Blackmagic Design “Confident” of July Delivery Dates for New Cameras

Blackmagic confident on delivery dates

“We’re confident.”, says Blackmagic Design’s Director of Asia, Richard Lim, when asked about the July delivery of Blackmagic’s new Production 4k and Pocket Cinema cameras. John Burkhart reports from Singapore

I sat with Richard in Blackmagic’s Singapore office to talk about their upcoming camera releases, and I asked him to comment on the shipping issues they encountered with the original EF Mount BMCC, and the status of the Micro Four Thirds BMCC.

As was previously communicated by CEO Grant Petty, there were issues with blemishes on the glass that covered the original BMCC’s sensors, that caused the units to fail their production testing.

Richard said: “It wasn’t until we got into full production volume that the issue with the sensors started showing up.  We tried to be as quick to identify and publicize the findings when we saw it.”
“We decided to get to the root of the problem of the sensor issues and these proved to be a very tedious process involving a lot of close consultation with our vendors. The whole process took nearly 4-5 months but since then we’ve been shipping quite regularly.”
“We understand that for the BMCC there are many people still waiting for their cameras, but we still have a pretty large order to work at and will be trying our best to fulfill these as much as we can.”

Two versions

There are of course, two versions of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, the EF-Mount and the passive Micro Four Thirds (MFT) Mount that was announced a few months later. Many people cancelled their initial EF orders to have the increased convertibility of the Micro Four Thirds version. What was the status of that camera?
“The Micro Four Thirds version has been tested and will be released soon, but the company’s intention is to ship enough of the EF cameras before we ship the Micro Four Thirds. Because the EF orders came first, we really want to satisfy as many of our pre-order list as possible. Most of the EF orders will have to go out before we start with the Micro Four Thirds.”

No problems with the new cameras

Richard went on to emphasize that the new 4k and Pocket cameras did not suffer from the same production issues that were such a set back for the original BMCC units.
“We learned a lot from the past year, and expect to meet the July shipping date for the new cameras.”