Is the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera still king in 2018? Part I

I'm breaking up with Nikon. Sort of. My Nikon glass will still come in handy. But I’m deeply in love with BMPCC.

I could blame Matteo Bertoli. But actually, I can’t believe I’m living in a time when I can get this quality of an image out of a cheap cinema camera.

It’s not an iPhone, it’s not a RED, but it is somewhere in between, somewhere comfortable. Once you understand that BlackMagic took a 16mm film camera, made it digital and added a viewfinder on the back, then you will understand what you’re buying. You don’t really need 4K. You need exposure latitude and beautiful resolution.

We're going back to our roots of WebTV. Full circle is what it feels. Watching this movie just made me think that Blackmagic is the Delorean of the film industry. Rugged, Raw, unorthodox, same black and metallic look and feel. If you’re keen to improve your color grading skills, this is the one.*

Learning color grading, in my opinion, improves your cinematography. Blackmagic charges almost $30K for its pro color grader. The lite version is free for anyone. And it’s as good as it gets. Believe it or not. It’s almost fully functional with HD as maximum export resolution. If you’re not ready for a RAW workflow, the camera can also shoot in various flavors of ProRes 422 at bitrates as high as 220 Mbps, which still captures plenty of data to play with in post.

The only question remaining? Seriously, where’s the new Pocket Cinema Camera? It’s 2018, not 2013! 4K, UltraHD Apple ProRes, 1080 up to 60fps and 15+ Stops. That would be gold! (Too good to be true?) Image stabilization would be a nice addition.

For now, I’m going for the good old BMPCC and so far, I still can’t find anything as good as this. Nothing is automatic, so it forces you to learn stuff you might have been content to leave to the camera. White balance, ISO, shutter angle…there is no aperture priority, no AWB… it will force you to be better. Requires all the lost skills of by-gone days of photography.

Stay tuned for Part II