Blackmagic Design Releases Raw Recording for Pocket Cinema Camera

Blackmagic Design Releases Raw Recording for Pocket Cinema Camera

Blackmagic Design, makers of the line of cinema cameras that are growing in popularity, today released the Blackmagic Camera 1.5 software which adds new 12-bit Log CinemaDNG RAW recording to the Pocket Cinema Camera. This update is free from Blackmagic's website and can be downloaded today.

The new Blackmagic Camera 1.5 software update adds CinemaDNG RAW file recording so customers can now capture super wide dynamic range in a single file. Wide dynamic range RAW image recording allows users to capture the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows simultaneously, capturing more of the scene than is possible with a regular video camera. CinemaDNG RAW files give users incredible freedom to be able to adjust the exposure manually during color correction with DaVinci Resolve allowing more flexibility for incredible feature film look color grading.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera uses the open standard lossless compressed version of CinemaDNG RAW. CinemaDNG RAW lossless compression works in a similar way as a ZIP file where the RAW files are compressed during recording without the loss of any part of the image, so all images retain the same quality when they are decompressed. That means customers get back the mathematically perfect high quality RAW file image that they recorded.

For more information on the update as well as the Pocket Cinema Camera, head over to Blackmagic.com.

Jaron Schneider's picture

Jaron Schneider is an Fstoppers Contributor and an internationally published writer and cinematographer from San Francisco, California. His clients include Maurice Lacroix, HD Supply, SmugMug, the USAF Thunderbirds and a host of industry professionals.

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9 Comments

A $1000 camera that does RAW natively... Yeah, I'm in.

My only concern would be burning through SD cards rapidly.

And batteries.

Oh yeah I totally agree, but compared to the price of a Canon 5D Mark III and having to hack the firmware to make it shoot RAW, this seems to be a pretty good option.

A battery pack could solve the latter problem, at least make it better...and the memory space would be solvable too, if only Atomos' ninjas could record RAW on those SSD's...I know they are costy, but some might happen to accidentally have one laying around at home. :))

See at that point, you're carrying around more gear, which was the problem that the "pocket" camera was solving.

I don't know how many of you are already using that camera neither do I but I belive that after using it just for a little while based on the reviews I read/watched we could all agree that the word "pocket" was added there for commercial reasons only. Yeah you can carry the camera around in your pocket if you are going on a shoot but you are also going to be carrying a lot of accessories to use it with :)

We are gonna do a short fake trailer (30sec) with is next week! So i keep in touch! :)

I was just about to sell my 1month old Canon 6D in order to get the 5D MKIII but now I dont know what to do... Maybe I'll wait to see some RAW footage taken with the blackmagic!