Nathan DuMoulin

Hard to argue there. But conversely, the Weapon form factor may suck for run and gun, but its modular structure makes it more versatile in other ways. You can combine these various modules and components to make your own custom camera, which is certainly pretty cool. And it's all integrated and cable-less, with third parties now starting to release their own more cost effective modules. Pretty crazy the prices of some of the stuff, but it does allow you to add features that other systems couldn't possible have without a million cables and external components, such as wireless video modules, WIFI driven electronic follow focus, wireless timecode, additional independent monitors paths with each one having its own 3D LUT, etc. Different needs, different cameras. It's as simple as that. Now if someone could combine the ergonomics of Sony and Canon with prices of Blackmagic, and the modularity of Weapon, we'd have ourselves something pretty incredible.

I fully agree, although I'm not sure this applies to the Raven. It's a Weapon body, which is already in the wild, and a Dragon sensor, which is a staple of the commercial, music and occasion cinema industry. A 4K crop from any existing Weapon/Dragon footage shows you exactly what you'll be getting.

The big Ursa is just too heavy and cumbersome. As for Twixtor, I will be using it to get from 120fps to higher frame rates, assuming that it does a better job than Ravens shitty 2K 240fps. lol

On a more serious note, for most people, I certainly understand that Raven isn't a good fit. It's $4000 more than the Mini, it's not as good in low light, it's basically an ugly brick, the crop factor is inferior, it sucks at audio with horrible 3.5mm jacks, etc. However for me, I shoot in a studio lit environment, on a jib, with external audio, so most of Raven's limitations aren't a factor. I also shoot a ton of slow motion, so that's where the Raven 4K 120fps really appeals to me, as it's far superior to the Mini's nearly unusable 3.5x crop when shooting HD slow motion. Which of course brings us to the apparent horrors of 13:1 Redcode compression. I've been collecting some high frame rate Dragon footage from people, with heavy compression ratios similar to what are offered on Raven. Specifically 13:1. I've found some good samples and some bad, but it's shown me that properly lit and exposed 13:1 can look quite good when downscaled to 1080p. Sure the compression isn't ideal, but when I usually float around 75-100fps, 7:1 and 10:1 are perfectly acceptable. It's only in those occasion 120fps required circumstances that the 13:1 even becomes a factor. At the end of the day, I'm delivering 1080p to network TV, and not cinema. Simply put, Raven may be a poor purchase to most, but it's a clear winner for my personal needs.

I could see that quote, and that's why it was so effective. It's not that you didn't say anything, its that you didn't have to say anything NEW. You basically said to me "read this you idiot" and showed me that there were indeed positive things already posted about Raven. It worked. lol

I was actually being sincere. The fact that he didnt have to write a single new word made his point even more effectively! EDIT. I should probably also clarify that when I said that the there's a heavy bias against Red, I was speaking in general terms in regards to the collective thread. I didn't mean Ebrahim specifically, although I was probably not as clear with my wording as I should have been.

Pretty solid rebuttal without saying a word.

This is, after all, a thread about comparing the two cameras, with much talk about sensor size, so why all the sudden is comparing sensor sizes not fair? Seems a little counter productive, doesn't it? The reality is that the Mini shoots at 1.4x FF, while the Raven shoots 1.8x FF. That's a clear advantage for the Mini, however when speaking in terms of high frame rates, the Raven kills the mini in terms of widest available crop, with 1.8x vs 3.5x. For the Raven, 13:1 compression at 4K is horrible, yet on the Mini, raw at 3.5x HD crop is incredibly limiting. It will take a 6-7mm Fisheye to get an UWA shot, and as far as I know the EF fisheyes are f2.8 at best, which yields a DOF of about f10. This is a MASSIVE downside to the Mini that everyone seems to be overlooking. Personally the Mini seems like a much better camera in terms of performance per dollar, but all this bias towards the Raven is not making for a very objective comparison.

These points are very valid. Very helpful in my decision, and much more useful than the earlier Red bashing tone. Thanks!

This seems awfully biased. 13:1 is when filming at 4K. At 1080p, which the Mini is limited to at 120fps, the Raven will do around 7:1 compression (the Social Network and many other Oscar nominated movies were shot at 7.5:1). At least Raven has the option to shoot at higher res (3K at around 10:1, or 4K at 13:1) which lets shooters get a wider field of view than the Minis utterly unusable 3.5x crop. Am I missing something here? Most users don't shoot raw. On the Mini, they will opt to shoot 4K Prores over 4.6k raw. That means cropping in on the sensor to around 1.7x, a mere 0.1x wider than Raven. Why is everyone acting like Raven's sensor size is so terrible, when it's barely any different than the BMC4K, Mini 4K, or 4.6K in ProRes? I agree that RedUser is ridiculous, but I sense an awful lot of envy going on over here at EOSHD. Why can't people just accept that different tools suit different shooting environments or scenarios? And no, I'm not a Red user.