2K BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, active m43, $995

_gl

@Tron, good user-name :).

@Ralph_B, those lenses are apparently designed for IR/near-IR capture. Does that have any impact on visible-light quality, eg. aberration & flaring?

Tron

@Aria Yeah, I'll bet SLR Magic is already working on a nice set of cheap, sharp lenses with full coverage... do you hear us Andrew?!! :)

WhiteRabbit

@futur2, I found this.

John_Farragut

@Ralph_B Are those Kowa lenses any good? If only these were sold by stores. Prices seem all right.

If only one could use Nikon 1 lenses -- I mean, they have a 10mm, 6.7-13mm, 11-27.5mm.

cantsin

My understanding is that the Kowa lenses do not fit c-mount adapters for Micro Four Thirds, at least not unless one modifies their mount.

futur2

pardon my poor google abilities, but is it possible to see some material shot with those kowa lenses? reviews?

Ralph_B

Guys, lenses already exist, and they're not that expensive.

http://www.1stvision.com/lens/kowa/LM8HC.html

http://www.1stvision.com/lens/kowa/LM6HC.html

and here:

http://www.kowa-usa.com/kowanewweb/lenses/fa8.html

matthere

@Aria +1 I would be very surprised if manufacturers aren't already looking at the huge buzz around the idea of a popular pocketable cinema camera... And thinking how can we get a slice of that pie? SLR magic have on a number of occasions asked the m43 user base what lenses they would like for the system, and we now have the 12mm 1.6 as a result (thanks). It is a shame about the distortion of the lenses listed, but maybe correction will come later, and maybe (just maybe) some of the companies that rely of correction will think about opting for less reliance on correction in the future? (We can hope..) More choice for us, I don't see as a bad thing : )

Aria

I believe the BM Pocket Cam will be highly successful and will cause lens makers to look to provide wide angle lenses for this camera. We've seen already how much the Niche Market Producers have responded with new products for m4/3. It seems to me that as soon as we start voicing our needs companies will start to address that need just based on the success of products they've already made for the m4/3 mount. I predict we won't be waiting too long for products to come along for the wide end on the BM Pocket Cam.

Sangye

Well, count me among those that don't really care about moderate distortion. For 90% of shots, it won't matter to me. For the other 10%, I'll correct them in post. Having a reasonably sharp lens that flares nicely and has a smooth focus throw and bokeh, is much more important to me.

cantsin

@gl: For serious work with the Pocket, I think we'll have to use manual lenses like Voigtlanders, and adapted Super 16mm glass. The electronic MFT lens option smells more like a marketing gimmick.

_gl

Here's an animated GIF version of the uncorrected vs corrected to see the difference more clearly (you probably have to click it to see the animation).

Not exactly terrible, but working off 2.5k would be nicer of course. Also note that even if they did it in-camera on the Pocket for ProRes, it would only buy you convenience but no more resolution, as there aren't more pixels to work with in the first place.

cantsin

@KeithLommel: I've simulated the result you would get with 14mm/2.5 (the lens which BlackMagic used to advertise the camera) by taking a raw 16:9 photograph with the lens on a GH2, switching off all geometry corrections in the raw converter and cropping into the medium 65.6% of the image to obtain the same field of view as with the BM Pocket camera. It's quite heavily distorted for a normal focal length on the BM Pocket, and would probably be even better visible if I had shot people.

This is how the 14mm/2.5 would look on the BM Pocket without geometry correction:

This is is how it should look if there was some clean way of applying the geometry corrections:

KeithLommel

@cantsin: Yes, this is a serious concern, but bear in mind that the BMPCC's smaller sensor means that it is cropping heavily into the center of the image circle from any of these lenses, and thereby cropping out the worst of the distortion. Certainly, some distortion will remain even in the center portion of the image that the sensor is recording, but it might only be objectionable on the most demanding architectural shots... although that remains to be seen.

cantsin

There will be one problem w/ using Panasonic and Olympus MFT lenses on the Pocket. Practically all of them (all zooms, all lenses below 45mm) have major barrel distortions that only get corrected in software. I.e. camera firmware or raw converters photoshop the optical flaws of the lens away. This works well enough on multi-megapixel images. But with the sensor of the Pocket being only 1080p, there will be no spare pixels for keeping these software corrections invisible. The image has to degrade/suffer partial pixellation.

And: Can the camera firmware apply these lens corrections at all, on the fly, when recording ProRes? Would the camera controller chip even have the required horsepower for this?

With lenses like Panasonic 14mm/2.5, the 20mm/1.7, the 14-40mm and the 14-140mm, distortions of the unprocessed images are very pronounced, or in plain English: really ugly. They're bad enough to render these lenses unusable on the Pocket unless the camera sensor actually has more native pixels than 1920x1080 for correction in firmware or in post.

_gl

That said, I can find no evidence that anyone has tried on any Blackmagic camera.

Hey @David_Cole, 's been a while. That's surprising.

@johnbrawley, David, myself and a couple of others have been shooting our DIY'ed m43 stereoscopic solutions for a while now. I'm a programmer and I've actually written my own software to wrangle the 3D footage. If BlackMagic is interested (PM me) I'm sure any of us would be up for testing and giving feedback on 3D use of their cameras. A simple firmware tweak may be all that's required to get something pretty good up and running, even without full-blown Genlock.

David_Cole

powerup-sync workaround would still be useful if it works on the Pocket

These babies have LANC, so, I would hope that a LANC start / packet timing analyzer (like the LANC Shepherd) would be as effective - or better - than power-sync. That said, I can find no evidence that anyone has tried on any Blackmagic camera.

Tungee78

Ok i made a mistake; The pitcures are for 16mm and not for Super 16mm! here are the real pics: So sorry guys, hope nobody throw his money for the Fujinon ;(

Cosmicar TV lens Silver 12,5mm f1.4

Cosmicar TV lens Black 12,5mm f1.9

Fujinon 9mm f1.3

ixvi

if there are speedbooster my choice is tokina 11-16 2.8. As far as I know is parfocal, no? Sorry for my english.

Tungee78

These wide C-mount Lenses will full cover the S16-Sensor ! The first is a Cosmicar TV lens Silver 12,5mm f1.4 without c-mount thread modification, the second Cosmicar TV lens Black 12,5mm f1.9 without c-mount thread modification, the third one is Fujinon 9mm f1.3 with c-mount thread modification. Im so lucky that i have 5 of them ;)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76135655@N07/8399279500/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/76135655@N07/8596673591/in/photostream/<img

double_vision

@Aria, yes you can do whatever you like, it's your money :) I was giving the advice to other people.

_gl

@johnbrawley, have you heard of any attempts to synchronize the sensors of two Pocket bodies for 3D capture? Would triggering capture via the Lanc port allow this?

Note I'm not talking about loosely starting capture at the same time, or even starting at the same frame. With 3D you need sub-frame accurate capture, with synchronisation preferably at the scanline level, else any motion looks terrible. It doesn't matter if both bodies start several whole frames apart (that can be corrected in post), but that the sensors start scanning from the top at the same time.

Usually that is done with Genlock, but you only ever see it on high-end cameras. With the GH1/GH2 you can get a reasonable amount of initial synchronisation by powering both bodies simultaneously (I use a dual GH2 rig with a custom circuit to do that). The downside is that the sensors then gradually start to drift apart, so it's only suitable for short takes (depending on how closely matched any two bodies are) and you have to keep power-cycling.

A real on-going electrical sync like Genlock is a much better solution for 3D, but the powerup-sync workaround would still be useful if it works on the Pocket. Would love to hear some feedback from BlackMagic on either method.

odessa

See post before my from @rsquires I just cut a frame from his video )

luxis

@odessa hey what lens is this?

lmackreath

still vignettes according to this

http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/2513-pocket-cinema-camera-c-mount-compatibility-list/#entry31703

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