Emanuel

Pretty nice, they need to bring it to the Pyxis 6K

... and the Ursa Cine 12K LF.  This would be huge for me.

Now it's truly the end of an era.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx
 

«As a Fuji user, that smooth autofocus on the BM6k makes me cry.»
«I sold my X-H2s and all the lenses a few months ago to get BMD Cinema 6K, and I never looked back since.»
source
«The most significant thing about all this, as you pointed out in the video, is that Blackmagic is essentially giving autofocus to all of us who already bought their camera, instead of releasing a Blackmagic 6K Full Frame Pro with autofocus just to make us open our wallets again. They may be losing money in the short term, but in my view they are gaining in the long term, because the trust the brand inspires is truly remarkable.»
source
 
Disclaimer:
Happy camper as Blackmagic shooter over here!
Looks like I am not alone...
 
- EAG :- )

2021? More than a decade later. Well, too late for me then... :- )

Excellent insight, Thank you for the write up!

Ok, first 2 week trip behind with the ZR, 35mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2 and 135mm F1.8 Plena and here are some thoughts about the ZR.
First the good sides. The ZR screen worked well enough for nailing focus and exposure, even when shooting into shadows in bright daylight, but you may want to max the screen brightness. Zooming into the image with the zoom lever was handier than with Z6iii plus and minus buttons.
Even with screen brightness maxed occasionally battery lasted about as well as Z6iii with it’s EVF on normal brightness. Had to use 2nd battery only a few times during 4-5 hour shooting days in cold, 0 to 10C conditions.
Brought also the Smallgrip L cage with me, but did not use it, as it makes the ZR body taller than Z6iii and about similar weight. Even with 1kg lenses ZR felt quite comfortable to use and hold, but as a climber my fingers are not the weakest.
I missed the Z6iii EVF a bit, but used now also different shooting angles and heights more due to the bigger screen being handier than EVF for that.
32bit float saved the few clipped audios I had pretty well, even though I don’t know if it is true 32bit pipeline from Rode wireless go mic to the ZR. Still, the audio sounded a bit better than what I have gotten with Z6iii and Rode.
Exposing clips with R3D NE took at first a bit more time than with NRaw, but by using high zebras set to 245, waveform, and Cinematools false color and Rec.709 clipping LUTs it was quite easy to avoid crushed blacks and clipped highlights.
R3D NE has manual WB, so I took always a picture first and set the WB by using the picture as preset. It worked pretty well, but not perfectly every time.
Shot also NRaw in between to compare, but used auto A1 WB for it. It seems the auto WB did not always work perfectly either, but it was relatively easy to get R3D NE and NRaw to match WB wise in post.
In highlights R3D NE clips earlier than NRaw and it was clearly seen in the zebras and waveform. Still with R3D NE there was not much need to over expose and even with under exposing I needed to use NR only in a couple of clips, where I under exposed too much.
On last year’s trip with Z6iii, when it didn’t have the 1.10 FW yet, that improved the shadow noise pattern, I needed to use NR in many clips, until I realised I could raise high zebras from 245 to 255 without clipping.
With R3D NE and NRaw 4 camera buttons and one lens button was enough. I had 3D LUT and WB added to My menu and that mapped to a button, so it was quite fast to change display LUTs or WB. WB mapped directly to a button or added in i menu won’t let you set the WB by taken picture as preset. WB se to i menu let’s you measure the white point and set that though.
In post I preferred the R3D NE colors over NRaw in almost all of the clips I took, except in few clips where NRaw had more information in the highlights.
Changing NRaw to R3D with NEV to R3D hack brought NRaw grading closer to R3D NE, but they were still not exactly the same. NRaw as NRaw seemed to have more blueish image in some of the clips due to the blue oversaturation issue it has, but the NEV to R3D hack fixes that.
Then the bad sides. After coming home I picked the Z6iii, looked through it’s EVF, felt all of it’s buttons and thought, this is still the better camera, a proper one. Z6iii has also focus limiter and mech sutter which both I missed during the trip.
The worst part became pretty clear after every shooting day. Not the R3D NE file sizes itself, but the lack of software support to be able to save only the trimmed parts of R3D NE clips. Currently Davinci Resolve saves the whole clips without trims, even though NRaw works just fine, and Red Cine x pro gives an error during R3D trim export.
If you happen to fill 2TB card a day with R3D NE, you need to save now everything. I saved like 6TB of footage from this trip when it could have been only 600GB. If this does not get fixed I could as well shoot NRaw with Z6iii and get rid of the damn ZR. Changing trimmed NEV files to R3D does not work either, as Resolve does not import the files. ZR is fun to shoot, no doubt about it, but it’s R3D NE workflow is almost unusable at the moment, at least for my use. 

I shoot in uncontrolled conditions, using only available light, and shoot what is happening with no directing and no do-overs.  This means I'm frequently pointing the camera in the wrong direction, shooting people backlit against the sunset, or shooting urban stuff in midday-sun with deep shadows in the shade in the same frame as direct sun hitting pure-white objects.
This was a regular headache on the GH5 with its 9.7/10.8 stops.  The OG BMPCC with 11.2/12.5 stops was MUCH better but still not perfect, and while I haven't used my GH7 in every possible scenario, so far its 11.9/13.2 stops are more than enough.
The only reason you need DR is if you want to heavily manipulate the shot in post by pulling the highlights down for some reason, or lifting the shadows up for some reason.
Beyond the DR of the GH7 I can't think of many uses other than bragging rights.  When the Alexa 35 came out and DPs were talking about its extended DR, it was only in very specific situations that it really mattered.  
Rec709 only has about 6 stops of DR, so unless you're mastering for HDR (and if you are, umm - why?) so adding more DR into the scene only gives you more headaches in post when you have to compress and throw away the majority of the DR in the image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXt3V6OAEpo
 

None of those images show the full dynamic range.
It's a low light test more than dynamic range.

This is the first smartphone video I've seen that didn't shout (or whisper) that it was shot on a smartphone.
I do get flavours of it being shot on something small and mirrorless because of the movement of the camera (if it was a heavy rig it would have moved differently).
I'm pretty stoked actually, and can't wait to get a vND solution for my iPhone 17 Pro.  I suspect that I might end up shooting a lot of street stuff on it just because the form-factor is so small and people are far less curious/suspicious of smartphones than real cameras.

Ignore it today, it's stuck in the past.
E. :- )

The iPhone 17 Pro selfie camera has a square sensor, and when using the default camera app there's a button that swaps between it recording a 9:16 video and a 16:9 video.
I don't know if you'd rate it as a "real" camera or not though!

Is this why they alegedly rebranded the Osmo Pocket 3
 

The Sigma BF, from what I’ve seen so far, looks like a design-first camera that deliberately embraces limitations and a very specific tactile shooting experience. If your baseline is “fast, familiar, efficient, and feature-complete,” then yes, it can easily feel like a compromise for the money. But cameras built around constraints are often the ones people actually end up using, because they push you into a different pace and a different kind of attention. Calling it “bad” is basically mixing up “not optimized for my workflow” with “objectively worthless.”
Same story with the Fuji X-Half. If it really ships as JPEG-only and is clearly marketed as a “fun,” frictionless camera, then the fair comparison is less “serious camera vs serious camera” and more “intentional point-and-shoot experience vs phone.” In that context, price becomes the whole argument: a fun toy is fine; an expensive fun toy is where people split. And wanting RAW isn’t necessarily pixel-peeping. It’s about long-term ownership, personal rendering, and not being locked into a single pipeline. Fuji could improve the proposition a lot with a smart firmware strategy (RAW/DNG, better HEIF options, more flexible output) without changing what the camera is supposed to be.

"Passionate people in a time when there's not a lot of courage going on"
Too right Ms Obama.

To misquote Niemöller:
”first they came for the media. I sat and watched. They came for the gays, the trans and those who are different. I sat and watched. They came for those they claimed don’t belong. I sat and watched. Then they came for me. There was no one left to hear my cries…”

I wish I could sit in the corner with a hot chocolate while someone wise told me that we are over the worst of it… then I remember that Vance waits to inherit, Farage hovers around No10 like flies over a corpse and… unfortunately it does seem that sitting back and ignoring it is no longer a sensible option.

A couple of years ago, I was saying on Forums that Arri would fail, and people were calling me stupid. Ohhh its image is so special, etc etc how peasants could understand this. But the problem is you can't sell a lot of 70-100 000 usd cameras, the market is what it is, even more so when you have very capable cameras coming for much less. You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price. Before you had the highend market where camera cost/rent is peanuts compared to the overall cost, but that secondary market, the people that used to rent those highend cameras, can now buy a camera that will do 90% of what they need, and will rent only 10% of what they used to do.
Arri and most US/german companies are going to be eaten by the Chinese ones. They still live in the rental business, for camera and other gears light lighting etc. The principal of the Chinese is that they will produce affordable equipment for the many, that will help them also produce for few highend that they will sell. You will find Aperture/Godox/Nanlight models that will cost less than a hundred dollars, to 4k led light costing more than 10 000 USD. They will sell a thousands of the 300 USD 300 watt cob monolight, for perhaps every 10 000 USD 5000 watt one. But those thousands of 300 USD lights will help them for R&D for those big lights. same for camera, imagine if Arri had repackage the original Arri LF in a more affordable casing, taking out some features of frame rate and sell it for 10K. They would be selling thousands of them, perhaps at the detriment of their higher ends, but those thousands of 10k models would overall bring so much money. 

Yeah the whole nature of the business is changing rapidly. It's easy to keep pace when you're working in the YouTube world, but I can't imagine how tough it must be in the Hollywood circles. 

They're already closing down their pro services, and no way they invest in a zero growth business when they kill their own zero growth businesses.
Canon can't do it. That would be all against their ego. They and their customer base believe Canon color science is best in the world, and thats why they have 50% market share. They're like "we ain't need nobody". 
Sony will have a integration nightmare if they do it. Arri systems are in conflict with the whole Sony line up. Also it would be an official admission that the electronics/AV giant couldn't get the color science right and eventually had to go shopping.
Nikon acquisition of RED unintentionally made this perception that its a preferred approach in Tokyo. But it isn't. Nikon had to choose between two costly options and the acquisition was cheaper.
In China, its only DJI who can gain a lot with Arri reputation in its arsenal, but I don't think Germans are comfortable with giving away this German icon to Chinese.
Zeiss would be the perfect owner. A German brand with enough money, so the brand stays in the country, and they're heavily invested in high end part of the cine market. 

"You reach a level where that 5% more cannot justify the 10, 20x the price."
 
true

Scary image.

In an alleged board meeting, it was suggested but in the end, ZR narrowly got the vote.