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NAB 2013: News Shooter looks at Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

Apr 8, 2013 at 19:54:47 GMT

VIDEO NEWS BLACKMAGIC CINEMA

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Digital video site www.newsshooter.com is at this year's NAB show in Las Vegas, and has been taking a look at the Pocket Cinema Camera from Blackmagic. The Pocket Cinema Camera is a small, 1080 video camera with a Micro Four Thirds lensmount and an eye-opening MSRP of $995. Click through to see newsshooter's video, straight from the floor at NAB.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera uses a Super 16 imaging area (around 12.5 x 7.4mm), and an 'active' Micro Four Thirds lens mount, giving full aperture control of native lenses. The camera can capture footage in Apple's 10-bit 4:2:2 ProRes format Blackmagic promising to add the open, lossless CinemaDNG Raw standard later.

Click here for our announcement news story including press release and detailed specifications

Click here for the original article on www.newsshooter.com

Comments

Total comments: 33

Micro shake is could to be the downside unless IS works on this mount? Whether its up to the task or not BMD are going to sell truck loads of these, I want one.

0 upvotes

This is a pro camera announced at National Association of Broadcasters show. The combination of small size, "Pocket" name, NEX appearance, affordable price, MFT mount and the news post on Digital Photography site is VERY MISLEADING to photographers that want to shoot better video.

BlackMagic will face the perfect storm of returns once they start shipping.

1 upvote

Let's not overstate things here, your comment is a bit overly dramatic. Im sure consumers who are about to shell out $995 will first check the spec sheet. As pointed out in the article this camera offers high quality for its size and is suited to warzones etc. Id say that makes it a viable option for professional journalists and videographers who at times resort to using iPhones for video footage. Times have changed

0 upvotes

You are right, some will. Probably more videographers than journalists, but yeah. Great tech at affordable price.

Just mark my words about the returns, there is no way of knowing it now. I hope I'm wrong.

1 upvote

Said SD cards couldn't keep up with RAW capture, even though the tech specs say there is RAW. Still 10-bit 4:2:2 ProRes on a $995 cam. Nice.

0 upvotes

Raw capture (CinemaDNG) will be enabled by a firmware update, and you're supposed to use an external drive to record that.

0 upvotes

1.5:1 compressed Cinema DNG to SD card.
Mentioned here: http://vimeo.com/63675961

Comment edited 18 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

This man was once in Digitalrev.

0 upvotes

He's not a good interviewer.

0 upvotes

Is cropping factor 3X vs full frame?

0 upvotes

Best to think of it as "full frame Super 16"! Those of us who have shot on such will know which lenses are needed. Of course, there's not yet a cinema-ready super-mega-ultra-hyperwide, and if there is, it likely won't fill a MFT frame.

1 upvote

MFT is a 2x crop factor vs FF.

0 upvotes

And this is slightly smaller than MFT. Super 16 is actually a great sensor size as many super 16 lenses vignette on the BMCC .. But you can still achieve fantastic depth of field with fast lenses. It's the sweet spot, IMO. Full frame is not suited to video, as its exceedingly difficult to keep anything in focus.

Comment edited 50 seconds after posting

1 upvote

You can close the aperture and still get cleaner video due to ISO performance of full frame sensor. I do agree that deeper DoF with faster T stop could be an advantage, but your ISO performance would be degraded (small sensor). Both FF and S16 have their advantages depending on the application.

0 upvotes

I wish people would stop spreading misinformation. A smaller sensor itself does not equate to high noise or poor noise peformance. It's the size of the pixel that matters, not sensor size! It's simple math people! The pocket cinema camera has pixels in the 5-6 micron range. That's about the same density as an 18MP full frame camera or 8MP APS-C camera! And with today's semiconductor fabrication and electronics technology, that's very high DR and low noise!

2 upvotes

@DerDer
Not the whole truth. If the signal is weak, i.e. light levels are low, read noise is more important than photon shot noise, and more pixels within a given area (smaller pixels) will result in a noisier image. And it gets worse as you increase the ISO, of course.

But for stronger signals, i.e. brighter images, shot noise is more important, and that is primarily dependent on the total light gathering area (sensor size), not how many pixels the sensor is divided into.

1 upvote

Is it strictly a video camera or you could shoot still images??? I have some Olympus prime lenses micro 4/3 that I've been using on my OMD EM5 so please clarify??? Thank you.

Comment edited 29 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

Almost certainly video only. Blackmagic makes no reference to stills at all.

2 upvotes

Thank you.

0 upvotes

If it does shoot stills, I'm guessing they will be much lower res than your EM5. Most still cameras that also shoot video skip lines of pixels on the sensor to take 1080 video because they have way more pixels than they need to capture HD video. Unwanted artifacts arise as the result of this line skipping. This camera will probably be optimized for shooting only video, which is a very good thing. I'm guessing though. Any other thoughts on this?

1 upvote

And it only does up to 30 fps. It needs 1080/60 in order to minimize jello. So it's not a replacement for an action cam like the GoPro

0 upvotes

The frame rate has nothing to do with the Jello effect. The sensor read speed is what matters.

12 upvotes

No, jello is related to global shutter or not. So, its not sensor read speed either. A global shutter will never give you jello no matter how slow of a frame rate you are at, its will just blur. The global shutter will read all the pixels at the same time vs something like gopro which does not have a global shutter, it has a rolling shutter, which pretty much is horrible. That got to be the next thing to change on the hero cameras as the hero 3 still has a rolling shutter.

1 upvote

If the camera has a rolling shutter, then the read speed determines the percentage/angle of the rolling shutter effect.

If the camera has a global shutter, then there is no rolling shutter effect.

So what mpgxsvcd said is accurate, assuming that a rolling shutter is used (as it is on the models discussed but not on the related 4K BlackMagic camera).

3 upvotes

You need a certain amount of mass to have smooth dampened movement, or in fact just trying to hold it still. So forget longer lenses unless one is tripod mounted or ... one ends up with one of those ridiculous shoulder rigs ... which takes one away from the "pocket" concept.

0 upvotes

You can always add mass, but you can't take away mass. If you find it's too light, connect it to some weight via the top or bottom tripod hole.

5 upvotes

Yeah, this paired with the IS system in the EM-5 would make sense, But micro-shake is very apparent in pretty much any handheld footage. Not sure what the point of a small pocket camera form factor is, especially with no viewfinder. Footage will be shaky as hell and unusable without a built out rig, in which case why not use the BMCC/BMDC? Still, finally someone gave us some decent minimally compressed codecs at this price point. Its worth it for that alone! How $3500 DSLRs (or the laughable $12k 1D C) are still only offering only 8 bit compressed-to-hell codecs is beyond me.

0 upvotes

This is going to be an outstanding seller!!!!!

2 upvotes

Still no sign of whether "Active" means that it can auto focus the lens or not. Dpreview, a little help here?

1 upvote

They don't say. My guess would be aperture control only.

1 upvote

The same as the original 2.5K BMCC with EF-mount, the pocket camera offers setting of focus and the iris via the camera. Focus button turns on peaking. Iris button automatically adjusts lens iris settings so no pixel value is clipped.

1 upvote

The Video states, Iris and Focus, not zoom.

2 upvotes

Focus by wire to support MFT lenses only + focus peaking is good enough for the most. More control that way. Don't want to tie up the resources that could be used to potentially write RAW. They are going to push RAW first. I like that.

0 upvotes

Total comments: 33


Blackmagic Design announces Super-35 4K camera with global shutter Apr 8, 2013	Blackmagic Design creates Pocket Cinema Camera with raw 1080 shooting Apr 8, 2013	JK Imaging, Blackmagic Design and others join Micro Four Thirds Jan 21, 2013	Blackmagic Designs announces Blackmagic Cinema Camera Apr 16, 2012

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