Biggest European dealer CVP 'in the dark' over new Blackmagic cameras

[Bruno]

Ok guys, time for everyone to calm down.

 

The fact remains, BlackMagic committed to ship in July. It is still July. They did not promise that customers would get it in July either. Ship likely means that distributors get the first cameras in early august, with likely some pre-orders being fulfilled by mid-end of August.

 

That's what I said, didn't calm anyone down. :)

[HurtinMinorKey]

The deafening silence is very strange. Perhaps BMD is concerned that their manufacturers/firmware designers, will take their foot off the gas if they announce a delay.

[Bruno]

http://invite.blackmagicdesign.com/event2013/

 

They announced this last week, it's not a clarification, but it's no deafening silence either! :)

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

In a sense I am glad BM is making ("making"?) cameras because it at least theoretically puts some added pressure on other camera makers to add more value for lower costs.

 

I sold my GH3 because it was too large in size for me. The pocket camera is an ideal camera for my needs as I want something I can take with me on my bike and head out and document my city. The size factor is a big deal to me, no pun intended, and so this release date has me in more anticipation than I would like. Yes, I should probably have other interests and hobbies but to me the BMPCC is a potentially revolutionary camera that could inspire and facilitate me to finally get back into taking moving images.

 

And so right now I'm having a love/hate relationship with BM as they've raised expectations. July isn't over yet so the waiting continues...

[ErikSwan]

To all those saying it's not late yet, you're right. It's not late yet.

 

And there is still a possibility that it will be to the distributors by July 31st and shortly to us thereafter, with RAW firmware and all. If that happens, I'll be satisfied and impressed with Blackmagic's ability to stick to their word this time and pull off a product launch in such a short period of time.

 

But I think we all know that's not very likely at this point.

[mtheory]

Wow, now THAT is balanced moderation. Stay classy Andrew.

 

You provoke someone through constant harassment, then accuse them of being classless? Cmon.

[bmcc.tv]

I sold my GH3 because it was too large in size for me. The pocket camera is an ideal camera for my needs as I want something I can take with me on my bike and head out and document my city

 

This is good in principle, but the pocket camera won't to take photos like your GH3... 

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

This is good in principle, but the pocket camera won't to take photos like your GH3... 

 

I wasn't taking stills with the GH3 much anyway so I'm ok without that feature. 

[Luc]

Today, in the BM forums, from their spoke person:

 

"The team tells me that we are still on track to start shipping before the end of July. I'm not sure if there will be more of an official update than that within the next week, but for anyone in the LA area, we will have cameras at our event on Thursday if you want to check them out"

[Lee Mullen]

2nd year running! Completely unacceptable.

 

Blackmagic are risking serious reputation damage with this.

 

What ya expect, Aussie company with the "she'll be right mate, no worries" attitude! I live here and sometimes the term 'Whinging Pom' is fully justified! Parts of Aus have never moved on since the Gough Whitlam era!! Terrible.

[Andrew Reid]

I have been the ultimate whinging pom this past week but yeah - I feel it's justified.

 

Last year was different, I defended them all the way for months and months, publicly and privately.

 

What changed for me this year is that they clearly disregarded customer concerns and carried on as normal. mFT body 9 months late. New cameras likely late. Small quantities. This is not so much a balls-up out of their control any more, but bordering on disrespectful. Even John Brawley who I respect a lot, handled me with a poor attitude on BMCUser the other day, practically implied I was nothing but a peddler of hype with my BMCC coverage on EOSHD.

 

I have to say, I don't think quite so highly as Blackmagic now as I did when they started out on this venture.

[mtheory]

Criticism will be healthy for BMD, it will prevent them from becoming the next RED cult and keep fanatics and douchebags at bay.

[zephyrnoid]

As far as I know, Red and Sony have never been involved in  litigation/negotiation  until this year 2013 after RED  (not Sony) sued F55, F5 and F65 for using compressed RAW. Sony counter sued in response claiming three patent violation. 

 

Big sensor video revolution happened as a natural followup to the use of CMOS sensors in DSLRs and simply advances in producing faster and cheaper electronics that can process that data and record it to faster cards.. This would have happened regardless even if no such company called Red existed. 

 

These advances will continue until in few years even cell phones would do 4K video. When that happens some people are going to say, look we will never have 4K on cellphones without Red, but of course that would be nonsense..It would be simply a result of cheaper and faster electronics and cheaper and faster with larger capacities flash memory cards, regardless if Red existed or not. 

I practically live at PTO. You do realise that Sony discovered that RED had bamboozled them. It was actualyl RED that stole the Sony tech. Oops!

[zephyrnoid]

Promises Promises. How The New Millennium revived the 'Snake Oil Shell Game' of 1800's America.

________________________

If I had a dollar for every technology 'Gee Wiz' product rollout delay or worse, for every scam (not saying BMPCC is a scam) that collects but either delivers YEARS late or never delivers at all- I'd be filthy rich.

CASE: As a onetime Kickstarter aspirant (not a video related project) I studied the most compelling cases to learn the ropes pulled by the successful ones. Here's a typical example.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/midasmount/snapfocus-follow-focus-system

Funded up to 500% of Goal Net = $111,000.  Funding Period ended June 2012
I went over to thier website yesterday July 23rd, 2013 to see how things were going. Here's a screengrab of thier homepage

Here's the blurb incentive for the highest backers...

• Pledge $2,499 or more

  4 backers

  THE DEALER PACK. Get 9 SnapFocus units that will arrive in time for you to sell them for the holiday season and one LIMITED EDITION SNAPFOCUS unit with an estimated September delivery date.

  Estimated delivery: Nov 2012

Nov 2012 - July 2013 = 8 months and counting!
 

So, how about thier paying customers? $111,000 is a pretty big stash for bicycle handlebars turned follow focus contraption don't you agree? You'd think a year would be enough to turn out some deliverables right?
Have a read...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/midasmount/snapfocus-follow-focus-system/comments

Now. In all fairness, BMPC looks like an eminent deliverable,  but will it astound or be a flat  or incomplete delivery? Oh gosh. No 4K yet. Will they then say, oh gosh! No lens yet how about a pinehole instead? Kidding :D

 

I belong to about 35 Forums in about 5 domains (over 10 years) and have seen this pattern of deceit a lot. I could write a book on it but not here. It's what I've dubbed the 'Snake Oil Shell Game' . It's given birth to many awesome products and obviously some trash but also to many. many scams.

What folks need to understand is that it's NOT about customers at all. It's about how VC funding occurs in the New Millennium. Blame the dot.com era craziness on this (start ups sucking in vast sums of loose cash and going belly up rather than IPO) . In the old days, if you didn't deliver the goods, the banks would swoop in and take all your tools, property and remaing cash away from you. These days it's just a slap on the wrist a chapter 11 or 7 filing, a name or brand change and you were off to rip another community of suckers off.

The operative culprit is always ......  PREORDERS
Don't do them. EVER
They are the trick that sucker you into financing someone else's posh lifestyle and retirement rather than yours.

 

 There is community of people out there that have no respect for paying customers and it takes teeth pulling to get them to poney up refunds or end products. Your best bet is to stand in line for products that are already shipping. You KNOW you don't really need 'IT' ASAP, you are just feeding a psychological addiction to über-cool toys so why not play the waiting game to YOUR advantage not thiers.

[peederj]

The awful thing being good and worthy projects will fall unfunded due to the malice of a few scammers and slick operators.

[zephyrnoid]

Last year was different, I defended them all the way for months and months, publicly and privately.

 

What changed for me this year is that they clearly disregarded customer concerns and carried on as normal.

I have to say, I don't think quite so highly as Blackmagic now as I did when they started out on this venture.

Andrew. Don't be too hard on yourself. I belong to about 35 Forums in about 5 domains (over 10 years) and have seen this pattern of deceit a lot. I could write a book on it but not here. It's what I've dubbed the 'Snake Oil Shell Game' . It's given birth to many awesome products and obviously some trash but also to many. many scams.

What folks need to understand is that it's NOT about customers at all. It's about how VC funding occurs in the New Millennium. Blame the dot.com era craziness on this (start ups sucking in vast sums of loose cash and going belly up rather than IPO) . In the old days, if you didn't deliver the goods, the banks would swoop in and take all your tools, property and remaing cash away from you. These days it's just a slap on the wrist a chapter 11 or 7 filing, a name or brand change and you were off to rip another community of suckers off.

The operative culprit is always ......  PREORDERS
Don't do them. EVER
They are the trick that sucker you into financing someone else's posh lifestyle and retirement rather than yours.

[Andrew Reid]

PREORDERS

Don't do them. EVER
They are the trick that sucker you into financing someone else's posh lifestyle and retirement rather than yours.

 

How else are you meant to get hold of the cameras first? If you didn't pre-order the original BMCC, you were looking at a 9-12 month wait for 'in stock' badges at stores.

[Bruno]

I understand you'd do pre-orders, you run a camera website, you have all interest in posting reviews as soon as possible, but for everyone else, I don't think anyone gains anything with pre-orders. If pre-orders were placed with Blackmagic Design directly (in this case), it would be a different case, but with resellers you never know, the reseller next door might not do pre-orders and have them in store way earlier than you get yours. It's happening now, some people are still waiting for their BMCCs while B&H has them in store.

[Jacek]

Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye... :angry:

 

What changed for me this year is that they clearly disregarded customer concerns and carried on as normal. mFT body 9 months late. New cameras likely late. Small quantities....

I have to say, I don't think quite so highly as Blackmagic now as I did when they started out on this venture.

 

and pay no attention to today's date: 25 Jul = almost two weeks from 13 Jul... :D

 

I have the Nikon > Micro Four Thirds Speed Booster now and have been testing it for a few days, so check back for a review next week...

[dahlfors]

Never do preorders?

I don't know how the situation is on the other side of the Atlantic, but when I preordered my Nikon D800 here in Sweden, I just told the local camera shops that I wanted to get in queue for a camera. I didn't have to pay a single cent, they just gave me a number in the waiting queue. If I wanted to drop out of the queue, I could do that whenever I wanted - nothing legally binding about being in queue. That's the preorder situation here, and I don't really see how you can lose anything on that, since you keep your money until product is delivered.

 

Same thing applies to BMC if preordering here. No money in advance.

 

Kickstarter preordering: There you really should use your best judgment to figure out if you believe they will succeed. If you have any doubts about them not succeeding, don't put in any more money than you can live with losing...

 

 

That said: If I'd need a camera right NOW, I'd buy what's available right now in shops - not counting on getting the bmpcc a certain date for a particular shoot. Only if I had the equipment I can use right now, I'd put in a preorder and be prepared to wait.