NAB 2014 Wrap-up. Top 10 Products. Kinefinity’s KINEMINI 4K.

The NAB of Cameras. Kinefinity KINEMINI 4K.
By Sean Davis

While NAB 2014 was dubbed the NAB of 4K, with all the new camera announcements and updates to existing camera models it was really the NAB of cameras. Some of it made sense and some of it didn’t, but here’s what we found noteworthy.
This little Chinese camera company has been around for a few years now. Some of us have taken notice and others have ignored them. They have an impressive product for the sub-$5000 price range that can no longer be ignored.
This year KINEFINITY brought their update to their Kineraw mini which they’re calling the KINEMINI 4K. The camera sports a super 35 CMOS sensor rated at 800 ASA that can shoot 4K in cinema DNG RAW at up to 30fps. It also offers CINEFORM RAW, which in my opinion is one of its strongest suits, unlike all the other 4K camera options that offer either Cinema DNG or prores.

The KINEMINI offers  a compressed RAW codec, and not just any compressed RAW codec but CINEFORM RAW. (Prores is not RAW or compressed RAW, the log recording options offered in prores on other cameras are no comparison to true RAW or a visually lossless compressed RAW.) In camera you get the  option of 2K CINEFORM RAW. But the camera also comes with KINEFINITY’s Kinestation, which gives you the ability to transcode cinema DNG to CINEFORM RAW on the fly.

Why is CINEFORM RAW important? It’s simple efficiency: it’s a professional visually lossless compressed RAW codec, which translates to having all the flexibility of RAW without the data management and storage nightmares. CINEFORM RAW is the codec that the SI-2K records. (The first digital cinema camera to win an Oscar for cinematography was the SI-2K for Slum Dog Millionaire, which was captured to the CINEFORM RAW CODEC).

So what else can this camera do? It sports an interchangeable lens mount system with options for the Nikon mount, PL mount, and the increasingly popular EF mount. The guys at KINEFINITY have designed a locking EF mount, essentially making your EF mount photo lenses a bit more cinema-use friendly while giving you the required electronic control of the lenses. It also implements what KINEFINITY calls their sports mode to reduce rolling shutter when shooting fast motion. They had a few shots of helicopter rotors on their demo reel and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it handled this.
The camera also sports a Wi-Fi remote control option with a free app that allows you to control the camera’s menu via your android or iPhone. One thing I noticed while scrolling through the camera’s extremely deep menu was a function that you will find on no other camera in this price range: anamorphic de-squeeze, and not just one anamorphic de-squeeze but an anamorphic de-squeeze for every possible flavour of anamorphic squeeze from 1.33x to 2x. The camera will squeeze the image and output it at the appropriate aspect ratio over its HDMI or HD SDI monitor outputs.

The KINEMINI is also extremely lightweight, weighing approximately 3.5 pounds without a battery or SSD. Speaking of SSDs, KINEFINITY offers their own 2.5-inch SSDs for the camera, which they call the KINEMAGS, but the camera will work with off-the-shelf 2.5-inch SSDs (the same ones who may or may not have been using the Blackmagic cinema cameras).

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For more in-depth technical articles visit Sean’s company Across 100th Media and follow him on Twitter (@across110media).

This is our 4th post on our favorite toys at NAB 2014. The other highlighted products are:

1. G-Speed Studio and G-Raid Studio
2. Grass Valley’s EDIUS 7
3. Syrp’s Genie
4. Kinemini 4K camera
5. AJA Cion camera
6. Blackmagic 4K Film Scanner
7. Livestream’s Studio solutions
8. Edelkrone pocket series
9. Atomos Shogun and Ninja Star
10.NHK 8K Camera