Blackmagic ships new URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF

With an eye on the high-end market, the new Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF adds a high performance optical low pass filter to the existing camera's 12K Super 35 image sensor.

It's been close to three years now since Blackmagic launched the URSA Mini Pro 12K and the camera has developed a decent enough reputation in the market that, for the new model, it hasn't felt the need to overhaul anything apart from correcting the omission of an optical low pass filter and a bit of associated technical tweaking.

This should all help to make a camera with already high-end capabilities more appealing to the high-end user base, with the company making mentions of virtual production and even IMAX in its release notes.

"Since we released the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K, we’ve been hard at work to make the camera even better for new production methods such as virtual production with LED video walls," said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. "That’s why we have have taken considerable time and effort to develop an optical low pass filter that is perfectly matched to the sensor and not only reduces artifacts such as moire, but preserves and enhances the details and colour the URSA Mini Pro 12K is renowned for. I can’t wait to see what DOPs can do with this high resolution camera in virtual productions!"

As Petty says, the OLPF reduces artefacts such as moire and aliasing, while preserving the colour and critical image detail the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K has established a decent reputation for. 

And, as the company also explains, when shooting in virtual production environments the high frequencies of the LED matrix in video walls can cause problems for ultra sharp modern lenses and high resolution sensors, creating interference patterns. Using an optical low pass filter minimises that interference, which results in a reduction of moire and aliasing. 

The new OLPF model also incorporates updated IR filtering that improves far red colour response which, when combined with Blackmagic RAW processing for the URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF, preserves colour and critical image detail for what the company says are new levels of image fidelity.

It also bring the camera very much into line with the other high-end cameras that productions would be looking at using. Of course, people have been able to use third party OLPFs, but that adds to the expense. Talking of which, perhaps one of the most impressive things about the new Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF is that the company has managed to bring it to the market at the same $6385 price point as the non-OLPF version.

As we said, everything else on the camera stays the same. And the brief list of all that is:

• 12,288 x 6480 12K Super 35 sensor.
• 14 stops of dynamic range and native 800 ISO.
• Blackmagic RAW optimized for Metal, CUDA and OpenCL.
• Generation 5 Color Science with new film curve.
• PL mount included and optional EF and F lens mounts available.

Worldwide availability is immediate.