Listed at $2995, I would expect the street price to be slightly lower when it comes times to ship. Markertek has it at $2845, so other sites will probably match closer to the release date.
Preorder Blackmagic Cinema Camera from B&H Photo Video
Here’s a DSLR / Cinema Sensor Size Comparison chart
$159! Lowered from $189.95 at B&H Photo
This is the only card that can reliably span at high GOP1 bitrates and at the same time record for nearly an hour straight at those high bitrates. I’ve previously used the Sandisk 45mb cards with good success, but the 95mb cards are a whole new ballgame. I just hope you have a place to store all the footage.
1. Make the mount extender detachable.
Right now the Canon EF/Nikon ZF mount sits past 40mm from the sensor. I know I went over this in my last post, but by reducing this distance to NEX or 4/3 20mm distance, a whole range of lens options open up. Lens options that work better with the 15.6mm wide sensor (2.1x 35mm FF crop)
2. Allow for line skipped higher framerate modes.
Cameras like the new FS700 change the sampling of the sensor to allow higher framerates. For instance, at 240fps you see a decrease in vertical resolution over the 120fps and slower modes. Certainly there may be limitations with the onboard cpu that might make this impossible, but if it is, people will gladly take a small resolution hit to get 60fps, or even 48fps like the Scarlet X at 3k. At the same time, it is also important, even without higher framerates, to have ramping options available in camera from 1-30fps.
3. Timelapse mode.
It certainly hasn’t been mentioned yet as far as I can tell, but a RAW timelapse mode would be incredibly useful for this camera. Settings for variable slow speed frame rates as well as long duration shutter exposures would be equally useful.
4. RGB Histogram.
Monitoring the image/exposure should be done exactly as Red does it. They’ve perfected the RGB histogram and it is essential for RAW cinema applications. Shutter should also allow for settings in shutter angle as well as further synchroscan settings for shooting monitors and other equipment.
Wow! What an announcement! This new camera is very close to the old Scarlet 3k for $3000 that was promised long ago. Instead this is a $3000 camera with a built-in $1000 RAW recorder, $1000 software, $750 Canon EF mount and a $250 camera?
Of course this has opened up more questions about how the camera operates, and the lens choices possible. The sensor itself is very interesting. 13 stops DR, if true, is much higher than competing DSLRs. Doing a little searching around, there was a sensor announced in 2009 – A sCMOS sensor with very high DR with an active pixel area of 16.64×14.04mm, exactly the same as this new blackmagic camera. Another camera with an sCMOS sensor is the pco.edge, an industrial camera, but maybe a good camera to look at the datasheet for to see lower resolution high speed options that are available with this sensor. I’m not saying this sensor is in the new blackmagic camera, but it looks very similar.
On to camera mounts: The ideal mount for this camera would be a 4/3 mount that is adaptable to PL, B4, OCT-18/19, EF, Nikon F, PK, OM, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. From the spec sheet and website it says that is supports both EF and ZF, but only pictures of EF lenses are shown on the camera. Hopefully this will be cleared up soon. With a 4/3 mount you could use the excellent lenses designed for this sensor size already from Panasonic, Olympus and Voightlander. For now, the Ideal zoom is the Tokina 11-16 – hopefully electronic in both Canon EF and Nikon G mounts.
…
Brought to you by http://www.cavootle.com
What is Cavootle? http://youtu.be/D41vHGWAqts
Fourth in the Hacked GH2 Tutorial Series. In this episode we start with the footage loaded and ready to test with the streamparser software. This software will tell us that the footage has recorded at the correct bitrate, and has all red frames which represent I-frames (GOP 1) which makes this essentially a CBR Intraframe AVCHD codec. Very impressive for a $600 camera. Following this we have information on the ISO Bug which affects ISO 320 and 640 and can be countered by setting a higher ISO and returning back downward. This segment was recorded in true anamorphic which I will talk about in a later video. The video ends with using Kelvin for white balancing.…