I used the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K for a couple of years on commercials, personal work, and even on a feature film I wrote and directed. These days you can find it used for around $3,000, and for what you’re getting, I honestly think it’s one of the most overlooked cinema cameras out there. In this video I go through the positives and negatives, focusing on image quality, build quality, the solo-operator experience, and what it was like taking it through an actual feature production. My favorite part is the image: it’s filmic and organic, and even though it’s a 12K sensor it doesn’t look oversharpened—if anything it’s quite soft in a good way when you shoot 8K or 4K. I mostly treat it like an 8K camera (often 8K 12:1 BRAW), because you still use the full sensor, you get great readout speed (around 8ms in 8K/4K), and you avoid the heavier rolling shutter you’ll see in 12K. The big downsides are low light (it gets noisy fast if you underexpose), the lack of an OLPF on my model (moiré can happen), and the real-world costs of power and media. Ergonomically, it’s a great shoulder/handheld camera with an excellent EVF and a big bright touchscreen, plus internal NDs. And because it’s BRAW-only, you get tons of latitude and a really smooth Resolve workflow—even editing 8K BRAW without proxies. After shooting a feature handheld with one lens and one light, I still feel comfortable calling it a “budget Alexa” in terms of the overall experience and the images you can get.