Blackmagic Camera App v1.1 for Android Released – HDMI Monitoring, Support for More Phones, and More

Phone Cameras

by Jakub HanJuly 23^rd, 2024

Blackmagic camera app for Android v1.1 adds support for HDMI monitoring, pull focus controls, 3D LUT for recording and monitoring, screen dimming while recording, and more. The app also officially supports more phone models, such as OnePlus 11 and 12, Xiaomi 13 and 14, Google Pixel 6 and 7, and Samsung Galaxy S21 and S22. The app is available now on Google Play store free of charge.

Last year in September, along with the newly announced iPhone 15 and 15 Pro smartphones, Blackmagic Design released a new, free camera app for iOS that introduced new options for these phones (and a few older iPhone models). We covered the initial announcement on the show floor at IBC 2024.

Since then, Blackmagic Design has updated the iOS camera app a few times, and finally, in June 2024, they also released an Android version (for only a few select smartphone models). Now, a new version of the Blackmagic camera app for Android has been released. Let’s take a quick look at what is new with version 1.1.

Blackmagic camera app for Android v1.1

The new version of the Blackmagic camera app for Android adds a few useful features. Firstly, it adds support for HDMI monitoring. This means you get a better view of the scene, which helps when checking focus, exposure, and composition of the shot, and even watch the recording with multiple monitors so everyone on set can view the footage.

This update also adds pull focus controls to the camera so you can change the focus of the lens during a continuous shot. This allows you to gradually pull focus between 3 preset focus points in the foreground or background.

There’s also support for syncing media directly to a Blackmagic Cloud Organizations account, which allows you to select between syncing media to your personal account or your company’s organization account.

In addition, you can now dim the screen while recording, apply noise reduction or sharpening to the recorded image, and use 3D LUTS while recording and monitoring.

The official list of new features in the Blackmagic Camera for Android 1.1 includes:

• HDMI monitoring.
• 3D LUTs for recording and monitoring.
• Pull focus transition controls.
• Blackmagic Cloud organizations.
• Login account within Blackmagic Cloud.
• Ability to dim screen while recording.
• Optional image noise reduction.
• Optional image sharpening.
• Audio level pop-up.
• Japanese translations.
• Ability to not generate a proxy while recording.
• Save clips to any location, including external storage.
• General performance and improvements.

Support for more phones

Thankfully, Blackmagic Design did not forget to add official support for additional phone models with this update. Initially, the app was only officially available for the latest Samsung Galaxy phones (S24 and S23) as well as Google Pixel 8. The new version 1.1 brings support for more phone manufacturers as well as some older generations:

• Samsung Galaxy: S21, S22, S23, S24 – all models
• Google Pixel: 6, 7, 8 – all models
• OnePlus: 11, 12 – all models
• Xiaomi: 13, 14 – all models

The full specs of the Blackmagic camera app can be found on the official product page.

We need true log on Android

Having played with the Blackmagic camera app on my Samsung Galaxy S23 for a few weeks, I have to admit there is some helpful stuff. Especially for people who use Blackmagic cameras, the interface is pretty much the same – you will be right at home using the camera app. It does unlock some new options that are not accessible with the camera app from Samsung. For instance, I can now record with new framerates, such as 25fps. All in all, it is amazing that we get this app free of charge for our phones.

What is missing, though—and that is not Blackmagic’s fault—is true log support like Apple added to the iPhone 15 Pro phones. Unfortunately, this is still not a thing on any Android smartphone. It would be nice to get an image that is not butchered by the massive amount of noise reduction and sharpening that every Android phone bakes in when recording videos. Maybe one day…

Do you use the Blackmagic camera app on your phone? Do you find it helpful even on an Android phone? What do you think of the new v1.1 update? Let us know in the comments section underneath the article.