Initially taken as just a hobby for a niche market, quadcopter shooting has become increasing common after its hardware technology has matured, fostering the action into an inevitable trend and important development in the world of professional shooting these recent years. Blackmagic Design was the first to hang up their mega size billboard during the NAB Show 2015 in Las Vegas, which opened the prologue to different competition with their Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera. The camera’s magnesium body measures at only 82.5 × 69.5 × 65.4mm and weighs 300g. Its extremely compact size focuses on the combination of advanced miniaturize design with the exclusive implementation of an expansion port, also offering a Super 16 standard sensor at the same time. Even though the size of its equipped frame is only two-thirds of a 4/3 light sensor component, its interchangeable lens specification is supporting M4/3 series lens by Panasonic and Olympus just to name a few, not only does this make shooting more resilient, it can also be directly connected to the DJI Phantom 2 quadrocopter (or used as an Action Cam) for remote operation and wireless control on functions such as focus, iris and zoom.
Installed with 13 stops of dynamic range and a global shutter, its shooting speed can go up to 30 frames per second. It uses a rolling shutter different from most DSLR and sporting cameras, as the latter expose different parts of the image within a second, resulting in images that are prone to be shaky when the camera is moving quickly or shooting under a bumpy situation. However, Blackmagic’s global shutter exposes every pixel at the same time so any picture distortions are completely prevented. Other than that, its light sensitivity can go up to ISO 1600 so that high-quality images can still be rendered in dim environments. Last but not least, it supports 12-bit RAW format videos and offers large space for professional producers to conduct post-production. The product is expected to be officially for sale in July.
