In Germany there is a 5kgs limit for commercial general flight license. It would be a no brainer to get this Micro cam on a drone and stay under 5kgs. The Phantom2 GoPro has about only 1,3kgs. I always wondered why there was no manufacturer who filled this gap with a better camera than the GoPro or Phantom Vision.

@peaceonearth

Just give it time.

Action and drone cameras are best sectors in camera shipments. All major manufacturers working on offerings.

BM is just faster.

global shutter! @kurth not everybody wants an ultra wide angle. I mounted a 5.4mm lens on the GoPro and I am quite happy with it on the drone. It has a 60° angle. The built in lens is far to wide. 1st of all the distortion is awful secondly you are always too close to the subject if you want a shot with an object in the foreground. For the pocket the 12mm Olympus might be a perfect choice. 84° angle, equivalent 36mm to full frame 24x36. 130g

I saw that too. Even if the montage is ragged and evident it's promising ;-)

From Black Magic's email description:

Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera

Our Pocket Cinema Camera has been popular because it’s an incredibly tiny digital film camera that’s super portable. It does not even look like a digital film camera!

It’s a great handheld design, however, it’s also been used for shooting remote shots and it was not really designed for that. So we have been working on a digital film camera that’s specifically designed for remote shooting, and it’s even smaller!

The result is the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera, which is a miniaturized Super 16mm professional digital film camera with a new expansion port that lets you use PWM and S.Bus model airplane remote controls to operate the camera wirelessly for capturing action anywhere.

What this means is you can use the same low cost radio control gear that hobbyists use for model aircraft and quadcopters. Normally these receivers plug into “servos” which generate movement when the user adjusts a knob on the hand held transmitter. These connections use a voltage called PVM and we have the same connection on the Micro Cinema Camera. So this means you can plug into the camera and control the camera remotely.

You can even map what camera feature you want on what channel. So you could map the lens to adjust iris or focus. You could use a channel to start and stop recording, so you don’t fill the SD Card with RAW or ProRes files before you are ready for your shot!

To see what the camera is doing, it has a full sized HDMI connector and it even has composite NTSC/PAL out so you can use a low cost hobbyist video transmitter to see what the camera is doing and confirm its recording. Imagine having live feeds back from the camera when its in all kinds of hard to reach locations. I think its going to be exciting to see where this camera is mounted and what kinds of shots it gets.

Because it has an MFT lens mount you can put all kinds of really professional lenses on it, and adapt it easily to other lens mounts. On this camera we even put the buttons on the front of the camera so when it’s mounted on a wall or in a car, you can just start recording from the front. It also has a tally light on the front so you can see if its recording.

Image quality wise, its a true digital film camera because it has a wide 13 stops of dynamic range. This means it’s a big improvement in image quality over consumer “action-cam’s” so you can get all those high energy shots, without the consumer look.

The Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera will be available in July for $995.

I think there might be a bit of a spike in angenieux 5.9mm lens prices on ebay when this cam starts shipping!

there are a lot of options:
- Olympus 9mm f8 30g (!!)
- Lumix 14mm f2.5 55g
- Lumix 7-14mm f4 300g
- Samyang 7.5mm t3.8 195g
- Lumix 8mm f3.5 165g
- Lumix 12-35mm f2.8 305g
- Olympus 12mm f2 130g

...

seems like the first MFT camera with global shutter ... i wonder why they didnt bring this up in a regular chassis...

Exciting. What I want to know:

• does the existing BMPCC Speedbooster work on it (I guess so, sensor sizes seem to match)?

• can you Genlock one cam directly to the other for 3D (ideal), or do you need an external sync generator driving both?

• 13 stops dynamic range in Global shutter mode too? (typically DR is less)

• same or improved colour & noise performance over BMPCC?

Agreed @Leto. I would like 4K, but how are they going to record it internally? We can barely get 1080p RAW on a high-end Sandisk card. And there's no room for an SSD in that form factor. It's just not practical yet.

Also I just heard from someone that asked about the other Micro 'Studio' cam at NAB (which is 4K but has no internal recorder), and was told it's DR and sensitivity are way lower (quote was 8-10 stops, native ISO ~320). So this is not a Cinema camera. At this level, the choice is between resolution or pixel quality - I'd like both, but I'll pick quality.

I'd already be impressed if they can get 13 stops out of the Global shutter mode. The only other fatal flaw of my Pocket cams is the aliasing (often no problem, but not ideal and sometimes terrible). I suspect the Micro Cine will be the same, but an AA filter would make it perfect.

@aaronchicago right that's my dilemma too. It's almost too good to be true for 3D use (my use case), genlock, global shutter etc. But I got my 2 BMPCCs in a sale, so it's quite an extra outlay even after selling them.

And knowing BMD, if we don't pre-order right now, we'll probably wait many months past the July target before we actually get the cams (and that's assuming they make July in any quantity). Although maybe BMD have improved the supply issues too ...