Blackmagic RAW – Dynamic Range on the URSA Mini Pro 4.6 Test

Impressive results https://www.cinema5d.com/blackmagic-raw-dynamic-range-on-the-ursa-mini-pro-4-6-tested/.
When downscaled to 2k/FHD and DaVinci Resolve's “highlight recovery” option for BRAW it's almost on par with the DR of the ARRI AMIRA/ALEXA(still seen as the gold standard).

Even more impressive is BRAW vs. ProRes 4444XQ

I am using an I7-4720HQ Laptop with 16GB RAM and a GTX980M graphics card, and 4.6k ProRes XQ resulted in ~7 frames / second playback (fps), 4.6k RAW DNG (lossless) resulted in ~11 fps, whereas BRAW had smooth 24 fps playback in a UHD timeline! Hence, not only smaller filesizes with BRAW but also vastly improved playback – a real winner combination.

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I understand that the BMPCC4K is an improvement over the 4.6K, especially at high ISOs, so the results should be even better.

And what sounded great was that you can edit far more easily at the recorded fps.

No it's not https://www.cinema5d.com/blackmagic-pocket-cinema-camera-4k-handson-review/, but for the price it's a great camera.

Damn, I didn't see the "Pro" in the title. Never clicked so fast on a topic here

I understand that the BMPCC4K is an improvement over the 4.6K, especially at high ISOs, so the results should be even better.

And what sounded great was that you can edit far more easily at the recorded fps.

No it's not https://www.cinema5d.com/blackmagic-pocket-cinema-camera-4k-handson-review/, but for the price it's a great camera.

That didn't compare noise between the BMPCC4K and UMPro4.6K. The former has dual ISO the latter does not and the ISO in the latter only goes to 1600.

ISO 3200 BRAW constant bitrate 3:1 4.6k scaled to UHD

For ISO 3200 we counted 11.7 stops for an SNR = 2 (12.9 stops for SNR = 1), again without post-processing. Playing around with the highlight recovery option and noise reduction, I was able to get around 12 stops for SNR = 2 (13 stops for SNR = 1).
Noise kicks in, hence about one stop is lost vs ISO 800. This is still a very good result.

You will improve noise when you scale down, the same would happen scaling down 4K to UHD.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of tests available regarding the high ISO qualities of the BMPCC4K, this one seems to go into greater depth: https://www.proav.co.uk/videos/testing-bmpcc-camera-comparisons/. And this quote is interesting:

There is no doubt, that the BMPCC 4K performed better than any other Blackmagic camera to date in this test.

I'm not putting the UMPro4.6K down, but given the sensor size of the BMPCC4K and the inherent technology, what it delivers is pretty amazing.

That test was before BRAW, the cinema5D test is with the latest firmware hence BRAW and iso3200 on the UMP.

The thing I like about the Cinema5D test is that every camera is tested in the same way with ARRI being the current gold standard (which isn't a surprise with their 8.25um pixel pitch and double 14 bits A/D converters vs. 5.5um pixel pitch and double 11 bits A/D converters of the UMP. The ARRI pixel is (8.25^2/5.5^2)=2.25 times the size compared to the UMP).

a few seconds of BRAW 12:1 in "no light".

They forgot to do black shading.

Gunther Machu

Thanks for the hint Jamie, no we didn’t do a blackbalance – but good to know and thanks for sharing that experience.