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BlackMagic: Official $2,995 raw cinema camera topic
  • 1156 Replies sorted by
  • kavadnikavadni

    @all .. Where did I order. Local distributor, an organisation who also are distibutor and service agent for Pro Sony/Panasonic etc. I have dealt with since my first Panasonic camera .. an F70 (my age is showing)

  • kavadnikavadni

    In terms of value. You get a full copy of Resolve (with dongle) .. value $995 You get Ultrascope Software .. value (let's say half price of hardware solution) $300

    I have both those items on my wishlist. To me that makes the camera only cost $1600

  • ttancredittancredi

    only reason not to buy BM would be gh3

    if it's true pana is not continuing AF line, maybe now we will see a longer step from gh2 to gh3 video-wise.
    GH series is not promising for stills. GX series is.

  • johnbrawleyjohnbrawley

    I wouldn't be concerned about the wait. BMD know how to do volume and i've seen their projections for how many cameras they will sell. These guys aren't' a small company. They do all the manufacturing themselves, aside form the sense ;-)

    jb

  • johnbrawleyjohnbrawley

    Oh, and it wasn't a dust bunny. Guys this was a hand built prototype. ONe of 5 or 6 that are made. The rest are at NAB. The sensor calibration isn't done yet. There are lots of dead pixels. The hand made prototypes aren't made in the usual clean room of the regular manufacturing.

    jb

  • RRRRRRRR

    @johnbrawley Aside from cutting into Canikon dslr markets, do you think there is any technical reason why they go for ef / zf mounts? That is, imo, right now the only slight qualm I have over the camera. E-mount or m43 would make a lot more sense from a technical POV. E-mount mostly due to the slightly shorter FFD than m43 and hence a bigger range of compatible lenses.

  • klem007klem007

    @RRRR i'm having that same feeling

  • everoevero

    Even though I love RAW, I think the requirements and workflow of editing RAW smootly will be a little demanding. Not to blame BMD ofcourse. And they do offer compression choices too. Personally I'd love to have some form of RAW compression, similar to RED raw choices - I can easily live with some compression setbacks, but still having the luxury of adjusting WB, shadow details etc. to a certain extent. ...Without something less than 100MB/sec files (based on 4 MB per frame I read somewhere, I might be wrong here).

    Anyway, It's really great to see such affordable RAW! And finally some pressure on the slower bigger corporations. To bad it won't compete directly with the FS700 - I like the idea of Sony rethinking the price of it ;-)

  • taktak

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev "I think this camera will be good in practice for the task it is made. But it'll become major disappointment for many who'll buy it."

    I agree 100 %

    This is a great camera because it will make other manufactures give us more features for a better price. But, it will not be easy to use properly and quickly. What does filmic really mean?, my super 8 cameras are filmic, so is my Bolex, but my GH2 and 5D are easy, fast and the output looks great. When fashion retouchers here in Paris started processing digital pictures, they all added grain. They dont anymore, the aesthetics have changed, the public is no longer shocked by high definition clean images and the next generation of viewers will expect it and have a different expectation of what "filmic" look like. What I saw from this camera looks very much like 16mm film, but is that a good thing? Soft, cool looking images with a big latituded are great, a great step forward and for that the camera can become a game changer, but in the sense that it will help change the game, not be the game. When I use 16mm film now it looks "retro", that's only because of the changing aesthetic.

    I'll probably be one of those Vitaliy is speaking about who buy it and become disappointed, I want it to be to me what a Bolex was to Jonas Mekas. I'm lucky that I live in the same building in Paris as the distributer for Blackmagic, so I will be ably to try one when they come in. Yes I'll post raw files and I might just sell my Bolex, but I'll keep by GH2.

  • RRRRRRRR

    Another thing I'm quite curious about, @johnbrawley - is what you think about the raw image at per-pixel level? (Fully realizing it wasn't an end product) The main reason I'm asking is because resolution related questions seems to be a matter of dispute on here and I'm guessing you had some restrictions on delivery format.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    @johnbrawley Could you pass a suggestion along to Blackmagic - Could they please install a codec that's PC friendly. For example, why not use their own MJPEG codec? And maybe create a higher quality setting for it to use with the 2.5K picture.

  • jfrojfro

    Just ordered one. Have time to cancel, but watched two interviews today from NAB with Black Magic (BM) folks and liked what I heard. Have extra batteries and lots of lens, so it's a no brainer for me. Only thing I'll need is to buy couple SSD drives. Per gigabyte, they are cheap compared to what we've been used on the hacked GH2's. Course, gonna be a lot more gigabytes captured.

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev "I think this camera will be good in practice for the task it is made. But it'll become major disappointment for many who'll buy it."

    I have a few fears also, just not sure what they are other than large amounts of data I'll be capturing and have to process and store. I'm trying to figure out for commercial work if I can get by with ProRes. Never edited it and not sure what the work flow would be on PC with Sony Vegas and Premiere CS5.5 which I use. I think ProRes is compressed, but not sure how much.

    Only time will tell to find out it we can used it both as a movie & documentary camera as well as a run and gun. I like light and uncomplicated and this looks pretty good (until the battery drains). Big question is will EVERYTHING we shoot on it be huge files or will ProRes be a reasonable workable compromise for commercial work.

    With the GH2's, I've been using it 2 ways. Sometimes with lower bitrate settings in the 40-66Mb/s and others, at the 120-144 Mb/s range that Driftwood has been feeding us. Not fun flashing camera to go back and forth. Used GH2 on an unplanned commercial shoot today and had just put Sanity 5.1 on it last night. Was just testing it and had the camera with me when they sprung the "can you shoot some video " this am when at the clients.

    That being said, I'm a huge believer in shooting raw so one can have more latitude to tweak. They claim Dynamic Range of 13 which isn't too shabby. Did hear that the white balance will be burned in to the file. Too bad on that.

    Anyway, we all have about 3 months to figure this out before the units will ship.

  • vladnikvladnik

    DNxHD is PC frendly... why everybody ignoring that option? @rozroz not just avid ,premiere to ....

  • RRRRRRRR

    I'm guessing that Vitaliy is talking about is people who have no real need for raw / prores / DNxHD out of the box will still buy the camera and get put off by the workflow to create moving images that in the end result @ 1080p are not too different to footage from the gh2 (amongst other cameras)..

    For anyone who makes film on shoestring budgets, this will make rental fees of an alexa seem expendable..

  • rozrozrozroz

    @vladnik- you're right. every Avid pc user should be completely satisfied :) it's a great codec.

  • vladnikvladnik

    the biggest problem will be for those who want to buy this camera to shoot backyard flowers and cats...anyone else are already familiar with intermediate codecs ... transcoding DNG to ciineform raw is same as MTS to prores in 5DTORGB...

  • RRRRRRRR

    @jfro

    Prores 422 has pretty similar bitrates to INTRA settings in the gh2.. So for file sizes that is not so different, if I recall correctly. The good part is that the compression on prores is pretty light, so CS5.5 should handle it without much strain to the CPU (less strain than h.264 causes).

    Edit: if you check out the NAB interviews, you can fit about 4 times more Prores or DNxHD footage than CinemaDNG..

  • soundgh2soundgh2

    1st casualty? Rumour site has the AF100 line deleted by Panny .....

  • MacalincagMacalincag

    People are also forgetting that Prores works on PC NLE's like CS5.5, although not the obvious choice.

  • Ralph_BRalph_B

    A PC friendly codec is one that does not use Quicktime. Quicktime on a PC is inferior to AVI. Blackmagic already makes an excellent MJPEG codec that is native PC. They should use it in the camera and make everyone happy.

  • RRRRRRRR

    DNxHD does not use Quicktime as far as I know. It's Avid's own codec isn't it?

  • luxisluxis

    the important thing about this camera is its price range for what it gives. so the top players in the industry might reconsider their pricing in a downward manner and/or push their invention even further to keep the top notch professional products which is good either way. shooting raw for a web, computer screens,(tv?) and similar is big time overkill but for a films that are going to end up on big screen situations raw/2.5k at this price is out of this planet. no matter how one looks at it. interesting times indeed ; ) do we have enough stories to tell with all that technology...

  • jfrojfro

    Just did some reading. I'm assuming at this point that ProRes and DNxHD is similar in size to Cineform. Also, Premiere CS5.5 will edit the ProRes files without transcoding on a PC. DNXHD on Premiere PC is going to take some more reading.

    ProRes 422 at 120Mbps ProRes 422 HQ at 185Mbps ProRes 4444 275-315.

    Seems either the 120Mb/s or 185Mb/s should suffice for commercial work. (I'm not referring to TV Commericals )

    Any opinions....

  • killagramkillagram

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev - I appreciate the honesty but exactly why do you feel it will be a disappointment by looking at the specs? From what I've read the specifications are nothing short of spectacular besides the 30p limitations (which hopefully can be expanded to at least twice that through firmware upgrades).

    Is it because BMD doesn't have a huge following and may not support the device?

  • ttancredittancredi

    +1 @vladnik @tak once upon a time when you saw a 16mm aesthetic you already thought : wait a second, there is someone talking to me now and I'll watch it with respect since I presume this guy really had something to say. this" respectfull" aesthethic and response was somehow achieved, at first, in dslrs with the use of shallow dof and the look-like film look. Of course once people started shooting cats,backyards mom's cooking french food, tv documentaries and musical clips all filmic respect was gone. So, in my opinion it is really good that this camera will need some care to be used and it won't be a "good" al around shooting camera. It would be nice seeing an aestethic line between cinema and tv doc, clips, pseudo visual poetry doc shooting again. Maybe the respect will return I for myself will only rent this camera once I have at list a finished script and all ready to shoot, for the rest, I'll stick with gh2.

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