Blackmagic Design has announced two new digital movie cameras at the NAB 2013 Trade Show in Las Vegas.
Front and rear views of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. (Source: Blackmagic Design.)
The more interesting of them for Photo Review readers is the Pocket Cinema Camera, which comes with a Super 16mm sensor plus an M 4/3 lens mount. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera can also accept Super 16 cine lenses via MFT adapters. Its sensor has an imaging area of 7.4 x 12.5mm, which means the M4/3 crop factor of 2x changes to around 3x. The M 4/3 lens mount supports autofocus and exposure information and the camera is said to have a global shutter, which eliminates ‘rolling shutter’ artefacts.
The compact size of this camera enables it to be used in more situations where a larger camera would not be practical. One of the most important features of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is its super wide dynamic range of 13 stops, allowing feature film quality images. The new camera comes with a built in SD card recorder for ProRes 422 (HQ) format, as well as 12 bit Log RAW lossless compressed CinemaDNG format. Blackmagic Design will also be implementing a QuickTime wrapper for the open standard CinemaDNG and companion codec, allowing the camera to record in a format that allows RAW editing in popular editing software.
The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera will be available in July for US$995 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.
Angled view of the new Blackmagic Production Camera 4K. (Source: Blackmagic Design.)
Blackmagic Design has also developed a new high resolution 4K digital film camera with an innovative large Super 35 size sensor. The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K can record high quality compressed CinemaDNG RAW and ProRes 422 (HQ) files in 4K, providing a professional recording solution. With a large Super 35 size sensor, cinematographers get familiar framing and behaviour from the lenses they already own. This camera sensor features a global shutter and its large size allows minimal crop factor so cinematographers get nice wide angle shots from their wide angle lenses. This camera will be available in July for US$3,995 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.
Blackmagic Design has also announced a software update for the HyperDeck Studio Pro SSD recorder/player that adds Ultra HD recording in Apple ProRes HQ 422 format, along with several new products associated with broadcast video production. The company has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, visit www.blackmagicdesign.com.
