Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,950 words · ~9 min read
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Vengeance gaming to learn more this my friends is a little bit unusual for us
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this is the Blackmagic pocket cinema camera and if you're not familiar with
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Blackmagic what they've basically done is they've taken the camera industry and
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kind of giv it a wakeup call giv it a shake but the introduction of their 2
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and 1/2k black magic cinema camera they
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introduced like massive dynamic range which basically amounts to capturing
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detail in low light and highlight at the same time giving you a lot more
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flexibility in postprocessing to work with the footage so they introduced that
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camera for just like Wicked crazy low pricing then they turned around and
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introduced a 4K version for $4,000 and a
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1080p version for $11,000 and dropped the pricing on the 2 1/2k to 2500 bucks
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so essentially for every line of vertical resolution you're paying about
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a dollar which is you know sounds great on paper and all that but what do you
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actually get and the answer is you get a pretty wicked looking image we're
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actually going to include some test footage that Brandon uh Boll took with
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this particular camera cuz we've already actually opened it up before at the end
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of the video so do check that out but let's start with what's inside instead
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of including stupid discs they include yay an SD card that has the software and
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manuals unlike the 2 1/2k and the 4k camera it doesn't come with a full
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version of Da Vinci resolve which is black Magic's color correction software
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so it just comes with the light version which it should be noted is actually
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free for download um for anyone so it's
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th000 software for the full version so it makes sense that with A1 th000 camera
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they didn't necessarily include that next inside we find the power adapter
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which you may actually find yourself needing because the integrated battery
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is not really anything special there we
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go as well as International plugs so there's our normal us plug that looks
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like an EU one and wherever the heck all these things are from all right so they
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include those as well as a carry strap
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and what's neat about the fact that they include like a wrist carry strap for it
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is that even though it produces some fantastic images it is small enough to
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look like pretty much a normal point and shoot now when it comes to cameras
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Hardware is a thing but it's not actually the only thing things like
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codec licensing make a big difference to
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what kind of an image a camera can produce so for example the camera we're
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shooting this on the Sony fs700 records
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in abchd which isn't a fantastic codec
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in terms of retaining color information
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so what that means is that the image might look great to you guys but if
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we're shooting in the dark or if we're shooting in non-ideal conditions we
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might not be able to play around as much with how the image looks in
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postprocessing not so with this particular camera out of the box it
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comes with Apple's prores codec which means uh basically well the opposite of
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what I just said so there's more that you're going to be able to work with in post it's better than h264 which is
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better than ABCD and coming in a couple of months
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with a firmware upgrade you're actually going to be able to use lossless Cinema
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dng which is basically almost like it's
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raw but it's not uncompressed raw so
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there will be a little bit less flexibility but you still should be able to do an absolute butt ton with it in
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post give that you can shoot in raw and it has 13 stops of dynamic range so
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we've only found a handful of cards that'll work with it without dropping
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frames including this Sony UHS 1 card
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which is their 94 megabyte pers second card so that's usually a read speed spec
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which is sort of irrelevant when you think about it because rights are what people actually care about on these
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devices so it comes only with a micro 43s Mount unlike the 22k which is also
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has an EF Mount option but unlike the 2 and 1/2k Camera this one has an active
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micro 43s Mount which means you can use lenses that control the aperture
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electronically versus being stuck with manual lenses so I think for that reason
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a lot of people were going with the EF mount on the 2 and 1/2k so now you don't
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have to be quite as concerned about the lack of mounting options speaking of
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lack of options there's not a whole lot in terms of stuff going on here so on
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the back you find a large LCD that quite
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frankly um I it's kind of poopy it's not
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that great you're going to want to use an external viewfinder the good news about it is it's about as big as they
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could have made it and it features a one to one zoom in so you can get your focus
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right so at least it has that but color really doesn't look true to life on it
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at all uh you've also got controls over here so you can navigate the menu this
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way the power button is here and then on the bottom of the camera you find a
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simple tripod screw you've also got the battery compartment down here which also
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contains the SD card reader and the USB slot for pulling data off of it speaking
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of batteries the battery is nothing special however already even though it
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just launched you can get cheap batteries so don't worry too much about
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it in fact it's recommended to just carry like a tuaca like uh you know
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strap of batteries if you're going to shoot with this thing on on an ongoing
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basis now this is cool on the top of the camera you've also got another tripod
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mount so this is going to work with standard accessories like whether you
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want to uh you know put like I don't know like a hot shoe adapter there or
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whether you want to mount whatever it is you want to mount to it that's really handy and then you've also got dedicated
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playback buttons as well as of course a record button since this does happen to
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be a camera which brings us to the left
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hand side of the camera where we really find the bulk of the the io so there's
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the power in micro HDMI microphone in
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more on that in a moment headphones out for monitoring as well as a lan C
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connection which is used for remote control of the camera it's more of a prograde feature now that microphone
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in uh right now because the preamp built
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into the camera just isn't anything special levels are very very low so most
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people are using external audio recorders in order to get reasonable
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audio with the video that they're shooting with this camera it's possible
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someone will release like you know a dedicated design for this camera preamp
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so you'll actually be able to use the audio input on board otherwise it's
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really recommended to use a zoom or some other kind of external audio recorder
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now before we dive into the menus here I just want to talk a little bit about the
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overall build quality of the camera it is absolutely beautiful the uh the soft
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touch finish on the front of the camera has just the right amount of grip that
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you never feel like you're going to drop it or lose it but without feeling like
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it's just going to flake off and peel off the back has a slightly more subtle
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slightly more plastic feel to it and then the middle piece right here so the
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top piece that wraps all the way around the side and to the bottom is solid
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aluminum and just feels absolutely fantastic the camera does get a little
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bit warm in your hands so that should be noted however if you buy a ruggedized
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case for it or something like this you will likely never notice those things so
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let's dive into a couple of things in the menu here so number one is white
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balance um so if you're evaluating the temperature so the color of your light
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um the screen doesn't really help the profiles it shoots in don't really help
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because they tend to be quite flat and the fact that there's not much
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granularity to the white balance selections will make this a little bit
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challenging for some people however if you're willing to work around it then
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you can and particularly if you're willing to grade it in post you can
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usually compensate for any inaccuracies uh in while while you were shooting
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another thing of note so there's the there's all the microphone options
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although you probably won't use them unless uh something sort of dramatic
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happens over here we've got our recording options so prores right now is
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the only option for recording format dynamic range you can select either film
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or video and then you can go anywhere up to 30 FPS this is really cool so this is
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a time-lapse interval you can set frames seconds or actually up to 10 minutes so
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it has dedicated time lapse built into the camera and then finally we've got
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more kind of similar settings including uh HDMI overlays or not overlays I think
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that pretty much wraps it up other than to address the black dot issue so very
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very strong light sources have been actually blacking out you can fix them
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in post but Blackmagic has a firmware fix it'll be coming very very soon for
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that and I think thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Blackmagic pocket
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Cinema Camera don't forget to subscribe to L's Tech tips from unboxings reviews
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and other computer videos like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment if you
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thought we did a reasonably good job of something that really we don't talk
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about that much also last thing guys if
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you're looking at this going oh wow it's like a prograde camera for like a
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thousand bucks and sounds like a great deal maybe I just won't buy like some
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other camera um be in mind the way that
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this works the footage you get out of it will have to be worked on there's no
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such thing as you take a video with this camera of your kids birthday party and
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it looks perfect out of the camera this is a prograde equipment they expect that
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you know how to use software like uh Premiere or resolve or etc etc etc so
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that's just something to bear in mind here guys