Firmware Friday: It’s all about the video as Blackmagic, Digital Bolex cameras get updates

posted Friday, December 5, 2014 at 2:34 PM EDT

After a truly monumental Firmware Friday last week, things have calmed down a little here at the Imaging Resource newsdesk. This week, we're aware of only five firmware updates, all for cameras aimed first and foremost at the video crowd.

Australia's Blackmagic Design makes frequent appearances in our Firmware Friday roundups thanks to a pretty aggressive update program -- both for new features and swift bugfixes -- and this week is no exception. The Blackmagic Camera Utility 1.9.10 update, issued a few days ago, makes changes for four camera models. The Blackmagic URSA, Pocket Cinema Camera, Cinema Camera and Production Camera 4K all gain better reliability for the in-camera formatting function when using Apple's HFS+ filesystem. In addition, an error when reading timecode input with the Blackmagic URSA has been corrected.

You can get the Blackmagic Camera Utility 1.9.10 update here, and no other changes are made in this new release.

And that leaves just one other camera with new firmware this week. We've told you a few times over the last couple of years about the handsomely retro Digital Bolex, and now we can tell you about its latest firmware. Digital Bolex D16 firmware version 1.2 is installed with the Bolex Update Utility app, after first removing a few screws as shown here for an earlier update.

Changes made in the new Digital Bolex firmware are as follows:

Timecode support has been added
Single, continuous and timelapse shooting mode are now provided. In timelapse mode, you can set the interval between shots in either seconds or minutes
Audio and video sequences from the D16 will now sync up automatically in your non-linear editor, thanks to a renamed audio sequence
An optional dead pixel correction function has been added
Response time has been improved for both menus and overlays