timbutt2 wrote:It feels as though Blackmagic is ripe to blow us away with something new. You know they have to be developing something. Even if they don't announce it for IBC it will still eventually be announced.
I'm not sure this is necessarily true, the first line anyway. I think they are caught somewhere between a rock and a hard place. The 12K, for some reason
seems to have failed to hit the mark. It's revolutionary but it has yet to be approved by Netflix, perhaps mainly because of perceived workflow issues. Yes, I know who gives a stuff about Netflix but BMD probably do, and the UMPG2 is the only current product so approved and so if they were to replace it, something would have to take that place fast and surely.
I've no experience with the 12K but resolution on it, it seems to me, is not as clear a demonstrable gamechanger as many think. It's colour from what I can judge is its main strength and that sensor technology together with Braw, has a lot of mileage in it, not yet realised. Covid, war, fuel crisis and chip shortage mean 8K for consumer distribution is a long way off - the 2nd big theatrical cinema attendance death knell means DCPs are stuck at 4K/2K and most terrestrial TV and 60/70% of streaming is stuck at HD (legacy not new content I mean). Resolution and DR are not the issues any longer, only for obsessive pixel peepers; RS and aliasing still are. 6/8K vs 4K, FF/VV vs Super35, box vs full size, wars are largely marketing. Arri have shown that 4.6K and Super35 are more than good enough when properly implemented. For less than a 10th of the price the UMPG2 is still a very good camera, with good colour, rez and RS; the form factor is still very good IMV too (though I realise that will have to be addressed for launch wow). I'm not sure why it hasn't had a Gen 5 firmware update, maybe processing, but ultimately that should still not be sensibly a deal breaker. Whatever BMD have cooking they have to tread carefully in totally replacing it, maybe a G2 12K, with Prores as well, is more likely, as well as core market Pocket evolution?