HANDS-ON REVIEW: Blackmagic Design’s Pocket Cinema Camera 6K

There have been quite a few mirrorless cameras introduced over the past 10 months. However, one of the hottest cameras during this time in the world of cinema wasn’t a mirrorless camera or a traditional digital cinema camera. It was, in fact, a small, rectangular, 2-pound slab of carbon fiber polycarbonate composite known as the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K (or BMPCC6K), which was announced in August 2019 for $2,495.

But what’s a little tricky for some is that the BMPCC6K looks like a mirrorless hybrid. It may lack the mirror found on DSLRs, but it’s really a unique digital cinema camera in a category all its own.

Here’s why there’s some confusion: The new model replaced its predecessor, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K (BMPCC4K), which was a 4K-capable model that utilized a Micro Four Thirds sensor with an MFT lens mount. And while the new BMPCC6K takes some of its DNA from the original BMPCC4K (an HD-only, tiny, pocketable digital video camera popular among low-budget filmmakers), it differs significantly from the original in that the BMPCC6K uses an S35 sensor (instead of an MFT sensor) and comes with a Canon EF mount (instead of an MFT mount). Obviously, as the name of the camera implies, the