Blackmagic Design today announced the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, a new handheld digital film camera with a full Super 35 size 6K HDR image sensor, 13 stops of dynamic range, an EF lens mount and dual native ISO up to 25,600.

Compared to the company's current Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K model, the new camera has a larger Super 35 sensor size with 6K resolution, allowing higher image quality. The EF lens mount model works with a wide range of lenses from companies such as Canon, Zeiss, Sigma and Schneider.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K is available from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide for US$2,495.

Made from lightweight carbon fiber polycarbonate composite, the camera features a multifunction handgrip with all controls for recording, ISO, WB and shutter angle right at their fingertips. The sensor is designed to reduce thermal noise allowing cleaner shadows and higher ISO. Plus the large 5 inch LCD makes it possible to get perfect focus at 4K and 6K resolutions.

Featuring a larger 6144 x 3456 Super 35 sensor and EF lens mount, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K lets owners use larger EF photographic lenses to create cinematic images with shallower depth of field, allowing creative defocussed backgrounds and gorgeous bokeh effects. This means that users can shoot in 6K and then in post production zoom and re-frame to allow wide shots and close ups to be created, all from a single camera and without losing image quality.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and 6K both have a 13 stops of dynamic range which means they preserve more detail in the lightest and darkest areas of an image than simple video cameras can. This allows users to set exposure for an indoor scene such as a cafe and still retain the details of bright outdoor light coming through a window. Users even get more colors than the standard DCI-P3 colorspace used for feature films.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features dual gain ISO up to 25,600, which means both the 4K and 6K models are optimized to minimize grain or noise in images, while maintaining the full dynamic range of the sensor. The native ISO of 400 is ideal for scenes with on-set lighting. The gain is set automatically as users adjust the ISO setting on the camera.

The 6K model will shoot up to 50 fps at 6144 x 3456 16:9 or 60 fps at 6144 x 2560 2.4:1 and 60 fps at 5744 x 3024 17:9. For higher frame rates they can window the sensor and shoot up to 120 fps at 2.8K 2868 x 1512 17:9. Users can even work in true anamorphic 6:5 using anamorphic lenses in 3.7K 60 fps at 3728 x 3104.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera records using standard open file formats. Recording works in industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files in all formats up to 4K or 12-bit Blackmagic RAW in all formats up to 6K. Best of all media files work on all operating systems plus they can format media cards and disks in HFS+ for Mac and ExFAT for Windows.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features built in CFast and SD UHS-II card recorders, and a USB-C expansion port for recording direct to an external media disk. Owners can use regular SD cards for HD or higher performance UHS-II and CFast cards for native 4K or 6K when using Blackmagic RAW.

Blackmagic RAW is a new format designed to capture and preserve the quality of the sensor data from their camera. Video formats such as H.264 are highly compressed. Blackmagic RAW is said to eliminate this problem. It also saves camera settings as metadata so users can set ISO, white balance and exposure in camera or override them later while editing, all without any loss of quality. Blackmagic RAW files are also small and fast to use making them easy to work with.

The rear of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features a 5-inch touchscreen, which displays critical information while you’re shooting, menus for setting up the camera and touch to focus controls. On screen overlays show status, a histogram, focus and peaking indicators, levels, frame guides, playback controls and more.

With the Blackmagic OS, users can make simple tap and swipe gestures to adjust settings, add metadata and view recording status. They also get full control over advanced camera features such as on screen focus and exposure tools, 3D LUTs, HDR, metadata entry, timecode, Blackmagic RAW settings and more.

Featuring the same Generation 4 Color Science as the high end URSA Mini Pro G2, the Pocket Cinema Camera promises to deliver accurate skin tones and faithful color in every shot. Blackmagic Generation 4 Color Science uses a complex dynamic 12-bit gamma curve designed to capture more color data in the highlights and shadows. The color science also handles some of the complex Blackmagic RAW image processing, so color and dynamic range data from the sensor is preserved via metadata which they can use in post production.

The camera includes a full size HDMI connector for monitoring with support for HDR and clean 10-bit output. There’s also a mini XLR connection with 48 volt phantom power for attaching professional microphones, a 3.5 mm video camera style microphone input, headphone connection and a professional locking DC power connector.

Digital film cameras shoot logarithmic colorspace to preserve the dynamic range, which is great for later post production, however when these files are viewed on a monitor they can look flat and washed out. 3D LUTs solve this problem because they allow customers to apply a "look" to the monitor so customers get an idea of how the finished images will look like when editing. The Pocket Cinema Camera works with industry standard 17 and 33 point 3D LUT files, or users can work with the built in LUTs such as Extended Video, Film to Video, Film to Rec.2020 and more.

Professional cameras include professional features and users also get a built in timecode generator, allowing shooting with more than one camera while keeping perfect sync. Simply plug in an external timecode generator such as Tentacle Sync into the 3.5 mm audio jack and the camera will automatically detect timecode and lock the internal generator. Now each camera can start and stop recording and all the shots from all cameras will have the same matched timecode. In addition, the new DaVinci Resolve 16.1 will automatically find and sync the shots from all cameras so users don't need to waste time sorting through thousands of shots.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera uses standard removable LP-E6 type batteries and also features a locking DC power connector. The included AC plug pack can power the camera and charge the battery at the same time. The USB-C expansion port can also be used to charge the battery from portable battery packs, mobile phone chargers or a laptop computer. An optional Blackmagic Pocket Battery Grip that lets users use 2 batteries to dramatically extend the power of the camera.