Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro headset can play back videos in a high-res 3D Immersive Video format, and now there’s a $30,000 pro camera that can shoot videos for it.
Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Camera, touted as the first official pro camera that can shoot in Apple’s Immersive Video format, officially costs $29,995 and will be shipping by “late Q1 2025,” but preorders are opening up today on Blackmagic’s website. The camera was announced at Apple’s WWDC developer conference earlier this year alongside VisionOS 2.
The Cine Immersive camera’s specs are imposing: 8,160×7,200-pixel resolution per eye, capable of recording 90fps 180-degree 8K video for Vision Pro with 16 stops of dynamic range with dual camera sensors. The camera comes with 8TB of onboard storage and 10G Ethernet support for cloud-syncing to Blackmagic’s servers. Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio, the software that you’ll need to edit this Immersive Video footage, will get an update next year alongside the camera.
While this camera isn’t in any way intended for your average consumer, it’s the upper range pro camera that could spark more pro video production for Apple’s hardware, as the Vision Pro aims to pivot to being a more affordable/mainstream device in the next few years. Right now, there are still very few immersive-format videos in Apple’s own catalog for Vision Pro, although some early efforts look pretty amazing. The amount of available video content has to increase to make the whole proposition more appealing. Blackmagic’s pro camera, which appears to be far more portable than the earlier immersive cameras Apple used in some of its shoots, looks like a start — but for anyone else, shooting basic 3D videos on iPhones will be the way to go until something like this becomes available at a smaller scale.
