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BMCC on a budget, what is needed?
  • A lot of people talk about how much the BMCC will cost, so I wanted to give a little run down on budget options. What is NEEDED?

    2 SSDs (switch one out when it's full) - 109$ each for 120g models via newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211588

    1 Battery (any reason why you can use the tekkeon batteries? - 120$ from BH.

    Thats it.

    Want to have a more professional rig? Well if you don't already own one, you can buy cheap one off of PV deals for 100$, and then buy the 50$ adapter from CPM tools for the Tekkeon batteries.

    Boom, Cheap BMCC bundle for 3340usd, minimum. Or if you're ambitious, another 150$. oh, and you should probably already have a tripod. if not, WHY?

    Mind you, this is the bare MINIMUM one would need to shoot.

  • 12 Replies sorted by
  • The SSD you have listed might or might not work. The SSD approved list is here: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/detail/faqs?sid=27541&pid=27542&os=mac

  • Those are all name brand options, no surprise. I'm sure anything with the same read/write speed would work fine. regardless, we wont know until the camera ships.

    Point of the thread was to outline for less than 500$ you can have the camera fully functional. It is NOT thousands of extra $$.

  • i think the thing people most over look on the BMCC is that you're also going to need a lot of storage to dump those SSD's on to when you're done shooting, ESPECIALLY if you're shooting raw. I think thats going to be the biggest cost. You're looking at a few hundred dollars for a small raid setup to get you going… and over time, it will really start adding up if you're archiving your footage.

  • That's the price you pay for better footage. People were complaining about the space it took to shoot with higher bitrate GH2 hacks... well? Then shoot with a lesser image if you don't think a better image is worth it.

  • I agree… and it's worth it… but I've had to talk some sense into some of my friends that think they're going to get by shooting RAW with just the cost of the BMCC, and no thought to the price of storage or computing power they'll need once they make the jump from their DSLRs to the BMCC. Better to set that expectation before someone spends $3k on a camera they can't afford to use.

  • That's a good point. I see where you're coming from, now.

    I shoot a lot of Epic at low compression rates, and knowing Blackmagic needs more space than that was scary at first but now it doesn't bother me at all. The more important issue is being able to get the files down to a harddrive faster.

    You need esata on both ends or better for sure.

  • Not having any compression may actually be why the BMCC looks better (in terms of color fidelity and skin tones) than the REDs. I'm honestly just planning to shoot in prores unless I have a job that requires raw. and I'll be using the Seagate thunderbolt adapter to edit right off of the drive, probably.

    not the greatest option but it gets the job done until I get enough money for a small raid setup.

  • Nnaaaah. Compression has nothing to do with the color. It's BMD's color science and experience shining through to be honest.

    =T Just wait til you actually shoot with it and get the hang of the camera... I don't want to shoot with anything else aside from Alexa, really. Oh and maybe F55 when it's time.

  • I've heard a similar comment from shian about it being a pain to shoot with. What makes it so?

  • =P Vitaliy calls those comments something along the lines of emotional outbursts. I kind of agree, haha.

    I've had no trouble shooting with the camera on or off of a full rig. And it was just me running and gunning on one shoot, and on an Epson commercial in another where we used two Blackmagics to cover everything.

    No worse than trying to shoot with a GH2 without a rig.

    When I mentioned getting the hang of it, I meant learning how to expose it.

  • Great to hear, Kholi. Now if only the camera would ship. hahah