The Ninja starts shipping this week and is set to topple both the NanoFlash and the AJA Ki Pro off their perches as far as price in concerned. Atmos the company who developed the Ninja were at BVE in London demonstrating the Ninja, now here are some interesting facts…

1. The Ninja records to Apple ProRes in various flavours the best being HQ which records at 220 MBs.

2. You get 10bit 4:2:2 recording from the HDMI input.

3. You can record 1080 50i, 1080 24p and 720 50p plus other recording formats in the pipeline via an online firmware upgrade scheme.

4. The screen can be used as a monitor or for playback.

5. You choose the recording media, 2.5″ Hitachi hard drives or the more popular 2.5″ SSD Intel solid state drives.

A word of warning to AF101 and F3 owners the Ninja only has one HDMI socket so if you are using the Cineroid EVF this may not be a good choice as it’s unwise to split the HDMI signal. NOTE. The Cineroid does have an in and out but unfortunately it uses the mini HDMI socket which in my opinion it too week to stand up to that level of use. A solution is just down the road with the arrival of the Samurai.

The Samurai is an HD SDI version of the Ninja and as we all know HD SDI is a far more professional, safer connector to use for recording HD video signals.

Pricing :

The Ninja which comes in a case with all the leads and two batteries but NO recording media is £828

The Samurai is a fair bit dearer and will come in around the £1300 price NOT CONFIRMED

I will be reviewing the Ninja as soon as I get one, in fact my 160 GB of Intel SSD arrives tomorrow and I will be ordering the Samurai on the strength of the Ninja’s performance.