Jamie LeJeune wrote:
To be "scientific" these tests must have a control. To know for certain whether the results you're getting from pushing the image to unrealistic extremes mean anything, there's got to be a known standard of comparison. Otherwise, no actual conclusion can be drawn from any of this.
Science is theory and observation. A study. It has to start somewhere. And before any standards can be derived from science there is a lot of trial and error. If there were a standard to measure by and the issue had already been quantified, there would be little need for science.
Taking pictures with turret caps on and without lenses to reveal possible flaws of a camera , is, when employed on a Camera using Lenses to capture real-life images, scientific by nature

In this case, it would require a known sensor that everyone agrees is standard that is then put through the same test as the Ursa Mini 4.6k sensor and given an identical grade in Resolve.
What if the sensor is working and performing just fine in other camera bodies ? But the camera body in question has an off-center cooling unit blowing cold air from the right side of the sensor thus generating non-uniform temperatures of the sensor. In this case the sensor would be fine but its cooling would induce its flaws. What if the the color filters on the sensor were unevenly applied by one manufacturer and evenly by the other ? In this case the sensor would perform perfectly well in the latter condition but exhibit major flaws in the other.
We don't even know if the sensor is the problem. How could we then agree on any one sensor ?
The sensor is an important but very small part in all that could skew the quality of an image.
Given the nature that Black Magic would not intentionally ship nor kidney-test each camera prior to shipping, they only way for them to learn that something went wrong in production is when the camera operators report back...
In this case of the UM46. When first getting one's camera and paying a premium for it, no one would expect it to be faulty. And thus (me at least) not begin by conducting weird and extreme scientific tests. One would unpack his camera (like I did) be happy as a baby and start shooting some test footage and look at it...
If the person in question has had past experience in buying cameras he would know what to expect from one.
If that same person had been shooting 1000 of images for the past decade or more - it would be safe to assume that he/she would have some idea of how images look captured from a wide variety of scenes.
So when he eagerly and with great passion takes his first look at the test photos he would not sit there with a grim look on his face expecting to see artifacts, he would naturally assume that the camera which he has been waiting for the past 12 months (like the cameras he bought in the past did) is going to blow him away and thus justify his 9K investment !
If most the test photos reveal artifacts that the user has never before been confronted with by any camera not even a $100 cheap-cam on an iPhone, naturally he is going to think that this is fixable in his favorite software or that he did something wrong. So he double checks. Triple checks. Quadruple checks. If all his experience neutralizing and grading images the past decades won't allow him to correct for the artifacts then and only then he adventures on to the scientific stage of shooting white backgrounds and other extremities like naked sensor shots or with turret/lens caps on. Who in their right mind would begin shooting images that aren't images because the lens is detached, of evenly lit white backgrounds - as the first shot of a brand new camera which they just bought ?
I did exactly what I described above, shot images in my apartment of my daughter (we happen to have white painting on the walls) - on our balcony which has white stone walls, in our kitchen with lots of natural gray by nature caused by stainless steel pottery.
Most those images revealed strong magenta shifts on the right side of the camera and towards the left side, cyan shifts to go to strong magenta on the outer left side (not as strong as the right side). The center was gray. I would have to choose to either balance for edges or center. Only none of the result were uniform.
So then and only then did I venture into to the scientific state of testing the camera.
All those cap and wall tests when boosted to the extreme revealed identical patterns recognizable from the normal images I had shot. And if that is the case it is safe to assume that the artifacts present in my normal images were not caused by cam-operator-error nor by weird lighting. So the tests were merely revealing what I had already seen in the test images. And thus used for comparison only.
Remember - I did not start off by taking weird scientific images and boosting their flaws with the camera I had been waiting for so long and paid 9kEURO for - I was forced into that corner. As matter of fact, if you scroll back in this here thread you will find that I took the stance that folks with the issue should 'just' properly balance their imagery. I was refusing to believe that it could be the camera. I was very wrong and as you can read here, I was sorely corrected

I did not start this topic of Magenta - it was there long before I began writing. Dating back to the days of beta testing even. I am not sitting in a dark room downloading other folks' CinemaDNGs judging from afar - I am judging first-handedly after putting down 9kEURO prior to waiting for 12 months AND kidney-testing my camera.
Shutting up about it, pretending it is not there JUST because it is not convenient, isn't going to make it go away, you know !