LAS VEGAS — Blackmagic Design has unveiled the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, a new high-resolution 4K digital film camera with a large Super 35 size sensor with professional global shutter, combined with precision EF mount optics and high-quality Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) file recording.
The latest high-end televisions and video projectors support Ultra HD, which is four times the resolution of regular HD video. The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K shoots to high-quality compressed CinemaDNG RAW and ProRes 422 (HQ) files in 4K, giving customers a complete solution to shoot high-resolution music videos, episodic television production, television commercials, sports, documentaries, news stories, interviews and feature films.
The new Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, priced at $3,995 and available in July, also supports the new 6G-SDI video connection out so it can be used on live video production.
With standard connections and an internal battery packed inside a beautiful machined aluminum design, the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K will easily handle the rigors of location work. A high-resolution LCD display shows settings such as shutter speed, color temperature, aperture and timecode in an easy to read status strip. The built-in capacitive touchscreen offers direct access to menus with a touch of the finger and allows changing settings such as recording format, shutter angle and more. The touchscreen also allows users to enter important metadata that is compatible with popular video editing software including Final Cut Pro X.
With a large Super 35 size sensor, cinematographers get familiar framing and behavior from the lenses they already own. This camera sensor features a global shutter and its large size allows minimal crop factor so cinematographers get nice wide-angle shots from their wide-angle lenses. When working in HD customers can use the high-resolution images to reframe and zoom into shots without any quality loss.
With the built-in EF compatible lens mount there is a wide choice of optics to take advantage of the large Super 35 size sensor without cropping. Cinematographers get the choice of optics from leading lens crafters like Canon, Zeiss and more, with full electronic control. The EF compatible lens mount means customers are not locked into a specific lens and even professional cinema lenses with EF mount with professional rails and follow focus accessories can be used.
The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K easily captures 4K in compressed CinemaDNG RAW and ProRes 422 (HQ) using the built in high speed SSD recorder. Once the shoot has wrapped, the disk can be connected to a computer for editing or color correction of the shots straight from the disk, which can be formatted in either HFS+ or ExFAT for Mac and Windows compatibility. In addition to the regular CinemaDNG RAW format, Blackmagic Design will also implement a QuickTime wrapper for the open standard CinemaDNG and companion codec, allowing the camera to record in a format that allows RAW editing in popular editing software.
The wide dynamic range of the Super 35 sized sensor can be mapped into the quantizing range of the file so you can color grade shots to allow greater detail in highlights and shadows. When working fast, the customer can also record to regular Rec. 709 video files.
Blackmagic Production Camera 4K uses standard connections. The camera features 6G-SDI output that can be down-converted to HD or used for amazing quality Ultra HD video. In addition, the device includes a built-in Thunderbolt port and UltraScope software for real time waveform monitoring.