That’s because Blackmagic Design
cameras aren’t nearly as well known
with clients as RED, ARRI, Sony, Pan-
asonic or Canon cameras.
On the other hand, some cli-
ents don’t care what you shoot with
(which was the case in this instance)
just as long as the results were pro-
fessional and the images looked and
sounded good, which they did. But
many clients—PR/marketing/cor-
porate/the studios—do care which
camera you use.
Still, it’s just one of several factors
to consider.
One of the most important, of
course, is price. The UMP G2, con-
figured the way I needed it to be con-
figured, costs close to $9,000 with all
of the accessories I’d need and want
to make it work for my shoots. How-
ever, I do have an alternative. Most
other camera manufacturers in this
segment offer multiple cameras in
this general price range.
Consider the following: Panasonic
offers the VariCam LT for just a little
more and the AU-EVA1 for a little
less. Sony offers the PXW-FS7, PXW-
FS7 MKII and soon the upcoming
PXW-FX9, for a couple of thousand
dollars more. Canon offers the C200
at roughly $500 more for the basic
camera package, except the EOS C200
includes the top handle, handgrip and
a few other accessories that are extra
on the URSA Mini Pro G2. Canon
is still selling the EOS C300 MKII,
as well, for just a little more than the
URSA Mini Pro G2.
So, if you want a camera in this price
range, you do have quite a few options.
My point is, there are a lot of candidates
for professional digital cinema cameras
in the $6,000-to-$10,000 space.
But Blackmagic does have one ace
in the hole: The URSA Mini Pro G2
has the ability, with the right Black-
magic accessories, to transform into a
live event or broadcast camera, some-
thing that none of its competitors are
designed to do.
The URSA Mini Pro G2 was
designed with this in mind. So ifhaving an extremely versatile camera is
important to your work, then the G2 is
worth considering.
Overall, we were impressed with the
URSA Mini G2 since it does a lot of
things exceedingly well, including its
superb slow-motion capability and its
menu system that’s a joy to navigate.
There is an additional way the
UMP G2 is unlike its competition:
Blackmagic Design makes one of the
best software suites for editing your
URSA Mini Pro G2 footage: It makes
DaVinci Resolve 16, and the company
even gives you a free copy of the Stu-
dio version with your purchase of the
camera. No camera manufacturer
makes a good editing program along
with its own lineup of pro digital cin-
ema cameras.
If the limitations mentioned can
be worked around in your work-
flow, the URSA Mini Pro offers an
excellent value, robust build quality
and a great image. It’s a cine cam-
era I’d consider as seriously as any of
its competition. DPPCertain features, like the excellent EVF, simple menus and class-leading slow-motion
capability, make the URSA Mini Pro G2 a contender against its competition.58 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com