Blackmagic Design URSA Mini Pro 12K

I have been shooting for 30 years; 8mm, 16mm, news cameras, XL1S, HVX200, etc... and yes, RED. I own RED and was looking for a newer version because mine was out of date. I always had my eye on it when it was $10K but when it dropped to $6K, it was a no-brainer. Hell, a RED Komodo (6K, limited frame rate, clunky) is around $10 when you get the kit.Why this over RED for me?COLOR SCIENCEThe Gen5 color science. I hated Gen3. Gen4 was a big jump but when Gen5 came out, wow... just amazing, it looks almost identical to an Alexa, not a RED. The highlight roll-off is amazing and the skin tones are great.FRAME RATESIt's insane the variety you can shoot with this... I did 240 frames in 4K. Shooting waves in Hawai'i crashing is so surreal. You really won't use the full 12K but if you want to, it's there for you, the issue is that no codec supports it beyond BRAW so you have to still downconvert to 8K. Of course, you can punch-in from 12K to 8K.ON-BOARD NDsRED cultists will say, "Ah, real DPs use a mattebox and filters!" Or, you can include it and make life a million times easier for today's one-person crews, with more and more being asked of DPs. Couple clicks and you can get your exposure chopped down nicely. What's great for me is that I use a variety of lenses; from PLs to vintage DSLRs and I don't want to eat-up my mattebox stages with fumbling around trying to find the right amount of ND filters.ON-BOARD FULL XLRsEven the most high-end REDs don't have real XLR inputs, I don't get it. This does.MEDIAThe dealbreaker for me with REDs is the media. It's insane how they charge $2,350 for just under 1 TB. Here? All you need is a SanDisk SSD... a 2 TB one is around $300. That's all of the framerates.ALL-IN-ONEEverything's all built in basically. When you buy a RED, you get the 'brain' and think it's not too bad but then you add on everything else you have to buy and that's at least another $10,000 for the high end cameras.DYNAMIC RANGEUnfortunately, Black Magic is too humble about their dynamic range claims since they're in the color-grading business. RED always flat-out lies about their DR, claiming 17+ on cameras then independent tests show it's more in the 15 range. With this, I believe the claim is 14 stops of DR but tests showed that it's actually a true 15.5 I immediately noticed that when I shot in incredibly contrasty conditions and still had details in the whites and darks.TRUE PL MOUNTI love that I can safety mount a PL on this without some weird RF-PL converter. Also, you can get DSLR mounts.VALUE FOR THE DOLLARFind a $6K that looks as good as this. You absolutely can't. Then, start comparing it to the bigger cameras. I still like Alexa and Venice overall but this is right there. I'd put the RED Raptor's (around $45Kish with kit) sensor slightly ahead of this. Other than that, I'm sorry, this is right there and it's splitting hairs which you prefer but this looks "cinematic." You can make an incredible film with this... for a fraction of the cost as other cameras.

Completely worth buying!

We were sold a lemon. We sent it in to Blackmagic Design and they found both SDI ports were not working. As soon as we got it back and turned it on today it began to have additional issues. It goes back to the manufacturer again tomorrow. We have had it for over 2 months, Aug 29th, and not been able to use it! Not sure where the blame lies, but we can't believe they just wouldn't send us a new one. Nothing like feeling like a second class citizen. On the plus side we only spent an extra $100 to ship it the first time and the second time Blackmagic decided to be super generous and is paying for shipping. Yeah. 😑