Blackmagic today allowed beta testers of the soon to ship Blackmagic URSA 4.6K sensor, talk about there thoughts of the camera and release intial footage. Below is Roman the beta testers initial thoughts that were posted on BMCuser forum

Shipping of the camera has not yet commenced but if you think this is the camera for you best you put your order in sooner rather than later.

Hi guys, as some of you know BMD has graciously let me beta test the URSA Mini 4.6K over the past little while, and now they've let us talk a bit about the camera, and even share some footage.

First off I want to say, the footage here in, is pretty simple. Just a few shots of people and skin tones. I do have footage with a little more variety coming soon— landscapes, more stabilized footage, more dynamic range type shots, but for now just some really simple walk around type stuff that anyone with the camera might get after a few days with it. Please don't get the wrong idea about this video. Most of the shots here were not intended as beauty shots to "show off" the camera. I under/overexposed the hell out of nearly everything, and then tried to bring it to a solid place afterwards. This is me testing the camera not showing it off per se.



So, as you might know this is pre-production still at this point, as BMD is still nailing down the color science. Also to note, I am no colorist like Kholi, Hook and others here on the forums. These clips are as simple as it gets. I just did a VERY basic correction using 1 or 2 nodes at the most on any given clip, sometimes offsetting the color a bit for a look. No LUTs, or Filmconvert etc was used.

I hope to do a proper review soon, but for now I'll mention what I'm liking about the camera instead of getting too specific about differences between previous cameras and the Mini.

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.

I'm sure Tom will by sometime soon to indulge you all on more technical aspects along with others. But I just wanted to give you a super brief "feel" for the camera / my opinions.