At its NAB 2018 press conference this morning, Blackmagic announced an update to the wildly popular Pocket Cinema Camera. The new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K captures up to 4K/60p video, as well as windowed HD video at 120p.
It offers 13 stops of dynamic range and uses a full size Micro Four Thirds sensor and lens mount. The body is a new carbon fiber and polycarbon blend for a lightweight design. The new camera features a rethought ergonomics design and a large 5″ touchscreen display. There are dedicated buttons on top of the camera grip for quick access to ISO, shutter speed and white balance. Additionally, the 4K Pocket Cinema Camera offers the ability to capture still images – using a separate, dedicated button apart from the standard video record button on the camera’s grip.
The camera also offers a mini-XLR port with phantom power for working with shotgun and other condenser mics on set. The onboard mics are also much improved – and there’s a second mic input for using the smaller mini-plug mics.
The new Pocket Cinema Camera 4K also features a full size HDMI out port for attaching external monitors or recorders. Internally, the camera records to either SD cards (with support for UHS-II type cards) and CFast cards. You’ll also be able to use the USB port on the camera for capturing footage to an external hard drive, which will use either HFS+ or exFat formatting. The camera uses the popular LP-E6 form battery, which we’ve seen in Canon DSLRs for many years now.
The new Pocket Cinema Camera 4K retails for $1295 and will include a full version of DaVinci Resolve Studio (a $300 software package). According to Blackmagic, the camera is expect to ship by Septemer 2018. You can pre-order it here at B&H Photo.
[Update: I confirmed with a Blackmagic rep at NAB that the still image capture is for DNG files only (no JPEG). The file is captured at the resolution the camera is currently set at for video capture. So, the max resolution for still images is equivalent to 4K or, roughly 8MP. Still images cannot be captured during video recording.]
Carbon fiber and electronics don’t play together very nicely. It will be interesting to see if this becomes an issue. Carbon fiber sounds cool and all, but seems very unnecessary when taking into consideration the cost, and the alternatives to carbon for something in this form factor that wouldn’t produce much in the way of extra weight, while also being inert and eliminating the conductivity issue.
Interesting