@Amadeus5D2

Yep, but someone was not glad about my comments considering October after IBC :-).
And it turned out to be very optimistic estimate.

Hi,

I wanted to give everyone an update on where we are with Blackmagic CinemaCamera shipments.

As you know, we have been dealing with a supplier delay which has stalled our ability to build cameras. I thought it might be a good idea to explain in more detail what is going on, and do a technical “brain dump” on the problem so everyone understands the nature of the delay and what we have been doing about it.

Over a month ago now, we completed the testing of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and started production. Very quickly we started to see cameras failing our production testing as they suffered from blemishes on the sensor. These are high end cameras so need to be built to a very high specification.

We started testing to discover the cause of the problem and discovered that the problems were from our second shipment of sensors. The first shipment of sensors were fine. All the cameras you currently see people using had been built from this first batch of sensors and that is why we did not see any issues until we started to build cameras in volume.

While investigating the problem our engineers found the blemishes were in the glass that covers the sensor, and not the sensor itself. This is good because the glass might just be dirty so we saw this as a quick fix, but wondered how a supplier could deliver us sensors that had blemishes, as they are supposed to pre test them.

It is worth noting here what this glass does. Each sensor has a glass cover to keep contamination off the surface of the sensor itself, which is essentially a large semiconductor. If the surface ever got dirty, it would be impossible to clean, however the glass is easy to clean. All sensors have this glass cover. It is a high quality glass with optical coatings, similar to lens glass.

Anyway getting back to the issue, when talking with the supplier, it turned out they had a bug in their test software that tested sensors after the glass had been applied. That’s why they shipped us bad sensors and did not notice. They fixed that problem and could then see the problems we saw and stopped production as about 95% of sensors were suffering this problem with the glass.

The next step for the supplier was for them to work out the cause of the blemishes on the glass. They developed tests for the glass before being bonded to the sensor, and discovered it contained the blemishes on the glass before being used in the suppliers factory. After more testing over the last few weeks, the supplier has discovered the blemishes are caused by a contamination from the packing materials used by the glass supplier to ship the glass to the sensor supplier.

So that’s where we are at now. The supplier is due to get more glass later this week and then hopes to start up production again using new clean glass that will result in good quality sensors that we can use to start building cameras again.

We build our cameras in our own factory on a production line built for the camera so we can start shipping cameras again the day we receive good sensors.

I deeply apologize for the delay in shipping and it has been very frustrating for us as well to be sitting on a completed and tested product for a month that we cannot sell. Especially when people need them urgently.

As you can also see from the breakdown of the problem above, there has been multiple stages of testing to discover the cause of the problem so it has been hard to lock down dates or what was going on until now, so its been hard to update everyone on the exact details.

I hope this update helps people understand the delay. We should know more details about shipping times once the new glass arrives at our supplier.

We also have a new software update v1.1 for the camera due in a few days. The original v1 software did not have DNxHD support so thats now been added, as well as support for lens stabilizers and a bunch of other small features.

Regards,

Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design

Small update :-)

@danyyyel Then my remark was ironic, maybe? Get a BMCC now, make movies and sell it when something better is available ;-)

Still cheaper than RED!

@nomad

"Obsolescence Obsolete" you may need the dough for a RED.

The only problem with red "Obsolescence Obsolete" is that it cost like two BMC to upgrade a red sensor and perhaps 3 or more to upgrade the scarlet one.

Agreed, that's the future, for FX-heavy productions in particular. But how far away is it in production-ready gear, with the financial turmoil the film business and the world in general is facing?

I agree completely on the latter, it can be very helpful to nail focus in a pinch.

As much as I value your comments, I dare to disagree on FF, as long it's scenic production. Automatics still have a long way to go until they can compete with the aesthetic sensitivity of a real good focus-puller. Admittedly, most low-budget productions can't pay him/her. OTOH, low-budget is all about hidden talent.

If you have the money, you don't care for a BMCC (or GH2), but go for one of the big three – with all manual PL glass.

Docu is different, but it might be a safer bet to go for the EF-mount then, since it can be upgraded by firmware.

Plus, a lens which has an IS optimized for stills can show some nasty effects when moving the camera.

There must be a reason why even Canon has not activated auto-iris and -focus on the C300. Or look at the discussions over at reduser.net where quite a few people are disappointed with auto-focus with Canon glass on a RED. The list goes on, like disappointment with the aperture's behavior on the expensive Panny zoom over here.

I'll just be happy if they can get the passive version released in December (in significant quantities of course).

@Tobsen

It's a passive mount. To make it active it would have to have pins...which it doesn't have.

Maybe they will do an active one later. That will be a different version for sure. So count on active and IS only with EF mount. Otherwise make the most of passive.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev They had a bit longer to work on the EF version. Right now they're busy with getting the first one out the door.

I appreciate if I can mount all my manual glass – some adapted heritage lenses and some µFT like Voigts – pretty soon. I'll even try some Super-16 Arri/Zeiss PL-mounts which have been on the shelf for years to see how bad they vignette …

I think we can't have it all: short time span and great price point.

Why not shoot ASAP and resell if in a year it comes with a full electronic mount? If you want "Obsolescence Obsolete" you may need the dough for a RED.

Personally, I'm on John's side here. I don't see any problems with the passive mount at all. Blackmagic wanted to get a m4/3 version out as soon as possible, and it's up to the customer to decide whether he wants to buy it or not. If someone doesn't need an active mount or simply doesn't want to wait for it, then it's a great offer. Everyone else will have to wait for the active version.

I don't know, I think it's totally okay if Blackmagic needs the time. I don't blame them.

Actually it's like starting from scratch.

I am sure if you ask engineeres they'll tell you that it is not.

Apparently the m4/3 pins are very difficult and have to be done very precisely.

And EF pins are produced some extreme imprecise approach? :-)