hi this month marks the two-year anniversary of the Blackmagic pocket 6K Pro and I want to tell
you about my experience for owning this camera for the past two years and if you are looking
to buy a new camera in 2023 I want to tell you why you may or why you may not want to buy this
camera the 6K Pro comes in at 2500 which at the time and still to this day makes it one of the
most bang for your buck quality performance reliability feature sets to dollar ratio that
I've ever seen in a camera and of course they have some first party accessories both of which
I purchased and I want to talk about if those have been worth it or not do you know what else
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Pro the first one is the viewfinder now if you are filming out in broad daylight and it's very
sunny this comes in handy quite a bit however I do not shoot in that scenario too often and even
on the sunny year days the 1500 knit screen on the back is very very nice so the viewfinder is a nice
thing to have but it is definitely not a necessity and to be honest a lot of times it actually has
been more of an annoyance than a benefit for one it actually raises the overall height of the
camera and this is already a pretty chunky beefy camera that is hard to find a camera bag to fit
in so in certain bags the viewfinder has actually been a deal breaker for it being too tight of a
fit the other thing you'll notice is right now I actually don't have any rubber cap on the back and
that's because it comes with a couple different caps one of them which is very small the default
one but I really like the larger eye cups I think it's way more comfortable I have almost lost this
thing so many times it's not an accessory I use on a daily basis right now you were looking at
my brand new non-blackmagic camera that I'm not allowed to show you until next week I will give
you hints the camera itself is not brand new or unreleased or something but there's some things
about it that I'm not allowed to show or talk about in so it doesn't make sense to spill the
beans just yet but feel free to comment down below some guesses as to what camera it is I
haven't been this excited about a new piece of camera gear in probably like a decade so and
make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the big reveal next week or the battery grip for those
of you who have watched this channel for a long time you've probably seen me go from no batter
grip batter grip no batter grip battery grip and obviously you can see now I'm back to no battery
grip it allows you to have three batteries in the camera two in the actual battery housing and then
two in the battery grip now the cons obviously adds a lot of height and bulk to the overall
camera the pros is it gives you around two and a half three hours of record time without having
to think about your battery drain it is kind of annoying since the third battery is in the actual
camera that if you want to actually change all three batteries you have to take off the battery
thing which is fine if it's by yourself but if you're are in a like tilted cage like this which
does come with the extension for the battery pack you have to unscrew it and take it off it takes a
couple extra minutes so most of the time when I have the battery pack on I find myself ending up
just swapping out two batteries in the battery compartment how many times have I said battery
and while it did balance on the RS3 Pro gimbal as I've shown in many videos it didn't give you like
full confidence or full range of motion like if you really going like up and down and all
around there are points where it just became too heavy of a setup but I love this with the Tilted
cage how I can just slap this right here and it perfectly balances on the RS3 Pro now let's talk
about battery life because that is one of the biggest cons to Blackmagic cameras or pocket
cameras specifically now if I'm going out to film and I'm getting Clips meaning like I'm recording
for a couple seconds maybe a couple minutes at a time I do not hate this Battery Solution
whatsoever of just having a bunch of batteries in your bag or pocket and then just every you know
45 50 60 minutes just pull it out swap it not a big deal at all now when it comes to buying extra
batteries this is a big lesson that I've learned now in my opinion in my experience do yourself a
favor just buy the black magic branded batteries I have tried a couple third-party ones and I've
had more success with some more than others but not only have I ran into the issue with my third
party ones where I'll buy them for 20 or 30 bucks for two of them compared to the 60 per battery and
they'll do pretty well maybe instead of like 50 to 60 minutes I'm getting like 40 to 50. and so
you're like oh that's you know a fair trade-off for that price savings the problem is after like
four to six months those batteries are just trash and now they're only lasting like 20 to 30. these
batteries truly for the past couple of years have pretty much maintained all of their health the
other big difference is the Blackmagic branded version is a 3500 milliamp battery squeezed into
this my third party ones I could not find a higher capacity than I think 2 900 maybe even
2700 So I have six of these batteries because when I use the battery grip I essentially wanted
two rotations in a perfect world I think three rotations is perfect One charging one ready to
go one in camera and usually you can keep that momentum going if you have like Fast Chargers
or if I'm just using the camera like this I just have six batteries to run through other
physical parts of the camera the plastic unibody it's something that everyone can tell is one of
the cost saving methods because if you look at something like the fx3 which looks like it feels
like it's built like a tank this one not so much but if you throw it on a camera cage that's gonna
add a good amount of protection and honestly like you can see this thing is still basically in mint
condition I've taken it out in snow I've been in light rain obviously it's not advertised with any
sort of waterproofing so I'm not liable if you go and ruin your camera the built-in NDS I thought I
never cared about I used front lens variable NDS forever and I was like who needs variable and DS
like it's not a big deal just have a thing no I was completely wrong internal MDS like everyone
says has been a game changer which is why if you can swing the extra 500 bucks I wouldn't buy the
G2 I would go with the 6K Pro if you're like me and you're kind of doing all different types of
shoots you're traveling doing family stuff you're doing commercial stuff you're doing YouTube stuff
internal NDS have absolutely made it to my list of must-haves for cameras to come in terms of ports
they all have held up very nicely now with the tilt a half cage I basically have taken off the
top rubber guards so that's very easy to plug in a microphone and headphone jack and then the HDMI
I use the Tilt to right angle one because HDMI ports I think are some of the easiest ports to
break thankful this camera's full size HDMI but I like the right angle one because if I'm jamming a
cable in and out of this thing and I break this it's a lot easier to just replace this 11 right
angle adapter than having to send in your camera and pay to get it fixed mini XLR I really like
having and so rather than taking like the Sony or Canon approach where you have to have like
this separate accessory top handle that gives you XLR inputs I really like having mini XLR
it's really easy to have mini xlr2 XLR adapters I mean that's what I've been using for years on the
camera you're watching this is a rodent tg4 plus going straight into my pocket 6K with a mini xlr2
XLR adapter the tilting screen it's something that I myself and many others who are going to
wonder how is going to hold up years later movable Parts is just something that is usually the first
to break or have issues with I can tell you I've had zero issues whatsoever obviously I wish that
it swiveled out that would change change my life how hard it is to film myself with this camera
is definitely one of the deal breakers I've seen for so many people and I get that it's
very annoying that when I travel to like a hotel I have to make sure that I pack a extra monitor
an HDMI cord and batteries for the monitor so that I can't see myself or I can actually Vlog
because I've learned that this is about a foot and a half away so I just set my manual lens to
about one and a half feet and I do my thing and I know I'm Gonna Be In Focus but there's risks
involved to that obviously and the screen quality oh that's a good transition to talking about the
menu in the user interface I'm so spoiled by blackmagic's user interface though when I use
almost any other camera like when I grab my Canon EOS R here this menu system makes me want to throw
up it is terrible now obviously when you use something for years you get used to it you have
the muscle memory so anyone who shoots Sony or Canon or anything you're gonna be like like no
it's so easy because you know that on page four of whatever it's blah blah and I get it those
are hybrid cameras everything is just so simply laid out all of your recording functionality are
on a few pages with very big and clear graphics and icons the user interface just perfect now of
course what's the camera without talking about the camera quality am I still happy with it
even though it is over two years old now yeah you could shoot six K b-raw on this thing but granted
so many cameras that are out now that shoot h.265 or various other codecs prores even look
incredible I'm not doubting their capabilities at all whatsoever but I am such a fan of shooting raw
because I have not thought about white balance or having to fine-tune my ISO in years here since you
have that b-raw workflow throughout whether I'm at 6K 50 6K 24 all the way down to 2.8 K which is
where you can do the 120 slow motion so when you match it in post-production it's just so
much better so what are some things that I don't like about this camera or that I would love to
see them change with hopefully an upcoming version the most obvious one is the same thing we've all
been asking for for years which is a body style to something more box like a Komodo or a z cam
or confinity it's just a chunky boy of a camera the second biggest thing for me is change from my
a tilting screen to a swivel screen I'd love to be able to see myself I understand that this is
a cinema camera not really intended for people filming themselves but let's be real to Budget
Cinema Camera so that means it's aimed really at content creators like myself who are doing a mix
of everything freelance work commercial work event work where I'm filming other people but
then also doing stuff like this where I need to film myself I'd love to see more app connectivity
functionality on the iPad they do have a first party app on the phone I use something called
Bluetooth plus which gives you all of your camera functionality via Bluetooth it's really reliable
really great and they even added the ability to pull Focus if you have an AF lens but I would
love if they added a built-in wireless transmitter so you could actually preview the screen like you
can on some like my Canon camera it would be nice to get auto focus I'm not gonna lie I definitely
again now that I'm doing YouTube full time and so while someone like the DJI lidar experience does
give you auto focus while while using this camera it's not a perfect solution and there's a lot more
steps involved I didn't even mention before that when you buy this camera you get DaVinci Resolve
Studio license for free so that's I mean a 300 value in itself but I've obviously made so many
videos on resolve and you guys know I'm a huge fan of that and I love to see all creators switching
over to it this seems like the year that like everyone's making the switch but all in all the
quality that you get out of this camera even two years later I think it's still batting way above
its price point I do not think this is a camera that has fallen into the shadows of like oh you
definitely shouldn't buy it if there's a reason not to buy it it's only because NAB is in a few
short months and so I would just wait to see if Blackmagic was doing something different
but besides that one fact and unless any of my cons have absolutely turned you off to
the camera this is still a fantastic Buy in 2023 but I'd love to hear what you guys thoughts are
let me know down in the comments below thanks for watching see you guys in the next video