Ellory Yu wrote:This is a very interesting discussion. How would the UBG2 be a better camera over the UMPG2 for a narrative filmmaker, and pay more for the UMPG2 if all its glory can be done on the UBG2? I believe I have answered this myself and I don't like the answer. I wonder though, what other narrative filmmakers are thinking with their UMPG2 investment.
Unlike Will and you guys I have no direct experience of the UMPG2 and certainly would make no claim the UBG2 is better, but here is my take, Ellory, after only a short while of ownership:
Although I believe it's been rather successful in its intended market, I think BMD may have missed a trick in calling this current model the Ursa Broadcast, which may have put off many people regarding it for any film work. In many ways it's follows the product category, at a much lower price of course, of the Alexa Amira which is similarly flexible for B4 Eng/studio configs and digital film work with a Super 35 workflow. Maybe it should have been called the Ursa Film & TV camera or something.
I can only compare it to the UMPG2 on compressed YT and then really from the Pocket 6K footage with the same sensor. The real quality difference I can see is coming from the 12K in terms of colour resolution and the differences of the others are more subtle. Like Will I am finding using an Alexa emulation lut and Gen 5 is producing extremely nice images. Bear in mind at the moment I only have a 20 year old Canon J16 SD lens on it. But that has confirmed what I suspected for over 15 years B4 SD or HD marketing was just that because this lens is superb, resolving well into 4K, with little or no CA. I am still on a waiting list for the 4K Fujinon but I am most likely going to go DZO Pictor zoom full sensor route now, though I will miss servo zoom, 16x zoom + doubler and macro in one lens.
I have found the UBG2 to have very good sensitivity even with the light robbing B4 mount, mainly because of dual gain. The DR and resolution seem to me more than adequate and the flexibility of codecs very useful. I have yet to see any FPN too. I can compare this camera directly to the the FS7s and FX9s currently being used for both studio and VT inserts on the current TV series I am working on and in my, perhaps controversial opinion, it produces much nicer colour, sharper pictures than both. In my defence I can say I intimately work with rushes from those cameras as the online/grading editor and in the interests of fairness, they are being used with baked in non-log rec.709 only. I can say with a high degree of certainty it has a better constructed, more professional, body than both and costs a good deal less.
Ultimately and I have said this before, you can easily spend more fully rigging up a 6K pro for cine work than a UBG2 costs out of the box, even with the optional VF (which is superb). It comes with, included in the price, full shoulder mount kit, B4 and EF mounts and IDX V-plate battery adaptor. It has dual gain and Gen 5, identical usb 3.2, to the 12K and I would speculate (though it is only that) the processing cpu is both larger, than the 6K Pro and newer than the UMPG2 (my only inkling for this is its one trick over the P6K sensor -150fps slo mo in Braw HD). For those of you unused to the Ursa body, the pictures do not do justice to the solid all metal quality construction too. If you want to do pure cine work and your budget can stretch then I personally would go for the 12K currently, another amazing value camera, but if your budget can't and/or you need the flexibility then the UBG2 should not be overlooked, even for just film work.