DPReview TV: Atomos Ninja V Review

ninja sumo samurai these are words from Japan's great history but now when I hear them all I can think about he is Australian external video thanks Atomos welcome back DP review TV viewers Chris Nichols here from DP review TV and welcome to Alberta's autumn season we get about a week of it and then everything dies and then everything freezes solid so enjoy it while you've got it it looks nice right now and this is a nice backdrop for our ninja five from Atomos review I mean this is one of the more exciting products especially if you're into what everybody's into now vlogging making their own video productions maybe even getting into short film and some commercial work so today we're gonna take a look at what this product has to offer now you might be asking yourself why do I need to buy another piece of equipment if I've already got a screen on the back of my camera and it records video internally and this good question but there's a lot of benefits if you consider now that we've got new full-frame mirrorless cameras like the canon eos r the nikon z7 and six these cameras are specifically advertising 10 bit recording but you need an external recorder to unlock that feature but the first thing i want to address is this screen because this has a beautiful 5 inch screen it's 1920 by 1200 resolution and it's a thousand nits so it's way brighter and way easier to see then frankly the kind of crappy LCD that you have on the back of your camera right now you also get things like waveforms peaking if your camera doesn't support that to help you get the shot just right and of course note how it's quite compact I can fit this on top of a camera with a very cheap little ball head like this and I don't have to have a full rig so this lets me also point to screen in any direction I want I'm not limited by the directionality of my LCD on the back of the camera I could even go so far as to take this off camera remote send my signal wirelessly and then you can have a director of photography or the art director or a client see the footage you're recording and give their input so let's explore the device shall we we've just talked about mountain getting how you do that is with 3/8 screw threads on either the top or bottom of the device and those both come with quarter-inch bushings that's convenient here on the side we've got our full HDMI cable input as well as another HDMI output so we could go to another monitor if we wanted to get multiple people watching this thing here on the side over here we've got the power button we've also got a 3.5 mm mic jack and a 3.5 ml headphone jack as well remote attachment we could put like a lank controller for example now the thing that it really is quite amazing about the add almost five and kind of sets it apart from some of the other devices they've made is it's tiny I mean they've really made this as compact as possible incredibly thin it is now an aluminum body on the outside with a polycarbonate back as opposed to the larger devices we've played with in the past which are fairly cheap feeling big plastic bodies now right here you can see of course the battery this is a sony l battery but keep in mind that this particular unit as it comes does not come with batteries they're assuming a lot of people industry are gonna have tons of these at home but if you don't you are looking at another battery and charger now underneath the L Series battery at the very bottom there's actually a multi-function port now Adam O's has made two devices so far there's a timecode device as well as no transmitter those slot into the battery port and then your L batteries go into that and pass the power through it's a clever way to add new features but also work with the minimal real estate that we have on such a small device of course you have to record your media to something and very typical of course for recorders it's recording to SSDs they give a storage space for 4k video take a standard SSD drive use the caddies that they provide and then you can click it in here but I do want to mention that they do stick out of the body a couple inches so you lose a little bit of that compact nature now what we have here though is a different device so this is made specifically for the atomos by a company called angel bird this is an SSD but built into its own housing so it doesn't require a caddy and you can see that it's flush with the side of the body these are called the atom X devices they're a little pricey but it does give you a very sleek interface the last thing I want to mention about this body in general is right up here we've got a fan so it is very compact it dissipates the heat well but you do have to keep in mind it does make a fair bit of noise you certainly wouldn't want this monitor too close to any sort of microphones so the animals ninja Phibes got a lot going for it it's compact in nature and it's actually quite affordable for what you get but there are some limitations because of all that first off with the small size you'll notice a distinct lack of buttons so this is completely dependent on a touchscreen interface for everything there isn't even a button to do start and stop or cord now the interface works fine except if to wear gloves for example so there's any reason you can't touch the screen directly you're gonna be out of luck another issue that you're gonna have here a lot of the other external recorders on the market were actually also really good audio recorders I mean we tested the Animus ninja inferno albeit with crazy dongles you did get good audio recording and of note sound devices made their video device line with the pixi brand and those actually had really elegant audio control recording this just has a standard 3.5 milk you're not gonna use this as your one-stop audio recording shop the only thing that I do like about this having that headphone jack is nice because a lot of cameras on their market you might be using to record from often don't have headphone jacks if you buy this device you now have a pass-through for your headphone up in the monitors and you get that all-important audio check with those headphones on so you can see view ability of an intro fire is really nice when you're out shooting during the day but as well this is actually an HDR display so we're starting to see on a lot of mirrorless cameras professional video cameras they can capture hlg this will display it properly so you can actually preview what your HDR image is gonna look like while you're out in the field another really handy feature is that you've got full LUT support built in for this and you can actually put your own on so if there's a particular look you really like to use when you're recording log you can actually apply it right onto the monitor and see it while you're shooting it's also really awesome if you're working with clients they don't have to look at a disgusting gray image while you're shooting they can look at a nice pretty grated image instead in terms of what the Ninja 5 can actually capture it's pretty amazing we're getting full support for 4k up to 60 frames per second and it'll give you Pro res LT 4 to 2 HQ can also do DNxHD if you're working with an avid workflow anyways it's nice that it's very future proof so you may have noticed there have been a lot of camera announcements lately so I wanted to talk about how much you'll actually gain with one of these recorders depending on the camera model you choose now if you're looking at a Nikon Zed 6 or Zed 7 I think this is an absolute no-brainer you need an external recorder in order to get 10 bit and even to get log recording out of it to take full advantage of the dynamic range this is an essential accessory for those cameras if you're looking at the canon eos are there you're getting 10 bit on it but it has a fully articulating screen and when I compared the 10-bit to the standard internal 8-bit recording I didn't see a huge difference with that so I don't think it's quite as essential for this looking at the g h5 and g h5 s those cameras will shoot 10 bit up to 30 frames per second but if you like to record at 60 frames per second one of these guys will get you 10 bit 60 and you will definitely notice an improvement with that now if you're lucky enough to have the new Fuji XT 3 I didn't see a huge difference between recording internally and kicking out a 4 2 to 10 bit signal with this recorder but remember you just have that weird three-way display this will let you vlog so you can see the screen so what about all use Sony shooters well you're all sitting around waiting for an a7 s3 I hope it's been announced by the time you actually see this video you may want to grab one of these because those have excellent autofocus but no fully articulating screen so you might want to use this just as a monitor but as well you do get 4 - 2 output from those and if you're shooting a lot of s log you will definitely see a difference so let me sound like I'm really fawning over the ninja 5 but honestly this has become a really invaluable piece of my kit and it's small enough that I generally bring it with me when I'm traveling as well one thing to remember this is still pre-production firmware everything that I'm showing you but it feels very fluid it's a very elegant interface and it's only gonna get better one thing I really like about adam oasiz we do see features added regularly through firmware even after the product is already shipped so you can look forward to some nice cool stuff that way the biggest takeaway I think you really need to know is that this is priced very similar to some entry-level monitors but you're also getting this wonderful external recording capability an HDR display and a very bright one that you can see outside I think this is a smoking deal and you should definitely take a look at it if you're excited with using the mirrorless cameras to capture video thanks so much for watching guys let me know if you want to see some more video content no so much we mostly do photography you want to do some video once in a while but don't forget follow both of us even people interrupting people talking on Instagram and follow us on Twitter thanks so much guys we'll see y'all again soon you [Music]

Channel: DPReview TV

Views: 213,003

Keywords: dpreview, digital photography review, digital photography, photography, digital camera, camera, Atomos Ninja V, Atomos Ninja 5, Chris Niccolls, Chris Nichols, Jordan Drake, Review, Samples, 4K, DPReview TV, DPReviewTV, DPRTV, Canon EOS R, Nikon Z7, Panasonic GH5, Panasonic GH5S, Sony A7 III, Fuji X-T3, Fuji XT3, Fujifilm X-T3, Fujifilm XT3, Hands-On, Field Test, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Id: LyyCT10SSlI

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 13 2018