Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera for UAVs

damoncooper · Apr 12, 2015

The first picture was posted around from NAB's exhibit hall about an hour ago.

The second pic was posted to FB by super excited hopefuls that DJI, if they won't finally announce an MFT camera of their own tomorrow, might at least build a gimbal for this camera ASAP for the Inspire.

I sincerely hope one or the other gets announced tomorrow. This amazing looking camera was obviously built for use on drones as a primary use case.

OR maybe Blackmagic is getting into the drone game. Which would potentially be a game changer for the prosumer/pro market.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1428896928.922547.jpg

damoncooper · Apr 13, 2015

Someone pointed out that the drone in the BMMCC poster is this one:

http://aerialtronics.com/products/

sirnikolas · Apr 13, 2015

Nice looking drone hmmm

lrwskyfilms · Apr 13, 2015

Very nice!

cinepilot · Apr 13, 2015

This Altura drone is a joke , it has a flight time of max. 8 minutes and it can't even lift a BMPCC with a 9-18 mm lens ( together 530 grams ) , i have worked 2 years with this ever-on- the-table drone from aerialtronics and it only left the table for tests that never worked out.. sooo happy now with the Inspire !

Meta4 · Apr 13, 2015

cinepilot said:
This Altura drone is a joke

..... and it only cost how much??

damoncooper · Apr 13, 2015

Are you talking about the same drone? The one listed there can lift 2.9kg, fly for up to 42 min etc and is an Octo. It also apparently costs $25-30k.

Phatzo · Apr 13, 2015

damoncooper said:
Are you talking about the same drone? The one listed there can lift 2.9kg, fly for up to 42 min etc and is an Octo. It also apparently costs $25-30k.

42 min??? with how much amp batteries??? the swedish one that was used for a film production here in Hungary last summer was a dodeca and they put 3x10 000mhA batteries on top with a Red Epic on the gimbal which was 5 kg with lens.. the whole bird was 18kg takeoff weight and flew for about 6 min just about standing in the air... I doubt that outside of a total windstill environment it would go more than 25-30 min at most and that is with takeoff and landing... I might be wrong but what I have learned with my own birds (custom made) I don´t think 42 min is realistic. another aspect I see is that if that thing can go 42 min, then why can we only go not even 20 min with a lot less weight... unless they use more than 6cell lipo and a massive array of batteries in parallel connection... where one has to take extreme caution not to get to heavy because then it makes no sense having so much power that is drained by weight.

oh yes and the lifting weight has not much to say as normally the copter should be able to lift twice his weight. reason: when going up let´s say 40 m high and then descending a little bit faster for a shot and you have to catch it a few meters above ground or object it has to have enough power to be able to hold itself and catch meaning go back up. so if a copter is 5kg it has to lift a min of 10kg in order to not drop like a stone and when you add a camera I would go times three for safety reasons. I would even say that´s a rule of thumb or fist or what you call it in english...

my 2 cents

please educate me if I am wrong.

damoncooper · Apr 13, 2015

Phatzo said:
42 min??? with how much amp batteries??? the swedish one that was used for a film production here in Hungary last summer was a dodeca and they put 3x10 000mhA batteries on top with a Red Epic on the gimbal which was 5 kg with lens.. the whole bird was 18kg takeoff weight and flew for about 6 min just about standing in the air... I doubt that outside of a total windstill environment it would go more than 25-30 min at most and that is with takeoff and landing... I might be wrong but what I have learned with my own birds (custom made) I don´t think 42 min is realistic. another aspect I see is that if that thing can go 42 min, then why can we only go not even 20 min with a lot less weight... unless they use more than 6cell lipo and a massive array of batteries in parallel connection... where one has to take extreme caution not to get to heavy because then it makes no sense having so much power that is drained by weight.

oh yes and the lifting weight has not much to say as normally the copter should be able to lift twice his weight. reason: when going up let´s say 40 m high and then descending a little bit faster for a shot and you have to catch it a few meters above ground or object it has to have enough power to be able to hold itself and catch meaning go back up. so if a copter is 5kg it has to lift a min of 10kg in order to not drop like a stone and when you add a camera I would go times three for safety reasons. I would even say that´s a rule of thumb or fist or what you call it in english...

my 2 cents
please educate me if I am wrong.

I know nothing about it except what's listed on their product pages. And that the new Blackmagic Micro Cinema 4.6k camera appears on a gimbal on that drone and looks like a freaking AWESOME combo.

Phatzo · Apr 13, 2015

damoncooper said:
I know nothing about it except what's listed on their product pages. And that the nee Blackmagic Micro Cinema 4.6k camera appears on a gimbal on that drone and looks like a freaking AWESOME combo.

agree but looks like a "to be" plan to me in near future... I didn´t mean to offend you or anyone here. just shared what I learned and experience with building a few copters.

m00se · Apr 16, 2015

I have some experience with the Zenith, it seems to be a good machiene, dont confuse it with the lower class that Altura make.

skylabimaging · Apr 16, 2015

Phatzo said:
so if a copter is 5kg it has to lift a min of 10kg in order to not drop like a stone and when you add a camera I would go times three for safety reasons..

10kg of lift on a 5kg copter would be way over powered, which can cause the aircraft to float, like a butterfly effect. To lift a 5kg quadcopter (for example) each motor has to lift 1250g at 50% throttle and the aircraft will hover, theoretically most motors are double that at 100% throttle (give or take) but very rarely is anybody flying at 100% throttle, especially on an aerial cinematography platform, typically just hovering with minimal movements. So if a copter is 5kg it has to have a minimum lift of 5kg @ 50% throttle in order to get airborne.

As for the Alturas flight times...40-45min is entirely possible running a 4.6kg with 16600mah lipo. It's just more how the company is measuring that, most companies measure flight times at hover with minimal movements if any and call that a max flight time and depends how far they bring their battery down maybe they drain past the typical 20% rule for marketing purposes. Add in real world components, elevation, wind, air pressure, all that jazz it's probably more in the 30min range.

DJI did the same thing with the Inspire. They marketed their flight times at Approx 18min on the tb47 batteries...realistically, I get about 13-15min ish. depending on how I'm flying.

supasympa · Apr 16, 2015

The Altura Zenith is $15,000 aircraft, without Ground station or payload.

InterMurph · Apr 16, 2015

damoncooper said:
if they won't finally announce an MFT camera of their own tomorrow,

This is not a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) camera. This camera has an MFT lens mount, but not an MFT sensor.

This is a Super 16 sensor. It is much larger than the tiny 1/2.3" sensor on the Inspire camera, but it is smaller than the standard MFT sensor. I can't find an image that has all three sensors (MFT, Super 16, 1/2.3") on it, but here are the specs:

MFT: 17.3mm x 13mm (225 square mm)
Super 16: 12.52mm x 7.41mm (92.8 square mm)
1/2.3": 6.17mm x 4.55mm (28.50 square mm)

The MFT sensor covers about 2.4 times the area of the Super 16 sensor, which covers about 3.2 times the area of the Inspire's sensor.

That said, I am willing to bet that this camera is incredible, and I want one very desperately. BlackMagic has a terrific reputation in the cinema world; hopefully DJI is partnering with BlackMagic to produce an Inspire-compatible version of this camera!

supasympa · Apr 16, 2015

I've been reading a few things about 3rd party camera support coming when the Inspire1 SDK gets released.

The BMMCC looks really awesome but probably too big to fit under the I1 with a decent gimbal. I think any camera that is added to the I1 will need to be very compact to be able to retain the full motion the current one has (360 degrees and down and a small tilt up).

InterMurph · Apr 16, 2015

I think the design of the Inspire 1 means that we won't see third-party cameras mounted on it. Instead, camera manufacturers will have to partner with DJI to design a custom version of their camera, with a compatible gimbal.

This camera seems designed for larger drones like the S800/S900. But it's not unreasonable to think that BlackMagic could work with DJI to strip away all of the unnecessary parts to make it work with the Inspire.

supasympa · Apr 16, 2015

InterMurph said:
I think the design of the Inspire 1 means that we won't see third-party cameras mounted on it. Instead, camera manufacturers will have to partner with DJI to design a custom version of their camera, with a compatible gimbal.

This camera seems designed for larger drones like the S800/S900. But it's not unreasonable to think that BlackMagic could work with DJI to strip away all of the unnecessary parts to make it work with the Inspire.

Saying that though, have you seen the black magic website, they have it mounted on the bottom of a Phantom 2!

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmicrocinemacamera/design

The Editor · Apr 16, 2015

supasympa said:
Saying that though, have you seen the black magic website, they have it mounted on the bottom of a Phantom 2!

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmicrocinemacamera/design

PhotoChop is a wonderful thing

supasympa · Apr 16, 2015

The Editor said:
PhotoChop is a wonderful thing

I thought the same, but surely BMD are aware of the laws (certainly in the UK) that prevent companies from false advertising!?

The Editor · Apr 16, 2015

supasympa said:
I thought the same, but surely BMD are aware of the laws (certainly in the UK) that prevent companies from false advertising!?

Well, its definitely Photo chopped and I wouldn't mind betting somewhere buried in the small print is some type of disclaimer....... 'Black Magic are constantly improving and innovating their products and Images are for illustration purposes only and may not represent actual product configurations' etc, etc....blah, blah.
But, yes, I hear what you say and they need to make sure their backside is covered!