 I have a wonderful electronic invention I want you to see. It looks something like this. So last year in April I saw the Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K for the first time and I was surprised by what Blackmagic was attempting to achieve in a low budget production camera. So can the Ursa Mini live up to all the hype surrounding it since release or is it another Blackmagic release, late and buggy? It's definitely one of those things. Let's find out if it's both. Cooler Master's MasterK's Maker 5 features their freeform modular system allowing you to customize, adjust and upgrade. Make it yours at the link below. To start things off, Blackmagic has essentially taken their original Ursa form factor and shrunk it down to, in my opinion, something that is much more sensible for the target end user. On the back, the Ursa has a LAN C connection, an STI out, an STI in, timecode in, a 4-pin XLR port for power and a headphone jack. Moving to the right of the camera, we have a second STI out and 4-pin XLR port made specifically for use with Blackmagic's electronic viewfinder and optional accessory. Then on the top of the camera, we have two 3-pin XLR ports for audio along with four quarter-twenty mounting points for accessories such as Blackmagic's top handle. At the very front, we have a much appreciated Blackmagic staple, a built-in mic for scratch audio. On the left of the camera, we meet the 5-inch 1080p capacitive touchscreen which opens up away from the camera, camcorder style. Directly to the right of the monitor, we have the audio dials and other controls as well as two dual CFast 2.0 slots, a tough decision that Blackmagic made with a lot of pros and cons. Let's start with the cons. CFast 2.0 cards, which may be the wave of the future, you can learn more about them here, are not cheap right now. A 64-gig card, one card, runs north of $200. Making matters worse, that 64-gig card gets you about six minutes of record time at 24fps in the R7 Mini's highest ProRes recording setting and even less in uncompressed RAW before you even need to offload. My solution has been to use the Atosh C2S, a CFast SSD adapter that allows you to seamlessly use SSDs in place of CFast cards. Without getting into too much detail, my experience was usable at best. You can't close the LCD, many SSDs, even ones that should probably work, are detected inconsistently and the upfront cost of the box is frankly ludicrous. But I would still recommend it or something similar over loading up on CFast cards at this time because ultimately I didn't lose any footage and I did find some drives that worked well and thanks to the much higher available capacities of SSDs, Samsung's 3.84 terabyte PM863 worked really well for me. I didn't have to constantly be concerned with the dreaded countdown timer. With that out of the way, let's get into what makes this camera really special, that wonderful Super 35 4.6K sensor. So let's shoot some resolution charts, right? No! Blackmagic also boasts that the URSA Mini delivers a whopping 15 stops of dynamic range and if you're not sure why that's important, you can learn more about that here. So instead, I took the URSA out on a date in the real world covering lighting situations from harsh noonday sun to sunset along the water. And look at this, from the darkest shadow to the brightest highlight, nothing in this image is clipped. I love our daily driver, the A7S II, but compared to its roughly 12 stops of dynamic range, the URSA Mini's capabilities are noticeable as much more than a spec sheet on paper. And when reviewing the footage after each day, I was truly astonished by some of the results. Blackmagic's color science this time around has taken a huge leap forward compared to their previous cameras, which always had strong green casts in their film setting, making it much more difficult to grade them. And this is not the case with the URSA Mini. Viewing the footage in Rec.709 while shooting in the camera's film setting was a pleasure. Skin tones for me in particular really came to life and gave the footage a really natural feel, something that has been much more difficult with our current staple of Sony cameras. Usability is a solid point for this camera. You'll need to find your own battery plate and batteries, either V-Lock or Gold Mount, and like, a lens, but it's basically grab and go from there. When recording, you can choose between a wide range of options with every flavor of ProRes from their 444XQ down to ProRes Proxy, as well as compressed 3-1 and 4-1 RAW recording. Though looking over the footage, I could not tell the difference visually between RAW and ProRes 4444, so you can't really do wrong either way. It is a shame that in order to access the camera's full 4.6K resolution, you are required to shoot in one of the RAW recording options, but this is a minor complaint in my eyes considering how good the UHD image already is. Even the built-in 5-inch monitor is pretty darn good. The touch interface is both responsive and simple to use, almost to a fault, as it hides fairly basic camera controls beyond aperture behind two button presses, and takes over the entire screen, making previewing your adjustments a bit of a pain. The two mappable buttons on the side of the camera will hopefully help with this, but in the current firmware that I'm using, they don't do anything. So I'll just keep waiting, Blackmagic. But for the best results, I'd still recommend something a bit better to make judging exposure easier. Blackmagic's EVF, while pricey at $1500, was an absolute treat to use if you shoot outdoors a lot, but the built-in monitor really is very good, and I'd consider it an upgrade to be a nice-to-have, not an absolute need-to-have. But that's all fine and good tooling around downtown Vancouver by myself. How does it hold up in more realistic cinema-style applications, where I have a decent-sized crew? I wasn't sure, so I gathered a few friends and we shot a short on Saturday. To my surprise, the camera held up very well. Once I found the right combination of rigging parts, I was able to keep focused on the content of the short instead of thinking about any technical issues of the camera. High praise indeed. And the monitor showed us its strength when we put it up on the jib in the middle of the day without a second monitor to use, allowing us to get this shot. And the praise keeps coming. Initially, when I heard the URSA Mini would include up to 120fps slow motion, I didn't give the feature much thought. But after trying it out, damn. In the past, we've always had to use external devices and media to record slow motion continuously rather than only in short bursts. The URSA handles a 60fps recording at 3-1 compressed raw and up to 120fps at 2K with a windowed center to internal media. What is even better is the fine control that you have over frame rate. We used 35fps on a recent Channel Superfund shoot to get the desired effect, and the fact that it records audio, why doesn't every camera do this? However, it's not perfect. At 1080p with a windowed sensor exposing at 800 ISO, the image gets a bit too noisy and soft to be usable. But if you can avoid shooting at higher ISOs in this mode specifically, there is a lot to love here. And on the subject of high ISOs, Blackmagic designed the URSA Mini to be used with lighting or ample natural light. This is not, I repeat, not intended to be a low light camera, which is how I plan to convince Linus to get me to keep the A7S II, FS5, and this new toy. Different jobs need different tools. Linus wouldn't use an iFixit kit to repair his car, would he? Maybe he would. Which brings me nicely into my conclusion. Blackmagic has been changing the camera industry since 2012. Their style of delivering unheard of features and performance at unbelievable price points have made their customers, Linus Media Group included, forgive some of their fault. And none of that changes today. The URSA Mini 4.6K is a camera that, to me, unlocks creative avenues I never would have dreamed of possible at a price point under $10,000. From the improved color to the reasonable size to the excellent codec support, I think QC issues aside, and I've got a little post under the video with my experiences with that, Blackmagic has a true winner of a camera on its hands. And going forward, once we get our own unit to keep, the LTT Studio has its new A camera. It's just such an astonishing image to work with. Speaking of astonishing things, Dollar Shave Club, the club that delivers amazing razors to your door at a fraction of the price. They have a special offer right now for new members who join today. You can get one free month of their executive razor when you buy two of Dr. Carver's shave butter. Using Dr. Carver's shave butter with the executive makes the blade glide gently for the smoothest feeling shave ever. Once you try Dollar Shave Club.com, you'll become a proud member like millions of others. They ship to the US, Canada, and Australia. So head over to DollarShaveClub.com slash Linus and get yours today. So truly, thank you guys for watching. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to the way to buy the stuff we featured in this video at B&H in the video description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So click that little button in the top right hand corner to check out our video where I reviewed the Sony a7S II, an excellent camera that we use for B roll.