By technical editor Matt Allard:
We managed to get an in depth preview of the new Blackmagic Digital Cinema camera in the show hall at NAB 2012 today. The camera offers some exciting features at what will be a breakthrough price if they deliver the on the image quality. It has a Micro 4/3 sensor which utilizes a crop that is slightly smaller (16.64 x 14.04mm) than the whole sensor and marries that with either a Canon EF or Nikon lens mount. Footage is recorded at 2.5K (2432 x 1366) in 12bit RAW and the company claim a dynamic range of 13 stops.
The camera records RAW or compressed video to a built in SSD drive. File formats are CinemaDNG 12 bit RAW, Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD. It also has a thunderbolt connection built into the camera. This connection supports live waveform monitoring with the included Blackmagic UltraScope software.
Amazingly for the $2995 US price Blackmagic are also including a full copy of DaVinci Resolve 9.0 colour grading software. The camera should be available in July 2012. Full specs and press release are here.
Sample videos have already begun to show up online – show far the colour and look of the camera images look promising. Head over here for some footage from John Brawley.
Also launched by Blackmagic today was the Ultrastudio Express HDMI and 3 Gb/s SDI I/O interface for Thunderbolt. This captures most standard resolutions up to 1080/60P and can be powered from a computer directly for a remarkable $495.
