Shipping in ‘a sizeable volume’ of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is due to start in 1-2 weeks time.
In addition, Dan Chung reports, new features such as a double-tap punch-in focus assist and ISO 200 have been added.
The hardware has undergone a lot of under the hood optimisations recently but is now locked down and in-production.
The internal battery will be in the final design. Do I think this is an issue? Not really. At first it gave me some nightmares, of spidery rigs with a giant power brick like a 12v car battery on the shoulder mount! But the battery you need is actually very small. A Switronix power brick under the camera base for example will maintain the basic, minimal form factor of the camera and is hardly unergonomic. It is actually very compact. The internal battery lasts for 90 minutes but the compact Switronix base is good for nearly 4x times that (nearly 360 minutes or 6 hours on one charge) and of course is interchangeable in the field.
ISO 200 (ASA 200 in film speak) is very welcome too. If you want to expose for the highlights you can drop this down to 200 on the monitor and it will make things easier in bright light. You will still need your NDs though. It will also make it easier to match the Blackmagic to DSLRs in the field, if both can be set to the same base ISO of 200 for minimal noise on the DSLR and equal exposure on A and B cameras. If you are shooting ProRes, ASA 200 might be a good shot getter if you get stuck without your NDs and 400 is right on the edge of critical.
Don’t forget that because this is a raw camera, if your exposure is wrong at the time of the shoot you have a much better chance of saving the shot in post. If it is off on a DSLR, it is off!
Don’t forget to download the 2.5K footage if you haven’t done so already to properly guage what this beast is capable of.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/48085024[/vimeo]