There was a time when higher performance cinema cameras were bulky and prohibitively expensive; the Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera shoots 1080p RAW, is small enough to fit in your pocket and costs under a thousand bucks. Who said living in interesting times was a curse?

Blackmagic made waves at last year's NAB with the announcement of the company's first camera: the $3,000 Cinema Camera , which was equipped with a 2.5K image sensor. That camera was hailed as a revolutionary device for the filmmaking industry, giving users a relatively affordable way to record...