Suppose to be end of July but they are not famous for on time releases, don't get too excited to use your Canon lenses it's a 3X factor.

can you explain what the 3x factor means? is it zoomed in or something?

The sensor is a third the size, so it's zoomed in three time.

wow bummer. so what is the sensor in a Canon T3i/600D? it's smaller also, I think, right? Maybe about the same off-ness?

The BMD pocket camera with a Metabones Speedbooster does look attractive.
The other option is a PL adaptor and lenses made for Super16, we have a couple of nice primes and a never used zoom.

One warning. A lot of glass made for film does may not perform well in front of a digital sensor. There's a subtle difference between how light interacts with film and a digital sensor. Some digital sensors are designed to work well with old glass and others are not.
To explain that a bit. Some lenses have a low angle of incidence between the light and the plane of focus. Film handles this quite well, some sensors cause such light to reflect into adjacent photosites causing the image to look "soft" with such lenses.

Bob.

Bob, do you think this may have been overlooked by BMD?

Interesting thought.

G

I doubt it's been overlooked, the issue is how much additional engineering and design work do can they afford to put into this issue against how many extra sales that'll give them.
Like many things there's also constraints e.g. the use of micro lenses for each photosite improves sensitivity but can easily cause light to scatter into the adjacent little lenses.

You've also got to consider that some might actually like the resultant "soft" look.

Bob.

WWJD asked "so what is the sensor in a Canon T3i/600D? it's smaller also, I think, right?"

These Canon cameras have an APS-C sensor and have a crop factor of 1.6. So a 50mm lens will be 50 x 1.6 = 80mm. If the BM pocket camera has a crop factor of 3 then it'll be 50 x 3 = 150mm. Yea bummer indeed.

All of these reasons are why I opted for a GH3 as my next camera rather than anything Blackmagic is offering. It throws M43 a curveball and ruins the lens kit for many of us. Suddenly you are shooting with all wide angle lenses, just to get portrait shots.

I really WANTED to love the Pocket Cinema camera. Love Blackmagic as they put out nothing but excellent equipment. I am certain it can give fantastic results, but it is not a dream by any means.

Keep in mind that the camera is only using the center of the lens which is usually the sweet spot, so that you would likely get a pretty good image with a relatively inexpensive wide lens. Also keep in mind that while the sensor may be smaller, it is also subdivided into less capture pixels, so the light gathering area per pixel (and thus it's low light sensitivity) should be pretty good. The main thing you are giving up is depth of field, but on an all manual camera, that isn't such a bad thing. Still a pretty good sized sensor compared with something like an EX3.

"Crop Factor" is a funny term and people do get pretty hung up about it. The BM Pocket camera has a Super-16 size sensor and the standard focal length for standard 16mm is 25mm. The standard set of lenses on a Bolex-16 was 10mm, 25mm and 50mm (or often 75mm). I've bought a Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 lens for my BM pocket camera, so that covers what I'm used to for most work and I don't care what the same lens would cover on a standard MFT sensor -- not relevant. Each film format (or sensor size) has an associated "standard" focal length lens and knowing that seems to me a more useful set of information. I guess "crop factor" is useful for still photographers used to full frame 35mm format, so I'm probably being unhelpful.

thanks for that serena - (clear and concise as ever!)

[I]" I guess "crop factor" is useful for still photographers used to full frame 35mm format, so I'm probably being unhelpful. "[/I]

I think you're trying to be helpful in an area where very few are, especially those who make the cameras and lenses. We now have equivalent focal length to further muddy the waters and confuse all of us. I'm far from certain what it's even supposed to be equivalent to.

Bob.

sounds like I might not be able to adjust any aperature settings on my canon lenses, even with an adpater. unless I get that $500 adapter, then I'm out of money anyway

I had to look up "equivalent focal length" (which is not the same as "effective focal length"), and I see that it is essentially the inverse of crop factor; and since it just references the 35mm full frame it is really just as useless as crop factor. I suspect that most consumer users have never used a full frame camera, so the process they have to go through first is understanding how their camera sensor relates to the full frame. Wouldn't FoV be a preferable parameter? Reading the Wiki entry the writer is imprecise about a MFT 50mm f/2 lens being equivalent to a 100mm f/4 lens on full frame (other than the FoV). The DoF is the same when the 100mm lens is at f/8, and the implication that f/4 gives the same exposure as f/2 is curious. The total number of photons getting through the aperture isn't relevant, we're only concerned with photons per unit area of image.

These two videos are about the 2.5k Cinema Camera, not the Pocket Cinema Camera, although a lot of the discussion applies to both cameras. The second video clearly illustrates the difference in the post-production processing options between the Cinema Camera's 12-bit RAW and all other 8-bit cameras. I found both videos very revealing. I'm particularly interested in the $4,000 4k Cinema Camera with the Super 35 sensor and EF-compatible lens mount.

Comparing the Cinema Camera & 5D Mk III

Comparing the Cinema Camera: Part 2, The Impact of 12-bit RAW

[I]"Wouldn't FoV be a preferable parameter?"[/I]

Yes.

Bob.

I understand that the 4K camera will output an internally downscaled gorgeous HD image (1920x1080) . That with the global S-35 sensor is attractive, plus (of course) the 4K capability. Yes, I'm thinking of that a little further down the track.

What's mind blowing about the comparison is the sensor size of the BMD against Canon's full frame. It's amazing that BMD can even be compared. Price wise, the BlackMagic Design is slightly cheaper than the Canon

sooooo the 4K camera has an "EF" lens mount - perfect for all my canon lenses out of the gate... but the Pocket does not?? Kinda snubs all those potential Canon DSLR upgraders, doesn't it?

Sensor size is one parameter in the equation. Rather like a truck is not necessarily better than a Ferrari just because it's bigger. Makes a big impact on depth of field (lack of it) and low light capabilities (depending on pixel size and pixel binning). But not necessarily image quality. Full frame DSLRs are not outputing 25MB per frame (or whatever their still picture capability is) and the way the 1920x1080 image is extracted is very important; jaggies and moire fringing often being consequences. The BM cameras have a 13 stop dynamic range, far exceeding the 8 bit of any DSLR (including the Canon EOS C300 -- S-35 frame).

I am interested in this camera but it looks like it ships without a stock lens.

Also, can it shoot a single frame?

If not, how would you shoot say 50 portraits? Say, film 2 seconds each then grab from screenshots?

Then someone said the film length is in seconds. In what reference was that statement about?? I have a small DSLR and can shoot video without stopping until the memory base runs out.

Thanks,
Bill