Blackmagic Forum

The Studio Camera 4k was a perfect camera except for it's lens mount (and poor sensor performance...so not a perfect camera). And with all the new camera and switcher updates Blackmagic is coming out with, I can't help but think that there is going to be a new camera update soon for the Studio Camera or a stripped down Ursa Broadcast. All we need is CCU capable B4 mount camera in the 2k price range.

I would love to grab an Ursa Broadcast now and use it for live events but I feel like I would be wasting my money if they came out with a $2,000 camera soon that had everything I needed in it.

I understand that there is no way to know but how do you feel about BM going in this direction soon and do you think it's likely or unlikely?

Start ordering your Ursa Broadcast cams.. It's highly unlikely there will be a new B4 mount cam on the horizon soon.

BMD had to do a lot of development to get that B4 mount in there as it has an internal correction lens and a new 4K sensor with a smaller chip size just because it otherwise wont fit the image plane of the B4 lens without needing a doubler..

The whole CCU + Tally control on the BMPCC 4k/6K indicates BMD sees this camera as the next livestream studio camera. As it's big sensor has a much better performance over the old Studio 4K cam..

Xtreemtec wrote:Start ordering your Ursa Broadcast cams.. It's highly unlikely there will be a new B4 mount cam on the horizon soon.

BMD had to do a lot of development to get that B4 mount in there as it has an internal correction lens and a new 4K sensor with a smaller chip size just because it otherwise wont fit the image plane of the B4 lens without needing a doubler..

The whole CCU + Tally control on the BMPCC 4k/6K indicates BMD sees this camera as the next livestream studio camera. As it's big sensor has a much better performance over the old Studio 4K cam..

Yeah it kind of feels like that is what they are doing. It's just that the lens options for the BMPCC 4k suck for distances of 100ft or so. Right now we use three and use the digital crop to get the zoom that we want but we can't do live zooms because of the micro 4/3's lenses. If they every made that fabled Studio cam with the B4 mount we'd be golden. Just throw the BMPCC4k sensor into it instead

The point is that the BMPCC 4K Sensor is about twice as big as the 4K sensor used in the Ursa Broadcast..

Meaning that with the B4 lens system you would have a very nice tunnel you are looking into as the image plane is not big enough to fill the sensor plane of the BMPCC 4K...

As you can see in the image below, The smallest pink window is 2/3" broadcast like the Ursa Broadcast.

The purple box next is BMPCC4k. But effective it's 3 to 4 times as big.. Meaning the image from a B4 lens will be waaaaay to small to fill the sensor..

You can adapt b4 to MFT pretty easily.
We're using an older canon broadcast lens and it works great with both my BMPCC4K and GH5. You do need a 2x extender on it though, fortunately my lens already had one on it. Failing that, you could always make do with a FHD final file and crop in on a 4K recording.
The downside of the extender is, you loose a fair amount of light, but with the dual ISO on the BMPCC4K, you can run it at a much higher ISO, so that should compensate.

You do also loose some of the lens functionality, but you can power it off a 12v external battery and still have servo zoom. All you lose out on is any autofocus/auto iris stuff.

Easy if one is willing to sacrifice light, function, and resolution, not so easy if these are important.

Good Luck

Switching on the 2x Extender will also loose a lot of sharpness unless you have pretty new HD glass..

But externder on the old SD lenses are really crap..

I was wondering the same thing. Everyone is out of the cameras and reps are saying that there is no work from BM when is the next shipment.

People on eBay are asking more than the retail price for a used unit...