Convincing rumours are doing the rounds in the filmmaking community, thanks to a slip by Canon USA on Twitter. The official account offered a poll asking whether followers would like to learn more about Canon EOS R external RAW recording at NAB, or the C200’s existing RAW Light codec.
Blackmagic RAW has arrived on the Pocket 4K camera, meanwhile Cinema DNG has been remove due to patent claims, and basically being an obsolete format with poor performance and compatibility. I don’t really mourn Cinema DNG, but it’s a shame they had to remove it for legal reasons.
What’s very interesting on the hardware side is how Blackmagic are able to deliver such a dramatic firmware update. A lot of consumer cameras have hardware based on ASIC chipsets. The Blackmagic Pocket 4K has a FFPGA (Fast Field Programmable Gate Array) which is a type of chip that can be completely reprogrammed at the hardware level by software commands. This is how Blackmagic are able to deliver such fundamental features as an entire new raw codec, which would have necessitated a hardware change on a normal camera.
Blackmagic are providing a BRAW Player as well for MacOS which allows quick preview and playback of clips from the Finder. BRAW clips are a single file unlike Cinema DNG, which is a folder of still DNG frames in sequence.
This is a really surprising by Nikon, as I expected Sony or Panasonic to do this first. Nevertheless the Z6 and Z7 will be the first mirrorless cameras to offer 4K RAW via HDMI to an external recorder – namely the Atomos Ninja V.
For the first time ever I’ve come face to face with the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K has come face to face with me. It’s time to face facts without doing an about-face.
