One of the hottest items at this year’s NAB Show was a unique video acquisition device called the Cinema Camera from Blackmagic Design.
This is the first foray into video cameras for the company, best known for their video editing accessories. With an eye on the pro video market and a reasonable price tag this looks like a winner.
The Cinema Camera shoots uncompressed HD video in one of three different formats and stores the footage on a solid-state drive. Lenses can be either Canon EF or Zeiss ZF series. The camera itself looks like a thick tablet with a lens and just a few buttons.
Professional shooters are definitely the target market for this new rig. Instead of chasing gigapixel resolution the camera uses a super wide dynamic range of 13 stops, allowing feature film quality images. The Cinema Camera also includes a full copy of DaVinci Resolve for color correction and Blackmagic UltraScope software for waveform monitoring. UltraScope can be run on a laptop connected to the camera via a Thunderbolt connection. The built in large LCD display makes focus easy, and allows playback of captured files.
The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is slated for release in July 2012 with a retail price of $2995.00. Pre-order online now from B & H Photo.
