Blackmagic Design has announced their first camera, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. This will be a very interesting camera for people who are into movie-making. Blackmagic Design has up to now been more involved in the post-production side of things, making hardware and software for editing and such.
The Cinema Camera will be a 2.5K camera in terms of resolution, regular HD has basically 1K resolution, with a dynamic range of 13 stops, which approaches the dynamic range of film stock. The major goal for the camera is to produce the best possible footage in terms of image quality, which is a high goal indeed. It also uses the Canon EF lens mount, which is bound to of interest to filmmakers using Canon DSLR's like the 5d Mark II, and now the 5D Mark III, and the upcoming EOS-1D C, which is specifically geared towards filmmaking. And on the back of the camera is a 5-inch touchscreen for viewing, which dedicated controls for recording and playback. It will record onto interchangeable SSD hardrives or you can use a Thunderbolt cable and record straight to your computer. To sweeten the pot, so to speak, its price will come in around $3000, which puts it $500 less than a new 5D Mark III body, and it should be available in July.
As you can tell from its design, this camera is not trying to be anything other than a movie camera. It's not trying to be both a still camera and a movie camera. It's for making movies. I have the feeling that these will be very popular when they are available. You can find out more about the Blackmagic Cinema Camera here.
