Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro (Canon EF)

Have always loved red and blackmagic cameras. This one is great. Would like an excuse to buy a second. Great B cam. Nd filters are well designed and it just works. Love the simplicity of these cameras and the images is fantastic. The smaller sensor makes fire sharp focus.

Love this camera. Wish it had normal sized XLR plugs. But otherwise it is great

This is an amazing camera, If you are not familiar with the camera and features there are a few things you need to know.

First thing is if you are planning on using an SSD you cant just get any external SSD even if its the fastest and best one it wouldn’t really work there are compatible media that it requires, I currently use the Helix 1TB USB-C SSD which works great but tends to get a little hot.

The other thing is if you are taking video and want to delete a clip, you wont be able to do it from the camera you will need to do it from your PC.

There are some issues with the XLR as well even though the camera has 2 XLR inputs just note they are mini XLR so you will need to buy the adapter, the camera does provide phantom power as well, I currently use a Rode NT5 microphone for dialog.

The biggest con which I can think of is the SSD compatibility which Blackmagic needs to fix, because there are much faster cheaper SSD’s which I can get but the camera will not work with, unless you get the ones from the approved list which you can view on their website.

But overall the camera is just amazing for the price you cannot compete, the UI and everything just looks amazing its a pleasure using this camera, there are so many functions and it makes it super easy to use all of them and the touch screen works great.

I love the image this camera gives. It’s absolutely a steal at this price and it’s simply my favorite thing I’ve ever purchased. There’s not much more to be said. There’s no blue screen issue due to updates. B-raw is beautiful to grade. It’s used my production value by a great amount.

It’s definitely a higher standard than a dslr. It’s manual and that’s how it’s meant to be. I highly recommend adding this and the other pocket cinema offerings to your arsenal.

I bought this to use as a center camera for multi-camera videos. It’s large and stays on a tripod most of the time. The LCD touchscreen is very bright and the menu system is well organized. I record to an external Samsung T5 via the USB C connector. The camera can record in Blackmagic Raw which works very well in Davinci Resolve. I can edit directly from the T5 without copying the large raw files to my computer. I put a SmallRig cage around it so I can attach accessories. I use an external F970 battery on a small plate to power it via the 12V lemo connector.

There are a few things that I miss that my camcorders have: continuous auto-focus and face recognition; electronic zoom – my Canon lens doesn’t support that; one hand operation. The 6K Pro is not a direct replacement but is very good at what it does. There’s a good app for iOS called Bluetooth+ that duplicates the camera menu on an iPad so you can make adjustments without touching the camera while recording.

I’ve been looking for a video camera that can run all day without overheating or filling up SD cards. I don’t need autofocus but I DO need auto exposure of some kind as the lighting changes constantly and it’s not always manned. This fits the bill- ALMOST.

I record on a 2TB ssd (T5) at the lowest quality 4k and it’s still stunning footage. I replaced both my old cameras now after getting a second bmd 6k pro. I just use canon dslr lenses and it’s fine…

Watch out for auto exposure on the Iris and Shutter (NO AUTO ISO). If your scene changes in exposure even a little you have to cut the scene to adjust the settings for the new exposure and start recording again unless you want a HARSH jump in the shutter speed/angle or aperture during your clip. Alternately, in post you can split the clip and adjust for the changes in exposure settings, but that’s just more work.

This camera desperately needs some smoothing of these transition as you adjusts manually or automatically during lighting changes. Good luck going outside from inside without it looking like you’re falling down the stairs with the staggering jumps from one shutter speed to the next. If you have Cine lenses and you don’t mind manually adjusting aperture/ iris for every possible lighting change (which would NEVER work for me since my iris setting is extremely important) then have fun, this will work for you. For me a cloud going in front of the sun for a moment in the middle of a shot basically ruins it. This camera is NOT design for scenes you can’t shoot again and again. Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of editing my videos one frame at a time for a month, so if this is you, keep looking!

This isn’t meant to be a burn of the camera, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do really, really well for the price, but for ANYONE who is coming from a pro video camera or DSLR these shortcoming may surprise you. Those who have been shooting cinema cameras seem to be surprised that everyone doesn’t know about these shortcomings, so you’ll have trouble getting your questions answered on Black Magic forums, especially if you call them shortcomings!

UPDATE

I’m looking to replace these now, I have basically a studio type setup and the cameras aren’t manned, so the useless AUTO features are just causing too much trouble. The main problem recently is there no exposure compensation either, so even though auto shutter works ok if the white background gets too bright the subject in focus is blacked out. Can’t fix that in post. My Sony 6400 would never let me down in any of these ways, but….. it overheats as does EVERY other camera if it’s running for 8 hours and it gets over 80 degrees out.

Son dos semanas que tengo la cámara y en este tiempo grabé algunos vídeos probando formatos y exposiciones y solo puedo decir que valió la pena la inversión.