These days, it’s not often you get to write about prices going down, rather than up.
Here’s a refreshing bit of news: there’s at least one camera company out there whose products are getting appreciably cheaper. Today, cinema company Blackmagic Design announced that it’s slashing the prices of its full-frame Cinema Camera 6K and Pyxis 6K models by over $1000, something it says it can do after “securing better pricing on parts.”
Neither camera is particularly new: the Cinema Camera was announced in 2023, and the Pyxis in 2024. So it’s not surprising that Blackmagic is able to make them for less than it initially was. What I wouldn’t typically expect is the company passing those savings on to its customers, given our age of prices rising due to AI-driven chip scarcity and inflation.
| New Price | Old Price | Savings | Launch Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K | $1595 | $2715 | $1120 | $2595 |
| Blackmagic PYXIS 6K L | $1995 | $3080 | $1085 | $2995 |
| Blackmagic PYXIS 6K EF | $1995 | $3070 | $1075 | |
| Blackmagic PYXIS 6K PL | $2195 | $3265 | $1070 |
It’s also not a situation where Blackmagic raised prices due to tariffs in the US, and is lowering them back down now that they’re gone. It did raise prices – the Cinema Camera 6K launched for $2595 – but the new prices are well below what the cameras were originally announced at.
Realistically, I realize most of our audience won’t be interested in dedicated cinema cameras in an age when the best hybrid mirrorless models excel in both video and stills, no matter how inexpensive they are. But I’d like to think this is a sign that things might be changing in the camera world. While it may be too much to hope that we’ll see new models that are cheaper than their predecessors, or similar price reductions for existing cameras – I suspect the bigger, more established companies are already getting parts for as cheaply as they can, and Blackmagic is just moving up towards that level of economy of scale – perhaps we’ll at least see some cameras that aren’t substantially more expensive than their predecessors.
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