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2K BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, active m43, $995
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  • @matthere

    Get good advice - ignore most things they say at NAB. I think that due to secrecy all they know is some things written on tiny paper that they must eat after reading.

  • As I have understood it, MFT Speed booster opens up the field of view of a lens about 25%, not 50%. This means, that the viewing angle of: for example 50mm becomes similar to 35mm lens. Depth of field remains the same as with 50mm with it's original max. aperture. However, the amount of light, that the lens produces, increase about 50 %. Now, compared to 5dmkii FF camera, 50mm lens with super16mm gives a field of view similar to 150mm lens in 5dmkii. To get a similar shot with 50mm on 5dmkii, you would need to use 25mm lens + speed booster attached to BMC Pocket. Now, the depth of field would be wider with that lens compared to a 50mm lens. GH2, (which is 2x crop compared to 5d mkii), image would be similar with BMC Pocket, when the speed booster was attached, but only if one would find a suitable lens for it (with wide angles it is difficult). Low light would not be any more sensitive, but it would look out much better.

    With my experience on Super16mm cameras, I hardly ever used any lenses wider than 12mm:s, because they lost all the character and looked out like video. If 10mm-to 12mm lens is used, it was better to be one of a premium quality. For the BMC Pocket, my dream set of lenses would be 12mm SLR Magic, 17,5mm Voigtlander and a 58mm Minolta MC rokkor with Speed booster.

  • @eyeiaye Here is one of Kholi's recent vids with original BMCC camera for reference. If this is out of place Vitally I apologize.

    If the new smaller s16 cam looks anything like this (which they stated it will) then it's all good.

  • Nice concept but I have to wonder what is the business model of this compact BMCC. How big is this market for $995. No doubt BMCC is not going to try to compete against all the mirrorless crowd out there. Would a guy with a Sony RX carry in addition a compact BMCC for video? If the volume is not big, then why do this? Let's assume volume is big, does BMCC have the operations skills to support large volume with high quality.

  • Just hoping metabones hire all unemployed people in their country to work in m43 speedbooster mass production. If not, the queue of buyers will go around all the equator line...

  • Good show video VK. I do wish BM wouldn't keep using the term 'visually lossless'. In the past Cineform used that for their lossy codec, ie. 'it's not really lossless, but close enough'.

    'Lossless' is the right term.

  • @_gl

    Nope, their compression has losses, it is not losseless, hence the term - visually loseless.

  • The image in Camp Comet's video is so beautiful...

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev, everything I've read suggests their RAW is true lossless, their reps are confused. DNG has a lossless compression mode in the specs, and 1.5:1 again is a typical lossless ratio.

  • @_gl

    I already told to ignore things their reps tell at NAB :-) You can't specify any rates for loseless compression, you can just say that average compression for typical situation will be. And I think that actual ratios will be quite more than 1.5:1, more like 5:1.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    You can't specify any rates for loseless compression,

    If you've read my posts you know I already know that. I've worked with lossless compression a lot (including programming with it).

    And I think that actual ratios will be quite more than 1.5:1, more like 5:1.

    It makes no sense to offer RAW and then throw the information away. It's a true lossless mode (as is part of the DNG specs).

  • @_gl

    As I can see, Adobe offers lossy DNG compression also.

    Simple calc show that 30fps in pocket cam require (1920×1080×12÷8)×30 = 93 312 000 bytes per second

    Making it loseless is true way to issues with present SD cards, as in hard to compress frame it can just stuck.

  • Does anyone know of a camera that has single 1080p bayer sensor, so that we can can have an idea of the resolution capable from the bmpc.

  • So using C mount and PL mount lenses bypasses the 3x crop factor? Anything else like Canon FDs, Nikons etc. will be 3x?

  • @danyyel, the GH2 or GH3 in 1080 ETC mode is 1:1 pixel mapped from the Bayer sensor. Same thing if you crop the BMCC's 2.4 k to 1080p. 1080 windowed mode on RED cameras. Nikod D4 in 1080 crop mode. Lots more examples.

    @alabastard69, the BMPCC sensor diagonal is 1/3 as long as a full-frame 35 mm photographic camera sensor diagonal. That's where the crop factor of 3 comes in: attaching a full frame lens to the BMPCC is equivalent to shooting on a full frame camera with the same lens and cropping the resulting images by a factor of three in each dimension. It also means you get the same diagonal angle of view on the BMPCC using a lens that has 1/3 the focal length of a lens on a full frame camera. For example, a 12 mm lens on the BMPCC gives the same angle of view as a 36 mm lens on a full frame camera. It doesn't matter if that is a 12 mm lens designed for full frame cameras, or m43 cameras, or Super 16 cameras. They all have the same focal length and they more than cover the BMPCC sensor, so they give the same angle of view on the BMPCC. Good luck finding a full frame 12 mm lens, though. On full frame, 12 mm is super super wide. You'll probably only find that as a fish eye lens. On m43, 12 mm is wide. On Super 16, 12 mm is normal.

    The mount doesn't always tell you what format the lens was designed for. There are C-mount lenses for bunches of different formats, some smaller and some larger than Super 16. Same for PL mount.

    @_gl said

    It makes no sense to offer RAW and then throw the information away.

    Tell that to RED or Cineform.

    Blackmagic's web site pretty clearly says that the BMPC4k has lossy raw, and BMPCC has lossless raw. Lossless raw at 1080/30p 12 bits per photo site is 60+ MB/s; 89 MB/s at the quoted minimum compression ratio of 1.2:1, which is very nearly the top write speed of any SDXC card. The largest SDXC card supporting that rate is 64 GB, which translates to about 15 minutes of recording. We'll just have to wait and see how that pans out.

  • It makes no sense to offer RAW and then throw the information away.

    Redraw compression is visually lossless until a 3:1 compression ratio. Movies like Spiderman were shot around 7:1 Redraw compression. If it'sgood enough for them, it should be good enough for us ;)

  • @balazer , I think that perhaps the best comparison is to take the BMC and crop it to 1080p because the red is very soft at 2k if I am not mistaken. I think it is the olpf of the red which is very strong.

  • Looking at that low-light test with the BMCC, where these sensors really seem to shine is in medium to well-lit situations. I'm not sure if it's just Vimeo compression, but the shadows look almost as muddy as what I'm accustomed to seeing on a GH2. The highlight roll-off is sublime, though.

  • Other sample footage of the BMC from @Kholi

    the BMC shines bigtime & the pocket camera from what kholi said looks very simular to the BMC..

  • @TrackZillas --

    I just picked up the Super16mm Zeiss Superspeed lenses thanks to my friends over at Blacklist...

    Between today and Saturday I'm going to shoot a lot of S16, crop it to the proper aspect ratio or close to the PocketCam and post a ProRes422HQ of what I've shot after color work. It WILL not be for the purpose of showing compression etc. just FOV/DOF equivalent to what the PocketCam would do, and likely the overall "look" from Blackmagic.

    Strapping on the Hot Rod PL mount and Super 16s now to measure out the frame size.

    @apefos @Ian-T

    Thanks guys, Ian I meant to respond to you on VImeo, will get to it in a bit. Been running around since Vegas. >.<

  • @kholi awesome, looking forward to see the Superspeeds on the BMC, thanks!

  • what a nice s16 lens set (9.5, 12, 16, 25, 50):

    HS_Zeiss_Mk_II_S16mm_st5sm.jpg
    640 x 360 - 41K
  • @kholi Nice!!! can't wait to see the results..

  • @apefos

    Add a 5.9/T1.8, an 8/T2.4 and a 10-100/T2 zoom to that. =] I'll try to shoot footage with them all and label the shots, and also with SLR 12 and 25 HyperPrime.