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2K BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, active m43, $995
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  • There ya go. Thanks V.

  • FYI RAW is not LOG, two different things.

    The RAW DNGs coming off of the camera are exactly as they should be. It's the same for any other camera shooting CinemaDNG. BMD FIlm is BMD's way of moving the DNGs back into a LOGSpace for colorists that prefer to begin that way.

    As mentioned a few days back (and, now being discovered), the Pocket Camera's RAW actually comes off of the cards looking fairly accurate if you expose within a one stop bracket, and you could literally just export that as ProRes and call it a day. That's only abnormal to me because the 2.5K's stills often looked unpleasant from the start, I'm finding the Pocket RAW DNGs almost deliverable when shot for the look.

    And the footage looks far better than the ProRes Video mode.

    A workflow on set could be to have your offloader transcoding to 1080 DNxHD or ProRes right from the CinemaDNG, and discarding the RAW if you want.

  • @kholi

    Sorry, but beg to differ. Unless the goal is highly-saturated color footage, it can be very difficult to grade RAWS without a conversion to BMD film.

  • @kholi Yeah. That last workflow is the one that I'd use most of the time.
    Difference between internal ProRes footage and RAW->DNxHD is very noticeable.

  • @jrd

    What are you differing on, exactly? I didn't say anything about grading RAW without BMD Film as a starting point?

    I said transcode directly from the RAW to ProRes to hand off?

    But, since you've mentioned it, it's actually pretty easy to grade from the RAW without BMD Film, you just start at a different place.

  • @kholi I'm not familiar with a lot of technical things, so I'm curious what you meant by "exposing within a one stop bracket". What does that mean?

  • One stop over or under target exposure. Less noise of course with one stop over, one stop under protecting highlights.

  • @kholi

    To your last point, grading the RAWs directly, without prior conversion, I find that getting the popping color and skewed contrast down to neutral is a losing battle. At least for my purposes, it's much more effective to convert to film log, and build the image up from scratch.

    For the rest, I'm no longer sure who was saying what.

    All that aside, since Shian's the expert on color grading, am interested hear his views on both ProRes film log and RAW.

  • Hi Everyone

    This is a first few days video review of the Raw recording in the Blackmagic Pocket Camera.

    On my website there is a link to download some raw footage too.

    Chris :)

  • Anyone hearing anything about a release date for the Tilta pocket rig? Holding off on the viewfactor till it is released, but I'm getting an itchy buy finger.

  • @vapourtrail You can't go wrong with the VF cage. Best $140 ever spent. And people love the cage!

  • @jrd I'm pretty sure Shian has only seen the ProRes stuff and that's from what we shot so he probably will not be a good source of info on this. If I were you I'd listen to Kholi for now. He has the most experience of anyone on this forum with this camera so far.

  • @vicharris What do you think of the VF vs Shape's cage?

  • RAW is not log for sure. It's trying to squeeze a higher DR into the range that can be displayed by today's displays.

    Log is a kind of lossy compression, actually. It's doing that quite efficiently by redistributing bits to areas where humans have a better perception of tonal changes and dropping some minor differences in areas where we don't see that we'll. But lossy nevertheless, and it was developed for film scans initially in a time when fast storage was still very expensive.

    Colorists like it because they can see from the start what was really recorded and what they can play with. But it's their task to turn dull and stale looking log footage into something attractive or expressive.

    If you know your camera very well and know how you exposed, you can drop the log conversion and grade from RAW. BTW, log looks different from all major camera manufacturers.

  • @nomad

    Raw is always preferable, just needs good software support.

  • Here's a few shots from my desert adventure I've been on. Nothing special by any means and these are just random shots I picked out to throw on a quick grade for people to check out. After it's all over I'll put together a well edited little piece. I'm sure people will comment about the aliasing in the power line scene but that's all Youtube there. The original 4444 file shows nothing.

    All shot with the Pany 14-140, I know I know (because I really had to reach out for some of these shots and) and the Rokinon 85mm. Graded in Davinci of course :)

  • A panny lens???.. How could you!!

    Great stuff...

  • I would like to see a comparison between GH2 or GH3 with a native lens in Smooth or Nature and iDynamic enabled in the highest setting against BMPCC in raw to compare the dynamic range in a shadow/highlight situation like indoor with a window or clouds in blue sky and shadow under a three or building. I think many people would like to see this...

  • I saw some jiggle and some jaggle and some bumps and some rolling shutter.

  • Oh and @VicHarris, nice images mate!! Would you mind if a steal a frame for my desktop background?

    ... @apefos .... it would still be nice to see the results of the testing.

  • @apefos: on a tangent, the fact the BMPCC doesn't have a Smooth, iDynamic, Nature, Party, CutePetCat or Underwater Sunset mode is what makes it so special in this day and age.

    It's the Pentax Spotmatic of modern movie making. You set your ASA/ISO, the aperture, your shutter speed (angle), frame up, focus and shoot, there is no need to guess what the manufacture means by an icon with a flower or a sun partially obscured by an umbrella.

    The most annoying thing about digital photo/cinematography to date is all the crap that gets in the way of the basics.

    Thank you BMD for keeping it simple xx

  • @Stylz, yes you did and like i said, I just grabbed some footage to throw up but thanks for pointing all that out. Great eye there mate. Now once again, when I'm done traveling, I'll throw together a PROPER EDIT and post then.