First footage from Blackmagic URSA 4.6K

Blackmagic URSA 4.6K: First Footage

Here's the first footage released by Blackmagic from its new 4.6K variant of the URSA camera.

Blackmagic released a video from its just-announced URSA update with a new 4.6K sensor during NAB 2015, but in the rush of news, somehow it didn't make publication. But for those that haven't yet seen the footage, here it is on Blackmagic's site (They don't seem to let us embed it here). You have to scroll down the page to see the video

 Here's what 'CaptainHook', the shooter of the URSA 4.6K teaser video, had to say on the Blackmagic Forum:

Couple of things about the URSA 4.6k footage for some 'background'. I shot this on a prototype so things were still in development and changing. This was also just me shooting solo with the URSA like previously and is "home movie" type stuff intended to be a quick first look. In fact, last time with my URSA beta video i had Danelle helping me to carry some gear but this time it was just me shooting some friends and around the city - definitely no crew or anything like that. For the kitchen shots and the drumming i set up some lights, everything else is 100% natural light, not even bounce. Grading on this video is purposely VERY simple. It's really just a quick setting of white balance, then contrast and saturation. I didn't tweak individual colours or even shift colours with Lift/Gamma/Gain because i wanted to show the great natural colour "out of the box". This part is my personal opinion and obviously now that i work for BMD people will take it with a grain of salt (to be expected), but personally i think we've made a BIG improvement on colour - colour that i already really liked which led me to first purchase the BMCC as a customer. I think the improvement in colour is just as big as the improvement on dynamic range. With DR, so far in my experience i think it's safe to say that whatever you rate the Pocket Camera to be, add roughly 2 stops. 1 stop in the highlights, and another stop in the shadows. I can't wait for people to get this and go shoot some incredible footage with it!

Sure, there's the question of whether we should judge cameras based on footage that's been downres'd and compressed, but we can only go by what's out there and, currently, this is it. I think the URSA 4.6K yields a very attractive image and the additional latitude (up to 15 stops, as claimed by Blackmagic) is readily apparent. I can't wait to see more from this camera. Hopefully, more prototypes will find their way into the hands of shooters soon, so we can see what this camera can really do (and so we can get some downloadable files at full-resolution).

What do you think of the footage? Are you excited for the new URSA and URSA Mini with the 4.6K sensor? Let us know in the comments!