At NAB 2014, NYCPPNEWS had the privilege of a personal tour of the company’s large booth by Blackmagic Design’s US President Dan May on day one of the show. Dan showed us their new 4K URSA camera and Cintel Film Scanner – both products took the company to new levels of production capability.
The URSA camera (you might recognize that name – it comes from a prior Cintel telecine) addresses one buyer’s concern upfront – the 4K Super 35 sensor can be easily upgraded in the future. Priced at $5995 (EF mount; PL mount is $6495), the camera has a more standard design than Blackmagic’s first gen camcorders. There’s plenty of connectivity via standard issue SDI and XLR ports, two side-mounted touchscreens for camera setup and monitoring, and a huge 10-inch viewfinder that looks to replace those 3rd-party screens so common on other cameras.
The Cintel Film Scanner offers up the first results of Blackmagic’s purchase nearly two years ago of the storied British scanner/telecine manufacturer, which was originally founded in 1927 by John Logie Baird, credited as one of the founders of television. While Dan May notes that the company’s intellectual property was the first attraction, we’re also seeing BMD’s now classic move of taking once expensive technology and translating it into much more affordable gear. While Cintel once offered film scanning systems that priced north of $150K, the new setup runs $30K.
Joe Herman and I both enjoyed our interview with Dan May, who enthusiastically takes us through the camera’s and film scanner’s main points.
