To be able to use the black magic pocket cinema camera 4k to its full potential you need an external battery source and an external SSD to be able to record at the highest level of quality.
This means this camera is going to need a cage to hold all of this extra stuff.
In this video, we are going to be reviewing the Small Rig cage for the black magic pocket cinema camera 4k.
We reviewed the black magic pocket cinema camera 4k in the last video, so if you haven't seen that you can find the video here to see what we thought about it.
We have been using cages for our Sony a7s cameras for a few years now and without them shooting would be a lot more difficult. The same goes for the pocket 4k. Without a cage, the camera is just about unusable, especially if you’re shooting all day.
To shoot at the highest quality you need to use an external hard drive, but there's nowhere to mount it. Also, the battery life sucks so you need to use an external battery solution, and again there is nowhere to put it.
This is where the smallrig cage comes in. The cage is one piece of metal and has a bunch of mounting options. ¼ 20, ⅜, Rosette mounts for extra handles, and cold shoe mounts.
It fits the camera like a glove, and when holding it in your hand, the cage is curved and seamlessly joins the camera.
Next, we have the top handle. Small Rig has a few different top handles which will fit this cage. This one can change position and slide forward by turning these two screws. The best bit about this is that the Allen Key you need is magnetically stored on the handle.
the Allen key that you use to fix the camera in the cage is also magnetically stored on the bottom of the cage. This means you never have to go looking for the correct Allen key. It’s just there.
Having them magnetically stored on the cage is something I wish I had on my Sony A7s cage, as I take it in and out of the cage a lot.
Small Rig has designed an SSD holder which you mount onto the cage. You feed the cable through the front and tighten the hard drive in place.
This SSD holder is designed for the Samsung T5 SSD’s, but these Angel Bird SSDs also fit into the holder with a little bit of a wiggle.
Finally, you get this cable clamp for your HDMI and USB type C cable you use for the SSD. This just makes sure your cables are safe and secure.
With the cage, we have mounted our external battery solution which allows us to extend the battery life. Our DIY battery didn’t work great and the battery life kept dropping. So I would look into a different way to power the camera, maybe something that uses the 12v power input on the side of the camera.
But the smallrig cage has loads of room to mount something.
Just like all SmallRig products (and we have a few) everything is built to a high quality and they have a bunch of other accessories for all sorts.
Without the SSD holder and the ability to mount an external battery on to this camera, I don’t think we would use it. So spending an extra $190, which is how much all of these parts cost, is definitely worth the investment if you have a pocket 4K camera.
If you haven't seen our review on the Pocket 4K camera you can find that video here. Let us know in the comments below if you are thinking about buying one too and remember to achieve it one shot at a time.
🎥 This episode's kit/gear/equipment:
SmallRig Website - https://www.smallrig.com/
Cage - https://goo.gl/yj7w5H
Harddrive Mount - https://goo.gl/26Er3h
Cable Clamp - https://goo.gl/JUYnGx
Top Handle - https://goo.gl/opEJZ8
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