At NAB earlier this year, Blackmagic Design announced two new cinema cameras, the Pocket Cinema Camera, which has already made its way to market, and the Production Camera 4K, which features an s35 global shutter sensor and is not yet shipping. Like the original BMCC, the Production Camera has been temporarily delayed due to sensor calibration issues. With that said, the prospects for seeing the BMPC very soon are bright as it is now nearing its final testing stage, and at long last, we finally have our very first test footage.

First things first here's Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design, with an update on the camera and a few notes about the footage that you're about to see.

As I have mentioned previously we have been working hard on redesigning part of the camera due to differences in the production sensors to what we experienced in the early camera builds, however that work is completed now and we are in final testing.

I wanted to post some clips that I personally have shot from the camera as I know people are interested in them. We have other more experienced camera operators out shooting with beta cameras now and they can post more realistic clips with lens details and other shooting information soon, however I wanted to post something now so I thought I would upload some of the clips I have shot personally.

In Grant's update on the Blackmagic Forum, he included the link to download all of the footage he shot. As always, keep in mind that this is 1080p h.264 footage. If you'd like to see higher quality, download the ProRes files. Here's the footage.

Here's what Grant had to say about his methodology for capturing these shots:

This camera is not a low light camera, however I have included some clips at night so you can see that. I spent a few weeks wandering around with the camera taking some different types of shots. One shot of the jetty has some clipping in the sky to see the affect of clipping. All the shots are ProRes as I did not shoot RAW. I did notice that later when the guys did some more tests on the camera and lens that it was not shimmed correctly so I think the results could be better than this. Some of the shots have different shutter angles and I used standard still camera lenses.

To my eye, this footage looks absolutely fantastic. It certainly has a little bit less dynamic range than its little brothers (only a stop at most) but the image doesn't seem as critically sharp, which is one of the valid criticisms of the first two cameras. It should also be noted that none of this footage was captured in RAW, so it's technically not the highest quality that the camera can produce.

In his post, Petty also mentions that the BMPC is also in the hands of some experienced cinematographers as we speak, so within the next few weeks we should begin to see some legitimate camera tests as well some professionally crafted images. So it's only a matter of time before we know the extent of what this amazingly affordable camera can do.

If you'd like to read more about the footage that Grant shot (and download the footage and play around with), head on over to this post on the Blackmagic forum and click on the download link.

What do you guys think of the footage? Are you excited for the BMPC to hit the market in the coming months? Let us know in the comments!

Link: Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Update - Blackmagic Forum

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Cinematography & Cameras