By site editor Dan Chung:
Atomos have announced today that they are shipping the Samurai Blade HD/SDI field recorder, which they showcased at NAB in Las Vegas earlier this year. Costing $1295US it seemed well priced when it was announced, but now faces greater competition from the Convergent Design Odyssey7 since pricing on Convergent’s proprietary recording media has dropped. That said, the Blade is actually shipping now and its use of standard 2.5 inch hard drives or SSDs means that its media will still be cheaper. The Odyssey7 is not due until later in the year and the higher specced 4K capable 7Q is much more expensive.
The Samurai Blade benefits from a wide viewing angle IPS screen with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels – higher than previous Atomos recorders. It is only a 5 inch display, but the resolution combined with focus peaking and better colours should make it viable as a monitor as well. Better still, it has a built in waveform monitor and RGB parade function to make getting the right exposure easy.
Samurai Blade Now Shipping from Atomos Video on Vimeo.
Another feature of Atomos recorders which news and documentary shooters will likely enjoy is the ability to pre-edit your material on the device, marking in and out points which can be exported as an XML for exporting into your editing system later. I’ve used this function in the field and it can be a massive time-saver.
Unlike the Odyssey7 the Samurai Blade doesn’t have a RAW record option, but it does record in edit-friendly Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD. The Blade is more compact and easy to rig while the Odyssey7 has a larger 7.7 inch OLED screen.
I’ve always liked the form factor of Atomos recorders and have used my Ninja 2 on several jobs with no problems. Sadly, other users seem to have been less lucky. Our technical editor Matt Allard has had drive failures with his original Samurai and no longer recommends using it (edit – I am assured by Atomos that the SSD drive issues encountered by Matt have now been fully resolved). I really hope that the new Blade has no reliability issues – we’ll only know after time and testing.
Check out the detailed video below shot at NAB where our own Rick Macomber talks to Atomos CEO Jeromy Young about the Samurai Blade.
NAB 2013: Atomos announces 10-bit HD-SDI Samurai Blade recorder and monitor from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
You can find out more about the Blade here.
