I recently purchased a 5.2-inch Atomos Shinobi monitor as part of my run-and-gun filmmaking kit. I was impressed with it (especially considering the $299 price tag), so I thought I’d share this brief review to unpack my findings.
Generally speaking, I don’t review any product based on technical specifications alone. There are thousands of camera/gear review sites and YouTube channels that serve this purpose well.
Technical benchmarks are certainly important, but so is subjective experience in the field. Often, what looks good or bad on paper doesn’t really correlate with real-world experience.
That’s why this review – like most of my other reviews – is based solely on my experience using the monitor in the real world. This is how I learn about any product and determine if it truly meets my needs.
Hopefully this helps some of you decide if Ninja has a place in your filmmaking toolkit.
Build quality
The Shinobi is made from polycarbonate, giving the monitor a very lightweight feel.
This is a big selling point for me as I have always planned to use a top mounted monitor Fuji X-T4. Since the monitor itself only weighs 1.5 pounds, I can mount it directly to my camera’s hot shoe without worrying about any damage. With many heavier monitors made of metal, this cannot be done simply.
The polycarbonate material does make the monitor feel quite delicate in the hand, but rest assured, it’s actually quite durable in the field. If you really want extra peace of mind, you can always opt for a cage.
The Shinobi has 1/4 20-inch holes on the top and bottom for mounting purposes, and you’ll find an HDMI input on the left side, above the headphone jack.
On the other side of the camera, you have a remote control input, as well as an SD card slot for loading custom LUTs. There’s a locking battery slot on the back that’s compatible with Sony’s L-series batteries.
That’s what the monitor is all about. It’s very simple, very small, and minimalist. For my needs it really works.
Image quality and performance
The display is very detailed, sharp, and most importantly, very bright. It’s rated at 1000 nits of brightness, which means you’ll still see clear images even when shooting in direct sunlight.
I’ve used the monitor several times outdoors in broad daylight and never had a problem seeing images (even without the hood). For me, this is a make or break factor. If the monitor didn’t work properly in the sun, I would return it immediately.
The only area where the Shinobi struggles a bit in terms of image quality is in the color department. That’s not to say the Shinobi can’t produce beautiful colors, but they’re just not entirely accurate.
The built-in EVF/LCD on the Fuji X-T4 produces colors that are very close to the final image recorded on the memory card. The Shinobi, on the other hand, seems to add some extra contrast and saturation to make the image look more punchy.
In the future, I might create a custom LUT for the Shinobi that lowers the contrast and saturation a bit. This way I can more closely match the colors I see on the camera’s EVF/LCD and the Shinobi monitor.
But I do want to point out that the color change is minimal. I’m just very picky my background colorbut the difference is not that big in real-world shooting environments.
Atomos Shinobi Features
Considering its very low price, the Shinobi comes with some pretty amazing pro features.
Most of the features you find on high-end monitors can be found on the Shinobi, with some rare exceptions. Some highlights include: anamorphic desqueeze, false color, focus peaking, histogram, RGB parade, vectorscope, waveform, zebra and frame markers.
All in all, the features are very intuitive to use and work well. The peak is easy to read, the scope is accurate, and you can even shoot with obscure aspect ratio markers like 1:1.9.
My three most used features (by far) are custom LUTs, peaking, and frame guides. All three are crucial to my workflow, especially custom LUTs, which is the main selling feature of this monitor.
It would be nice to have some extra hardware functionality, namely HDMI out/passthrough so you can connect it to another monitor or wireless transmitter. But presumably this would make the display larger, which isn’t ideal for other reasons.
However, considering the price point of this monitor, it is very feature-rich. You get a lot for the money you spend.
Use custom LUT
Shinobi allows you to load up to 8 custom LUTs into your monitor. To do this, you simply load the required LUTs onto the SD card and import them into an available slot on the Shinobi.
From a practical perspective, there are two main ways you can use LUTs with this display (or any other display):
- Convert your color space (assuming from Log to Rec 709)
- As a creative look building tool
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you just want to shoot with a camera and monitor in Rec 709, you may not even need to load a custom LUT on the camera.
Under Shinobi’s Input tab, you can select the camera and its gamma/gamut settings to match the monitor to the camera for correct image processing.
In other words, instead of converting the color space via a custom LUT, you can do this natively using Shinobi’s operating system.
However, if your camera is not supported, or you simply want to create your own LUT for better visual results, you can use a custom method to achieve this.
Personally, I prefer using LUTs as creative tools. By loading 8 different looks into the monitor, I could quickly audition different visual palettes – high contrast vs. low contrast, warm vs. cool colors, etc.
To make the process easier, I’ve hand-picked 8 of my favorites CineColor LUT and load them into the monitor. This allows me to quickly switch between different looks and see how my lighting and composition match them.
Atomos Shinobi battery life
The Shinobi’s battery life is easily its best thing. I’m used to monitors with standard Canon/Sony batteries that die after 20 minutes, or monitors that need to be powered by a larger V-mount block.
Just connect a Sony L-series battery and the Shinobi can run all day long. They’re rated for about 12 hours of use, so you might not even need to replace the batteries on an average shooting day. You only need to replace the battery once at most.
For some people, battery life isn’t a big issue—especially if they’re using the monitor on a larger device powered by another power source. But for those who need to keep their kit as small and low-maintenance as possible, the all-day battery life is really great.
Before buying the Shinobi, I also considered the Atomos Ninja V – which is very similar to the Shinobi but also acts as a voice recorder.
Even though I’d love to have a choice also Recording on the monitor, the trade-off is battery life. The Ninja V uses more power, which means more battery changes and recharges. In the end I decided to sacrifice recording capabilities for battery life, and I’ve definitely never looked back.
final thoughts
The Atomos Shinobi is an excellent monitor, especially considering the $299 price tag. Perfect? No…. But then again, what is a monitor?
The best way to evaluate any gear purchase is to look at the pros and cons to see what really affects your workflow.
For me, the Shinobi has all the features I want, produces bright images in sunlight, and is very compact and easy to use. All of this makes up for its inability to record internally and some minor issues with color accuracy.
I suspect many other run-and-gun filmmakers would probably come to the same conclusion. At least for now, I don’t see any other competitor on the market that can deliver these results at this price point.
What do you think of Atomos Shinobi? Please leave a comment below!
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