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KineMini Raw Footage Shows Up Online

June 26, 2014

By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)

It’s footage week for cameras, as yesterday we had the ARRI AMIRA give up some tasty music shorts, and now we have some Raw video from the 4K KineMini, a camera that can offer similar features as the non-DRAGO RED SCARLET, and do it for a tenth of the price. But is this Chinese import capable to keeping up with one of RED’s finest? Well, I gotta say the footage isn’t half bad at all. And while the raw footage tends to be a bit flat, such is the nature of Raw, but, when you color grade, it ends up looking pretty sweet.

KineMINI is capable of Capturing and Recording 4K Uncompressed CinemaDNG and 4K Compressed CinemaDNG, In-Camera, without external recorder. New 4K OLPF is re-designed and optimised for 4K capturing, and also it makes images sharper even just capturing and recording 2K in-camera. 4K RAW capturing and recording leaves very large room for reframing, trimming, and CG, even not for 4K delivery. KineMINI may be the most compact cinema camera for 4K RAW capturing and recording now. – KineFinity.com

Not bad considering its $3500 price tag, that’s for sure, even though the design is a bit too close to RED’s for my liking. Still, users are flocking to its 4K skill set which includes features like:

4K RAW In-Camera Recording
100 fps @ 1080p(RAW) / 96fps@2K (RAW)
Multiple Codecs: CinemaDNG, CineformRAW, ProRes, H.264...
sensor crop function
13 stops dynamic range
3D multicam-sync function
Built-in 2.5-inch SSD Slot
HDMI & SDI video output
Exchangeable lens mount system
Only 1,9 kg body weight

But still, even then some are sketpical that the KineRaw may be too good to be true, that the workflow through Kine’s KineStation encoding software is limited. Ok sure. While it offers simple transcoding, it doesn’t give users control over codec, metadata or even the ability to apply a standard LUT. It just outputs to Cineform 444 in Quicktime. But hey, it’s in Beta, and from there, you can import, color correct and go wherever you want. And being in Beta, the KineStation software is sure to advance, so maybe we’ll get better options as time goes on.

Regardless, the camera itself shoots in CinemaDNG, ProRes, and several others, and there are plenty of other options out there for transcoding importing other than KineStation. So aside from the organizational benefits of adding metadata, I’m not so sure I share the feeling that this is an issue. And it sure beats the hoops you have to jump through using Magic Lantern.

So, at the end of the day, my only hesitation with the Kine line is where can I go if the camera breaks down? What if I want to upgrade it? Is there a strong local presence here in the U.S.? That gives me pause. Then again, I’m always buying stuff from China through eBay, so I guess that’s not so much of an issue!

And besides, $3500 for a body that gives similar performance to the RED SCARLET (non-DRAGON, mind you), but Kinefinity has an answer to that as well. And it’s not a bad way to dip your toes into a higher performance camera from a DSLR mindset.