Blackmagic price drop by a third on Cinema Camera and active mount mFT camera on the way

[richg101]

IT IS economically viable what BM is doing.  

 

not for the economy in general.  Think how many people would have bought a canon/panasonic/sony for the £800 and actually shot stuff with them?  Yes there is moire and lack of detail.  Banding, etc etc.  but they'd be out having fun with their product.  The money will be in Canon/sony's/panasonics hands earning them huge profits, but some of it will be going into their R+D - which eventually trickles into the products from companies like Black magic who don't have the budgets to push R+D as hard as canon, sony, panasonic etc.

 

Every day someone sits on a pre order for a camera that doesnt get delivered on time they are missing out on the stuff that is available, and their money isnt being pumped into R+D teams at the companies that create a system where there are off the shelf components developed and available to black magic - who are software and marketing guys, playing industrial designers.

 

I assume the issues BM are having is in some way connected to one of the big boys.  it's in Sony's favour to pay off a supplier of sensors to 'mess up' on delivering whats required by BM.  The sooner this dreamland BM are creating is snuffed out the better.  

 

 

[tosvus]

Let's see if all the happy sounding punters come back in 12 months on the forum when they still don't have a camera. Then we will see how they really feel.

Can possibly see that with the 4K camera, but the current camera which is what this topic is for, IS available. If I was not flat broke after buying the gh3 and 5 lenses this month, I'd ordered it from adorama yesterday.

[zephyrnoid]

Can possibly see that with the 4K camera, but the current camera which is what this topic is for, IS available. If I was not flat broke after buying the gh3 and 5 lenses this month, I'd ordered it from adorama yesterday.

GH3? Ah man! you bought another Panasonic 'beta' camera ?

[tosvus]

From reading some of the above posts I can only surmise that there are people on this forum that are very nervous due to the companies they work for or have a special relationship with are threatened by BMD. I understand the early adopters that are frustrated, but some of these other comments... I am speechless....

[tosvus]

GH3? Ah man! you bought another Panasonic 'beta' camera ?

HAha quite happy with it. The plan is to use it for wide shots and slow motion. The rest will be on a BMD when I can afford it.

[Luc]

I don't think you have any idea BMD works.. They aren't looking to be bought out and they definitely won't go belly up. The BMD cameras are only a small part of their business and have been a respected company for a long long time for other products they make at also highly competative prices.. How do this? By buying other businesses with tech they want and then bribging a highly polished product to market at insanely low prices compared to the competition.

They aren't going anywhere an it's funny how several prople question their business strategy when it's been highly effective for so long.
 

 

Exactly ! That annoys me too.

 

It's an approach they've done before. They disrupted the market where people are making insane margins.

They bought Davinci, and made it affordable. They bought Teranex  and made their products affordable. They regularly decrease the price of their SDI switches. They regularly decrease the price of their capture cards and adapt to their customers with new models. You get video production equipment for half or a third of their competitors.

 

They are just building a whole ecosystem for movie and broadcast production...

[Kays Alatrakchi]

I think every once in a while a company comes along with a business model which goes against what everyone else has been doing and foregoes huge markups for mass appeal.

 

In the audio/music world I have seen that with Peavey at first, Mackie, and then M-Audio more recently. 

 

Blackmagic is simply the same idea applied to digital video...a company who is manufacturing smartly, and taking shortcuts which most of us seem to be ok with. Their products aren't perfect, but they fill a niche that would otherwise go unfilled.

 

I don't think they're going out of business any time soon, and I think despite delays in delivery, people will not stop ordering from them.

 

They are giving away Resolve for free and taking a huge bite out of competing products while getting everyone used to working with it.

 

I am far from being a Blackmagic evangelist. I have criticized them plenty in the past, and I am not 100% crazy about the image that the BMCC delivers....but I think that in this case they're being very smart.

 

In my tests, the 5D3 raw delivers a much more pleasant image with more natural rolloff in the highlights, and yet here I am trying to figure out when I should put in my order for the BMCC (my birthday is coming up in a month...hint hint).

[Kays Alatrakchi]

One last point. DO YOU REALLY TRUST Black Magic as an enterprise now?  ;) So who wants to bet they'll either be bought out or go belly up  in the camera division? Then you'll be holding a $2,000 doorstop or book-end in three years .

 

I really don't understand this comment (unless it's trying to be purely sarcastic). Why would the BMCC suddenly become a doorstop if the company goes out of business or is bought? I see plenty of people still driving around with their Saturn cars even though the company went under 3 years ago. As a music composer I use a 30 year old keyboard which has not been officially supported for well over two decades.

 

It's not as if Blackmagic products need to "call home" every few days because otherwise they'll stop working...that actually would be Adobe products!

[Tzedekh]

 Only thing BM really has to worry about is GoPro, if they can make a 2.7k camera for $400...what can they make for $1000?

 

Remember, the GoPro Hero 3 Black, which uses the Ambarella A7 camera sysyem-on-a-chip, can do 4K (well, UltraHD 4K) at 15 fps. The next-gen chip, the A9, supports 4Kat 30p. No reason that the Hero 4 (or whatever it's called) will cost much more than $400. If you want an interchangeable-lens mount and more I/O ports, well, they would add to the price, but all should still cost less than $1,000.

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

BMD appears to be a whimsical company. It's hard to say they are making a lot of $ on their cameras because their prices are low and their supply is low as well. They create a lot of buzz, which is a sense of power I suppose, but I don't see what they are doing is making a lot of money. I guess they aren't losing money. Most of the hot air is created by their potential customers. Because they don't have any real competitors at what they are doing they are able to capture the zeitgeist for the moment, but at some point someone else will come in and actually deliver (literally) what blackmagic is promising, and then no one will care as much about BMD. We aren't there yet. In fact, we're probably a long way away, but BMD's niche won't last forever.

[tosvus]

BMD appears to be a whimsical company. It's hard to say they are making a lot of $ on their cameras because their prices are low and their supply is low as well. They create a lot of buzz, which is a sense of power I suppose, but I don't see what they are doing is making a lot of money. I guess they aren't losing money. Most of the hot air is created by their potential customers. Because they don't have any real competitors at what they are doing they are able to capture the zeitgeist for the moment, but at some point someone else will come in and actually deliver (literally) what blackmagic is promising, and then no one will care as much about BMD. We aren't there yet. In fact, we're probably a long way away, but BMD's niche won't last forever.

Did you ever consider that they may be aiming at making this a bigger market with low margins? They are essentially trying to eat away at dslr and prosumer vid cam shares with better products at competitive prices. If they get their supply chain in order, the japanese companies are the ones who should be concerned, who artificially have been keeping prices too high for the tech they provide and blatant witholding of features to support multi tier product lines.

[Tzedekh]

Because they don't have any real competitors at what they are doing they are able to capture the zeitgeist for the moment, but at some point someone else will come in and actually deliver (literally) what blackmagic is promising, and then no one will care as much about BMD. We aren't there yet. In fact, we're probably a long way away, but BMD's niche won't last forever.

 

This is a trenchant observation. One can ask, "Who else is doing this at this price point?" The answer is, "No one. Even BMD is barely doing it." A company can promise all it wants, but unless it can deliver -- in reasonable quantities (buyers don't have to wait weeks or months) -- it doesn't matter all that much. Has BMD even filled all the backorders yet?

[Kays Alatrakchi]

No reason that the Hero 4 (or whatever it's called) will cost much more than $400. If you want an interchangeable-lens mount and more I/O ports, well, they would add to the price, but all should still cost less than $1,000.

 

The problem with GoPro is the tiny sensor size. 

[Tungee]

Oh sh*t, this will be the end of Digital Bolex ;)

[peederj]

Hmm. You forgot to add staff wages, marketing, taxes, a cut for the dealer, shipping costs, firmware development, R&D, fluctuations in raw material prices and the low shipping volumes.

 

I think they are doing another bait and switch.

 

mFT BMCC was one of those. QUICK put a passive mFT mount on it! Too many people on our BMCC EF waiting list!

 

Like with the mFT version it could be some time before 10,000 people get to own a $1995 BMCC.

 

A Blackmagic rep recently hinted at 20,000 Pocket camera orders.

 

Good luck filling those at 100 a month!

 

Given how hot the Pocket cam apparently gets as it stands, I think we can cross RAW off the list of possibilities. Nearly all cinema cameras, we note, have active cooling systems. They may be able to squeeze compressed RAW of some form onto the SD cards just to pretend to make good on campaign promises. But I have a feeling that at least part of the holdup on the Pocket is thermal...they want to be sure the L-ion doesn't explode into flames as that is something that could threaten the company's existence via litigation. So they dribble out a few for early adopters to beta test (and hopefully not sear their peckers actually putting it in a pocket).

 

There still isn't a good option from them. The EF mount is an exercise in completely wasted flange distance. Can't speed boost nor internal ND nor anything. The passive MFT version natively supports what, four lenses in the entire world still? And won't supply power to any IS lenses or focus-by-wire ones you might adapt...you'll have to get one of those powered adapters to also plug into your external battery. And I don't think the Speed booster will be supporting those either very soon. The pocket doesn't do the RAW thing, has an even smaller, low-res sensor, and is hilarious to consider as a serious filmmaking option. The 4K camera apparently doesn't exist, and if it does, has very low DR and a base ISO of 400...a bizarre combination of next-gen resolution and old-school image quality.

 

Camera companies should start with one good and affordable option that builds their reputation. Work the bugs and quirks out of the one option, get the production right, sell it for a comely price and once established you can diversify. There's an awful lot of things that have to go right on a camera. BMD tapped into the dream but can't deliver on the reality. So they are selling off their early prototypes. The fact that the cinderblocks remained in stock at B&H for so long indicates to me that demand has actually dried up and they had to reprice the units trying to move them. I question 20K pocket orders...like phony Youtube view counts, it's free and easy to pretend you're awash in demand...and if they do have a lot of orders, I wonder how many will be returns.

[peederj]

The problem with GoPro is the tiny sensor size. 

 

Sounds familiar.

[PAVP]

IMO BM is our friend.  A company giving the public a product that is of high value and closer to the wishes and desires of the end user than many other companies have been producing.  I wish them well with their product line.  I personally just jumped on the Magic Lantern 50D bandwagon.  The low cost and overall value is extremely high IMO.  I was originally saving for a BM Pocket, but I thought about the Sensor size of the 50D and also the ability to record in 4:3 or 3:2 on the 50D for my Anamorphic needs and I went that way.  It's not a worry since the 50D was so cheap!  Now BM is making even their 2.5k BMC cheaper and I think it's moved into a nice spot below the 5Dmk3 which is now a clear competitor with ML Raw.  BM had to make a move IMO.  It's actually a sad thing that Magic Lantern is benefiting Canon who I feel doesn't deserve the boost.  Meanwhile BM is getting screwed when they are the ones who actually did the right thing by the user base. 

[Andrew Reid]

Given how hot the Pocket cam apparently gets as it stands, I think we can cross RAW off the list of possibilities. Nearly all cinema cameras, we note, have active cooling systems. They may be able to squeeze compressed RAW of some form onto the SD cards just to pretend to make good on campaign promises.

 

Solid reasoning, after all I can't think of any other camera that does uncompressed 1080p raw to 95Mb/s cards with no fan.

 

http://vimeo.com/66033769

[peederj]

...And the 5D3 is what...a 20th generation product from an industrial giant that has custom IC's made for its needs and plenty of mass to sink the heat with. Plus has CF to write uncompressed to rather than trying to squeeze into SD. Didn't you say something about "hard maths"?

[Bruno]

According to Grant's e-mail the Pocket cameras are shipping, surely you could wait a couple days for the first reviews before assuming it can't do what's on the specs list. Could even save the non believers some embarrassment.