While optic technology on camera phones has advanced tenfold, you still can’t go about filming with an iPhone and expect respect as a ‘serious photographer’. For that, you’ll have to look to the likes of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

Although the features and benefits list on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is impossibly long – possibly rivaling that of the freakin’ Space Shuttle’s manual or the Internal Revenue Code – certain things about this compact, semi-pro/pro (depending on whom you ask) camera stand out to us. First, its 2.5K image sensor with 13 dynamic range (DR) stops allows the operator to easily manipulate high quality stills from digital video. Second, the built-in SSD recorder lets the photographer (or cinematographer) capture video in RAW 12-bit, Avid DNxHD, and/or ProRes (Apple) formats. Afterwards, plug the SSD right into a computer and edit shots right from the disk drive. Third, the metadata entry function (essentially making the insertion of metadata [e.g. tags, time codes, shot nos., etc.] onto slides a breeze once the user acclimates to it) is something you just won’t find on any old DSLR.

Comes in two flavors: EF, for flexibility of lens swapping among Cannon EF and Zeiss ZE series, and MFT, for four-thirds, manual lenses, and lens adapters. Oh, and either camera comes with Davinci Resolve software, which is basically any photographers wet dream in terms of color manipulation.