One day my 4K BM Production camera will come - please

There is a bit of a lull in the world of 4K it seems. Sony has established a bit of an unexpected niche in the high end with their F-55; Arri is getting a big boost from its Alexa being used to great affect on Game of Thrones and Canon's much admired C300 has a 4K big brother in the C500. I haven't used any of them, partly because I don't want to spend the price of a convertible Mini on a camera, but mainly because I don't have a crew of 6 six to carry all the peripheral kit that these cameras require.

Of all the specs of all the cameras in all the world this is the one of most interest to me at the moment:

I put my name down for one of these mythical creatures the day after it was announced with CVP in London who don't exactly want to get my hopes up for an early delivery with these words on their website: 

At the moment we're not sure when it is scheduled to ship or will actually ship but based on our experience with the existing 2.5K model we expect long delays.

Our pricing is tentative, so may be adjusted upwards / downwards if the camera price is varied between order placement and shipping date.

Hopefully the price will come down because with exchange rates at the moment the UK price should be £2566 not the £3210 CVP are pricing it at - the difference would pay for quite a few SSD drives I'm going to need.

But the big question has to be the shipping date - what does it mean? The first one, the first 1000, a couple to a shop in downtown Melbourne? Black Magic is one of the most innovative companies in  the camera world but it still relies on component suppliers, one of whom screwed up with the sensors of the first Cinema Camera and rather too many people are still waiting for their cameras who ordered it in the early days.

I have faith though - mainly because I believe Grant Perry would physically drive the white van to deliver the camera because he comes from a post production background, and we post productioners do anything to deliver on time. I mainly shoot stock and I shoot a lot in London and I can't wait to suck the colour out of London and put it onto the screen, even if I will only see a quarter of the picture initially.

I have been promised that within a month I will get my hands on a pre-production model and run a couple of tests. It will probably be raining. This is London after all. At least the lull will be filled.