Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65: First footage as camera preps for release

You show me yours, I'll show you mine. Following the Fujifilm GFX Eterna footage debut yesterday, Blackmagic has rather upped the ante by releasing the first footage shot with the $30k Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, which looks to be available soon.

One of the sure signs that a new Blackmagic camera is about to hit the market is when the company updates Blackmagic RAW to accommodate it.  That's just what Blackmagic has done overnight, not only releasing Blackmagic RAW 4.5 to include support for the forthcoming (now presumably imminent) Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, but also the rest of the company's video ecosystem: Blackmagic Camera 9.3, Blackmagic Video Assist 3.19, and, of course, DaVinci Resolve 19.1.4, Fusion Studio 19.1.4, and more. Head to https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/ for more.

And all those updates are particularly relevant to Resolve users too because it's also released a load of footage from the camera that you can download and play with.

There are two main videos, Iceland and The Ranch, both of which come with their own BTS videos and stacks of individual clips that you can download. Head here for more.

Its not a totally fair comparison because the camera is so much farther down the development path, but compared to the 20 seconds of the GFX Eterna we got to see yesterday (which people incidentally seem to have quite strong opinions about), it's a bit of a classic spoiler operation.

Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65: Iceland 

Cinematographer: Florent Piovesan
Camera Operator / First AC: Alex Botton
Second AC: Thomas Teissier
Actor: Amanda Maleix

This footage was shot by Of Two Lands’ founder, French filmmaker Florent Piovesan. “I’ve shot on Blackmagic’s cameras before, so I found it pretty easy to understand the URSA Cine’s menu," he says. "Because this landscape has been featured in films like Prometheus, Interstellar, Oblivion and Game of Thrones, I wanted a set of lenses that would show this landscape exactly as it is. I wanted everything to be authentic, and so I finally decided on Tokina Vista Cine primes. Even though the image circle for these lenses is quoted as 46.7mm, their 35mm and longer lenses have an image illumination circle with enough coverage for a 65mm sensor!

"What I wasn’t prepared for was how beautiful this landscape looks on Blackmagic’s YRGB 17K sensor. Having all that extra resolution was like having a microscope on the back of the lens capturing every bit of detail in the landscape.”

Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65: The Ranch 

Cinematographer: Dylan Rucker
Producer: Troy Jackson
Assistant Director: Amanda Dodge
Trinity Operator: Daniel Vorlet
First AC: Matthew Bellamy
Second AC: Stephen Johnson
Drone Operator: Ben Ellingson
Gaffer: Chris Anthony
Key Grip: Andrew Williams
Set PA: Monica Morgan
Actor 1: Cole Nallion
Actor 2: Kamal Miller
Actor 3: Lauren Vemeys

Dylan Rucker’s short films and music videos are known for their gritty realism. Natural colors and beautiful landscapes is what he wanted from the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65.

“I love working with cameras that bring out colors and textures that are true to what I see! I haven’t shot a whole lot on Blackmagic URSAs before, so I was really interested in shooting with their new 140 megapixel sensor. 

“65mm cinematography is as close as you get to see in real life. Even when shooting on a 24mm lens, the field of view is more like a 14mm, but without the distortion you get with full frame. So there’s more depth and separation with 65mm cinematography, that makes everything feel super real!

“Having a 65mm sensor in a camera the size of the URSA Cine, means you can easily throw it on a drone, car rig, Steadicam or techno crane. It also has 16 stops of latitude and these cool monitors on the operator and assistant side, that really speeds things up! This camera has off speeds that were great for some of the horse scenes, and surprisingly, it will also shoot in 8K and 4K as well.

And we thought this was an interesting quote as well, especially for anyone thinking how on earth they will deal with all that data.

“Being able to work with 65mm 17K files was a lot easier than you would think. The URSA Cine has an 8TB media module in the side of the camera body. But because we were recording 17K in Blackmagic RAW Q3, we only had 3TBs of footage over the two days we were shooting, so there was plenty of media capacity. The media module pulls out of the camera which then mounts into Blackmagic’s own Media Dock. From there it went to a Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini network drive, using a 10GB Ethernet workflow.”

Pricing and availability

The Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65 will cost $29,995 or local equivalent. Looking around the various resellers, preorders are open and, while there is no firm release date, the 'new item shipping soon' toggle is firmly turned on. And if people weren't already interested before, the seven minutes plus of edited footage and sheer amount of other clips that have just been released will probably start a few interesting conversations in forthcoming productions.