Blackmagic Design Announces The New Pocket Cinema 4K Camera

Blackmagic Design announced today their new Pocket Cinema Camera, capable of shooting 4K video compared to its popular HD-only predecessor. Whether or not one can really regard it as a “pocket camera” is up for debate due to its larger size when compared side-to-side to the previous model, but on paper the specs seem to be pretty impressive.

The body is made of a carbon fiber polycarbonate composite, and the touchscreen monitor is an impressive 5 inches taking up basically all of the real-estate in the back (no flip-screen). Instead of the Branded Blackmagic lithium ion batteries from the previous pocket camera, the new 4K cinema pocket version is now powered by the popular Canon LP-E6N, allowing for longer battery life for shooting videos.

The video camera films full cinema 4K (4096 x 2160 pixels) at up-to 60fps with a new and full size 4/3 HDR sensor. It has 13 stops of dynamic range and dual native ISO up to 25,600, which according Blackmagic will improve the camera’s low-light video shooting capabilities. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K has an MFT mount as the original model, allowing for EF, PL or C mounts to be mounted through an adaptor.

The camera features 10-bit ProRes and 12-bit RAW recording, four internal microphones, a mini XLR audio port, bluetooth wireless camera control and HDMI on-set monitoring output. It can shoot 120 fps at Full HD (cropped), can record either to the internal SD/UHS II and CFast 2.0 slots or directly to an external drive through USB-C which seems to be a really cool feature for videographers and one-man-band style camera operators/editors.

The new camera will start shipping in September 2018, it will cost $1,295.00 and comes with Davinci Resolve Studio. There are a ton of other features not mentioned in this article, you can check out the full specs at Blackmagic Design’s website here.