Rick “Lets jump back in history. It was 2004 and I bought a Blackmagic Decklink Extreme card and installed this inside of a G4 Mac. This served me well, enabling computer to connect to professional high-end decks and letting me work with many formats which, otherwise, would have been totally out of reach without paying expensive rates at a facility house. The card costs me a few hundred pounds, from memory less than £500. Over a six month period I earn’t good money from that card and computer and then sold the whole set-up for more than I paid. Because of the philosophy of Blackmagic to provide high-end solutions at affordable prices, this enabled me to step up in the quality stakes and work at levels which I couldnt easily do otherwise.”
“The fact that it is now possible to buy a Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF or MFT for $2000 USD or just over £1300 in the UK (ex-vat). This makes Blackmagic camera, which records RAW or ProRes to SSD, almost irresistible to both fledgling and established filmmakers.
I already have a Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF which I love. I also love the idea of having more of these cameras, though may well choose the MFT model next as I have many lenses which will work beautifully, via adapters, with the MFT mount.
The result of this massive 33% price drop, in my opinion, will be tremendous infiltration of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera at all levels of the industry. This would have happened regardless – many said to me they would have paid twice the cost of the camera, and that was before the price drop. The infiltration will now be accelerated.”
HDW : To read Ricks conclusions why not click on the web link below…
http://www.moviemachine.tv/post/opinion-why-the-price-drop-for-the-blackmagic-cin/
Something about Blackmagic that hardly anybody knows and is very important:
During the 1 year guarantee (not 2 years as according to the EU regulations for consumer electronics, because they are professional electronics) you get your broken equipment replaced. After that 1 year guarantee they do not repair because they have no service centers and you have to throw your broken piece of equipment away and buy a new one. THIS MEANS THAT YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOUR INVESTMENT BACK WITHIN ONE YEAR. And hopefully some profit as well. This is no problem for the cheaper gear like converters, but for the more expensive like ATEM 1&2, some cameras and other + 2000$ hardware that is a problem and makes Blackmagic not so interesting. I think a lot of people do only see the cheap gear and do not get the whole picture here. I am a rental company and can tell you that there stuff brakes down more than gear from the big guys. Having no after sales service is a very negative thing, I have a ATEM 1me switcher ready for the bin and be shore I will not buy another one.
Here’s the reason Blackmagic dropped the price on the BMCC in my opinion.
It’s because Blackmagic screwed up royally when they announced the Pocket Cinema & Production Cameras. They simply didn’t anticipate the massive drop in sales and orders for the BMCC (even though they should have).
Virtually everyone either decided they wanted the Pocket Cinema Camera or would at least wait until the Production Camera became available to make a decision.
Blackmagic threw away millions of dollars in sales with their unexpected announcement at NAB 2013.
From a business standpoint it was an abysmal mistake.
Lowering the price was the only way to get the BMC moving off of the shelves.
Perhaps they were overly aggressive in dropping the price by $1,000. $500 might have gotten the job done.
Here’s another example.
Go Pro came out with the Hero 2 in 2012 around NAB. If all had gone to plan they might still be selling the “Go Pro 2”, but Sony came out with their competing action cam that summer forcing Go Pro to release its “Go Pro 3” ahead of schedule to maintain their huge market advantage.
The point is – developing new, updated and advanced products is great, but maintaining the secrecy behind those advancements is just as important until the strategically best time to announce them.
Go Pro’s hand was forced.
Blackmagic had no competition except for themselves and basically shot themselves in the foot with their announcement.