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2K BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, active m43, $995
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  • 3d potential- I was thinking with a pair of these flip one over they would make a good 3d rig since the lens could be placed close like that... not sure the exact distance they could be fit but from pictures it looks idea if you just flipped one cam over. Thoughts on the 3d potential? I know 3d is dumb blah blah....but some people want it.

  • I think the best thing is wait and see how the BMPCC pans out, me I believe it's going to be a great camera. If John Brawley can say the images are soo.. simular to those of the BMCC that you couldn't tell the difference, the guy that introduced us to the BMCC that says a lot.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev ProRes is not RAW though, so corrections could be done in camera. Which software would correct lens distortion automatically, based on camera meta data? Resolve? No matter whether the correction is done in camera or by external software, it should result into resolution loss since the camera does not down-sample to generate 1080p. I think Black Magic put the active mount on the wrong camera. It should be on the cinema camera where as the pocket camera would be fine with a passive mount for Super 16 lenses. It annoys me that Black Magic seems hobbles it's products with lacking features and justifies it with the lower price (hyper deck shuttle without control monitor, BMCC with a passive mft mount etc). I am pretty sure that BM would sell more pocket cams for a price of lets say $1500 if it the full sensor resolution of the 2.5K sensor, for my sake down-sampled to 1080. Heck, I would even pay 2000 if it included Resolve. I am not willing to wait until BM upgrades the BMCC to an active mft mount. I can't imagine technical reasons, it is just marketing to not piss off the people who have been waiting for months to get the passive mft mount version.

  • Easier then the gh2...

  • Peter123456, the 3.x crop actually means it will be easier to find lenses for it...

  • I'm pretty sure BMD didnt design the BMPocket to be "the gh2 killer." It's intended to be another tool to add to your tool box. I don't use a hammer to cut wood...make sense?

    The cameras may not have RAW yet, and it could be a while before it's a reality, I don't think BMD would false advertise.

  • @fatpig , at least one disadvantage of this vs GH2 that I see, is that it is more cropped. This means it is harder to find wide angle lenses for it. Also, you are going to have more storage costs, and will have to buy faster/larger/more expensive SDHC cards, and maybe a faster editing machine. Also, it is more expensive than a used GH2. Nonetheless, I am still very interested.

  • @_gl

    the BMC CEO confirms that they're initially using true lossless compression on the Pocket cam as expected (2:1 - 1.5:1 rates), and a lossy compression on the 4k model.

    Let's just wait for cameras and tests.

    watch the video @ 9:00:

    Right now none of the cameras have ANY raw, so let's ignore fantasies of this guy for now.

  • Thanks @TrackZillas, the BMC CEO confirms that they're initially using true lossless compression on the Pocket cam as expected (2:1 - 1.5:1 rates), and a lossy compression on the 4k model. But they will probably offer the lossy version on the Pocket cam later.

    watch the video @ 9:00:

    9:00

  • @_gl

    Calculations show that loseless at least is not an option for SDHC cards they use. 93 312 000 bytes per second in 30fps mode (and it is without audio and small DNG format added weight) if no compression is used. So, for any hard frames it'll just go into errors.

    As I already said in other topic, most people misunderstood Red legal battle with Sony, as it is, in fact, warning to BM. And it is the reason why on exhibition none of new cameras had raw support. So, now they just want to play nice, depicting loseless compression (to not get into legal issues), while all words had been about loss one.

    It is also can be real reason of absent 60fps modes in all cameras.

  • Where does BMC's Pocket page say their RAW is lossy?? It only mentions "lossless CinemaDNG RAW", including in the specs. Nowhere does it say 'visually lossless' or anything else. Lossless compression means no data is thrown away at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless).

    Red do compress, but they call it 'visually lossless' which tells you that it's lossy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDCODE). That's exactly what Cineform call one of their codecs because again, it's lossy. Yes, 'visually lossless' is what the BMC rep at NAB said, but I'm pretty sure he was wrong. He clearly checked the RAW codec details as the first rep got RAW support completely wrong, so I doubt he pulled the 1.5:1 compression ratio out of his ass. And that's exactly the kind of ratio you expect from lossless audio/video compression (eg. FLAC, UT Video, Huffyuv, Lagarith).

  • @kodakmoment: Useless is perhaps too strong a word. Remember the camera is cropping the center (and therefore presumably least distorted) part of the frame...

  • @kodakmoment

    By idea it must not correct any distortions. At least in all RAW modes. All it can do is set proper data for software correction.

  • photozone.de measures the uncorrected distortion of m43 lenses. If the BMPCC does not correct distortion, it is going to be next to useless.

  • It would be good to see some images/video which shows the distortion on some of the wider lens options for the BMPC as some of the BM team seemed to think there was no correction for either distortion or CA in cam..

  • Does the BMPCC correct distortion and CAs?

  • As was noted, if you play a little with image, the strange position of the sensor make sense.. image

  • @Sangye Additional optical elements can degrade the quality of a lens even behind the main optics quite a bit. It's not only about resolution, but CA, coma, distortion and such too. The Mutar tele converters for example – made by Zeiss and considered some of the best in the world – even they degrade the quality of my excellent Zeiss Contax lenses. So, we need to wait for facts from real world testing.

  • No downside whatsoever!

    This guy has made an interesting calculator : http://bmpcc.rubenkremer.nl/

  • Can someone point out the downside to this vs a GH2 please? :) Looks amazing!

  • @WhiteRabbit Yeah love that those software updates cause you don't have to constantly keep buying new models. Blackmagic philosophy is to give power back to the people love that also..

  • @TrackZillas, thanks for posting the video. Future firmware updates are looking promising for these three cameras, and GP now has an interesting vision playing out.

  • Preorder completed. I have all the glass plus I have a GH3 + GH2. I think this should cover most of my film making needs for the next couple of years. I can see the GH3 and the BMPC filling each others weaknesses.

  • Please use proper topic for speed booster talks

    yea...these posts about the pcc and the speed booster together are kinda of stretching the laws of probability ...all things undelivered and considered !