Atomos Shogun Inferno 4K

FILMING BIG CATS IN KENYA isn’t easy. Unlike actors, these animals don’t
follow direction. Catching, focusing and framing your shots is paramount. You
really need to see what’s going on.

That’s why Abraham Joffe turned to the Atomos Shogun monitor recorders with
their daylight-viewable high brightness screens for his latest project. Every
Flame and Inferno series recorder has a seven-inch display with an incredible
1500nits of brightness. “When we are out here in the African bush we are often
in pretty strong light. Even without a hood I can see what’s going on on the
screen,” Joffe enthuses. “Atomos is the best screen on the market in my opinion,
and it’s a piece of kit that would stay in my bag wherever I go around the world.”

Another key feature for him is the peaking function. “Getting focus is critical,
so the ability to have a really strong peaking mode with different colours is
fantastic,” he said. It’s so good, in fact, that his team “often just rely on the
screen, not even looking at the camera’s viewfinder,” he added. In addition to
peaking, the recorders also have the ability to magnify the image to check focus.

Lookup tables, or LUTs as they are known, have become a common way of
previewing how your finished footage will appear when graded with different
looks. Joffe likes to record as flat as possible, so he appreciates the ability to apply
a LUT, “which gives you a very good control over your exposure”. The Atomos
Inferno and Flame series have a bank where up to eight LUTs can be preloaded
for rapid preview. Hundreds more can be loaded at any time if placed on the SSD.
Incredible shots like these demand the highest quality recording, something that
Joffe is acutely aware of: “The most important feature for me is the recording
capabilities. So we shoot on a variety of different cameras and we like to shoot in
4K at least. We run 4K into these screens every single day.”

Joffe makes full use of the higher quality recording offered by the Shogun
recorder. “I record in a ProRes 4:2:2 10-bit stream and it records to SSD. What I
love about the SSDs is that they are relatively inexpensive and super-fast so we
can dump the footage back at camp and it offloads very, very quickly,” he said.
One reason Joffe favours SSDs over proprietary media is that his team can pack a
lot of them – they’re never without storage.

Being able to play back recorded material instantly to show directors, producers
and crew is also a key attraction of the Atomos devices for Joffe. “It can be a very
bonding and motivating experience to look at footage straight after its shot,” he
explains. “It’s an added feature that’s invaluable to me now.”
The recent price drop for the Atomos Flame and Inferno series monitor recorders
makes them even more affordable to filmmakers who want to achieve the best
possible results from their cameras – you can now get a 4K recorder for the cost
of a HD product.

The Ninja Flame offers HDR monitoring and 4K ProRes recording for popular
cameras with HDMI outputs like the Sony a7s, a7sII, a7rII and a6500.
Ninja Inferno is the perfect match for the Panasonic GH5 and other 4K 60
capable HDMI equipped cameras. It offers 10-bit precision direct to ProRes at the
higher 60fps frame-rate.

Shogun Flame offers affordable 4K recording over SDI and HDR monitoring from
a wide range of professional cameras. FS-RAW from selected Sony cameras (with
appropriate FS-RAW upgrade or expansion pack) is also supported up to 2K 120P.
The flagship Shogun Inferno offers Quadlink SDI connections for cameras like
the Sony F55 and Varicam LT. It can also do CDNG RAW and RAW-to-ProRes
recording when combined with selected Panasonic Varicam and Sony FS cameras
(again with appropriate FS-RAW upgrade or expansion pack). With the Sony FS5
with FS-RAW upgrade you can now achieve 4K 120fps RAW-to-ProRes in a
burst.