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Next week, Panasonic ships the first model in the new UX Series of professional 4K camcorders. The UX Series is the successor to Panasonic's AVCCAM Series of professional AVCHD camcorders. Given the increasing demand for 4K video content, the UX Series is designed to facilitate the upward shift to 4K for professional image production. The UX series offer specifications, functions and designs that provide the same level of mobility, operability and workflow tracking ability as conventional HD handheld camcorders. The AG-UX90 standard model, shippinge next week. offers wide-angle 24.5mm (at FHD) and optical 15x zoom, and supports UHD 30p and FHD 60p recording. The AG-UX180 premium model will ship next month and features the industry's widest-angle 24mm (at 4K/FHD) and optical 20x zoom, and supports 4K 24p, UHD 60p/50p, FHD 60p/50p recording, 120fps/100fps HD super slow, dual codec recording (UHD/FHD), IR recording in dark places, 3G-SDI output, and TC PRESET input/output.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that Tennyson Tanner, a full post and production company based in Illinois, used URSA Mini 4.6K EF to shoot several television commercials, including spots for a popular energy drink and for the Southern Illinois Miners professional baseball team. Tennyson Tanner also used DaVinci Resolve Studio to color grade the spots.



Tennyson Tanner is an award winning company that has created a huge number of national and regional television commercials and films, as well as The Driving Dead, a hugely popular public safety web series that encourages safe driving. One of the company’s hallmarks is its ability to shoot in any terrain or weather, and as part of that it has designed a number of rugged off road pursuit vehicles and camera rigs.

For the energy drink commercials, which included 30 and 60 second spots, the URSA Mini 4.6K EF was used as the A camera. In the spots, DP and founder Tennyson Tanner, focused on showing the inspiration happening at Level Seven Motorsports, an Illinois based hot rod design and body shop company.

The commercials included shots of Level Seven-built cars on the road at sunrise and sunset, tight shots of drivers in motion taken from outside and inside the cars and shots from the inside of the body shop. Lighting and motion changed dramatically throughout the spots.

“As with all of our projects, we never allow difficult locations, tough angles or motion to get in the way of getting a shot, and the URSA Mini 4.6K was perfect for getting what we needed,” said Jonah Atkins, assistant DP from Tennyson Tanner. “With the energy drink spot, the URSA Mini was tacked onto a moving car, rigged for a variety of shots showing the various parts of the inside of the body shop and on open ground at the beginning and end of the day. With each shot, the camera worked great.”

“We varied our shots between ISO 400 and 800 and shot in ProRes, and decided to shoot very flat because we knew that the URSA Mini would give us plenty to work with in post,” he continued. For the in-car shots, we loaded the camera onto a modified Ronin rig with which we devised a new battery powering system. One of the things I love about this camera is that Blackmagic designed it knowing that it had to be able to be easily modified and used with everything we could dream up. It really lets us be as creative as we can.”

Footage shot with the URSA Mini 4.6K was matched with aerial footage shot with various drone cameras. “With the data we can get with this camera, we had no problem matching it with the aerial footage. In post, we were amazed at how easy it was to manipulate use the footage from the URSA Mini. After editing the first shot, we all looked around and said that we didn’t know a single reason why we would have used any other camera,” Jonah said.

Tennyson Tanner also used the URSA Mini 4.6K as the main camera on a series of commercials for the Southern Illinois Miners professional baseball team. The spots were 30 and 60 second commercials used as part of a campaign aimed at bringing fans back by the team. Tennyson Tanner used the URSA Mini 4.6K and DaVinci Resolve Studio to create an intense and dramatic feel to the spots to show consumers that change was on its way for the team.

Davinci // JESSE from GuerrillaFilm on Vimeo.

Press Photography
Product photos of all Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Blackmagic Camera 4.0 update adds a new operating system for Blackmagic URSA Mini which includes a new user interface with simple tap and swipe gestures for faster access to camera controls and settings, new exposure and focus assist tools, and much more. In addition, this update also provides enhancements to the Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder such as improved colorimetry, sensitivity of the proximity sensor and adds support for the new URSA Mini camera OS metadata settings, new frame guides, safe areas, grids and menu items for configuring overlay settings.



What's new in Blackmagic Camera Setup 4.0

 

Improvements since 4.0 Beta 2 include:

Improved timecode accuracy.

Improved RAW 3:1 and 4:1 performance.

Improved RAW Lossless high frame rate off-speed recording.

Stability improvements.

Improved focus assist on URSA Viewfinder.

Improved audio meters on URSA Viewfinder.

Fixed bug where tally could not be disabled on URSA Viewfinder.

Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K and 4K

New URSA Mini OS.

New heads up display.

New menu system to allow faster operation.

Monitoring options separately configurable for all outputs.

Added ability to load 3D LUTs (Look Up Table) for monitoring.

Added ability to save and load camera settings presets.

 

New Heads Up Display Features

Swipe up or down to show and hide the heads up display.

Added pan-able focus zoom.

Added ability to change frame rate directly from heads up display.

Added ability to change iris from heads up display on electronic lenses.

Added ability to toggle timecode or duration from heads up display.

Added ability to toggle favorite off-speed frame rate quickly.

Added ability to change shutter angle from heads up display.

Added flicker free shutter angle suggestions.

Added manual shutter angle option for up to 2 decimal places.

Added indicators for genlock, timecode status, and sensor window in heads up display.

Added ability to change ISO from heads up display.

Added ability to change white balance from heads up display.

Added white balance presets including daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, mixed lighting, and overcast.

Added tint control.

Added auto white balance feature.

Added audio input and headphone level control from the heads up display.

Added media status page for formatting cards and media information.

Added ability to toggle battery indicator from heads up display.

Added monitoring option controls from heads up display including zebra, focus assist, frame guide and grids.

 

New Metadata Features

Improved slate and metadata functionality.

Added lens data information to slate metadata.

Added auto-fill lens metadata from electronically controllable lenses.

Changed slate shortcut from a single tap to a sideways swipe on the LCD.

New Record Features

Added additional ProRes resolutions for URSA Mini 4.6K including 4.6K 16:9, 4.6K 2.4:1, 4K 16:9, 4K DCI, 3K Anamorphic, 2K 16:9 and 2K DCI.

Added additional RAW resolutions for URSA Mini 4.6K including 4.6K 2.4:1, 4K 16:9, 3K Anamorphic, 2K 16:9 and HD.

Added option to select the preferred card for recording.

 

New Monitor Features

Improved screen colorimetry for the built in LCD.

Added ability to switch 3D LUT on and off for each output individually.

Added ability to switch false color, zebras, focus assist, frame guides, grids and safe area guide on or off for each output individually.

Added clean feed toggle for each output.

Added program tally indicator for the built in LCD and Front SDI when using ATEM.

Added monitoring option for tally, crosshairs and centre dot as part of grids.

Added 14:9 frame guides.

Added configurable safe area guides.

Expanded options for focus assist to include red, green, blue, black and white as well as peaking.

Added option for viewing codec and resolution setting instead of meters on the built in LCD.

 

New Settings Features

Added ability to program function buttons as a preset for frame rate, iris, white balance, ISO or shutter angle.

Added ability to program function buttons for Up or Down frame rate, iris, white balance, ISO or shutter angle.

Added ability to program function buttons as a toggle for clean feed, display LUT, frame guides, focus assist, false color, zebra, grids, safe area guides, off-speed and color bars.

Added flicker free shutter frequency selection for 50Hz or 60Hz.

Added support for drop frame timecode.

Added ability to trigger color bars from camera.

Added factory reset function.

Added hardware ID display.

Added software version display.

 

New Presets Features

Added ability to create up to 12 global camera settings presets.

Added ability import and export camera presets to CFast media.

 

New 3D LUT Features

Added ability to monitor with 3D LUTs.

Added ability to import 3D LUT from CFast media.

Added ability to store up to 6 custom 17 point or 33 point LUTs into the camera’s internal flash memory.

Added the ability to export one of the camera’s 3D LUTs to CFast media so you can pass the 3D LUT to a colorist or editor.

Added ability to delete 3D LUT from camera’s internal memory.

 

New General Features

Improved timecode functionality for external timecode and jam timecode.

Improved white balance performance.

Added option for single clip or all clip playback.

Added loop playback feature.

 

Blackmagic URSA Viewfinder

Improved colorimetry for viewfinder.

Improved focus assist on URSA Viewfinder.

Improved proximity sensor sensitivity.

Improved proximity sensor timeout settings.

Improved frame guide appearance.

Added support for URSA Mini OS metadata settings.

Added support for new frame guides, safe area guides and grids.

Added menu items for configuring overlay settings.

All purchases of a VariCam LT camera (AU-V35LT1G) between 20 October 2016 and 31 December 2016 or while stocks last, will be rewarded by Panasonic with two 256GB expressP2 cards (AU-XP0256BG) free of charge! In order to benefit from this promotion, the buyer accepts that we transmits a copy of his invoice or any evidencing document to Panasonic. Any personal information supplied by an end user will be used by Panasonic and the participating dealers solely for the purpose of this promotion and in accordance with data protection legislation. All data will be deleted 7 days after the promotion is terminated.