What is the Atomos NINJA V!? a full beginners explanation + a review for buyers

hey neighbor welcome back to another video in this one I'm going to be doing a full conversation about the Ninja five recorder from Atomos it's been a polarizing device I think and it's also kind of confusing because I talked to beginners a lot and so if you're a beginner you may not know what a recorder is or maybe haven't heard of the atomos or Ninja five systems or anything like that I'm gonna break it down today in a full conversation I can't possibly touch everything so I hope you'll forgive me for that but I wanted to talk about it and really quick before I do that though I wanted to show you my office because I think on Instagram and YouTube and all social media it's so easy to show a perfected image of our lives and I've been convicted recently because people have pointed out to me like oh I've been vulnerable and sharing like I need some help like with this or that and they're like oh I didn't even know you needed help like I kind of thought you had everything figured out and and they were being mean and and I didn't receive it that way but I realized I kind of just unintentionally show a polished image and so I've been doing a little bit of cleaning this morning because of the month of chaos that I just had where I produced my first online course I produced let's check those out in the description that is a plug for them but anyway the course and the Luntz just totally wrecked my house I worked for a month straight way too much and I just ended up like having tripods everywhere having monopod and gimble's and memory cards strewn about the house and I just did not keep anything organized during that process so I just wanted to show you a little bit of my reality this is my office right now it's just like everything is just strewn about and like this isn't even that bad because I did a little bit of cleaning this morning and I have my closet doors closed where I threw a bunch of clothes but I just wanted to bring a little bit of reality into my youtube channel and before I jumped into this ninja 5 conversation so yeah if you're a new subscriber I hope you see I'm not perfect this is reality for me and if you're a returning subscriber or if you're someone I know then just know that yeah my life is not always put together and so yeah I hope you see that reality I'll stop now and I'll just let you watch the Ninja five review video if you stuck through all of this rambling thanks and I'm gonna clean my office and then we're going to get to the Ninja five conversation piece okay the office is clean and we're ready to go we're ready to start talking about the Ninja five and I'm just gonna set you on the tripod here and we can start talking now about the actual recorder the Ninja five itself here it is before we get going though I have to tell you who so who is making this video and who is it for I am my wedding filmmaker mostly traveling all over the United States and all over the world I'm based in Kansas City in the Midwest of the US and I travel a lot so I make travel films I make wedding films I make outdoors films and I do a little bit of dock work here and there so that's who is making this video and that's the perspective that I'm going to be coming from I'm not going to be talking about high-end commercial production I'm mostly a one in one man crew running gun one and gun one man run and gun filmmaking crew and I'm not talking about big large-scale commercial corporate productions so if that's your setting maybe you can glean something from this video but if it's not and you don't get anything from this video I apologize in advance I'm also not a highly technical person I know what gear I need and I use it for what I need it to be used for and I try not to go too far beyond all of that I know a lot of the nerdy stuff I love Gerald and done as much as everyone else but I try to just use my gear for what it's intended to be used for so I won't be breaking down every technical aspect of why this works the way it does and what it's used for so take that as you will now who is this video for it this is most of my content is oriented towards beginners so this is a little bit more of an intermediate piece of equipment but it's going to be talking about actually using it rather than the high level technicalities and things that advanced or intermediate videographers want to be talking about I won't be talking about chroma subsampling and the reason that four to two makes for better masking I'm just not going to talk about that stuff it's not important to me and so if you find that important you should start making YouTube videos or find someone who's making that youtube video but with all that said that's who is making this video and who it's for now let's talk about what this thing is this is the ninja five from Atomos and it is a monitor and recorder combo you may have heard of a camera monitor like the small HD or the all of the Chinese manufactured ones on Amazon field world and I'll Andy cine all of those other ones they are great monitors that will take the little tiny camera monitor that's too dim to see in bright daylight and they'll give you a much bigger picture via the HDMI signal coming out of your camera so that you can see your image on a bigger screen and even have tools like rule of thirds grid or load in nuts so that you can see what an image will look like color graded at least some amount of a base view of that and a bunch of other tools like false color and peaking and even aspect ratio like cropping all sorts of things like that D squeezing for anamorphic so that's what a monitor does it just really lets you see it monitors your image but a recorder like this Atomos ninja 5 this is going to record what it is monitoring so what is seen on the screen here will be recorded to one of these a SSD that you're just going to plug in to the back of the monitor just like that so an SSD is going to be capturing the image that is being displayed here the recorder but it's going to be recording at a much better image quality than what your camera is able to do because what your camera is able to do is kind of limited by its form factor being that all of that computer mechanism is being smashed into the tiny little camera body and so instead your camera offloads the higher quality image here to the monitor that's not the technical breakdown of how it actually works but that's what's going on is that your camera is going to offload onto this monitor a higher-quality picture and this is going to be able to process it because your camera can't and this will record it so that's what it's doing is it's monitoring your image and it is recording the higher quality image that your camera is able to provide to it not every camera is able to provide a significantly higher quality image so with your specific camera setup you should look up whether or not this is or isn't valuable to you it may or may not be more or less valuable for example with Sony cameras at least as it stands today Sony doesn't output a significantly better quality image to a ninja v as a compared to our internal recording so a monitor is going to be really helpful with a sony camera but a recorder like the ninja v might not be that helpful for you whereas with Fuji which is the system that I shoot on the XT 3 and the XT 30 they're both of these cameras output a much better signal when it comes to the external recording so there's a lot of technicalities there again I'm not going to break that down that's not what I'm doing today but you will look up your camera search it on the XT 3 or search it on the ninja 5 website and see if it does or doesn't work well with this what is its maximum output now versus with the recorder and then just make the decision for yourself whether or not it's worth it to get one of these in order to get the ninja 5 up and running you really well in all of its purposes I guess you have to have a SSD and you have to have a battery that is a Sony NPF like one of these and you just attach that right into the back here and so now you have your SSD and your battery which you can also use a smaller npf battery if you want to keep your weight down and then you need an HDMI cable to run to your camera from the recorder so it'll plug in right there go to your camera so yeah this is really all you need to get it going it's gonna cost you about $1000 USD this combo kit here is a 500 gigabyte SSD with two of the batteries it came with and then the recorder itself it didn't come up with this stand from a small rig so this cost me about eight eight fifty I think and then the cable was another 20 and then this mount for my camera or for my cage was another 50 I think so it ended up being pretty close to $1000 after tax and everything else unfortunately I won't have time today to do a full setup of the Ninja five and show you all the ins and outs of the settings that I've worked with or a specific setup with the XT 3 or the XT 30 but I can tell you that it's really not that hard they make it really easy on you you pretty much just plug it in tweak a few things and about 5 minutes in the menu system will show you probably everything you need to know to get shooting and to get high quality image right out of the recorder and have it functioning with your camera pretty quickly although I say that with Fuji with Sony I know it's a bit more complicated in which case Gerald undone who I mentioned earlier is definitely going to be a helpful resource for you so yeah that's who this videos made by who it's for that's what the ninja 5 is and now why would you buy the ninja 5 or why should this video matter to you at all well really it comes down to you specifically whether or not you do or don't need this tool and that's the way I feel about gear in general is why do you need gear I can't say you know it's up to you specifically but I can tell you why I went with this piece of gear and that is because I am a wedding videographer or wedding filmmaker and for me having a backup recording or a redundant recording on a wedding day is essential to me I just would be panicked if I didn't have a redundant recording on a wedding day and the Fuji cameras the xt3 and the FT 30 don't dual record the SD 30 doesn't have two slots and the XT three has two slots but doesn't record video to both of them so the ninja five is my insurance policy I know that this might sound so crazy that I paid nearly a thousand dollars to get a glorified insurance policy and dual recording but to me that's valuable this is incredibly worth it and so that's my big reason that I bought the ninja five was because I needed do a recording for my industry and for my work that I do and it came with a bunch of other benefits like high quality video 10-bit four to two in a ProRes codec coming straight out of the recorder that's amazing and the monitoring features are incredible so I can shoot in F log or you turn it and load in my Luntz so that I can view a color grade live on the monitor that's amazing there's a ton of other features of I mean it's just bright in daylight which is much more than I can say for the camera screens that I have there's a lot of benefits but really I paid a thousand dollars for an insurance policy so that I have redundant recordings as soon as I leave a wedding day and I don't have to worry about what happens to that SD card immediately so that's why I did it why you might do it is going to be very different so if you need it then definitely go ahead and get it because I can recommend it really highly it's a great piece of equipment I have loved using it and so if you have any need for it if any of the things that I've named or if any of the things you've researched have told you to get it or that it might be a good idea I can affirm that it's a great piece of equipment I've loved working with it it's been really handy and there have been a bunch of situations where it's really saved my life so yeah I can tell you it's awesome go out there and get it but with that said I do have a couple of quirks that people have addressed on the Internet and I think are worth talking about as well the first one is kind of an easy fix and it's also the sillier one in my opinion but it's that the fan does get a little noisy so this is the unit here and this is the fan so it has to get rid of all the heat that its building up from doing its job right but it does get pretty noisy even just on startup I will start it right now and I'm sure you've probably seen this before or you can go find it elsewhere but I'm going to start it right up next to my mic here and I'll just let you hear even on startup what it sounds like [Applause] [Applause] so that's pretty noticeable in my opinion and now it's on it's running you can see what it looks like there to me that's noticeable enough that it does bother me I do wish that it was quieter but the easy workaround is to manage your mic setup on a rig in a way that it's not pointed directly in front of the fan or to the left side of it but on the right side maybe that's the easiest fix that I've implemented and also for weddings for example I usually put a lav mic on any of the really important audio and also if I have an on-camera mic running or if I'm in a noisier environment the fan noise kind of just blends in to the environment but if you're going to be shooting somewhere that's dead silent and you need really high quality audio right on your camera or in your camera then you're probably going to pick up that sound so that's the first quirk is that the fan noise is a little intrusive at times the next issue is one that's been a little bit of a bigger deal for many people it seems and that is a weird quirk about the full range signal versus the legal range signal coming out of the camera so I'm gonna have to jump in to my computer to show you I've got a lot of test footage that I've accumulated for this video maybe you've been seeing it I may be overlaying it on this video up til now but this quirk is pretty easily solved in my experience I did contact atomos about this issue and when I first got the recorder they said it was actually Fugees problem about the full range versus the legal range thing that apparently the recorder can only receive a full range signal when it is in EV log F gamut and the Fuji is outputting F log and it can only receive a legal range when the Fuji camera or other cameras is in a picture profile or film simulation but I think I actually found out that that's not true that's what Adam host told me was that it's Fugees fault but I found out I don't think it's either of their faults it seems like there's some for some weird reason when you bring the files in to post-production they're automatically being limited to legal range as opposed to full range I'm just gonna have to show you what I mean so I'm gonna dive in to DaVinci Resolve and show you exactly the differences that I'm talking about but yeah let's just go there for a second all right so I've got some Fuji X T 3 and X T 30 with the ninja 5 footage ready to go I've already got a few test shots pulled up but what I want to talk about is this full range versus legal range issue III don't know what's going on and I can't explain why it happens but I do think that I have a fix that has worked for me and as far as I can tell is a comprehensive solution to the problem but if any of you know something else I'd be happy to correct this please check the pen to comment or the description in case someone brings up something that I didn't know but here's how I personally fix this and here's what the problem is so you can actually see it so we've got the footage here and I went ahead and grabbed two of these test shots of my wife this was a great situation for testing 10-bit 42 opposed to 8-bit for 200 and you can click on the color tab and see that it is h.264 8-bit for 200 versus Apple ProRes for two - LT for 2 to 10 bit coming out of the ninja 5 so here's the difference in the footage this right here is the DSC F so this is the Fuji file and this is the ninja 5 file I don't know if you caught that hopefully YouTube is showing you this accurately but look at the difference here and this is in F log so if I go and show you now what it looks like with the picture profiles this is my favorite picture profile this might go too you can see that the Ninja 5 is applying contrast and I think saturation as well and this is what many people are upset about if you're one of the people who are upset about this I totally understand if you work on big-time productions or rely really significantly on color fidelity then this is a big deal but if you're someone who just shoots wedding films and travel films and is a one-man crew and running gun style like myself this really hasn't influenced me negatively so don't let this be a turn-off from the Ninja 5 altogether if you're considering it but you know take this with a grain of salt that this is a part of the workflow and this is a reality of the Ninja 5 so if this is a make-or-break deal for you then don't get it by any means I don't want to push product on someone who doesn't need it or who might end up creating more problems for themselves so this is just my experience and this is what I can show you about the solution as far as I know this is a holistic solution this solves any of the full range versus legal range problem that happens but if someone else knows more than me which I know for a fact that's probably the case please comment below what I'm missing and I'll be happy to correct this video and I'll update the description and the pin to comment so that everybody knows you know what's really going on so I'm gonna show you now what I think the solution is and how I've solved this problem for myself so you can see the difference being that there is saturation applied and I'm going to go ahead and bring in a couple more examples so this is a little film that I shot in a cabin in California so I'm just going to bring this clip in here so that's into five and I'm gonna shorten it and I'm gonna bring in the equivalent clip from the oh wait I'm going to move that town and I'm going to bring this clip in from the XT 30 and I'm gonna bring I'm going to shorten that down okay so we got one extra clip in there and now I'm going to pull up this footage from the xt3 that I just shot recently out in the snow doing a little coffee test video so okay you've got all this test footage in here now and I'm just going to go through each one and you'll see the difference that's Fuji that's the ninja five that's Fuji that's the ninja five that's Fuji that's the ninja five Fuji ninja five so actually that last one I I'm having a hard time seeing the difference but I I do know I have edited this footage so I know that it's there but the clearest difference is with the picture profile here which además did tell me that the picture profile does seem to have more of an issue but I think I've solved that issue too so basically all I'm gonna do here is once I call and I get everything on the timeline let's say that before I go and I color grade I need to make sure that my Fuji and my ninja five files are going to be equivalent if I'm mixing them on a timeline or if I just AM worried about the fidelity of the ninja five files I'm just going to select everything on the timeline here I'm going to right click or two-finger click and I'm going to say clip attributes and then I'm going to go and I'm going to change the data levels to full so I'm going to override whatever it thinks it should be at and I'm just going to tell it put the data levels at full even if they're Auto video you know if it thinks it's a video I'm going to tell it to go a full signal and so now when I change this that was the ninja 5 footage you can see now when I click command Z when I undo it and look at the difference there but now I'm going to click command shift Z and I'm going to redo this change and there you go and even when we go back and forth between the two picture profiles the image looks the exact same so now I get all the benefits of the ninja 5 giving me pro res 4 - 2 LTE in 10-bit and I still get the color fidelity and everything else is equivalent and now I'm just going to do a quick plug for my Lutz where I just show you that just slapping my fuji let on looks really really good maybe it's a little too warm so you want to cool it down just a touch and there's the before and after of what my let's look like so that's a little plug there but I hope this was helpful this is the solution I have found for the problem that has probably caused the most drama when it comes to the ninja 5 across the internet so if this was helpful for you please let me know in the comments below please leave me a like subscribe comment all of that is really helpful as I try and grow this channel I would love to help more filmmakers like you so yeah if you like this video let me know about it if you didn't I'm sorry I'd love to help you still in the comments or send me an email visit my website buy my let's buy my online course yeah overall ninja 5 great product I highly recommend it there are a few quirks so don't buy it if you don't need it and yeah I'll catch you in the next video thanks for watching you

Channel: John Stambaugh

Views: 7,322

Keywords: wedding videography, wedding filmmaking, groom cries wedding, fuji xt3, fuji xt30, fuji xt3 wedding, fuji xt30 wedding, fuji xt3 videography, fuji xt30 videography, john stambaugh, ninja v, atomos ninja v, ninja v fuji xt3, ninja v fuji xt30, ninja v recorder, how to use ninja v, fuji xt3 10bit, ninja v review, what is the ninja v, ninja 5 recorder, ninja 5 atomos

Id: 5IemBnBYdYw

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2020