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4K video was beautifully sharp, but free from visible over-sharpening. With no noticeable artifacting to speak of, the results were amongst the best we’ve seen on any sub-£2,000/$2,000 camera. Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best.
Videomaker Lab Tests
This is the cinema camera for the rest of us, but it remains very much a cinema camera. Its size and price — and use of the Micro Four Thirds mount — will naturally draw comparisons to hybrid mirrorless cameras like the Panasonic GH5S, but these are not direct competitors. Despite the accessibility, the BMPCC 4K is built for professional filmmaking workflows, and thus it may not suit the needs of the more casual user. The BMPCC 4K continues Blackmagic Design’s trend of making weird-looking cameras. It is excessively wide from left to right, but oddly short from front to back. Pick it up, and it’s surprisingly light thanks to its carbon fiber and plastic composite shell.
Focus
We noticed during testing that the battery percentage went down very rapidly. Our suspicions were confirmed when we tested the battery life. Across a few different batteries and tests, we saw a relatively consistent battery life of about 40 minutes. The camera did get hot during our tests but never hot enough to affect performance.
Dual ISO
This will set you back around $65 (£49), and as we will cover when we talk about battery life, will be a worthwhile investment. Good travel cameras should be small, versatile, and offer good image quality. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for travel and recommended the best.
And if you want to record RAW, you still have to attach BM Video Assist. I still see a MAJOR selling point adding a hinge to the screen as is, at the cost of $1-200 (can't imagine being more...). The Blackmagic Pyxis is available from June 2024 at a recommended price of $3,000. To test the moiré of the camera, we shot the DSC Labs SineZone test chart. We all love making memories, and a great way to collect those memories is to take a quick snap of a gorgeous landscape, a party in full swing, or a particularly incredible meal.
Because the screen is larger, no movement isn’t as bad as it could be, but it’s still lame when you want to shoot low or high angles or in situations where there is loads of glare on the screen. The screen looks great and, along with the built-in shot assists tools, it gets the job done. For about $150, you can get an SSD that will capture for 15 minutes at the highest data rate. Outside of having to secure the media, external SSDs are a great lower cost option. All you do is plug them in via USB 3.1 and you are ready to format and shoot; it’s really easy. With the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, you can record in either CinemaDNG RAW or ProRes to SD, Cfast 2.0 or external media.
Price and availability
Its form-factor is that of a mirrorless hybrid video/photo camera, but, ironically, it doesn’t shoot photos. The first reaction from this reviewer is that it’s just plain ugly. Luckily, the picture quality is much prettier than the physical design. Unfortunately, it’s not quite right for one-person crews like YouTubers and vloggers (and Digital Trends camera reviewers) who depend on reliable continuous autofocus and can’t monitor battery life like a hawk.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K Announced – Full-Frame, L-Mount, 3:2 Open Gate for $2595 - CineD
Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K Announced – Full-Frame, L-Mount, 3:2 Open Gate for $2595.
Posted: Thu, 14 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Ports
It shoots beautiful DCI 4K RAW video, has an easy to use menu and costs only $1,300. In our experience, the autofocus was often slower than simply focusing manually (which, again, is quite easy to do thanks to the great monitor). Worse, it only focussed correctly about 50 percent of the time, often missing focus even in well-lit situations with plenty of contrast. As for the onboard microphones, they sound as decent as on-camera mics can. They are useful for scratch audio or for syncing if you record primary audio into another device, but you probably shouldn’t rely on them for much beyond that.
However, it is otherwise such a refreshing camera to use and produces such great results that it may well be worth the minor headaches. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is a revolutionary product, one that has again lowered the bar for entry into professional video production. It will find a warm welcome in independent productions, student films, and documentaries. At the same time, there’s nothing proprietary to Blackmagic going on here. ProRes (a professional compressed format developed by Apple) and CinemaDNG (an open RAW video format spearheaded by Adobe) are industry standards.
They prone to build up heat that affects the sensor noise, to use strange codecs internally, to be very picky about power, they are kinda painful to rig, and so on, and so on. BM cameras are great paper tigers but from my experience are not very reliable, part of the reason why you almost don't see big movies shot on BlackMagic. Most films are not shot in raw - especially not the ones in the price category this camera plays in. No one wants to have to transcode - and a lot of editing houses just outright don't want raw format. But, again, videographers looking at $1,300 cameras often do want stabilization, so it’s a conundrum. At any rate, we achieved decent handheld results using stabilized Panasonic lenses, but an external gimbal would definitely be preferred.
I also believe BM shoots at marginally higher framerates (36fps opengate, not that it really matters). @Samuel Dilworth No built-in ND filters, fixed LCD, but by all means, it's as close to perfect as one can probably get at this price point. The cheaper alternatives would be one of the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Cameras, or possibly a Panasonic mirrorless, but this is already so cheap that a couple of jobs will pay it off. @arhmatic - BM already has a hand-held 6K camera with a tilting screen in the back. And instead everyone complained to them that they wanted a box camera that could be rigged out with external monitors and viewfinders.
We expect you could easily get several years of use out of it. Basil Kronfli is the Head of content at Make Honey and freelance technology journalist. He is an experienced writer and producer and is skilled in video production, and runs the technology YouTube channel TechEdit. With such massive power drains, if you’re doing any studio based work, we’d recommend stumping up for a 2-pin DC connector. As for on location shoots, packing in excess of ten batteries wouldn’t be a bad idea. This isn’t surprising, not only does the Pocket Cinema Camera have a giant screen to power, it’s also got a air vents to keep things cool - and even so, it gets hot.
XLR is also an industry-standard connector in the pro video sector that plays nicely with everything from wireless mics through to concert hall audio rigs, adding a huge amount of audio clout to this small camera. With 4K CinemaDNG RAW recording at 272 MB/s and ProRes 422HQ recording at 117.88MB/s, you will want a lot of storage media, even for short projects. Getting specific, a 256GB card will capture 14 minutes of 30fps raw footage.
There’s a good size grip with access to control dials, function buttons, and the record button. On the side of the grip you’ll find memory card slots for both SD and CFast 2.0 cards; the opposite side houses a USB-C port that can be used to connect a solid state drive (SSD), which the camera can record to directly. At the base is a slightly flimsy battery door which is removable so the potential for third party battery grips is a reality, while to the left you’ve got a dual card slot which feels a bit more sturdy. The camera takes SD and CFast cards, with the CFast cards required for the highest quality raw 4K video. Blackmagic PYXIS features a wide range of connections for audio, monitoring, power and more.
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