Review of the Atomos Samurai ‘Blade’ and ‘Connect’

Philip Bloom by James Miller

I wish we didn’t need to have external recorders. There…I said it. They are a necessary evil. I would rather be able to record internally to the quality I need without having to resort to external devices but the reality is most cameras don’t record in a high enough quality. Thankfully then, they do exist. I have been using them since my first one which was the rather big Aja KiPro. I still have a few including the Sound Devices Pix240 and the Atomos Ninja and Samurai (soon to be joined by the Convergent Design 7Q)

Atomos have made a name for themselves with budget recorders, the Samurai Blade is by far the best recorder they have made. It’s wonderful. I use it with my C100 when I need a better codec. My good friend and fellow shooter James Miller uses it with his 1DC and has kindly written this excellent review of the Blade which he bought a couple of months ago.

I’ve been using the Atomos Samurai ‘Blade’ hooked up to the Canon 1DC now for a couple of months. I purchased the Blade as I’ve been shooting lots of long interviews and B-Roll shots for a series of corporate films.

I have the option of recording to the camera and to also to the Blade. For some recent interviews I recorded just to the Blade. This way the interviews can go on for a couple of hours without worrying about swapping cards on the camera. I do stop recording between questions, for safety and for ease of edit. I have never had a problem doing this, so far!! I have had a couple of occasions where the 1DC has locked up, and the only way to stop it was to pull the battery. If you do this, the last clip will be unusable, but the clip from the Blade will be fine, just not 4k etc. read more...

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	Atomos Samurai Blade 10-BIT Smart Production for HD-SDI Cameras $1,295.00			Atomos HDMI to HD-SDI (H2S) Connect Converter $295.00			Atomos Ninja 2 HDMI I/O 10-bit Field Recorder, Monitor, Playback & Edit Device in One $695.00