The Highs, Lows And Bottom Line
After using the UMP G2 on our project
and taking it through its paces, here’s
my general assessment of what I found:
The Highs:
- It’s well-built and
robustly constructed. - It comes with the best menus
of any camera I’ve ever used.
Simple, clean, easy to navigate and
find settings. - Excellent electronic viewfinder
(EVF). - Exceptional slow-motion capabili-
ties. In fact, I’d rent this camera
just to shoot slow motion. - RAW, with multiple compression
ratios, and Prores LT, 422, HQ,
444 and XQ. In short, you have
an excellent selection of codecs to
choose from. - The Integrated recording unit
that uses SSDs is slick: Every
camera on the market should have
this feature.- Beautiful, very natural image,
with great color science. - Nice integration with accessories.
Blackmagic makes and sells the
EVF, V-Mount and Gold-Mount
plate, shoulder mount kit, hand-
grip and SSD recorder, all at a rea-
sonable cost. They’re also all well-
integrated. There’s no third-party
confusion that you end up with
when using other camera brands
to obtain the same accessories.
- Beautiful, very natural image,
The Lows:- No Waveform Monitor. Histo-
grams are for stills and close to
useless for digital cinemas with no
scale or IRE to expose skin tones
correctly at a glance, although
you can at least get an idea
with Zebras. - Audio XLR inputs are located in
an awkward location. - No cold shoe on-handle in shoul-
der mount kit. - The 4-inch LCD screen only
flips out 45 degrees, instead of 90
degrees and folds against the body.
(You might try out the G2's selfie
mode, if you shoot alone and want
to adjust settings or lighting. )- Shoulder pad barely allows
forward or backward movement
to balance for many different lens
and battery combos. When you
do need to adjust it, you need a
screwdriver and have to loosen and
tighten two screws. - Using the handgrip, it isn’t easy to
feel for and find the record button. - Mediocre in low light. The maxi-
mum ISO I’d use is ISO 1600. I
found ISO 3200 was too noisy. - Needs extended ND: The internal
NDs only go to ND 6, which isn’t
enough for sunny days at the beach
or snowy days.
The URSA Mini Pro G2 features an internal
scratch microphone for when you can’t
hook up an external shotgun to record
scratch audio.56 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com