Blackmagic Production Camera 4K price drops to $3k and ships

[Rockect Sky Sword]

Holy digital orgasm!

if someone would have told me that three years ago, I would have called the police.

Still. I don't want to join hands and pray for audio meters. I mean. What company should I sleep with in order to get audio meters!?

[tosvus]

I'm not sure that is an accurate recap, and whatever statements made probably had a very different context. A few days ago, 4K cameras started at $4000, now possibly as low as $1500. Before gh3, and magic lantern, the dslrs had very shitty 24/28 mbit codecs, etc. At that point raw was FAR superior.

It's amazing how fast EOSHD went from "8 bit is complete shit and RAW is everything" to "8 bit is super great and you don't need RAW anyway".

[Kays Alatrakchi]

It's amazing how fast EOSHD went from "8 bit is complete shit and RAW is everything" to "8 bit is super great and you don't need RAW anyway".

 

A manufacturer can affect blogger's opinions, it's just human nature. Not saying that Andrew is disingenuous, but when a manufacturer gives you exclusive access to their new gear and makes you feel part of the creative process of the product, it's hard not to have a bit of bias toward their product.

 

Nonetheless, I appreciate that opinions can change, and that technology can cause us to re-evaluate what is important and what is not. As I stated many times, more options are always better, and lower prices are definitely better. 

 

Right now the best strategy is to wait and see how these cameras really perform once they're out in the wild. We won't really know what the image quality is really like until people get their hands on them and start putting them through their paces. Personally I don't really trust promotional pre-release footage, there are far too many unknowns to truly judge it accurately.

[etidona]

Changing mind is normal. You can think that RAW is great and in theory it is, but when you start to deal with it you start to notice all the Cons. And they may be more that the Pros. 

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

First question that came to my mind was: if they can make money selling it at 3K$, how much money were they making selling it at 4K$??

[Pierre_move]

First question that came to my mind was: if they can make money selling it at 3K$, how much money were they making selling it at 4K$??

 

Does it really matter? They're all about being "disruptive" and I bet there's nothing comparable to this in terms of features/price comming out this NAB. If the color science/calibration is tasty enough (previous 2 BMC attempts sadly sucked)  this camera might be the next best thing. The law is that the footage should look already very good right from the cam.. it should not require 10 hours of work and 50 of nodes in Resolve. This is what Arri did and hit the jackpot. Even the old Red camera footage looked quite nice and filmic/artistic/cinematic off the cam.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

First question that came to my mind was: if they can make money selling it at 3K$, how much money were they making selling it at 4K$??

I would imagine probably the same. I believe the only way they'd do this significant price drop, is that their sales (preorders) were extremely good that they were able to renegotiate their suppliers' prices (sensors, etc).

There profits are pretty marginal anyway compared to rival companies. Imagine how much money canon makes from a C300/C500 for example!

[Kays Alatrakchi]

First question that came to my mind was: if they can make money selling it at 3K$, how much money were they making selling it at 4K$??

 

$1k more?

[Andrew Reid]

Weird binary view of it, I am not anti-8bit at all. For me it doesn't matter what the number is on the specs sheet. What matters is the final end result and the look of the image.

 

Raw is a huge step up from 8bit compressed on the 5D Mark III.

 

4K on the GH4 is a huge step up from 1080p on the GH3.

 

8bit or whatever it looks amazing.

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

It is a very honest move, I hope they make a "must buy" camera!

[Bruno]

First question that came to my mind was: if they can make money selling it at 3K$, how much money were they making selling it at 4K$??

 

It's highly likely that the sensors have come down in price since the camera was announced almost a year ago, it's technology we're talking about after all!

Same goes for most other components...

[Don Whitmore]

It's highly likely that the sensors have come down in price since the camera was announced almost a year ago, it's technology we're talking about after all!

Same goes for most other components...

These sensors are <$100 probably, they may not even be the most expensive part in these cameras. The digital bolex sensor is somewhere around $60, you can call the manufacturer up and buy them in any quantity you want.

[KarimNassar]

 "I think people might get a little surprised at how fast it runs out of shadow room though."

 

LOL 

 

I was already surprised at how fast the bmcc 2k runs out of shadow room to begin with.

The original 2k camera needs a TON of light to produce a decent image.

Which is one of the major factor of discerning between good and bad camera, any camera produces a good image with a ton of light.

And now it is even worse?

no thanks.

[Bruno]

These sensors are <$100 probably, they may not even be the most expensive part in these cameras. The digital bolex sensor is somewhere around $60, you can call the manufacturer up and buy them in any quantity you want.

 

Yeah, but a product's price is determined more by what consumers are willing to pay for it than what it actually costs to make.

 

They can choose to sell less units at a higher profit or more units at a lower profit, and use this to control not only how much money they make but the size of the distribution channels, personnel teams, etc.

 

But it depends a lot on the market and how much people would be willing to pay for such product, and the 4k Camera reality now is not the same as it was back in May.

[pablogrollan]

Yeah, but a product's price is determined more by what consumers are willing to pay for it than what it actually costs to make.

 

A product's price is SOLELY determined by what consumers are willing to pay. Manufacturing costs condition wether that product is actually viable or not in the market. Pricing is really subjective, it is a "notion" consumers have based on personal beliefs and preferences... that's why Blackmagic may be seen by other manufacturers as destructive, not disruptive.

 

Not long ago, a 35mm film camera with extras could go up to 300.000$. A Betacam could be bought for 30.000$ to 60.000$. Now cinema & broadcast gear seem to have dropped a zero... Our "notion" and subjective idea of what their price should be changed the minute we could have a 5D MKII or 7D -which we though was really cheap-.

 

BM is no real rival for Canon or Sony because they will sell thousands of units, not millions, and their lineup is pretty limted and "niche", but it has had an effect on how we see Canon prices now... Probably the manufacturing cost of a DSLR is lower than we think -like 100$- but if Canon, Sony or Nikon decide to gon the BM way with prices, they may actually change the whole concept of "how much it should cost" and hurt their future business...

[AaronChicago]

How likely would it be for BM to release a super 35mm global shutter pocket cam? 1080p only.

[Sean Cunningham]

Weird binary view of it, I am not anti-8bit at all. For me it doesn't matter what the number is on the specs sheet. What matters is the final end result and the look of the image.

...

 

8bit or whatever it looks amazing.

 

I worked many years at Digital Domain, the company that raised the bar for and set a new standard for taking film into the digital realm and then going back out to film.  Not even Kodak could match the quality of our filmouts.  We did so, in the beginning, with 8bits and the best digital color men in the industry.  We became fairly infamous quickly, for a lot of reasons, one of which being a screening where a collection of filmmakers were shown imagery containing a shot processed by us and only one among the entire audience could pick out the 8bit shot.  The right 8bits looked almost indistinguishable from straight film that hadn't gone through a digital step.

 

Besides drastically opening up the compression pipeline I think Driftwood's patches for the GH2 make their best effort looking for that "right 8bit" among the raw info coming off the sensor.  It's still going to be the last 8bit compressed camera that I ever buy though.

[Aussie Ash]

Video Review: Blackmagic Production Camera 4K vs. $12,000 Canon 1DC

First tests on vimeo.Low light performance rather dissappointing

 

[Michael1]

Video Review: Blackmagic Production Camera 4K vs. $12,000 Canon 1DC

First tests on vimeo.Low light performance rather dissappointing

 

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