Sun Apr 23, 2017 12:51 pm
Had a chance today to test these two cameras against each other. I tested each camera cold, after heating up to working temperature and finally after calibration. I opened test pictures in Photoshop and in Resolve, of course I recorded RAW, uncompressed in the case of the Ursa Mini Pro, since Adobe's software doesn't read compressed DNGs until today, even with their latest update. The Scarlet's recording was at the usual 8:1 compression.
A few observations:
All pictures were black on a calibrated screen without massive lifting. When I turned the "Exposure" parameter in Photoshop to 10, I finally saw real differences.
The UM46P showed a bit more noise when cold, while the Scarlet got more noisy when at working temperature. The Scarlet had about 7 dead pixels, one quite prominent in the center, while the UM46P had no dead pixels – or thousands of them. What does that mean? Well, the lifted noise of the UM46P was darker in general, but had more contrast with many small lighter pixels. There was some vertical FPN all over the DNGs, a bit stronger on the left side. The Scarlet showed minimal traces of horizontal FPN in some areas.
After calibration, which takes about 13 minutes (!) with the Scarlet, all dead pixels were gone, as was any trace of FPN. There was only very smooth, irregular colored noise left, very cinematic, but at a bit higher intensity than from the UM46P.
The UM46P improved only marginally, both noise and FPN was reduced slightly, but not much. It had probably been calibrated recently, and calibration takes only a few seconds. The Scarlet can store a few calibrations for different temperatures and/or exposure times, which is not really important for the UM46P with such short calibration times.
When I compared the footage in Resolve (both set to log) and turned the gain up to 4, the noise band from the Scarlet was a bit narrower and touched the 50% level, but it was very smooth. The noise band from the UM46P was lower, but wider and hat obvious spikes, that also touched 50% at maximum – these were fixed pattern.
Conclusion: these are both CMOS sensors, so don't starve them for light. Yes, the UM46P has some FPN, but nothing that should ruin your footage if shoot at reasonable light levels. BTW, the Scarlet MX was close to 10K with all accessories to make it work (minus a lens) when I last checked second hand offers and it doesn't have the same frame rates the UM46P offers and no ProRes or uncompressed RAW. Not bad, BM!
A few observations:
All pictures were black on a calibrated screen without massive lifting. When I turned the "Exposure" parameter in Photoshop to 10, I finally saw real differences.
The UM46P showed a bit more noise when cold, while the Scarlet got more noisy when at working temperature. The Scarlet had about 7 dead pixels, one quite prominent in the center, while the UM46P had no dead pixels – or thousands of them. What does that mean? Well, the lifted noise of the UM46P was darker in general, but had more contrast with many small lighter pixels. There was some vertical FPN all over the DNGs, a bit stronger on the left side. The Scarlet showed minimal traces of horizontal FPN in some areas.
After calibration, which takes about 13 minutes (!) with the Scarlet, all dead pixels were gone, as was any trace of FPN. There was only very smooth, irregular colored noise left, very cinematic, but at a bit higher intensity than from the UM46P.
The UM46P improved only marginally, both noise and FPN was reduced slightly, but not much. It had probably been calibrated recently, and calibration takes only a few seconds. The Scarlet can store a few calibrations for different temperatures and/or exposure times, which is not really important for the UM46P with such short calibration times.
When I compared the footage in Resolve (both set to log) and turned the gain up to 4, the noise band from the Scarlet was a bit narrower and touched the 50% level, but it was very smooth. The noise band from the UM46P was lower, but wider and hat obvious spikes, that also touched 50% at maximum – these were fixed pattern.
Conclusion: these are both CMOS sensors, so don't starve them for light. Yes, the UM46P has some FPN, but nothing that should ruin your footage if shoot at reasonable light levels. BTW, the Scarlet MX was close to 10K with all accessories to make it work (minus a lens) when I last checked second hand offers and it doesn't have the same frame rates the UM46P offers and no ProRes or uncompressed RAW. Not bad, BM!
Now that the cat #19 is out of the bag, test it as much as you can and use the subforum.
Studio 18.6.6, MacOS 13.6.6, 2017 iMac, 32 GB, Radeon Pro 580
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G
Studio 18.6.6, MacOS 13.6.6, 2017 iMac, 32 GB, Radeon Pro 580
MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and iPhone 15 Pro
Speed Editor, UltraStudio Monitor 3G
