Thoughts on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro - why EF mount?

[Alexis Fontana]

On 6/12/2021 at 11:19 AM, Django said:

I've been doing some commercial shoots with the BM 6K's lately and the 6K PRO will probably be my next camera purchase. For the money it is kind of a no-brainer: 6K BRAW / ProRes, Dual ISO Super35 sensor, 5" bright LCD, best GUI, SD/CFAST/SSD storage options & internal NDs.

That said, I do agree the biggest drawback is EF mount. While there are a large amount of EF cine lenses, they're on the bigger side and a lot of the more recent compact cine lenses including anamorphic lenses such as the SIRUI series are mirrorless mount exclusives. One of the big attractions of the 6K/6K Pro is 6K 2.4:1 ratio recording but I can't seem to find any affordable anamorphic EF lenses?

But for client work, 6K RAW is really impressive and the cropping capability kind of a game changer as far as I'm concerned. Many of us had hoped the R5 would give you that in a hybrid but my experience with R6 is that its simply too unreliable to use on a commercial shoot. The Canons are good for b-cams / BTS purposes.

As for ProRes vs H264/H265, while on many recent computers the processing difference may not be too obvious with 4K, I can assure you that with 6K its night & day as far as rendering, editing, playback. My iMac Pro struggles a bit with h264/h265 6K footage while ProRes cuts like cheese and renders 20x faster.

The 6k 2.4:1 ratio has nothing to do with anamorphic - it just crops the recording to a widescreen image to save space (and derives you of the opportunity to reframe in post). 
 

But what a magnificent camera the 6k pro is - and with the upcoming tilta viewfinder extension cable and mounting system, it’s like a budget Alexa mini.

 

Will be shooting a no-budget featurefilm with it in July.