Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro | One Month Review

i've been using the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro for about a month now so i'm in a pretty good position to say what i like about it what i don't like about it who i think should be buying these things and whether you really do need the pro version or you can get away with the plus before i start talking about all the positives that i've found let's just do a quick recap on what this device is or actually i should say devices are because there are two of them there's the blackmagic studio camera 4k plus which is sort of like a stripped down version of the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro both of them though are beautifully designed lightweight all-in-one 4k studio cameras and they both boast an impressive feature set you've got this stunning 7-inch 4k display touchscreen display on the back of the device and if you've got the pro version it's actually an hdr touch screen as well both are capable up to ultra hd which is 3840 3840x2160 resolutions and again you can shoot up to 60 frames per second so you've got those fast frame rates as well both devices include tally camera control and color calibration and if you do go for the pro model you also get talkback built in too and i'll talk about that a little bit later on in the review and both models which is slightly different to the original blackmagic studio camera that they released in 2014 but both of these new models actually allow the capability to record as well onto an external usb disk thanks to the two new usbc ports on the side of the camera now in this video i'm going to cover the main features and the positives that i've found with them but if you do want to know all of the feature set across the two devices i actually did a video around the announcement of these cameras uh a month ago so if you want to check out that video it's down below also i've just recorded a bunch of tutorials for these cameras and top tips and my setup tips for them so if that's something that you want to watch they will be out on my channel in the next couple of weeks so just go down below make sure you've hit subscribe and turn on the notification bell so that you get notified when those launch as well but let's get into the review and i want to actually start with the positives so i'm going to start with image quality to test the image quality of this camera i really wanted to put it in the environment that it was meant for and built for which as it's in the name it's a studio camera and i think you need to remember that when you're looking at this camera this isn't something that you're going to be running about with it's not like a black magic pocket cinema camera that you're going to be you know running and gunning and sticking on a shoulder rig or a steady cam or anything like that it is a studio camera it's designed to be put on a tripod and be in a controlled environment with controlled lighting and and things like that so just bear that in mind as well when you're looking at this camera but as i say i wanted to put it in that type of environment and the closest thing that i've got to that right now is my home studio here and so everything that you've been watching on this video so far and what you're seeing right now is coming from the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro and i'm uploading this video in 4k as well so you can see the the quality that you get from this camera but you're getting that full 4k resolution because of that brilliant 4k sensor in these cameras which by the way is the same sensor in the blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4k the same sensor same gen 5 color science as well which actually makes it really easy to mix and match these cameras so if you're in a scenario where maybe you've already got a couple of these blackmagic pocket cinema cameras and you're wanting to add more cameras to your live environment now you've got a bit of a decision to make do you go for more blackmagic pocket cameras or do you go for these newer studio cameras but the good thing about that is you can mix and match these devices because they'll they'll match them perfectly in terms of the color and the look and the science and things like that you won't have that worry that you sometimes get where oh what happens if i use a sony and mix that with a panasonic and mix that with a black magic everything just looks ever so slightly different even when you try and color calibrate it as much as possible with this everything will match perfectly and of course when you hook it up to something like an 8m which we'll talk a bit about later you get that advance color calibration and things like that it is as i say the same sensor so you get the same 13 stops of dynamic range you get the dual eye dual native iso as well which goes all the way from iso 100 up to a whopping 25 600 which basically means this camera does pretty well in low light situations as well i did a couple of test clips that you can see now where i turned off my studio lights and just tried to make this room really as dark as possible to see what the quality of the image looks like and you can see that as i say right now if you want to see more tests of what image quality looks like in different situations and you can't see any footage from the studio camera the closest thing that you're going to be able to compare it to if if you go on google and look for footage that has come out from the blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4k and try and look for some that has used that gen 5 color science as well because that's going to be pretty much a like for like match of what you're going to get out of this camera let's move on to talk about audio now because although both of these cameras do have two inbuilt microphones and i'll let you hear what those sound like in just a second the likelihood is you're not ever going to be using those especially if you are using this camera in a live environment you want to bring in external audio sources and that's where these two cameras start to differ with their audio inputs as well the plus version of the studio camera has a 3.5 millimeter stereo input and that allows you to plug in microphones that you'd usually find sort of mounted on top of your dslr camera things like this the rode videomic pro which has a stereo connector connected to it on the pro side of the new studio camera it has that connector but also gives you the ability to plug in two balanced xlr inputs as well and blackmagic when they announced this camera made a big deal about boasting of the quality of these xlr inputs and that's what i really want to test because they said you know the noise level on these were incredibly low of the preamps and things like that and i think the term that they used was the world's best camera audio and that's a big claim so we're going to run tests on both the internal microphones for this camera and also i'm going to try a few xlr microphones with the pro as well now before we do the internal microphone test i am just going to caveat this slightly that the room that i use to record all my videos in has really high ceilings it's wooden floors so it is quite echoey that's why i use a microphone right up against my face to try and get the best audio quality so the quality that you're gonna get from the internal microphones will probably sound a little roomy um but it gives you an idea of what sort of quality you are gonna hear from these internal microphones now you're now hearing me through the internal microphones on the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro i'm sitting about a meter away from the camera itself there's no room noise that could be picked up it's nice and quiet as i say it might sound a little bit echoey but there is no room noise in here so this is the quality coming from the internal microphones and one thing i have noticed just sitting here is that i can actually hear the fan of the camera so i am wondering whether that is being picked up by the internal microphones as well and just so you know the gain is up all the way at 100 because that is what i needed to get around negative 10 db on the meters now i plugged in a pg-48 sure microphone directly from xlr into the xlr one port on the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro and i've turned the gain up or the game percentage in in this case on the blackmagics to around about 80 and that was coming in uh somewhere between negative 15 negative 10 db so i'm just going to keep talking like this so you can hear what it's like and then i'm going to be quiet so you can hear if there's any um noise floor or anything like that now i plugged in a shotgun microphone again directly into xlr number one on the pro camera i've had to turn on phantom power for this microphone as well and the gain is set to around about 60 percent and again i'm hitting those negative 10 levels on the meters as well so this is what that sounds like i'll be quiet for a second so you can hear the noise floor so there we go that's what the xlr inputs sound like on the pro and as i say the pro version does come with two balanced xlr inputs they both come with phantom power they both have those incredibly low noise preamps as well in fact the figure that blackmagic gives is negative 131 dbv for those preamps which yeah is pretty impressive especially when you do bump up the gain you don't hear too much noise at all really so yeah the the audio quality coming into this camera is pretty high and why i believe that that is important is two main reasons obviously when you're recording with this camera you want to have good quality audio especially if you are using external devices which most people will but it's for me in my eyes more important for when you put this camera into the blackmagic ecosystem and we're going to talk about that in a second but into the ecosystem of an atem live environment as well because don't forget that you can send that audio coming from the camera down either an hdmi if you've got the plus version of the studio camera or down an sdi or even down ethernet which we'll talk about later as well you can send that audio to your mixer and then use that within your live show thanks to the fairlight audio console built into the 8m switcher so yeah the audio input and the quality of audio on this camera does get a big tick from me moving on from audio to now ports because i do just want to speak about the two new usbc ports which can be found on both the plus and the pro model of the new studio camera because it does unlock quite a few new functions and capabilities the first of which is recording because you can now plug in an external disk whether it be an ssd or a fast usb for example a usb drive that is and you can actually record directly onto that disk now i've been using the sandisk ssds the ones i've been recommending for ages that i'll have a link to them down below in fact i'll put a link to my kit page where you can find all of the kit that i use down below if you want to grab some of those but i've been using as i say the sandisk ssd extremes perfectly fine all month i've been recording onto my one terabyte drive the 250 gig drive without any issues whatsoever so i know those work really well and it's it just it's really good in terms of workflow i can just record directly onto disk then take that disk out plug it into my computer and then edit straight from that drive there are two caveats which i'm going to cover more when i speak about some of the negatives that i've found a little bit later on but one thing i did want to mention straight uh away is that the recording on this camera you are locked into only recording blackmagic raw and you have to record at 4k it's not like the pocket cinema camera where you have the option to go between blackmagic raw and prores and you also have the option to step down from 4k to let's say 1080p with the studio camera it is blackmagic raw 4k recordings only now the other thing that the usb does unlock which i'm really excited for is accessories and i feel like that can be developed a lot in the future and it's really nice to see that blackmagic have actually released two already in the form of a focus demand and a zoom demand and i'm going to focus more on the focus demand because i think that's the one that people will at least pick up first and try before moving over to the zoom one as well they're basically um accessories which you can bolt onto your tripod arms which allow you to adjust the focus and the zoom of your lens rather than having to reach round the front of the camera and adjust the focus manually and the same with the zoom and they plug in via usb directly into the camera and then as you adjust the focus will for example it will the camera will then send signals to the lens to adjust the focus of the lens you do of course need powered focus and power zoom on your lenses to be able to make use of both of those features which is why i think most people will at least pick up the focus assist first because there's not many powered zoom lenses out there that's a whole nother discussion now these aren't actually out yet so i haven't been able to get hold of one and test but it from what i saw in the demonstration video by grant it's pretty cool and certainly the focus seemed to work really well and it just gives you especially when this camera is mentioned before doesn't have auto focus it does give you another method of focusing which looked quite precise and is more tactile than as i say reaching the the front of the camera and uh manually adjusting on the lens one question i did pose to blackmagic with the fact that the pocket cinema cameras and the ursas both have usbc ports as well is if the zoom and focus demands would be able to be used with those cameras too they come back to me and said that as of now the both the focus and the zoom demand are only compatible with the new studio camera 4k pro and plus models now before i go on to the ease of use of this camera let me talk to you about today's 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each section of davinci and all of the effects and functions built into it skillshare is curated specifically for learning meaning there's no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you and because i've teamed up with skillshare on this video the first 1000 people who use the link in my description will receive a one month free trial to skillshare premium so you can explore your creativity one thing which for me is a huge tick in the positive field and i absolutely love about this camera is usability it's friendliness and in two forms one the initial ease of use for the setup but also the day-to-day usability of the camera and i got to talk about the setup because it's actually like it blew my mind i think from the moment of unboxing to mounting the camera on my tripod plugging in turning on and starting filming that whole process took under five minutes for me which is sort of unheard of when you get a new camera you have to sort of dig into the the manual and then dig into the the menus and set it up and i didn't have to do any of that and part of that is because i'm within the blackmagic atem ecosystem so the brilliant thing was it meant that i was able to uncable my pocket cinema camera which is what i was shooting with before unplug all that from my atm mount the new studio camera on my tripod plug that into the atm and then as soon as i turned on the 8m it of course just pushed all of the settings directly to the camera so i didn't need to do anything like set the project frame rate or even color calibrate the camera because the color calibration was exactly the same one used on my pocket cinema camera was sent over the hdmi directly to the camera and the shot looked exactly the same so yeah initial setup so easy but then a part of that as well is like the everyday usability of the camera and a lot of this is down to the work that's gone into blackmagic os which is the os which runs across all of blackmagic's camera i do not think there is a an easier line of cameras for not just beginners but in terms of user friendliness and in terms of like logicalness where things should be within a menu you know i come from a background of shooting on sony's and i remember digging through menus and then pages of menus trying to find certain options whether it be just to turn off the on-screen displays on the hdmis or to set a particular recording frame rate or anything you would have to scroll and you still do on those cameras have to scroll through menus and menus and menus but with blackmagic os everything is in its logical place there's a menu for recording and all the settings you need for recording are on that one page or you just scroll through there's a setting for what do you want to see on your monitor there's a set there's a page for audio it just makes it one super user friendly for beginners so that people who maybe have never picked up a blackmagic camera before can pick them up and go with it straight away but also there like i said it's across all of their ecosystem so maybe you start with a pocket cinema camera 4k and because you picked that up a year ago you now go and buy this the studio camera 4k pro you're used to seeing that menu layout so everything you know feels similar and you're able to find all those additional settings really easily in there you then go from using this camera to maybe working on a film set and picking up an ursa brook or a nurser 12k it's the same blackmagic os so it's gonna feel familiar so that's a huge benefit as well uh and it just to me gets a huge usability tick the other thing i do just want to mention in here is it's nice to obviously have that seven inch touchscreen display to navigate through all those menus and it is it is a great display i know i keep raving about it but it's also really nice on this camera that they put physical buttons as well so on both sides on one side you've got the physical dials for things like contrast brightness and focus peaking i use that a lot and on the other side you have your function buttons which by the way are fully customizable and i'm going to do a video about how i've set mine up these can then trigger things like i have my function button number one set up for a focus zoom so it punches in times two and so i can check that i am in focus you can do other things again turn on and off zebras focus focus peaking um there's a lot that those custom buttons can do even trigger presets the usability of this camera i find the best really the best in terms of like across a wide range of cameras but that's mainly down to how good and how simple blackmagic os is one of the big benefits of this camera and you've heard me use the term ecosystem a lot already but it has to be the way that this camera is able to integrate with blackmagic devices most noticeably the atem line of live production switches the first thing i want to talk about i guess is the way it integrates with the a10 mini line both cameras can integrate with the a10 mini really well because there's an hdmi output on both cameras which means you can plug the camera into one of the inputs on the a10 mini and it creates a bi-directional connection so you can send audio and video from the camera to the switcher but the switcher is actually then able to send back some ancillary data to the camera as well and so that will be in the form of tally so when you cut to program or preview for a particular camera it turns the light on top of the camera either red or green also in the form of camera controls you can adjust things like the frame rate or even control the focus on the lens or the uh the iris of the lens but also color calibration as well so you can go into the atm software control and adjust how the shot looks in terms of the color and even match all your other cameras as well using the color calibration that's with the a10 mini it's that sort of workflow that just makes things i love it it just makes things so much easier you heard before how i was able to switch from my blackmagic pocket cinema camera to the studio camera 4k pro because all the settings i just pushed them directly to the camera it's that ecosystem that just makes things so so easy and simple and then you can go up a stage especially when you've got the studio camera 4k pro which i do in my case and if you've got one of blackmagic's top of the line 8m switches or sdi based switches something like let's say the atm broadcast studio or studio broadcast 4k or the atm 8k constellation they all have sdi inputs and outputs and the studio camera 4k has a 12g sdi input and a 12g sdi output and that unlocks a number of additional functionality as well the first thing of course is distance hdmi is limited to about 15 feet let's say if you go with optical hdmi cables you might get that up to 50 feet but sdi will easily run 100 feet 300 feet so you can do long cable runs which means you can have your cameras further from your switcher which is great but the the real added benefits that unlocks are for example you can send a return video feed back to your camera operator so you can send the program output from the switcher to the camera operator so they can see exactly what is going on air also down that return video sdi feed is talk back because those bigger atems actually have talkback embedded into sdi channel 15 and 16. so you're able to send back talkback to the cameras and in this new studio camera 4k pro there is a 5 pin xlr connector so that you can actually connect broadcast quality headset and have crystal clear talkback connections between the camera operators and the production crew sitting in the gallery now i haven't tested this camera yet in those types of settings in fact this camera hasn't really been out of my studio so i can only attest to how beneficial i'm finding the workflow with using it with things like an a10 mini but i have used other blackmagic cameras like the ursas in those types of production environments where you've got the sdi and the sdi return and you've got talkback it's so useful it really is and this is what i mean by ecosystem now there is one more thing that i have to talk about before i talk about some of the negatives which is the 10 gigabit ethernet port available on the blackmagic studio camera 4k pro what this one ethernet port is going to allow you to do is have one cable between you and the switcher or production team it handles power it handles sending the audio and video back to the gallery and then it gives you all of that ancillary data like tally camera control color calibration it also carries torque back all over a single ethernet cable and it gives you essentially the same benefits that you'd get with simpti fiber which is horrendously expensive in the broadcast world instead you get those benefits with relatively cheap copper ethernet cable now it is worth mentioning that to reap the benefits of this one cable system you do also need one of blackmagic's new blackmagic studio converter boxes at the production end and that's basically what you connect the other end of the copper ethernet cable to and then it's a bit like a breakout box it's got all the sdi connections that you then plug into your switcher and you will need one box per camera okay let's round stuff off with some of the negatives and they're not really negatives but some of the things that i would like to see improved in the future um with this camera and actually i will start off with something that is being labeled as negative but for me personally i don't see it as that which is lenses so when this camera was announced there was a whole discussion of hoo-ha around the fact that this is an mft mount on the camera there was a subset of people that were saying it's almost perfect if it had the ability to have a b4 lens mount for me i'm just going to say like for all of my use cases and where i plan to use this camera in the future mft is is fine it works i'm very interested to see how the focus and the zoom demands work with these mft lenses in the future i'm also interested to see if more powered zoom lenses are developed off the back of this camera being released um because that will make certainly the zoom demand more uh you know more of an interest to me as well now one thing i did do was actually get in contact with blackmagic to see if there was any way or if they were planning to make the mount on these cameras interchangeable so that you change it a bit like you do for the ursa with a mount that can take a b4 lens the response that i did get back there was that at the moment mft only and no plans for an interchangeable mount so for those of you that are really wanting a b4 lens mount i don't think it's coming anytime soon now the next thing i do just want to reiterate something that i mentioned earlier on but there is no autofocus in the camera and again it's not something that bothers me at all there are enough options to focus this camera you can manually focus it you can press and hold on the screen to actually focus on a particular point for me in my setting here what i love is because i'm connected to the a10 mini i'm able to click the focus button on the a10 mini xtreme to trigger the autofocus within the camera and of course one of the exciting things is you do get the focus demand coming out soon as well so i'll be very keen to try that one thing that did surprise me about this camera though and that i will call a negative at the moment is the screen viewing angle the screen on this camera or these cameras i should say is fixed and so it's great when it's like this pointing directly horizontally in front of me but what happens when i want to do a top-down shot of something or i want to you know low looking up i'm not able to tilt the screen or pan the screen out or anything like that so it can make viewing angles of the screen a little difficult in some situations but again for 99 of the time where the camera is just going to be set up on sticks pointing at a subject it's going to be okay i did just want to touch again on something i mentioned before but with the recording the fact that it is locked in currently to only blackmagic raw so b raw and only 4k you can't step down to 1080p and i just wanted to kind of reflect on that a little bit i am lucky that i use davinci to edit so it's fine with me i've got a number of one terabyte drives so again this is fine for me and i'm pretty sure it's fine for 80 of people that are going out and buying these cameras however these cameras are also marketed not just at the pro line of people but they are the prosumer and dare i say it the sort of top tier of consumer and so i do think blackmagic need to have in mind a little bit that there are a lot of people that edit on final cut pro and blackmagic raw is not supported natively in final cut pro so it's going to be a headache for them and you're just sort of excluding that subset of the market two more things that did just pop into my head not really negatives but just things i thought of when i saw this the first thing is that ethernet port that ethernet port if you're using that is so important it carries everything down one cable even the power and so for that reason i'm kind of left thinking like is that ethernet is an ethernet port strong enough if that gets damaged that's it that camera is down so i wonder if in a future version of this camera they'd be better off going for ethercon which is more of a locking connector with the ethernet port rather than just a standard ethernet port and then the final thing which again isn't a negative but more of an observation is i have mounted my camera on a tripod right now and on the front of it i have a teleprompter and one thing that i have noticed is i'm not actually able to see the tally light because the teleprompter comes up high and covers it so one thing i'd love to see from blackmagic is the development of a detachable uh tally light or an external tally light which i could then put on the front of my teleprompter and then plug into the camera somehow i think it could be possible with like the audio uh output so an external light would be great so what scenarios do i feel this makes sense to get one of these cameras well i'll kind of start by reiterating what i said at the beginning of the video which is this is a studio camera it's not going to be something that you throw in the bag and you're running gun and things like that and it is meant more for live production than it is recording as well so do bear that in mind in terms of the types of situations that i feel that this camera is really going to benefit it's going to be great for for news i think it will be good also for conferences having that big 7 inch monitor there will really help i don't for example see this necessarily being used for sporting events i don't think mft lenses with sporting events i don't really see happening but for where there isn't that much motion and movement i think it's going to be great so those types of studio environments podcasts you can use these for small podcast setups talk shows conferences zoom even zoom meetings and things like that we're seeing more and more hybrid and virtual conferences going on i think these are gonna flood out the door for those types of settings which one do you get do you go for the plus do you go for the pro or neither do you just continue getting blackmagic pocket cinema cameras for these types of studio environment here's my thought on it all firstly it is dependent on your situation and mainly i suppose will be dictated by price the plus version of the studio camera comes in at 1 295 and you get still a lot for that money you get the exact same sensor that's in the pro and the same sensors in the the pocket camera 4k you get all the integration with the a10 mini line via the hdmi external audio input through the 3.5 millimeter stereo jack all of this exactly the same blackmagic os lots and things like that there's a lot i haven't talked about in this video which i just couldn't fit in there's so many features you get all that for 1295. in my honest opinion if your budget can stretch to it i always say where possible future proof yourself you have no idea where what you're investing this kit for now how far that business or that little idea that you had to start a podcast could be in three or five years time that podcast you start tomorrow could be number one on itunes in five years time and get a spotify deal and you have to build a studio we all hope right you'd be kicking yourself if you went for the plus at that point and then suddenly you've got to pay more in the future to upgrade for the pro because you need the added functionality of the sdi inputs and the outputs for example so that's where i sit on which one you should go for i would say if you can afford it go for the pro now in my balance for okay do you go for a blackmagic studio camera 4k pro or do you go for a blackmagic studio camera blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4k both got the same sensor both have similar features um again i would say it depends on what you're predominantly going to use it for if you see yourself doing a mixture between live and recorded in different scenarios then yeah maybe stick with this the pocket 4k upgrade to the pocket 6k if you want if you know and you just want a camera that does studio scenarios predominantly within a live environment although of course you can record on this camera now if you know that's what you're going to be doing for the next x many years you cannot go wrong with this camera i have used it for the last month it hasn't let me down once and i'm loving what i'm getting from it i really hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please do consider giving it a thumbs up here on youtube and one thing that you can do if you haven't yet is just check down below make sure that the subscribe button says subscribe because i do have more videos on how to use this camera how to get the most out of it tips and tricks coming out on my channel soon so if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button turn on the notification bell so that you know when those videos are released also if you want particular help with your setup you can always get in touch with me on the email address on screen now we'll set up a one-to-one consulting session or if you've got any questions about what i've talked about in this video or how to implement the camera in your setup that's how to get in contact with me and also you can put your questions down below in the comments and i will try to reply to as many of those as possible once you've done all that guys i'll see you on the next one

Channel: Alex Pettitt

Views: 20,016

Keywords: Blackmagic, studio camera 4k, blackmagic studio camera, blackmagic studio camera 4k, studio camera 4k pro, studio camera 4k plus, blackmagic design, blackmagic studio camera review, studio camera 4k review, blackmagic studio camera 4k pro review, 4k pro review, 4k plus review, atem mini camera, atem mini studio camera, live streaming, live streaming camera, atem mini extreme, should I buy blackmagic camera, blackmagic zoom demand, blackmagic focus demand, blackmagic raw, BRAW

Id: kTfdUhb3vEg

Length: 33min 22sec (2002 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021