First reported on planet 5D, then picked up by our friends at PetaPixel, earlier this week producer and videographer, Forest Gibson's $4k+ Blackmagic Cinema Camera kit caught fire after filming. This a video he shot of the aftermath.
After wrapping the shoot Forrest reports that his battery exploded, violently spewing black smoke. For safety reasons, everyone left the studio, reentering later to try to recover the footage.
@BlackMagic_Cine Have you heard of anyone else's BM Camera's Battery exploding? Mine just did... http://t.co/mrqbkhGNLA
— Forest Gibson (@forestgibson) March 17, 2014
Ummm my BM 2.5k camera just burst into flames filling my apartment with smoke... @Blackmagic_News help?
— Forest Gibson (@forestgibson) March 15, 2014
Gibson Spoke out on Twitter but is still yet to hear back from the people at Blackmagic. It's likely that we'll get an official response some time in the next week. As far as malfunctioning camera goes, this is about the worst case scenario, his equipment is totally shot, his footage likely unrecoverable.
What's the worst equipment failure you've had to deal with? Tell us below.
[Via planet 5D]
And two weeks before NAB. I wonder what they had planned to talk about instead of this?
Wow, no kidding. As bad as I feel for Gibson, I almost feel worse for black magic. I think this is about the worst kind of pr problem you can have for new camera company.
yea no kidding, delays and now this? thank goodness most of their other products are solid (at least when i spend months patching it to work with Evo)
Jeez, I've had a few hard drives die and once got an error message to send a scarlet in for service...no explosions or fires tho and hundreds of hours of usage! scary stuff BM!
I just have to add, and i know it means nothing, but sick $50 tripod with a $3k camera on top :-)
That tripod apparently did the job (better than the camera, btw), so I wouldn't knock it.
The worst are the $50 tripods with the $2 photographer behind it.
Blackmagic's response: "There have been a small number of isolated incidents where it has been reported the battery had exploded."
Considering that you have to wonder how many of these cameras are out in the wild, of which I would guess not many, this looks like it could be a bigger problem then their somewhat trivialization of it. While I really like what BM are doing with this camera, my biggest criticism of it has always been that non-removable battery.
I've lost an interview by using knock-off SD cards without testing them. Can't really blame the cards since I didn't test them first, but that sucked. I'd be curious to how many (total, not just that day) hours were on the camea when it caught fire.
That what a call BLACK magic smoke :)