Blackmagic Design releases film camera with 80-megapixel sensor for 12k video

By admin On Jul 20, 2020

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Blackmagic Design has announced the Ursa Mini Pro 12K video camera. The camera has an 80-megapixel Super35mm sensor, comparable to aps-c. The device can record in 12k resolution with 60fps and at 4k this increases to a maximum of 220fps.

The Australian Blackmagic Design uses a new sensor for the Ursa Mini Pro 12K with dimensions of 27.03×14.25mm and a resolution of 12.288×6480 pixels. At the maximum resolution, the camera can record at sixty frames per second. Files are captured in the Blackmagic RAW format. Compression is used here, because otherwise the amount of data cannot be written.

Recordings at 12k resolution with 24fps would yield a data stream of 2888MB / s uncompressed. With Blackmagic’s compressed raw formats, this varies between 578MB / s and 160MB / s, depending on the quality chosen.

At lower resolutions, the maximum recording speed increases if a crop of the sensor is selected. In the 8k crop mode, the camera goes up to 110fps and in the 4k crop mode that is a maximum of 220fps. The Ursa Mini Pro 12K also supports frame rates such as 24, 25 and 30fps at all resolutions.

It is also possible to film in 8k and 4k resolutions while the full 12k resolution from the sensor is read. Downsampling is then applied in the camera, so that all image information from the sensor is used.

The sensor does not have a traditional Bayer filter, but a custom filter that is optimized for different resolutions according to the manufacturer. According to John Brawley, a director of photography who has tried the camera, the sensor has a 6×6 grid filter with six red, green and blue sub-pixels, combined with 18 white sub-pixels. The video maker has put an example video on Vimeo.

The Ursa Mini Pro 12K has an interchangeable lens mount, a pl mount is supplied as standard. The camera has built-in nd filters, two CFast card slots and a USB-C output that allows data transfer up to 10Gbit / s for recording to an external NVME SSD.

Blackmagic is releasing the Ursa Mini Pro 12K for 11,999 euros. It is the first cinema camera capable of recording in 12k resolution. The manufacturer aims with the device at professional film and television makers.