Blackmagic announced some exciting new products last week; two control panels specifically designed for color correction work, a Linux version of DaVinci Resolve, and a new version of their Mini URSA camera, the Mini URSA Pro. Color Control Panels When Blackmagic acquired DaVinci Resolve, they took it in a new direction; they separated it from the expensive external control panel it had previously required, created Macintosh and Windows versions, released free versions, and greatly expanded the editing functionality of the application. In short, they seemed to be turning it away from a color editing powerhouse into an all-in-one production tool. […]

Ben Gaskell is a freelance cinematographer and DP for Witness Project, a series of short documentaries about oppression. For a recent episode on Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada 2015, Gaskell shot on the Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K using old Lomo anamorphic lenses. Filmmaker: How did you get involved with this project? Gaskell: The director was an editor on a documentary that I worked on and he knew that I had a knack for bringing an artistic flare to the documentary genre. We chatted about the series and ended up finding a common language, and he was really interested in the […]

The Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K was supposed to ship back in October, but after encountering some engineering issues Blackmagic has finally announced that it is shipping, though minus one important feature: global shutter. In a press release announcing that the URSA Mini 4.6K and the Micro Cinema Camera are shipping, Blackmagic acknowledged that they had encountered problems with the global shutter in both cameras, though the problems were evidently different for each. Blackmagic decided to give up on the feature, in part because they think the key feature of the Mini 4.6K is really the high dynamic range, and when you […]