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It takes a different approach to the best 4K cameras out there right now, so let's take a closer look. Additionally, there’s no ND filter in the body as found on the likes of the significantly pricier Canon EOS R and C100. This is a big deal for video, owing to the restrictions around manipulating shutter speed, so old school ND filters or a quick swap adaptor for your favourite lenses will be the way to go if you shoot outdoors often. This definitely feels like the biggest omission here, as with a flip out screen, the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K would have been the ultimate advanced YouTube camera. Even for traditional videographers, when hand-holding the camera, there’s a conflict between being able to see the screen and securing the steadiest shooting position possible. This bulbous camera looks playful and, truth be told, a touch dated, but the combi-polycarbonate/fibreglass body feels well weighted and solid in the hand.
Autofocus and battery woes
With a Micro Four Thirds sensor and lens mount, dual native ISO and a hardware/software combination you would expect to see in a £2,000+ movie camera, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K looks versatile and capable. When you consider its asking price of £1,134/$1,300 – significantly less than the Panasonic GH5S – for video, it makes a lot of sense. Although it can’t capture 10-bit internally, it can output it to an external recorder.
Features
The ProRes files work flawlessly in Apple Final Cut Pro, while CinemaDNG sequences are natively supported in Adobe Premiere Pro, so you’re not forced to use Blackmagic software if you prefer not to. This gives you a huge choice of compatible lenses, and by using a sensor with a native 4K resolution, whichever optic you fit, crop factor will be negligible. The same can't be said for a stills camera like the Canon 5D IV.
Video quality
The studio test scene is recorded in 4K resolution on all the test cameras, with a still frame extracted for visual comparison. The frame the Pocket Cinema 4K's footage has slightly more muted colours and subdued contrast, but this lends itself well to colour and contrast enhancement in post production. The grip is ribbed and has a secure tactility, with a new improved dual microphone set-up to the right of it. There’s also a front-mounted record button and an LED light as well. The Pocket Cinema Camera 4K has a standard tripod thread mount at the base with an additional mount where the hot shoe might be on a stills camera, perfect for an external monitor or LED light.
Price and availability
In fact, you won’t find RAW in any other camera even close to $1,300. With that said, we wanted to test out the camera’s higher frame rates to see if the image quality suffered. While the sensor is cropped even more when shooting 120 fps in HD, it’s very sharp and the image quality is fantastic.
Review: Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K - Blackmagic Design Expands Its Cinema Camera Lineup by Oliver Peters - - ProVideo Coalition
Review: Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K - Blackmagic Design Expands Its Cinema Camera Lineup by Oliver Peters -.
Posted: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
When uploading to Blackmagic Cloud, customers can use an Apple or Android phone to get a connection to the internet via mobile data. Simply connect the phone to the USB-C port and Blackmagic PYXIS will configure for mobile data. Customers can also connect via wired Ethernet using the camera’s Ethernet port. This lets customers get their media out as customers shoot so post production teams anywhere in the world can start work in real time.
Focus
Add in its abysmal battery life, and you have a camera that’s more difficult to operate that you would expect. You do get a full-size HDMI-out port, so connecting an external EVF or monitor is easy. You will, however, benefit from a basic understanding of cinema camera terminology, such as knowing the difference between shutter angle and shutter speed. Really, though, there’s nothing overly complex going on here — Blackmagic Design has taken what seems to confound other manufacturers and turned it into something elegant and approachable. Yes, this is a professional tool, but it would also be incredibly easy for a beginner to learn on — other camera companies would greatly benefit by studying this interface.
The lack of ND filter also means if you need to flit between shooting indoors and outdoors at a moment’s notice regularly, you will still be better served with something like a Cinema EOS C100. Default colour from the Pocket Cinema 4K compares favourably to the much more expensive Canon C300. Weighing 722g and sporting a retro, 90s aesthetic, the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is decent feeling bit of kit. Ditching the weather-sealed magnesium alloy of some more premium cameras has kept the weight manageable, though it still packs enough heft to deliver good weighting when steadied in two hands. The Pocket Cinema Camera lineup received a solid reception when it launched, although the sacrifices made in terms of ports and battery life always held the series back.
What’s also interesting is that the manual electronic focus on MFT lenses requires a very long turn of the focus ring by contrast to, for example, the GH5. It can feel inconsistent and potentially hamper you from getting that pan-focus you want, especially if you’re winging it without any supporting accessories. If you want to film plugged in, you’ll need to go for a DC connector that plugs into the lockable 2-pin port.
That’s some serious data creation, working out to over 16 gigabytes per minute. At that data rate, a 64GB card will capture just 4 minutes of video. Looking at the list of supported media, 4 minutes of capture will cost a minimum of $120 for an SDXC card or $155 for a Cfast 2.0 card.
You can say it would increase the cost, but I'm sure that a hinge would increase the price less than buying an extenal monitor. Blackmagic PYXIS supports creating a small H.264 proxy file in addition to the camera original media when recording. This means the small proxy file can upload to Blackmagic Cloud in seconds so their media is available back at the studio in real time. The ability to transfer media directly into the DaVinci Resolve media bin as editors are working is revolutionary and has never before been possible. The 5-inch touchscreen has a great viewing angle, and that’s a good thing because the monitor does not move.
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