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Blackmagic Cinema Camera – infinity focus issue “solved”

Blackmagic Cinema Camera MFTYou might have heard or experienced the issue yourself: Some wide angle lenses can’t be focused to infinity on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. This issue has now been addressed, but the solution won’t make current owners happy.

Blackmagic has been looking into the issue last month when it was reported. See a sample on one of the affected lenses (Tokina 11-16mm) below.

So what’s the problem?
According to Blackmagic Canon builds “some fair amount of tolerances” into their cameras “to cater for still lenses where the tolerances are not as critical as cine lenses.

Blackmagic didn’t know that while they were building their Cinema Camera and apparently just sticked to the technical specifications. Hence all our BMCCs are too perfect for some of our not so perfect stills lenses. It’s definitely a problem as users of this camera system are already very limited in their choice of lenses due to the Cinema Camera’s small sensor size.

How can it be fixed?
You’ll have to send it in. Yes, unfortunately that’s true. While all future BMCCs coming out of the factory will have a more compatible flange distance the ones currently out there will have to be sent in to be calibrated.

If you’re one of the unlucky ones you can file a support ticket here: LINK
How long will it take? I have no idea, I’m scared myself saying goodbye to the camera for a while as we’re sitting in the middle of Europe.

More interesting stuff on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera
If you’re still struggling to get that camera to work properly there’s a great and comprehensive writeup by dop Shane Hurlbut and some intriguing tips and tricks to get the most out of a BMCC. After all this one is a somewhat special camera that needs special treatment to work to its full potential as we’ve seen ourselves.

Unfortunately there’s still no word on when exactly the much anticipated MFT model of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera might hit the shelves.

via nofilmschool

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