NAB 2014: Atomos

Atomos-HD 720p from TheCameraForum on Vimeo.

Atomos Global Pty Ltd, Level 1, 36 Park Street South Melbourne, Victoria 3205 Australia, the creator of the award-winning camera-mounted recorders Ninja-2 and Samurai, and the pocket-sized Connect converters, is an Australian hardware design/manufacturing company few have ever heard of. However, that is rapidly changing. In just a couple of short years, Atomos has risen to an installed base of over 45,000 digital field recorders. A remarkable feat, from a remarkable company. I myself use one of their Ninja 2 digital field recorders.

What is a digital field recorder, you ask? Well, think of it as an external recorder that saves high quality output from your HDMI port on the camera onto internal fast media of its own. This recording is done in the ProRes 422 Codec, at a bit depth of ten bits. You do this so you have much more latitude in your footage for color grading. Nothing pushes around like ProRes recorded pixels!

Here at NAB 2014, Atomos introduced two new products, both equally impressive for their innovation as well as for the expansion of the Atomos market. Let’s call it hitting the two extremes.

The Atomos Shogun 4K Recorder for Sony A7S

Ask yourself a question. If you were Sony, and you had one of the hottest small camera products ever to come along for the mobile video world, wouldn’t you want to couple it up with a perfectly matching recording unit? Sure you would. And who better to work with than the undisputed market leader in field recording technology, Atomos? So they did.

Atomos is in development on the Shogun, a whopping SEVEN inch high def monitor equipped 4k Field Recorder. Here are the specs:

Atomos Shogun 4K Field Recorder Designed As The Perfect Companion For The Sony A7S

Atomos Shogun Attached to tje mew Sony A7S “A tasty Pair UNDER GLASS”

The Shogun really got the crowd's attention drawing a crowd the whole show.

The Shogun mounted with the Sony A7S got lots’s of attention drawing a steady crowd the entire show.

The Sony A7S is expected to ship beginning in July, 2014. The Atomos Samurai is available now, but if you want the Shogun, your going to have a couple months more to wait after you get your A7S, as the Shogun is not expected until late 3rd quarter or early 4th quarter 2014. Price for the Shogun +/- $2,000.

Atomos Ninja Star External HDMI Recorder

Ask yourself another question. If you were flying a GoPro HD, one of the hottest small camera products ever to come along for the quadcopter video world, wouldn’t you want to be able to record ProRes 422 10 bit some day? Sure you would. That day is today. And once again, who better to do the development work than the undisputed market leader in field recording technology, Atomos? Here is what Atomos engineers did to create the Ninja Star.

Atomos Ninja Star Features

Atomos took the guts from a Ninja 2 Field Recorder, stripped off the monitor, changed out the SSD hard disk for a CFast Compact Flash Card, added a few lights, and shoe-horned the ten pounds of electronics & physical components into a compact 100 gram (3.5 oz) package 3.5″ wide, 2.3″ tall, and 0.8″ deep. Now that is what I call an accomplishment!

The Ninja Star records in both HD and Apple ProRes to capture lightly compressed, 422 10-bit images straight from any camera sensor directly to the less inexpensive first generation CFast media cards, with up to 3hrs of Apple Pro Res footage space costing $250. Not a bad price per recording hour at all! The Star also features Timecode optional, and Start/Stop Triggering with certain cameras and Audio Line-in sound recording, though what use sound recording is on a unit basically designed and intended to fly attached to a quad-copter I have no idea.. Shipping in May, 2014 (Next Month) for $295, the Atomos Ninja Star is a welcome addition to every quality conscious filmmaker.