How does the URSA MINI 4.6 fare against the RED EPIC DRAGON 6k

[jonathan murphy]

Curious as I am thinking about downsizing from a Red Epic Dragon to maybe an FS7/Ursa mini 4.6 combo. FS7 for run and gun and URSA Mini for studio/higher end stuff.

Has anyone shot with both the ursa mini 4.6 AND a RED epic Dragon? How does it hold up (both how it shoots and image quality)?

Thanks!

 

[Frank Glencairn]

Red, Alexa/Amira, Ursa - I shoot all of them, and IMHO the differences are nothing to write home about.
All of them get out of your way, all of them are good enough for everything.

The person behind the camera, and what is going on in front of the camera, makes all the difference again - like in the old days of 35mm film.

 

[jonathan murphy]

Thanks for the response.. Can you really push the Ursa in post? I am a colorist as well and do lots of color grading. I assume the raw does well but just havent worked on any of this footage yet.

 

[Frank Glencairn]

I know I gonna get flak for saying this here, but compared to the Ursa's raw DNGs - R3D feels like ProRes.
Never saw so much flexibility in any footage, especially when you use Resolve.

 

[jonathan murphy]

I know I gonna get flak for saying this here, but compared to the Ursa's raw DNGs - R3D feels like ProRes.
Never saw so much flexibility in any footage, especially when you use Resolve.

Does it thrash your computer? Or is it decently easy to work with? I mostly work with red raw 6k footage. Also are file sizes much bigger? That is interesting to hear.. I use resolve so very appealing.

 

[Frank Glencairn]

Just to give you an idea

 

[jonathan murphy]

wow thats impressive. very nice

 

[Frank Glencairn]

You need fast drives and a beefy GPU with at least 4GIG ram, CPU doesn't mater that much, since most work is done on the GPU.
Just download some material and give it a test ride.

 

[jonathan murphy]

So I dont have a red rocket card... so for my machine RED footage is really hard on the cpu as it has to decode it. Are you saying it doesnt use the CPU to decode? This could be a win win win for me. I currently have a 12 core titan x mac pro (as my main machine)

and am looking at getting an alienware 13 OLED with i7 6700HQ Quad core and 1060 gtx graphics card. 1060 has 6gb of ram. So theoretically this laptop system would do well with this footage?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Frank Glencairn]

Yes, they both should work just fine, as long as your drives are fast enough.

 

[jonathan murphy]

Yeah I will have an m.2 pcie for OS, 1 m.2 pcie for cache and 1 pcie m.2 connected via USB 3.1 for media (on the mobile system)

 

[Frank Glencairn]

I work from a bunch of software RAID 0 striped drives (spinning), even that is fast enough.

 

[jonathan murphy]

I work from a bunch of software RAID 0 striped drives (spinning), even that is fast enough.

Have you shot with the FS7 or FS7 12 bit raw by chance? Also thinking about going that direction

 

[Petter Brandt]

Have always had a lot of moireissues with blackmagic and the one time I used the ursa mini 4.6k wasn't an exception. Really wanted to like that camera but the moire makes it useless imho

Didn't really love the handling of the camera either, like the limited swiveling of the touch screen, overall feel of build quality wasn't super didn't try the new camera os but the old had a lot of things feeling half done.

So try it for real before you buy!

 

[jonathan murphy]

Thanks for the comment. Good to know. Does anyone know how the FS7 Raw holds up to the ursa mini 4.6k or Red epic dragon?

 

[jonathan murphy]

Anyone else have any thoughts on the blackmagic usra 4.6k or FS7? Would love to hear them as I ponder the biggest decision of my life (not really)

 

[Dermot Shane]

i'm a colorist, so i see what come out of the pipe only.. have graded / finished one indie film shot on each, in both cases there was no real issues with either camera's files, in a great DP's hands they both can produce great images

what it took to get those files into my hands looking great i could not comment on tho ;-)

 

[C.H.Haskell]

Fixed pattern is a issue, even at 800 which is native....1600 and it is very noticeable. Sent my 1st camera back, got another sensor....same issue. There is a sort of blackmagic sensor lottery you have to play to get what you want and so far I have not won this in my experience. Having said that, I have been able to produce lovely results. My ursa mini 4.6k just got stolen on a Job in Berkeley...would I buy again ? Probably not due to FPN and overall quality control on sensors.

 

[David Peterson]

Anyone else have any thoughts on the blackmagic usra 4.6k or FS7? Would love to hear them as I ponder the biggest decision of my life (not really)

The FS7 is a hot hot HOT property, and has been for a while now. And the FS7 mk2 has some nice little updates over the FS7 mk1.

The FS7 has a great degree of flexibility in terms of what you want it to be. You can use it straight out of the box, you can rig it up, you can run and gun with it as an ENG camera, you can use it as a heavy duty cinema camera, and so on and so on. It is very flexible in how you can use it as you wish.

While URSA Mini 4.6K is also a very good camera, but it serves a relatively narrower niche.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Thanks for the response.. Can you really push the Ursa in post? I am a colorist as well and do lots of color grading. I assume the raw does well but just havent worked on any of this footage yet.

I've done a few Ursa 4K projects (no 4.6 yet), and I found it to be a somewhat noisy camera for post. Nothing that was a disaster, just noisier than I like to see. My impression is you need more fill light and you have to rate it lower than the manufacturer's spec.