Firmware Friday: Better image quality for Blackmagic URSA Mini-series and Samsung Gear 360
posted Friday, June 17, 2016 at 8:59 AM EDT
Want better image quality from your camera? If it's a model from Blackmagic Design or Samsung -- specifically the URSA Mini 4K or 4.6K and their accessory viewfinder, or Samsung's VR-friendly Gear 360 -- then we have good news for you in this week's Firmware Friday roundup.
Blackmagic URSA Mini 4K, URSA Mini 4.6K and URSA Viewfinder
We'll start out this week with the Blackmagic cameras, whose new firmware arrives via the company's Blackmagic Camera Setup 3.3 utility. For the Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K, the company promises better white balance, less prominent vignetting and better saturation in the "video" dynamic range option. The URSA Mini 4K shares this last improvement and also offers better saturation on SDI and LCD outputs for video monitoring using the "film" dynamic range option. Finally, the URSA Viewfinder is said to allow better saturation for both cameras when monitoring video.
More information along with the Blackmagic Camera Setup 3.3 utility itself can be found on the Blackmagic Design website.
Samsung Gear 360
The Samsung Gear 360 spherical panoramic camera, meanwhile, gets three changes in its new version C200GLU0APE4 update. Perhaps most significantly, color matching of the device's two lenses is said to be better. Image quality is also said to have been improved, although precisely how isn't stated. And finally, there's a new time-lapse settings menu in this latest firmware release. To get the update, you'll need to first update the Samsung Gear 360 Manager app on your Galaxy S6 / S7 / Note 5-series phone to version 1.04 in the Google Play store. The new firmware should then install once your Gear 360 is next connected.
(Camera parts image courtesy of Kelly Hofer / Flickr; used under a Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0 license. Image has been modified from the original.)