Video professionals already know the name Blackmagic Design thanks to its considerable collection of post-production hardware and software; now the company has decided to jump directly into the other side of things with its Cinema Camera ($3,000). With a 2.5K sensor that enables budget-conscious professional users to shoot entirely in RAW, the Cinema Camera isn’t messing around; most DSLRs in the same price range force compression onto their lower-resolution videos.
Cinema Camera captures RAW video at 2432×1366, and has a handful of other notable features that set it apart. On the back is a 5” capacitive touchscreen, giving you not only a large viewing window, but an efficient way of entering metadata as well. An SSD bay is used for storage, and replaceable, so you can choose a 2.5” SSD and swap it in instead of having to fuss with low capacity SD cards. There’s even a Thunderbolt port built-in—a first for any camera. We’re very interested to see how this thing performs in the field when it’s available in July 2012.