First ever footage from the 4K Blackmagic Production Camera released for downloading

First footage from the Blackmagic Production Camera

With all the excitement - and copious examples of footage - from the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, our attention has been diverted from the other big news from NAB this year: the 4K Production Camera

But things are obviously now moving with this higher-end sibling to the original Blacimagic Cinema Camera.

Blackmagic CEO, Grant Petty, and written a blog post, and right in the middle of it is a link to some ProRes 4K footage from the camera.

It's working!

It's clear from the post that it's a working thing but is still going through adjustment and calibration - all quite normal for a new camera at this stage.

From Grant's comments, you can see that he's clearly enthusiastic about the new device, and is also very anxious for potential users to see what it can and can't do. For example, it's not designed as a low light camera, and he's apparently provided some clips that demonstrate its low light performance.

In many respects, the characteristics of the new camera are pretty astonishing: 4K and a global shutter for a start, not to mention a Super 35 sized sensor and visually lossless compressed CinemaDNG raw - as well as ProRes, of course.  

It goes without saying that we can't wait to get our hands on one of these.

By the way, these are big files. Ours are still downloading but if you have anything faster than moist spaghetti connecting you to the internet, you'll get them before we do.

You can see Grant's post in full and see the download link after the break

Hi,

I wanted to do a quick update on the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K.

As I have mentioned previously we have been working hard on redesigning part of the camera due to differences in the production sensors to what we experienced in the early camera builds, however that work is completed now and we are in final testing.

I wanted to post some clips that I personally have shot from the camera as I know people are interested in them. We have other more experienced camera operators out shooting with beta cameras now and they can post more realistic clips with lens details and other shooting information soon, however I wanted to post something now so I thought I would upload some of the clips I have shot personally.

The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is very different to our other cameras, but I personally think it's quite filmy in its look, even though it's not really a digital film camera but more of a general production camera.

This camera is not a low light camera, however I have included some clips at night so you can see that. I spent a few weeks wandering around with the camera taking some different types of shots. One shot of the jetty has some clipping in the sky to see the affect of clipping. All the shots are ProRes as I did not shoot RAW. I did notice that later when the guys did some more tests on the camera and lens that it was not shimmed correctly so I think the results could be better than this. Some of the shots have different shutter angles and I used standard still camera lenses.

The download is here.

Its a big file at just under 10 GB so it will take a little while to download, but these 4K files are big. Also, I know you might want to color grade these shots so I allowed some clips to be longer at up to 10 seconds for some of them. I think when working in higher resolution, being able to see the movement in the distance in these shots is quite interesting. I will be excited to see if anyone color grades these shots up nice because I am a terrible colorist!  

We expect to see some of the DOP's beta testing the camera to post some professional test shots with comments on how the camera performs in a few days. I hope that gives everyone a better feel for the camera. A lot of people think this camera is a similar camera to our other cinema cameras, but it's quite different and so I think these posts will be important so people know what it's like to use.

I think people's relationship to cameras is such a personal and deeply creative connection, so I never really know what will happen with a new camera until it's used professionally. It has been really fun to get time over the last few weeks to use it myself!

Regards,
Grant