Atomos Ninja 2: Shoot Day 1

The Camera Forum by Sean Ware

Editors Note: One of the best things about our move to the Studio City, CA area last fall was the proximity to the action “where the nerds live” in the movie business. They don’t call it Studio City for nothing…. our apartment is surrounded by all major studios within a couple of miles, six major TV network production studios & countless smaller production and post-production houses. Our neighbors all work in the TV or film industry in various creative jobs of one type or another. This is the real deal, the land of multi-million dollar production budgets where dreams are made and hopes are dashed on a daily basis. This is also where the rubber meets the road, where the best of the best teamwork is done by some of the best craftsmen and women in the world, using state-of-the-art gear creating state-of-the-art entertainment. This is why we relocated here, to be as close as possible learning daily by osmosis from all the talented artists.

One such talented artist is a great young guy by the name of Sean Ware. After untold hours of pleading, sniveling, groveling, and generally making a nuisance of myself, Sean has finally lost his mind and has decided to join our rag-tag creative team here at TheCameraForum.Com. Sean’s task will be to help keep us all abreast of the latest technology and to share his insights on how independent Hollywood producers and directors are using tools with technology in crafting their artistic productions. Sean’s stories are going to be more “in-depth” and meaty perspectives of gear, talent, and techniques important to the creation of great content, but told from the perspective of a user, not a product reviewer. Far more than our usual “first glance” or “field reports” these stories will be much longer form content. For the most part these will be multi part stories where my editorial direction is to really dig into the how and why these various tools are best used and do they in fact hold up in real world professional production conditions. My intent is to bring you the view from the other side, the professional movie makers and shakers who have had the budgets to use anything and everything made. No tool is ever perfect for every use, but “the best tool for the purpose” does exist at every budget level. We just need to identify them.

There should be more depth to major production tool reviews than just a couple of hours of artificial testing with a manufacturer loaner. There is a need to answer the the more subtle questions like how does something feel in use over time, how do the first impressions change, does this shiny new tool grow on you, and do the workflow changes required yield sufficient long term benefits to warrant the cost? What are the pros and what are the cons? A long term Torture Test, if you will. We’ve chosen the Atomos Ninja 2 field recorder to use with our Canon 5D Mark III as two of our long form evaluation projects. I’ll let Sean pickup the story from here below. Thank you for reading! - Chuck Jones, Managing Editor. read more...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	Atomos Ninja 2 HDMI I/O 10-bit Field Recorder, Monitor, Playback & Edit Device in One $795.00			Atomos Samurai Portable 10-bit HD-SDI Field Recorder, Monitor and Playback Device $995.00			Atomos Samurai Blade 10-BIT Smart Production for HD-SDI Cameras $1,295.00