Producing videos for companies on a day to day basis means that I have to be robust enough to respond to any situation that I could be presented with.
On my company website and in every brief I give to clients I always include the phrase “broadcast standards”. Its a very general term but to me it means that I am producing something that is good enough in terms of production and technical quality to be shown on screens.
Now I know that is not the technical description for it, but it reminds me to stick to a rule during every shoot.
I shoot with a Canon C100 which is not typically known as a broadcast camera. Why? Well its because the internal codec of the camera is only 8 bit 4:2:0 colour space which isn’t what broadcasters want.
So I use an Atomos Ninja 2 which can take an uncompressed HDMI feed from my C100 and record at 8 bit 4:2:2 in either ProRess 422 or Avid DnXHD.
So here are the 3 main benefits for me using an Atomos Ninja 2 in day to day filming.
1 – External Media
This one is a bit of a given but the Atomos Ninja 2 is a hard drive recorder with a monitor attached. Recording at a higher bit rate means there is a lot more colour information to hand when it comes to editing. Especially useful if I ever need to shoot in LOG because the AVCHD codec has its limits.
In a low light environment I will never shoot log but on that very rare occaision that I have to, I know I’ve still got some space to recover in the codec.
2. Ergonomics
For me I’m a huge fan of everything being useful even in terms of its size and handling. If its not comfortable or easy to use I don’t want a lot to do with it. This is because I don’t have time to problem solve everything, I have to be able to problem solve the things which are out of my control and my camera equipment is not one of them.
I can easily keep the Ninja 2 in my bag and it barely takes up any room and I can mount it to my camera. There is a slight weight penalty but I’m not as massive fan of handheld shooting and much prefer to be on a tripod or on a monopod. It also comes with a sunhood as well, which isn’t the best in the world I will admit but it does in a pinch.
One of the other nice features is that it has an HDMI out port so I can feed a signal out to another monitor for a director or the client to use when I’m filming. This stops them peering over my shoulder when I’m filming as on occaision I’ve had clients who fancy themselves a camera operator.
3. Organisation & Features
The ability to organise my files on site and name them as I’m going along is really invaluable along with other features like zebra, false colour and focus peaking. All of those are especially useful when I’m filming on my Canon 7D Mark II which has none of those features if I’m filming in 50fps as that is something my C100 lacks.
Conclusion
Its fantastic to use though in terms of usability and produces really decent footage next to the built in AVCHD of the C100. The Ninja 2 is now one of the oldest recorders on the market and I have been considering others like the BlackMagic Video Assist and the Ninja Blade but right now I’m more than happy with the Ninja 2 because it does everything I need it to do and I’m just fine with that.
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