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I will say this, as I'm sure there will be people who are infuriated.  If you look at this as a Kickstarter campaign, you essentially crowdfunded a company's first camera. $2995 would get you a camera before everyone else (yes even with all the shipping problems).  A few friends of mine have received there's.  In truth they said to me, it's a little annoying, but hey, we have our cameras and that's the price of being one of the first owners even if they did come late. Anyway on kickstarter campaigns, as we know, there are great products and when one invests in a product, you will pay the price for it.    This goes with virtually any product on the market.  Apple should make us all very familiar to this process. Heck I paid nearly $6000.00 for their Mac Pro bundle in 2006, and the price steadily dropped to the point where you can have the same specs in a freakin' Macbook Air for $999 today. Back to my Kickstarter campaign analogy.  Many times when a small company tries to get its foot in the door on making a new product we all want and could not afford before, many of us will invest with that company and try to be among the first.  Problems happen.  Some kickstarters never even come to full fruition but many, usually end up delivering later than anticipated.    Let's take Defygimbal or Besteady for example. These two companies are creating the best competition to Freeflysystems ridiculously overpriced (like Canon)MōVI. In order for these companies to get their feet off the ground, sometimes you still have to pay a price to do it that may be pricier than you thought it would be. Defy's $2300 Gimbal only gets you 2 lbs of weight capacity.  But know what? It works and works well!! Once you figure in the cost of materials and what it takes to build it than it becomes understandable.  And then Besteady's first product is priced at $600 more but for that price you get nearly 4lbs of weight capacity.    Maybe in the future when more people buy these products these will drop in price as well. It's the cost we pay of being the first in line.  It's just many of us were used to being so darn upset at Blackmagic that all we can do is get mad.  I still say, if they make us upset, fine but we have a decision on whether or not to purchase products through this company or the next. It's still an uphill battle. They're fighting against Canon, Nikon, Sony, and RED but all these company's are arrogant, and have a right to be. They've had decades of establishing themselves as industry leaders. But tell me this, name any other company that offers 3 cameras who all produce a RAW image, one is 1080p, one is 2.5k and the top of the line is 4k with global shutter and super 35 for $1000, $2000 and $4000 and offer the industry leading color correction program for free with two of those offerings?  I have been rooting for these guys from the beginning and now for $2000.00 you can own a proper 2.5k camera? Could they be improved with aliasing and moire, telling you the battery life, letting you delete your clips in camera, telling you how much ssd room you have left? yes a million times over yes, but if this is their first offering of cameras, I hope they eventually get to the point in the next 2 years of seriously disruping the market.  Canon's C300 is way over priced and so is their 1DC, but hey people will pay for it because it's a sure thing.  Now you can get 4k raw with globaal shutter for $4k.  I hope we can say , TAKE THAT CANON! (maybe a sub $10k C300 price drop in the near future?) We shall see. I love the free market for this reason.  Competition is good.  Let's enjoy it. We who buy these products are investors who want these guys to succeed. There WILL BE moments that anger us. Let it be what it is.  Don't forget even Apple has had huge shipping delays on their products that are unexpected.  I'm not looking to compare the two companies. I'm just saying, this company, Blackmagic Design, is changing the game for us Indy filmmakers and this is an exciting time for us.  We used to have to kill ourselves and go into severe debt to get in the game. Not anymore. 

I think the price was too close to the 4K camera...   The 4k camera offers not only increased resolution, but also a s35 sensor size (very welcome) and compressed raw (much more manageable files), two serious downsides to the original camera, so I guess that with price tags of $3k vs $4k, the "old" camera would not seem that appealing anymore. The new price tag separates it into a different segment and now the 3 different models all have their own place in the market. Definitely $2k is a great price, even $2500 would have been great!   For owners bitching about the price drop, they need to know this is what happens, it's how it goes! People keep complaining that camera makers are not giving them all they could, keeping features out and inflating prices with tiny updates, but when someone has the balls to make a price cut like this and actually offer the technology as cheap as they possibly can, then their own personal interests come up and they quickly point the finger and feel ripped off. It's evolution, deal with it!   I also don't think this affects the Pocket camera, I never saw them as competing products, if anything, the pocket camera is still a better choice, as the sensor size matches the mount better, you can use 16mm glass, you get an active mount and you get compressed raw.   Now they just need to add compressed raw to the BMCC. (Audio levels on ALL camera models would be great too, but it seems to be asking for too much, they'll probably release a 6k camera for $500 before that happens :)  )

First off, I think this is great. What a deal for this camera.   As an economist, i'm trying to understand how this move fits into BMD's overall strategy. This is what I've come up with: Just a few months ago, the BMCC was supply constrained, so they announce the BMPC and the Pocket Camera to take some pressure off the BMCC. Now it appears that the pocket camera is supply constrained (and the BMPC will be too), so they drop the price of the BMCC, because it's now available.   Just a theory, and probably not 100% of the story, because I'm sure RAW on the 5D3 factored in there somewhere too, but it seems like a strategy to try and limit the frustration with the BMD supply chain SNAFU.   But either way, BMD is really putting it to the Asian manufacturers. I'm sure the Ninja assassins are sharpening their katana blades and catching the next boat to Australia as we speak.

Good News for 7D owners.   "a1ex committed  2 hours ago (raw commit)   7D: found raw image buffers! raw overlays and silent pics working"    

I see it differently : we're all spoiled without even realising it.  For 98% of my work (commercials, music videos, documentaries and wedding videos) my T3i and Nex5N give me all I need.  I've never had any complaints whatsoever from any clients, nor TV-stations (my music videos are broadcast on national TV) that the image quality of my work wouldn't be good enough.   Only 3 years ago, all of the people who complain about Canon today, would've given up both of their legs for a camera that you can buy today for a little over 400 EUR.    Last year I was in the market for a new camera.  I was considering a second hand 5D MkII, but opted for a T3i and a NEX 5N.  Both cost me less than 700 EUR.   That's even cheaper than my very first HDV camera (a Canon HV30).    I can shoot whatever I want, and the NEX gives me wonderful slowmotion when I need it.  On top of that, both cameras are extremely good photo cameras, which has allowed me to do more photo assignments.   I'm not even talking about the Mosaic Engineering AA filter for the T3i (which significantly improves the footage and gets rid of 90% of moiré and aliasing) or Tragic Lantern for the T3i (which allows you to increase the bitrate to >120Mbps).   What I'm trying to say is that today even the cheaper DSLR's are no longer limiting filmmakers.  All this talk about dynamic range, sensors, ... is interesting for people who like to indulge in the technical side of things, but the vast majority of the audience and clients couldn't care less, as long as the result looks great.

  It isn't the same.   The situation is that people have waited almost a year for their orders to be delivered, and just after they ARE finally delivered they knock $1000 off the price and they come into regular stock to pick up off the shelves. If you can't appreciate how frustrating that is for some people, then you're a lost cause.

Here's another interesting snip from the article about its video:   Perhaps more intriguingly, Panasonic says that the better image sensor means that it need only bin four pixels to create each pixel in the final movie, rather than six pixels as in the G6. The mixing is performed in 1 x 4 pixel lines, rather than 2x2 blocks, and the image processor performs low-pass filtering on the resulting data as it comes off-chip.   I'm not sure how they would bin in 1x4 lines, I'm wondering if it improves horizontal resolution in video. I'm also not sure how they could bin 6 pixels off a 2x2 block. The low-pass filtering of the data coming off the chip may have been how Panasonic has been getting relatively moire-free video for years now.

1. Yes. Look to Hot Rod Cameras or Ceicio 7 on eBay for the adapter   2. Active mount has advantage of being compatible with all mFT glass that has electronic aperture control or fly-by-wire manual focus or stabilisation. None of the Lumix or Olympus lenses work on the passive mount. Only SLR Magic and Voigtlander manual stuff without electronic contacts work on it.

They're from ReWo http://content.rewotechnic.de/?page_id=81

Two points I want to add.   1.  Will this be another Blackmagic Design over-promise and under-deliver?  Another huge shipping delay could occur because of something unexpected happening.   For example, they get more orders than expected combined with some sort of supply chain delay cause problems again.     2.  I agree with Vidrios and just want to reiterate that regardless of Black Magic's history of over-promising and under-delivering, these are still truly amazing times to be a filmmaker.  Just a few years ago we dreamed of shooting images of the quality you can get on a  Canon T2i.  Now, you can get a used T2i for under $400!  WTF?  You can't even get 4 minutes of 16mm film processed and transferred to HD for $400.  See http://www.colorlab.com/ for pricing on that.     Anyone that is upset about Blackmagic, Canon, Sony, Red, etc. should take a step back and calm down.  These are exciting times and we should all be grateful for all of the tools available to us.  Aren't you shooting on something already?  If you think the tool is going to make you a better craftsmen, think again.  Good filmmakers can take whatever tool is handed to them and make something good.     But if you are still truly upset, then, go make your own camera.  If you really know what's best and it's easy enough to criticize someone else, then why don't you go and fix it and go be a millionaire selling the world's greatest camera.  Yes, this previous statement is a little sarcastic but it's really meant to put it all in perspective.  I really believe these companies are doing what they think is best.  You can't please all of the people all of the time.  Camera makers and anyone that makes anything has to make choices that won't be perfect for everyone and maybe not even for most people.   Either way, thanks to Andrew for this blog, thanks to all the camera makers for these awesome tools, and thanks to all the filmmakers that share their knowledge.  Truly amazing times.

  How does this in any way effect your 5D Mark III purchase? They are quite different cameras. The 5D Mark III has a much larger sensor, better suited to the EF mount glass you will use on it. It is much cleaner in low light and the form factor is better. It is much lighter, runs for hours on a tiny internal battery, has no fan, uses small CF cards, gets constant firmware updates and takes 22MP professional quality stills. Blackmagic have their work cut out to compete with it.

does it suffer from Aliasing and Moire? thanks

@PAVP :   I would call Apple anything but modular, except for the Mac Pro line.  But every other product they make, is a closed system with very few tweaking options for the user (especially compared to Windows). However, I think this is Apple's strength, cos it allows you to focus on what you want to do, and not how you want to do it (since Apple has more or less decided that for you).   Furthermore, I don't think you understand the difference between developing and engineering things, and actually making them.  There's a huge difference between something like Magic Lantern, which is purely development and a much more horizontal process, and mass-scale production, which by definition has a more vertical and hierarchic structure.  It's the only way to keep production as cheap as it is.  If you want your production to be more modular and flexible, this will increase your costs exponentially (and people are already up in arms about camera's costing too much today).   Also, you say you want manufacturers to poll users so they can make the cameras that you and me want.  Problem is that we all want different things : you might need 4-track audio when shooting, while I don't need a mic nor headphone port.  Or I might want 50p while you'd rather have a built-in vectorscope.  I might want RAW, while ProRes is fine for you.  I might want a built-in viewfinder, while you prefer uncluttered HDMI so you can attach an external screen.  The only way to make everyone happy, is to include ALL possible demands from users.  Which increases costs and has clients skip the camera cos it has way more features than what they need.

Enjoyed a lot of your points, especially the one noting that it's ludicrous that these companies are using stupid simple 3$ features like headphone jacks to swing us around by the necks and "protect their higher models". It's pathetic, more competition needs to enter this industry and actually sell devices that are in line with what is technologically feasible at the moment. If someone came in and tried to do what BlackMagic was doing but actually thought out their production flow and business model, Canon/Nikon/Panny/Sony/Olympus/Red/etc would be forced to compete or be crushed. BlackMagic has an opportunity to exploit a VERY vulnerable exploit in this market...yet they choose to remain so small that they cannot sustain the demand for their product. Seriously, they could be industry leaders. It's suicide, because it's only a matter of time before someone else comes in and does what they're doing and does it better.

Looks like Panasonic is downsampling differently with this sensor than the one from the G6.   http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-gx7/panasonic-gx7A.HTM     "Panasonic says that the better image sensor means that it need only bin four pixels to create each pixel in the final movie, rather than six pixels as in the G6. The mixing is performed in 1 x 4 pixel lines, rather than 2x2 blocks, and the image processor performs low-pass filtering on the resulting data as it comes off-chip."

will you accept $246,000 for the lot? Cash waiting.  Ps. I'll throw in a hours teabagging or bagpiping at your discretion!