Blackmagic Production Camera 4K vs RED ONE MX - Fight's On!

We've been waiting for this for a long time. The first images from the Blackmagic Production Camera, announced in April 2013 at NAB, are finally here! Yesterday, Blackmagic CEO, Grant Petty, posted a 10GB downloadable sample that he shot personally (if you want to see it and experiment with how it performs in the grade, you can download it here).

This was a very cool thing for him to do, but the community of interest for this camera continued to clamor for images shot by a "real DP".

Well today, we have those images - and the backstory is almost as interesting as the video itself.

Turns out that Captain Hook (of Captain Hook LUT fame) took his test BMPC out on a music video shoot as the "B" cam to a RED MX.

The director liked the early images so much that the BMPC was promoted to the "A" cam:



This camera essentially delivers Hollywood quality 4K motion pictures at an "amateur movie" price of $3995 - which is less than a 1080p Canon 5D Mark III with the 24-70 lens, $1500 less than an 8 bit 1080p Canon C100, $8000 less than a non-RAW capable 4K Canon 1DC, $13,000 less than the 10 bit 1080p Canon C300 and $23,000 (!) less than Canon's 4K C500.

RED and Sony prices for equivalently equipped 4K cinema cameras are also at or above $10K.  The new 2K Arri Amira is $20K.

My guess is that Blackmagic will be able to sell as many Production Cameras as the factory can crank out.  I also predict that we will start to see downward price adjustments from Canon and Sony - and perhaps even RED and Arri.

This may be bad news for the large camera companies, but it is a terrific Christmas gift to photographers and moviemakers everywhere - even those who will never buy a Blackmagic camera.

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