I've seen some weird and wonderful things out there in the world of photography and filmmaking, from reproductions of old Leicas to cameras with 16 lenses built in. Still, I have never heard of someone – or at least another company – taking an existing product's internals and using it to build something else.
Who am I kidding, this happens all the time with lens manufacturers and camera sensors. But why has the news of a new box-style cinema camera, which is built around the sensor and electronics of the popular Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, caused so much speculation?
The Idea of such a thing sounds plausible enough, but why is another company doing it rather than Blackmagic itself? That's the first red flag in my book. The second seems to be that this box-style has been applied rather heavily. The design trend comes from the famous Red Digital Cinema Camera, the Red Komodo, which really spearheaded the box-style camera design and helped introduce others like the remarkable Panasonic Lumix BS1H.
But it appears that what's really got under the skin of filmmakers around the world is that this new company – Nexus, founded by filmmaker Thomas Boland – just so happens to be based in Australia, where Blackmagic camera originates. What's more, it has revealed a CGI rendering of this camera project.
Creating a rendering is expensive to do when a project is just getting off the ground, leading to a lot of the community thinking that this could potentially (or even likely) be a scam. See the video below to make your own judgment:
While this video is of high production value, there are no suggestions that the filmmaker didn't make it himself. And investigating the website www.nexus-camera.com reveals that nothing seems to be on it, other than a lot of "coming soon" side tabs.
However, Redshark reached out to Thomas over this speculation and received this response from him:
"The entire project is self-funded, and will continue to be until we have completed development, have proof of concept, and prototypes. While crowdfunding may be the wisest way to fund the production of the Nexus, no plans have been made or even suggested that this will happen yet, and all reference to crowdfunding by people is speculation.
"I am not only an industrial designer and filmmaker, but also a CGI artist (it's what I do for work) and I am backed by my family who I work together with daily, and this gives us the unique ability to very easily share the project using our own expertise, at an early stage, to get critical input from people who have far more experience in the film industry than we do – this 'mastermind' input of the community is the foundation of the Nexus project, and what excites me/us most of all."
So there we are, right from the horse's mouth: yes it is a project and, no, it's not a scam, just a work-in-progress – an idea for consideration. Which hopefully keeps the naysayers happy, but leaves the genuinely excited a bit sad.
While investigating these claims across social media I saw many users comment on how this would be a great system and many stating "Take my money now." What Blackmagic would have to say about this is yet to be seen – after all, it's designed using the company's hardware – but maybe this is just the design kick it needs to give filmmakers what they want; a box-style Blackmagic camera.
Only time will tell if the Nexus G1 ever comes to fruition, but as a concept I would say it has done its job marvelously – and I'd think it would be a pretty cool camera.
Take a look at the best cinema cameras, among them the best Blackmagic cameras, along with the best cine lenses.
