For a limited time, #1 Bestselling Pro Camcorder, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is just $495!

Today, Blackmagic Design announced a $500 off summer sale on the groundbreaking 12-bit RAW Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. Until August 31st, 2014, the BMPCC is $495 at Amazon, Adorama, eBay, B&H and other authorized retailers.

At this price, the Pocket Cinema Camera becomes price competitive with entry level DSLRs and DSLMs - with a camera whose image quality is on par with cameras costing thousands of dollars more. Here's the Blackmagic press release:

Fremont, CA - July 16, 2014 - Blackmagic Design today announced an exciting Summer Special discount for the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera for the low price of US$495. With a normal recommended retail price of US$995, this Summer Special represents incredible value and is available for a limited time and will end on the 31st of August 2014. This Summer Special price is subject to limited availability, after which the price will return to the usual recommended retail price of US$995.

Since its introduction, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera has been used in thousands of independent films, television commercials, music videos and anywhere cinematographers need a high quality digital film camera in a stealthy super small size.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera includes powerful features such as Super 16mm sized 1080HD sensor, super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, built in SD card recorder for Apple ProRes, lossless CinemaDNG RAW capture and active Micro Four Thirds lens mount, all in an attractive compact design.

This compact design allows the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera to be used in more situations where a larger camera would not be practical. It’s so small that it can be used in situations in the field where a larger camera could be dangerous. The camera’s film look even allows personal video to be shot with the style and creativity of a motion picture film.

Unlike regular video cameras Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is a true digital cinema camera as it includes a super wide dynamic range image sensor with 13 stops of latitude, allowing feature film quality images.

A common mistake in the television industry is the assumption that more resolution means higher quality. Most cameras produce"video" looking images that suffer from highlight and black clipping that limits details. Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera's wide dynamic range eliminates this problem and provides film quality with dramatically more detail retained in black and whites in the image. Once the shoot is complete, DaVinci Resolve Lite 11 color correction and online editing software can be used to adjust images and take advantage of this extra range in the images.

To eliminate the damage that low bit depth and high compression video storage creates, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera includes a easy to use SD card recorder that allows the full sensor dynamic range to be recorded in professional ProRes 422 (HQ) format, as well as 12 bit Log RAW lossless compressed CinemaDNG format. These files can be read by high end video software as they are all open standard.

“We have worked hard to set up this exciting special price to allow more people to afford a super compact digital cinema camera that they can personally own. However stock is limited at this lower price so customers who want to buy at this price will need to move fast,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “We are extremely proud of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and we want to thank all the cinematographers who have send us examples of the work they have completed with this camera. We want to thank everyone for the wise and intelligent feedback they have given us and we hope this special offer is a great way to show our appreciation to the wonderful customers we have. For us, this is a dream come true!”

Now, at the $1700 price point, we have the GH4 competing with cameras such as the ~$3000+ 5D Mark III and ~$11,999 1 D C - while, at the low end, DSLR video shooters can buy a straight-out-of-the-box RAW camera for the price of a T3i.  This is bad news for the old-line DSLR manufacturers.

It seems to me that Canon and Nikon either have to step up to the plate and offer more high end features for the money - or, cede the video market to the newcomers and watch sales of mirror-box DSLRs slip even further.  If I owned stock in these companies, I would sell it.

If you've been eyeing the BMPCC, but didn't have quite enough money to buy one - now may be the time to pull the trigger. Please click on one of the links, pictures or display ads from our sponsors on this page to order. It won't cost you anything extra, but it will help to keep these blog posts coming. Thanks so much for supporting the Hybrid Camera Revolution!

Which is better for Chromakey - the 4K compressed Panasonic GH4 or the 2.5K RAW Blackmagic Cinema Camera?

Here's a very nicely done video from Paul Shillito at Video-Alchemy, who gives us an in-depth discussion of keying with 10-bit ProRes 422 and uncompressed RAW video from the 2.5K Blackmagic Cinema Camera (BMCC)  - and then compares the results to an 8-bit 4:2:0 compressed video key from the 4K Panasonic GH4.

In this 15:25 video, Paul does a 9 minute, detailed walk through of the setup - and then about 6 minutes of side-by-side conclusions. If you'd like to cut straight to the bottom line, please click here.

It would be reasonable to expect that the 8-bit compressed video would not hold up well to the key as uncompressed RAW - but let's take a look at the video and see:




So - to my eyes at least, compressed 4K looks clean enough for a production quality key. This should be interesting to two groups of people. First, those who have already bought their GH4s, and who have had concerns that they'll need to buy an external 10-bit recorder to get a clean key. Those folks can relax - internally recorded 4K works just fine.

The second group is those who have hesitated before buying the GH4 because they were concerned about this issue. Those folks can relax too - and go ahead and order their cameras.  The best price for an in-stock GH4 right now is $1793.95 at Cameta via eBay.

A Whole New Camera - Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Upgrade to CinemaDNG RAW!

Yesterday, Blackmagic set the filmmaking community on its ear (again!) with the announcement of the firmware v1.5 RAW upgrade to the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera.

With the addition of lossless CinemaDNG RAW, the BMPCC is now the least expensive unhacked 12-bit RAW solution in the marketplace, and a tremendous value for money at $995.

There are already some impressive examples of RAW footage, like this one from Ron Stratton on Vimeo Plus:



First raw video from Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
I guess it's time to pick up a few $127 Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB cards and start shooting RAW. 
Or, for about the same price as 4 of the Sandisk cards, a $328 Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle and a $200 ADATA 256 GB SSD (Adata offers more GB per $ than the other brands on the Blackmagic approved list.

I shoot ProRes with an ADATA 64GB SDXC card - it's a rock solid performer with no dropped frames. ProRes, we hardly knew ye.

CinemaDNG RAW Coming to the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Soon!

Blackmagic guru John Brawley posted this image of a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera LCD on Twitter yesterday, along with this teaser, "Coming soon to the Pocket...RAW". Looks like I'm going to need that SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s card sooner than I thought.