Blackmagic newest launch: a less expensive Pocket Cinema Digital camera 6K with mass attraction

We were hugely impressed by the affordability of 2021’s Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, a compact (if not quite pocketable) filmmaker’s friend that made us feel like Baz Luhrmann on a budget.

Smash-cut to a year and change later and it’s getting a sequel of sorts – and guess what? This one’s even cheaper. Priced at £1659 and available now, the new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 slots into Blackmagic’s PCC range between the 6K Pro (currently £2069 – and being used to film Taika Waititi’s TV series Our Flag Means Death, if you’re wondering just how pro-friendly a cheap cinema camera really can be) and the 4K (£1079).

The 6K G2 looks very similar to the 6K Pro both on paper and in the flesh. It offers the same polycarbonate body, tilting, bright 5in LCD touchscreen, NP-F570 batteries, and Blackmagic generation 5 color science as its pricier big brother; the main difference between the two models seems to be that the G2 lacks the built-in ND filters of the Pro.

Like the Pro, it’s compatible with an optional OLED viewfinder (a £475 accessory) and can record video in a wide variety of resolutions (the highest being 6144 x 3456), frame rates and codecs.

If you’re wondering how it can be so affordable with this spec, it’s because it’s a pure cinema camera lacking a lot of the user-friendly niceties you’d get from a video-centric mirrorless model from the likes of Sony, Panasonic or Canon. There’s no optical image stabilization or fast, accurate face-tracking autofocus here, making it far less easy to pick up and use if you’re not au fait with the filmmaking basics. You can’t really take still photos worth a damn either – it can snap a 21MP freeze-frame in a pinch but it really is a pure cinema camera rather than a jack of all trades.