Zacuto shrink the EVF - Gratical Eye available soon for $1950

[Andrew Reid]

An eye for an eye.

Shipping from April 25th, the Gratical Eye is something I've been waiting a long time for, to pair with cameras like the Panasonic GH4, Canon 1D C and Sony A7S II - a super compact EVF which rivals the beautiful new Leica SL EVF for image quality. It features a very large 0.61" panel (similar to the Leica SL's 0.66" EVF) and packs 5 megapixel resolution versus the 4.4MP of the Leica SL's.

Read the blog post

[Mattias Burling]

That looks very tasty. Perfect size for so many cameras that you don't want top heavy.

[Jimmy]

Could be interesting paired up with the BM micro

 

Edit - The outputs + power don't seem ideal for very bare bones Micro use.

[Eno]

Don't confuse mega Pixels with mega Dots (R, G and B sub pixels). This screen has 5 Mdots or 1,66 Mpixels and the Leica has 4,4 Mdots or 1,46 Mpixels effective resolution!

[marcuswolschon]

D-Tap and BNC power.... so I can't run it from an Atomos Power Station that runs the GH4R.

[Oliver Daniel]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

An eye for an eye.

Shipping from April 25th, the Gratical Eye is something I've been waiting a long time for, to pair with cameras like the Panasonic GH4, Canon 1D C and Sony A7S II - a super compact EVF which rivals the beautiful new Leica SL EVF for image quality. It features a very large 0.61" panel (similar to the Leica SL's 0.66" EVF) and packs 5 megapixel resolution versus the 4.4MP of the Leica SL's.

Read the blog post

 

For me, the power features ruin the potential of this product.

Doesn't make sense to have a micro type product, which you have to put on a rig to power up. Might as well have one of the larger ones off a different brand for less money. 

[Hans Punk]

That looks like it would work very nicely on the BM Ursa mini

[Garug]

I like the form factor and how it looks, looks like a high quality tool, but for the price I would expect better resolution than 1280x1024. 

[Andrew Reid]

36 minutes ago, Garug said:

I like the form factor and how it looks, looks like a high quality tool, but for the price I would expect better resolution than 1280x1024. 

That is 2700dpi on a panel that size dude. Why would you need more?

[Mattias Burling]

1 hour ago, Oliver Daniel said:

 

For me, the power features ruin the potential of this product.

Doesn't make sense to have a micro type product, which you have to put on a rig to power up. Might as well have one of the larger ones off a different brand for less money. 

It makes sense for cameras that has a power outlet or that uses external power as standard. 
IMO, pretty much the cameras where a $2000 external EVF makes sense.

[marcuswolschon]

2 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

That is 2700dpi on a panel that size dude. Why would you need more?

To see if you nailed the focus on that 4K shot of cause.

FullHD would have been good, so you can se at least every 4th pixel.

The panel size could well have been larger without sacrificing functionality if that was the price of higher resolution.

We're talking about the same price as an Atomos Shogun Flame but without the ability to actually record, play back, SDI, HDR, 10-bit or calibration.

[BrorSvensson]

This with an fs5 seems like a killer combo.

[Mattias Burling]

5 minutes ago, BrorSvensson said:

This with an fs5 seems like a killer combo.

There is one in this,

 

[Garug]

41 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

That is 2700dpi on a panel that size dude. Why would you need more?

I do not see the relevance of the panel DPI and is it 2700dpi, but anyway I have Sony HMZ-T1(3D head mount display) with 1280x720 OLED panels very nice panels, two of them, likely very similar panels than on this, but thanks to the optics between the panels and eye, individual pixels are clearly visible. I assume Zacuto has better optics, so the pixels should be even more visible. 

[Hans Punk]

One thing that Zacuto does very well are EVF's.

It's their one product line where the price point is always seems worth it, especially when it comes to the build quality and display panels they use. You'd still be hard pressed to notice the pixels on the first generation EVF they launched about 6 years ago, and that was only 800x 480!

[Don Kotlos]

6 minutes ago, yoclay said:

Andrew the thing I don't understand, is that you mention Panasonic GH4, Canon 1D C and Sony A7S II.  But this is an SDI only unit. So it will not work with HDMI out unless you use some kind of converter box.  Which kind of defeats the purpose, no?

Yeah me neither. SD1->HDMI converter plus a power unit make this larger (and much more expensive) than the smallHD 501. 

 

[roxics]

I'm sure it's nice, but the price of cinema gear is out of hand. I realize it's a niche market, but these companies price this stuff like we're all working on multi-million dollar productions. This thing shouldn't cost more than a Playstation. It neither has the size or complexity of a smart TV yet you can buy a couple of those for the price of this.  

[Bandido]

10 hours ago, Hans Punk said:

That looks like it would work very nicely on the BM Ursa mini

But the Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder is $455 less and matches the URSA cameras (Standard and Mini) perfectly.

[aldolega]

2 hours ago, roxics said:

I'm sure it's nice, but the price of cinema gear is out of hand. I realize it's a niche market, but these companies price this stuff like we're all working on multi-million dollar productions. This thing shouldn't cost more than a Playstation. It neither has the size or complexity of a smart TV yet you can buy a couple of those for the price of this.  

Sony sells, what, millions of Playstations? Hundreds of thousands at least? And Zacuto will sell, what, maybe ten thousand of these- at the most? It's not even close to fair to be comparing pricing on the two.

[Hans Punk]

It's obviously not aimed at the feature/price point that most of the DSLR crowd would be comfortable with - it's more aimed at fs5/7/Ursa owners who have SDI and power output direct from their camera and understand the advantage of having a compact top quality EVF that can be swapped across cameras and rigged to perfectly custom suit the user (and bypass the often inferior EVF available for that specific camera). It will most probably will be a good solution for the numerous box - shaped camera bodies that will no doubt be announced at NAB soon, camera bodies that will just ship with sockets and mounting holes for people to have stripped for drones, or rigged out for shoulder use as they see fit. Since this EVF requires external power, an addition of a tiny HDMI to SDI converter box is negligible inconvenience to those determined to use HDMI out only cameras. Those who think this EVF is expensive are correct, but at the moment (pre NAB) Zacuto have the market lead, and have no obvious competition that match them for build and image quality...they could easily bump the price to $2.5k if they wanted and would still shift units. A good quality EVF such as this (or Gratical) will devalue less than most of the cameras it will be used on, the original 5 year old Z-finder EVF still retails for around £700 at CVP here in the UK.