Blackmagic Cinema Camera
Well, I can’t say I saw this one coming. Blackmagic Designs, who are know for their elegantly designed I/O, conversion and recorder products, have staked out their position in the Digital Cinema War. Simply named, Blackmagic Cinema Camera, this new 2.4k DSLR sized image maker boasts some pretty nice features:
- 2592 x 2192 Resosution
- 12-bit RAW files recorded at 2432 x 1366
- 2.5K RAW at 2432 x 1366, compressed at 1920 x 1080
- Frame Rates 23.98p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 30p (What? No 60p)
- 16.64 mm x 14.04 mm sensor (4/3″)
- Dynamic Range 13 stops
- RAW 2.5K CinemaDNG
- Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD
- HD-SDI
- ThunderBolt
- Built in SSD Recorder
- Lens Mount EF and ZF mount compatible with electronic iris control
- 5″ – 800 x 480 resolution touchscreen LCD
- Integrated mono microphone
- Integrated Lithium-ion Polymer rechargeable battery. (90min run time)
- 12V-30V DC port for external power.
- Weight 1.7 kg / 3.75 lb
I hope you didn’t miss that lens mount feature. If I’m reading that right, you can attach either Canon or Nikon electronic lenses and control them via that camera, without the need for expensive third party adaptors that seem to have a hard time coming to market. That’s killer.
If all that’s not enough, the $3000 price tag includes a full version of DaVinci Resolve. This gives your one of the most power grading tools on the market, to insure you’re able to deliver the best images possible. The camera can be connected to any ThunderBolt enabled computer for monitoring the image a scopes live on set.
Storing useful metadata is the easiest I’ve seen on any camera.
[box] “Blackmagic Cinema Camera is the first camera to feature built-in metadata entry so your files include information compatible with popular editing software. This dramatically speeds up the whole post production process! Entering metadata is easy. Simply tap the capacitive LCD touchscreen to display the slate where you can enter information such as shot number, search tags, scene number, timecode and more! You can even set shot number and other data to increment automatically!” –Blackmagic web site.[/box]
One concern I have with this camera is with the sensor size. It’s essentially a 4/3″ sensor in a world obsessed with Super35. The Af100 has suffered from this lack of endowment. I wonder if the BCC with suffer the same fate? I guess you might say, it makes up for any shortcoming in sensor size with 2.5k RAW image capture.
I’m really eager to see some images from the camera, but I may not be able to wait to place my order.
Check out all the details at Blackmagic Designs.
