@danyyyel

They did m4/3 passive because it was easy and people wanted it.

Higher FPS is a much bigger deal. Maybe they'll find a way, but right now the engineering team is working on other core features !

jb

@kodakmoment, you cannot just choose a sensor on spec list. One thing that I don't find mentioned at least visibly is the dynamic range. Blackmagic have been very picky about one thing and have always put it at the center of their communication and it is DR. They went the Arri way and not the RED way. For me it is the best choice because I think DR is more important than resolution when you have at least reach a good 2k resolution. The DR and colour science remind me a lot of Nikon and some would say Alexa.

The images from the BMCC cameras which are out there are pretty amazing. Even if the supply chain problems delay camera shipments till mid next year, the BMCC will remain a unique offering to image makers.

To put it into perspective; it looks like the GH2 will remain a unique offering in terms of its image even with the imminent arrival of the GH3. If you value a unique look or unique capabilities at a certain price point it is only hard to wait.

@rajamalik don't buy it.

JB

@bwhitz You would laugh, but it's already over a year and half ago when I saw the JVC 4K 60p handheld Camcorder prototype with live 4K output they actually released for a measley $4995.

If only JVC could have only slapped a Sony, Canon or Panasonic label on their 4K camcorder everyone would be laughing at the competition for not bettering them by now...

Oh well, everyone will probably be showing small-chip 4K camcorders at CES 2013, so just a couple more months to wait for a few alternatives...

Do you think we will see a 2.5k, 13 stop, raw camera for $ 3000 anytime soon from any manufacturer. I don't see Sony, Canon or red coming close for the next 5 years at least. On the contrary, I see blackmagic coming with a S35 raw camera in the next 2 years.

Yep. Either Blackmagic... or from GoPro. I think well definitely see a revolutionary cinema cam from these guys sooner than later...

I really don't care about s35 over this current sensor size from BM though. It has 13 stops of DR, it's shoots RAW... it's a full-fledged cinema cam. No excuses, but the user. Sure, I'd take s35 if it was an option... but it's a VERY mute point considering the alternative insanely priced options.

I don't like the fanboyism that prevails today toward x,y or z brand. But I think Black magic should be given credit to what they are doing. Do you think we will see a 2.5k, 13 stop, raw camera for $ 3000 anytime soon from any manufacturer. I don't see Sony, Canon or red coming close for the next 5 years at least. On the contrary, I see blackmagic coming with a S35 raw camera in the next 2 years.

Company: lets announce a prototype at a show w/ a release date. All these people will advertise for us on these blogs... and it wont cost us a penny.

I guess in the end its positive, you have other companies scrambling and knocking down prices. Guess it could be worse. If anything just start your "masterpiece" with the tools you have instead of waiting for these "game changers" to finally land in your hands.

As a general rule of thumb I never prebuy something until it is in the field and proven by many.. Do I think the BMD is a good camera for the money , yes.. but I wont get one until it is in full production and well proven.. The way I see this situation is that now the big boys in the camera world have been given a chance to blow the BMD camera out of the water.. make us a BDM killer.. and actually get it in the field in qty and you'll win customers.. Not holding my breath on this but they were given a opportunity.. After I saw the new sony sports camera I was interested for a few reasons.. fps and image stability etc. but said no, Im good with my gopro hero 2 for now we shall see what comes of this camera, i want to see lots of field footage and user reviews ect.. waited a few weeks , BOOM GoPro out of nowhere drops the Hero3 Black on us.. never buy the first of anything.. especially a preorder of a product that is not actually in full production and in the hands of real users. I know BMD makes good products own many of there products., but still wont just buy anything they make. I need to see results before i buy.

Is the sensor from Asia?

Last time I checked motherfuckers tribe is evently spread across the Earth :-)

Hopefully this will be a learning experience for all concerned, and they will establish more effective QA processes that take into account the tendency for certain Asian suppliers to switch to cheaper options on the supply chain, without transparency. This is a known issue in the car parts manufacturing business. Kudos to BM for their openness around this problem.

This is quite amazing. I don't know if it is good or bad that they would speak like this about such an important piece in a puzzle that they are themselves ultimately trying to sell us. Really a double edged sword.

A new update regarding camera delays:

First a bit of a background in the issue.

As I have explained in earlier posts, we have been dealing with an issue from our sensor supplier where the glass that covers the front of the sensor has been contaminated and they have been working on that issue. They realized they had a contamination issue that turned out to be caused by the packaging of the glass was shipped to their factory and so that contaminated glass was used on the sensors and sent to us.

Now there were a few fundamental problems with this. Firstly we should never have received parts that had contaminated glass. It turned out their quality control software at the sensor company was poorly designed. Secondly it had taken them months to work out what was going on and to get new packaging to ship the glass to the factory mounting it on the sensors. It's been months.

However a few weeks ago things were looking good and the supplier got glass that was clean, they updated their test software to correctly test the sensors and could start shipping sensors to us again.

Now as I mentioned last week, the problem is while we did start getting sensors that passed our quality control when used in building our cameras, a lot of sensors did not pass. This was confusing because the sensor’s supplier was supposed to have fixed their test software and had new clean glass.

Working out what was going wrong is what we have been busy doing over the last week. It's going to get a little technical here, however I think everyone wants to know what’s going on, instead of platitudes.

In our frustration over still getting sensors that would not pass our quality check, we decided to move in and completely audit the sensor supplier’s process in detail using our engineers. We wanted to fully understand what was going on.

We wanted to know how the supplier could the fix to get clean glass not be working 100% and how could the sensor supplier still let bad parts through their quality control process and ship them to us, in the belief that they were "good" parts? This was very confusing. I mean, fixing the contaminated glass should have been a quick simple job so how could they still not get it right after months of work?

What we found when investigating their processes was quite surprising. Of course we had known the original problem with their quality control checks was their test software had not been modified for color sensors. In the past their sensors were used for scientific use and used in black and white. Also their glass was never used as other customers bonded the lens optics onto the sensor itself. In our case we use the sensor in a conventional way and the customers change lenses. We need the glass on the sensor like all other cameras do.

Also, they had never built a camera using the sensor they make for us. We are the only camera that’s used this sensor and glass combination. It's like designing and building cars but no one at the company has every driven one.

So it turns out their quality process is really only good at testing the semiconductor die. It's no good at testing the quality of the overall sensor product with the glass in front. This meant they could not even see the problems we were seeing, so that’s why we were getting bad parts. We sent them the information on how to build our test setup and yesterday they started testing using it. Now they are seeing the same quality problems we are seeing. This is good as it means we should not get any more bad sensors.

The problem left is that out of a test batch of 30 sensors, only 4 worked well enough so we can build cameras using them. This is bad. So while the good news is they can now see the same problems we see, the question is why is there still contamination on the glass.

The reason is the contaminated glass issue in many ways distracted them from the problems their manufacturer is having bonding the glass to the sensor itself. The sensor supplier now has two sources of glass, and both of them are showing the same problems. The parts without glass are ok, and the problems appear when the glass is bonded to the sensor. If the glass is clean then it's really the company bonding on the glass that are introducing contamination.

Now the amazing part is that the first batch of sensors we got that we used for developing the camera and that were fine when we started production were manufactured by a completely different company to the second and subsequent batches of sensors. I could not believe this news when I heard it today as it explains a lot.

Our current understanding is that the company that has been bonding on the glass is crap and they have been contaminating the glass when bonding it. Because the sensor suppliers test process was also bad, it meant that no one really knew what was going on and it's been weeks and weeks of confusion.

The sensor supplier is getting some new sensors made at the original supplier, which we should get test data back on late this week. Once we see this we will know if the original supplier can make the parts without contamination and so we can start building cameras again. I don't know why they changed glass bonding companies.

I am sorry this is a really long way of explaining what’s going on. It's a complex issue and the only way to explain what’s going on is to actually explain what’s going on in detail. It's been hard to update at times because there has been so much confusion at times about these issues and if they have been fixed or not. We don't know until we build a bunch of cameras.

What has really shocked me is how long it has taken our sensor supplier to fix this. They have been very bad at moving quickly and really thinking about what's going wrong. If we had not moved in with our engineers, they still would have no idea what was going on. It's taken months and driven us crazy with frustration.

So the current plan is to get some sensors from the original glass bonding company and based on their upgraded testing we should know more at the end of the week if we are going to get a good supply of sensors starting to ship using that new company.

I will let you all know later this week or early next when we get some of these sensors to build cameras with and will know if we can start production full speed again.

It's nice they are keeping us informed, but not looking good for us getting our cameras.