with 10 Bit H.265. I mean, H.265 is really incredible for delivery!

Well, the current Ursa Mini Pro can already be driven by the PBC so this one will be no different as it also has BLE with the same protocol. Which means that as a consequence the two AF system add ons will also be able to work with it, with the PBC controlling all the other functions such as ISO/WB etc remotely too if required. If people use the EF mount, then the focus can be driven electronically but PL mount would obviously require motors.

I think a lot of people have missed the point of this camera. It isn't just a 12K S35 camera, its also a 8K/6K/4K S35 and a 6K/4K s16 camera. It's been designed to shoot in all those formats without downsides. If you don't want 12K, don't shoot it, but it is there if you do want it.

It was shot from our own @John Brawley, if people come back to treat him well here he could give some useful insights. Maybe even for the troll of the other thread which says that a camera without IBIS or PDAF is not useful...

With that much resolution, they really should run half of the photosites through a different gain architecture to achieve higher dynamic range.

I make cat videos. Would this be any good?

From @CaptainHook Full 12K : ~15.5ms 8K/4K (full field of view) : ~8.5ms* 6K crop : ~7.8ms 4K crop : ~4.25ms* *We hope to improve this slightly in an update

The OG 4.6k's are getting pretty cheap. I got two now. The BRAW on the mini pro's is probably worth the extra $500-$1000 though.

Spot on. Yes this camera does 12K, and if it made many sacrifices to get that 12K then it would be silly but I'm really not seeing any sacrifices made here by Blackmagic. You can still shoot 4K and 8K RAW with no crop. You still get frame rates over 30p. You can still record to inexpensive, off the shelf media. It (most likely) won't overheat every 20 minutes. The files are seemingly very easy to work with. The only sacrifice, if you want to call it that, is the price.....but given who this camera is aimed at, $10,000 is not expensive at all. What I'm taking from this is how exciting the future from Blackmagic looks now that they are creating their own sensors, codecs and post hardware and software. I'm excited to see a Full Frame camera in a smaller form factor like a Kinefinity, Z-Cam or even C300 style body etc but with a sensor that might let me shoot 8K, 6K and 4K RAW with no crop in a fantastically flexible codec that I can work with on a laptop. What's not to like!

The big issue with the ursa 4.6K was the fixed noise pattern in deep shadows and higher iso's. If this camera is a win at 3200 iso and with Dynamic range its a RED killer for sure. Combined with the fact that its shooting higher RES than the RED helium at less than half the price. Plus recording straight to SSD's, ND filters, and built in monitor. It just comes down to reliability after that.

What drives me insane with these reviewers are their commercials for Square Space. I want to throw a shoe through my monitor. Enough already with Square Space!

I think there is a bit of a political move here as well. Studio execs LOVE big numbers. "Oh, that new camera is higher resolution than any other camera? I want my films shot on that". Now, I think the move away from bayer pattern for full RGB and the insane gradability this footage will likely have is in my mind worth the price. But they made a good decision being higher resolution than their competition, and rest assured this camera is not in direct competition with the A7s or S1h, its with RED and ARRI. They are making the feature film and TV industry sit up and notice them and this is a good thing.

Sshhh. we want people to upgrade from the G2 and drive 2nd hand prices down.

Director: Is the tree also 12K? Or 4K? Client: I want the fucking tree in 16K Dp: Heard of a zoom?

Apologies if the test footage was already posted:-

It seems that while i was sleeping last night, binary computing stepped up. I feel so old now that i have to stick with my good old 8K camera which i haven’t bought yet. A paradox maybe?

Same! It'll be early next year, so plenty of time to see real life material from both Canon and Sony.

If they do add CLOG3 and ALL-I via firmware to the R6 it makes it something to look at. My main filming is weddings, so to know (UK wise) 4K 25 doesn't overheat will be the key and get 4K 50 for select shots. It'll be a hard choice between the R6 and Sony a7siii!

Wow.. with these numbers alone we are close to global shutter in 4K. These high MP cameras seem to serve a double purpose when you lower the resolution. I mean this camera just may trump RED/ARRI ??

Feel your pain, but the cameras are already built - following a CML email thread I saw that John Brawley received his factory-built, final firmware unit yesterday.

Do it, I think this IS the camera to “future proof” with. It has the feeling of like a 6K Red Epic Dragon (still my favorite RED camera).

Sensor hours are not like kilometers on a car, or shutter life on a camera. They shouldn't necessarily "wear out". All it does is give a rough indication of how much the camera has been used. However, I'd rather take a C100 with 10,000hours on it that has been used as a locked off 24/7 live stream camera inside a house, than a C100 with "only" a thousand hours but has seen multiple expeditions into remote foreign battle zones to film documentaries on the front line.

I just saw on FujiRumours that people in the UK can rent Fuji gear for 48 hours for free! https://fujifilm-connect.hireacamera.com/en-gb/

Yes, I changed my tune on the megapixel Grand Prix because advancements like this are win-win. I don’t need 12K, or 8K but a 4K image from a 3x3 bayer array 12K sensor....awesome. So the headline is 12K but the meat of the story is the awesome oversampled 8K and 4K output from this camera. Same with the R5. Headline is 8K but we finally have a Canon mirrorless camera with 4K, IBIS, and 10-bit 422. That’s a win and a step forward.

I don't know. They are a bit too Florida for me. A bit Ken.

The most amazing thing about that is it only has 120 views. For a video with a topless model on the internet, that is a real surprise. It is proof of why Olympus couldn't sell enough cameras. They can't even promote tits on the internet.

BMMCC. I bought a cage for it, and it was a good deal to get top handle, which I thought would be good considering it has no IBIS, so I got that too, but couldn't work out how to rig it up! Awesome.... Hey - I see a photo I took in there! Cool 🙂 Obviously, this is the one I'm looking for: It was so obvious the whole time! Rode Video Mic Pro+, which has a reasonable shock-mount on it, but I don't want to bump it if I'm doing any more vigorous camera moves (which is what a top-handle is good for). I also don't want to have things too far forwards, as they'll get in the frame with a wide lens. I think the 7.5mm Laowa would be a great fit for it as it's got a horizontal FOV equivalent to a 22mm lens, and can focus quite close, so would be fun in a wider aspect ratio. I don't understand why people rig the top handle at the back like this: It means that all the weight of the rig is further forwards, so you're straining to hold it one handed, unless you're aiming at the ground that is. There are some cool ideas in there though:

Said people before 1080 and then before 4k and then 8k and now 12k.

Wow. That's an amazing image on Vimeo at 4K. Possibly one of the nicest I've seen. Those skintones glow. There's a 3D feel to some of those sequences which, I suppose, must be to do with capturing the focus fall-off of the lens at such a high resolution.

quick question... where do you guys watch 8k material? or even 4k?

If it has a solid 3200 iso and no fixed pattern noise it will be a winner. That said at the price point you may be tempted to get an FX9 or C300 MK3. BRAW is a huge advantage though and if you want or need 8k or highspeed 4k this really is a unique option at a low price point. I am actually more interested in Gen 5 color science.

I keep getting more and impressed by the actual image this camera is producing. I was kind of preparing to be "meh'd" by the footage, but the video quality looks fantastic in the few videos I have seen. The color science seems great and it seems to have a slight sharpness reduction which to me is fantastic - I hate overly sharp digital footage - i'm guessing this is due to the aa filter, similar to the S1H. It just slightly takes the edge off. I have said it before and I will say it again, it looks very similar to my C200 footage.

no debayer. it´s a pefekt 4k, 6k, 8k, cam. id the 14 stops are true this is the next step in motion picture imagers.

i understood it´s not a bayer sensor and you can scale the image resolution on sensor to get full uninterpolated color at 8k raw s-35. which is pretty neat.

From my understanding 8k and 4k are not cropped but scaled at least from the product page. So you should get 4k, 8k and 12k all raw and the same field of view that makes it much more practical.

I am not trying to be a snob, but I just can't watch the Tony and Chelsea videos anymore. Here are a couple of people suggesting cameras - often based on video features of a camera - and their videos are (technically) horrible. I mean, overly sharpened and contrasty (and both of them are at that age when having less sharpening would be a good idea). I hate the 60fps motion blur (or lack thereof). Tony's audio, in particular, is so crunchy it hurts. And I blame @IronFilm for making me care about audio quality. Life was so much easier when I had no clue what good audio sounds like.

The front page of EOSHD now has several of my shitposts on it https://www.eoshd.com/opinion/sony-announces-new-rumour-camera-yours-for-just-4000/ I sincerely hope nobody reads them! The EOS R5 may indeed be fake. Nobody has actually done a side by side comparison yet! The A7S III does however exist as the infamous Sony Rumours Camera Model 3 4K 120 GRAIL. Even the lambasted Sony menus have all been overhauled to resemble 12 pages of DPReview interviews with powerful Sony executives. The Creative Styles menu now has seven pages of arguments under it about Sony skin-tones and if you select the Sony Alpha Rumors mode the feed from the sensor speeds up and shoots a burst of 200 clickbait rumours onto CFExpress. Instead of a user manual it ships with so many online shopping codes that buying the Sony Alpha Rumour Mark III Filmmaker's Kit will save you $50 on the cost of Sandisk CFExpress cards* *You will need $5000 of them to store 12 rumours

If Canon insist of designing their own h265 encoder and use their own fabs for the prosessor, that's a very valid point to criticise. I can't see any good reason for them not to buy the design from ARM or Qualcom or whomever and get Global Foundries or someone else to produce it. I can understand why Canon want to produce their own image sensor, but for the prosessor they should license as much as possible except for the "Canon-sauce".

Still in the process. I'll open a thread on topic in the footage section : -)