Blackmagic Design Announces New Blackmagic PYXIS 6K

NAB 2024, Las Vegas, USA – Friday, April 12, 2024 – Blackmagic Design today announced Blackmagic PYXIS 6K a next generation digital film camera that features a versatile box or cube design so you can rig up the perfect camera for your production! This new model features a massive 36 x 24mm 6K sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range and dual CFexpress media recorders, all in a customizable body. Blackmagic PYXIS 6K is available in three models, with customers able to choose between L-Mount, PL or Locking EF lens mounts. Blackmagic PYXIS 6K will be available in June from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide from US$2,995.

The Blackmagic PYXIS 6K will be demonstrated on the Blackmagic Design NAB 2024 booth #SL5005.

With multiple mounting points and accessory side plates, it’s easy to configure Blackmagic PYXIS into the camera customers need it to be. PYXIS’ compact body is made from precision CNC machined aerospace aluminum, which means it is lightweight yet very strong. Customers can easily mount it on a range of camera rigs such as cranes, gimbals or drones. In addition to the multiple 1/4″ and 3/8″ thread mounts on the top and bottom of the body, Blackmagic PYXIS has a range of side plates that further extend their ability to mount accessories such as handles, microphones or even SSDs. All this means customers can build the perfect camera for the any production that’s both rugged and reliable.

Blackmagic PYXIS features a massive full frame sensor with a native resolution of 6048 x 4032. That’s almost three times larger than a Super 35 sensor and allows customers to shoot with a shallow depth of field or to use anamorphic lenses uncropped for a true cinematic look. Whether users are shooting in bright sunlight or in almost no light at all, the 13 stops of dynamic range with dual native ISO up to 25,600 provide stunning low noise images in all lighting conditions.

Using the full area of the sensor gives customers a unique open gate 3:2 image which also lets customers reframe their shots in post production. The large sensor also lets customers work in true 6:5 anamorphic without cropping, making widescreen cinematic images more detailed and in higher resolution than previously possible.

With 3 models, customers can choose between L-Mount, EF or PL lenses, making Blackmagic PYXIS compatible with the largest range of cinema and photographic lenses in the world. The L-Mount model works with the latest full frame lenses from Leica, Panasonic and Sigma but can also accommodate lens adapters, allowing customers to use a wide variety of new and vintage lenses. The EF model lets customers use high quality photographic lenses customers already own from DSLRs or even Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras. Or the PL model lets customers work with professional cinema lenses from Zeiss, ARRI, Cooke and more without needing an adapter.

Blackmagic PYXIS can shoot in all standard resolutions and frame rates from HD up to DCI 4K and even 6K. Customers can even shoot stills at 24.6 megapixels. Blackmagic PYXIS will shoot up to 36 fps at 6048 x 4032 3:2 open gate or 60 fps at 6048 x 2520 2.4:1 and 60 fps at 4096 x 2160 4K DCI. For higher frame rates customers can window the sensor and shoot up to 100 fps at 2112 x 1184 Super 16.

The built in LCD on Blackmagic PYXIS is more than just a simple status display. It’s a 4″ high resolution HDR touchscreen that is also perfect for monitoring and reviewing shots on set. Its full HD resolution means customers can frame and focus their shots without needing to carry around a bulky external monitor. Customers can even use the display as a focus assist station.

Blackmagic PYXIS features a logical design that puts important functions such as ISO, WB and shutter at their fingertips with both touchscreen and physical controls. A row of 3 customizable function buttons means customers don’t have to go hunting through menus on a tiny screen to find a command. The controls can even be locked to avoid accidentally changing settings during a shot or when the camera is out of reach on a rig.

The innovative side plates expand the riggability of their camera even further. The standard plate included with Blackmagic PYXIS is made from the same aircraft grade aluminum as the camera body and features 2 1/4″ thread mounts and one 3/8″ thread mount, allowing customers to add microphones, brackets or other accessories. Or customers can attach the included SSD plate which offers a convenient location to securely attach a USB-C drive for recording or even a mobile phone for live streaming.

Blackmagic PYXIS records in Blackmagic RAW to preserve control of detail, exposure and color during post production. It also records HD H.264 proxies in real time making it easy to share media around the world in minutes. This means images always maintain unprecedented resolution and quality for color, keying, compositing, reframing, stabilization and tracking in HD, 4K or 6K.

The Blackmagic PYXIS features two built in CFexpress card recorders, and a USB-C expansion port for recording direct to external flash media disks or an SSD. CFexpress media are more durable and faster than even older media so are perfect for recording full resolution, 12-bit Blackmagic RAW files. Plus, with dual CFexpress slots, customers can keep recording because customers can hot swap full cards without stopping.

Blackmagic PYXIS supports creating a small H.264 proxy file in addition to the camera original media when recording. This means the small proxy file can upload to Blackmagic Cloud in seconds so their media is available back at the studio in real time. The ability to transfer media directly into the DaVinci Resolve media bin as editors are working is revolutionary and has never before been possible. Any editor working anywhere in the world will get the shots.

When uploading to Blackmagic Cloud, customers can use an Apple or Android phone to get a connection to the internet via mobile data. Simply connect the phone to the USB-C port and Blackmagic PYXIS will configure for mobile data. Customers can also connect via wired Ethernet using the camera’s Ethernet port. This lets customers get their media out as customers shoot so post production teams anywhere in the world can start work in real time.

Blackmagic PYXIS supports the optional Blackmagic URSA Cine EVF to make outdoors and handheld shooting accurate and easy. Customers get an integrated high quality 1920 x 1080 color OLED display with built in proximity sensor, 4 element glass diopter for incredible accuracy with a wide focus adjustment.

Blackmagic PYXIS features a wide range of connections for audio, monitoring, power and more. The camera includes a 12G-SDI out for monitoring with support for HDR and Ultra HD output. That means customers can connect an SDI display for on set monitoring of images, with or without overlays that show critical information and camera status. SDI allows for much longer cable runs than HDMI making it easier to reach monitors that are further away on set.

Blackmagic PYXIS features a built hardware streaming engine that supports RTMP and SRT streaming to YouTube, Facebook, X and more. For internet access, customers have two options, one to connect via Ethernet or customers can connect a 4G or 5G phone for mobile data. As the streaming is built into the camera, customers can see the stream status and data rate in the viewfinder and the LCD.

“Since the introduction of the original Pocket Cinema Cameras, our customers have been asking us to make it in a more customizable design,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “But we wanted it to be so much more than just a Pocket Cinema Camera in a different body. The new Blackmagic PYXIS is a fully professional cinema camera with more connections and seamless integration into post production workflows. We think customers are going to love the incredibly adaptable design and we can’t wait to see how they use it!”

Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Features

• 36 x 24mm full frame 6K 6048 x 4032 sensor.
• Open gate 3:2, full height 6:5 anamorphic and Super 35 for creating cinematic content.
• Choice of models with L-Mount, PL or locking EF lens mounts.
• Records full resolution up to 36 fps or 120 fps windowed.
• Built-in 4″ HDR 1500 nit LCD screen.
• Records Blackmagic RAW and H.264 proxies.
• Extremely fast dual CFexpress card recording.
• Ethernet or mobile data for mobile remote streaming.
• Optional Blackmagic URSA Cine EVF.
• Features 12G-SDI for monitoring with status overlay.
• Professional mini XLR input with 48 volt phantom power.
• Complete streaming solution for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more.
• High capacity BP-U series batteries.

Availability and Price

Blackmagic PYXIS 6K will be available in June from US$2,995, excluding duties, from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I’d argue that multi-shot high-resolution modes are all but pointless.

Not entirely pointless: I’m sure there are applications out there where the subject stays still enough and where it’s practical to bring a tripod, and the improvement is worth the effort. And if you’re someone whose photography it suits, then I’m happy for you. But that’s very rarely the case, so it’s just not a feature I find very useful, and it’s certainly not one I’d use to choose one camera over another.

A lot of this is because most implementations are terrible. Noticeably, every brand appears to have a slightly different implementation, with the exact approach, the number of shots and whether they can be combined in-camera differing. This strongly points to it being an area in which each manufacturer is patenting its own approach and blocking others using it, and in doing so, making it harder for anyone else to deliver a usable/useful version.

Lost in a thicket of patents

It’s no surprise that some of the earliest pixel shift modes came from Olympus and Pentax: two companies that committed early to the idea of in-body stabilization, both looking for other features it could be used to deliver.

The Pentax system shoots four images, canceling out the Bayer pattern so that it has full-color information for each output pixel. This delivers greater color resolution with less aliasing, greater sharpness (through lack of demosaicing) and the improvement in noise that comes from combining multiple images. These individual shots are combined into a finished output file.

The Olympus method shoots eight images: four canceling out the Bayer pattern, then moving to position 1/2 a pixel offset from this and repeating the process to quadruple the output resolution. This system also combines the images in-camera and is unique in letting you set a delay if you were shooting, say, product photos and needed time for your strobes to recycle between shots.

Panasonic currently has one of the best (least-terrible?) high-res implementations. There’s an eight-shot mode with the option of 4X or 2X the normal pixel count, with or without motion correction, or a handheld mode. But the fact that it’s essentially three modes, each with its own trade-offs, hints at how far from ideal they all are. At least they’re combined in-camera, though. Panasonic G9 II | Panasonic 12-60mm F2.8-4 Asph OIS | ISO 100 | F5.6 | 1/320 sec Photo: Jeff Keller

It’s been mostly downhill from here, though. Sony first adopted a Pentax-like four-shot mode that had to be combined on a computer, before later adding a more Olympus-like 16-shot option. Nikon also offers a choice of Pentax-like Bayer-canceling or an Olympus-like res-boosting one, each with the option to perform it twice for a greater noise/tonal quality improvement. But, like Sony, these need to be combined off-camera, which requires a level of patience, file management and messing around in clunky own-brand software that builds into an appreciable hurdle.

Thanks to the complexity of the X-Trans sensor, the mode on its X-series camera requires 20 shots to deliver its pixel shift mode. Personally, I find that most subjects (even landscapes) have too much movement to wait this long and, on a grander scale, that life might be too short for such a commitment.

Limited benefits

I wanted to capture this burnt-out car, abandoned outside a defunct car dealership before it disappeared. I made the effort to arrive early on one of the only spring mornings with any light and then combined the images when I got home. As a result, I have a bit more detail, some odd cross-hatching in areas of movement, 16 massive Raw files and more information than I wanted about the lens’ corner performance. Yay. Sony a1 | Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM @ 16mm | ISO 100 | F9 | 1/100 sec Photo: Richard Butler

Not only are they slow and clunky to use, but the benefits of multi-shot mode are often limited. Even with a static scene and optimal conditions, a 100MP multi-shot mode won’t match the results of a 100MP camera, but in most situations it often won’t even deliver its own maximal performance.

Unlike smartphones, which make extensive use of multi-shot combination, most large-sensor cameras read out their sensors quite slowly, creating appreciable delays between each shot, raising the risk of subject movement. The more sophisticated systems correct for this motion to some degree but do so by dropping back down to using a single image’s data, throwing away the detail benefit for any subject that’s moved, as well as leaving ghosts and artifacts around the image.

They’re also based on making precise sub-pixel movements, so are very sensitive to any camera motion, and can’t apply stabilization because the mechanism is too busy making pre-planned movements.

Finally, the flip-side of the higher resolution pushing aliasing to higher frequencies is that, just like a high-resolution sensor, the shots are quickly limited by diffraction. This means that you’ll need very sharp lenses, fairly wide open if you want to minimize the degree to which lens shortcomings and diffraction eat away at the hoped-for resolution boost.

My point being that it’s very easy to go to considerable extra effort for minimal gain. You still get the noise benefit, of course, but you can gain that by pressing the shutter button several times and merging the images yourself: you don’t really need a special mode for that.

Handheld multi-shot modes

Hand-held multi-shot modes don’t work the same way as tripod modes, so don’t offer the Bayer-canceling benefits or the same level of additional detail capture, but they’re usable a much wider range of circumstances. This was shot on an impromptu hike on which I didn’t want to play tripod-sherpa. OM System OM-1 | 12-40mm F2.8 Pro II @ 18mm | ISO 200 | F5 | 1/1250 sec Photo: Richard Butler

Increasingly, we’re seeing handheld multi-shot modes appear, and these can be used in a broader range of circumstances. But it’s worth noting that these aren’t quite the same thing. Instead of moving the sensor in a precise, controlled way, they measure the degree to which your hand shake has moved the camera, then combine some of a burst of shots to try to boost detail levels. You don’t gain the Bayer-cancelling improvement in color resolution or sharpness through this approach, and won’t see the same degree of detail improvement.

Old man yells at cloud?

Ultimately, I’m not so vehemently against multi-shot modes that I don’t think they should exist. Even if they’re only useful to a tiny subset of users, I certainly don’t begrudge those people gaining a feature they want. But they’re so often so awkward to use and offer so little benefit in most circumstances, that I find it hard to be that enthusiastic about even the best (least-bad?) versions.

There’s a chance that my position is every bit as solipsistic as those who argue that cameras shouldn’t have video modes, just because they don’t use them. I’d like to think that my position is slightly different in that I dislike them because I don’t use them and have found them to be highly impractical and often awkward to use.

But to each their own. I’m certainly not about to start marking a camera down for having an extra feature, no matter how much clutter it adds to the menus. But equally, I’m not about to take up the cause of any commenters demanding that it’s a feature every new camera MUST have.