doddle Review: Atomos Ninja Star

doddle by James DeRuvo

I received a new Atomos Ninja Star external recorder recently and I have to say, while I knew it was a small recorder, it didn?t really hit me just how small it was until I pulled it out of the case and held it in my hand. About the size of an iPod classic, it?s not nearly as heavy ? weighing in at 130G. Atomos says it?s essentially the Ninja recorder without the LCD screen, and it was designed to be ideal for DSLR shooters and maybe even quadcopters. In fact, Jeremy Young from Atomos told a panel at NAB that the Ninja Star was built with the GoPro and DJI Phantom in mind, to cater to users who want to record in ProRes and still get a mobile action option.

Recording-wise, the Ninja Star offers a choice of recording in 1080p HD with ProRes HQ, 422 or LT. There?s HDMI in and an out loop to output to an LCD monitor when you?re camera is locked down and you want to monitor the recording anyway. There?s also a mini-jack for audio. Users can use the microHDMI cord that comes with the Atomos Ninja Star, but it rather sticks out, and I think it was just included because you don?t want users to have to buy their cable in order to start shooting. However, consider buying one of Atomos? coiled cables, anyway. They?re cool.

The design layout of the Ninja Star is very simple? Four buttons. Rec ? Play ? Prev ? Next. And they?re color coded in the classic Atomos Red, Green, yellow and Blue respectively. You can also use the bottons to also Power it on/off (Red); format your Cfast card (Red/Green); change your codec (Yellow); and change the conversion mode (Blue). There?s also LED meters for audio levels, battery life, and recording time. A note here, the Ninja Star does support automatic trigger recording with certain cameras, as well as recording in time code. read more...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	Atomos Ninja Star Pocket-sized Apple ProRes Recorder & Deck $295.00			Atomos Ninja Blade Portable HDMI Recorder Monitor for Filmmakers $975.00			Atomos Samurai Blade 10-BIT Smart Production for HD-SDI Cameras $975.00