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BlackMagic: Official $2,995 raw cinema camera topic
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  • @robmneilson

    I'm surprised a millionaire has so much time to argue with his customers online.

    I think you mean billionaire lol

  • very true....

  • He made most of that money on sunglasses.

  • Here's a nice summary of the cinema cameras which are available this year.... it's only missing the GH3... :-)

    http://thelightjournal.com/2012/07/13/new-2012-cinema-cameras/

  • Blackmagic seems like they are taking a humble approach. [with their marketing] That's rare these days. I think that sits well with people who avoid bullshit.

  • Over the weekend, Blackmagic Design changed their website URL to:

    http://www.blackmagicdesign.com

    (They removed the hyphen that previously was between "blackmagic" and "design".)

    Update your bookmarks ...

  • @peterdv_dot_com

    Thanks for info. I updated links on top post and all FAQs in Wiki.

    Hope that'y fire idiot who made this. Trashing all links and rankings before major products release.. Guys, read faq about how to do it properly first.

  • Interview with Blackmagic's President Dan May about the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

  • @Brian202020

    Thanks for posting. I'll check this.

    I have email of few BM guys, but they never answered any question. Say that it is all top secret :-)

  • And it looks like it will be first camera with absolutely zero examples of footage before shipping.
    BM is simply afraid to release it? Thinks that too much people will pull out instantly?

  • Maybe they are trying to emulate Apple for 'build-up'? They already have alot of people's interest. Also, alot of pre-release footage has looked bad from other cams and may go the other way as well. But off-course, i see what you mean. They haven't responded to my email either. :)

  • Considering this interview. One of the most useless interviews I ever heard.
    BM do not want on normal technical level about their camera.
    And one of the serious issues is they kept sensor efficiency. As all this 13 stops data are possible only is you use double ADC and very good cooling to low temperatures. For intended purpose - high price, scientific cameras located in controlled location it is all fine.
    We'll see how it'll work with real camera.

    Maybe they are trying to emulate Apple for 'build-up'? They already have alot of people's interest

    I see no logic in it.

  • Sincerely, I am all for this camera, but I think it is not very good to sell a camera without any footage when so many people have per-ordered the camera. I don't get by the argument that every-time you are getting out you are getting better, so you wait for the next on and on. That is a bit rubbish.

    I am sure that with a camera with the spec that they have, even if it is 80% of the finish thing you could do some very very nice images. People have been doing sometime some amazing job with camera with not even 1/4 the spec of this camera. So I think it is bit disloyal for them to treat their customers like that. I mean, I always thought that people are sometime a bit impatient and reckless, but damn I just realized that it is suppose to come out in two weeks and no damn image, so they are still tweaking it!!!!!!!!!

    I am still confident that this camera is going to be fantastic, because it would revolutionize the indie camera market. I hope that is not me and many other who want so much this camera to succeed that by principal Blackmagic should treat people who have already committed to their product like this. It is buying in complete blind faith and hope that in the end for those that have already committed to it, to be as good as the camera looks on the spec sheet.

  • @danyyyel

    And when we all receive our camera, we won't be able to release any of our footage because it will come shipped w/ an NDA ;-)

    Nah, but like the interview said, they're always finding something else to tweak every week, so I'm sure you can even expect more tweaks and updates rolling out once cameras are in the hands of customers.

  • I really do not understand tweak claims.

    As camera must be ready and with final firmware today and must start shipping to dealers (so they'll be able to start shipping orders in the end of July). It is not the case, as I see.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    I think firmware is ready enough to ship, but they are constantly nitpicking at it for any possible improvements. I say ship completely usable camera on time and provide firmware updates soon after, no matter how minor they may be.

  • @Macalincag

    My comment was about other thing.

    Why we still hear various things why we can't get any footage samples, if cameras MUST be already be ready and packaged for shipping to dealers around the world?

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    Oh, the million dollar question. I think no one can answer this one.

  • Sounds all so RED …

  • Again, I say I am all for this camera and seeing how they lowered to zero the price of Davinci resolve, I all for blackmagic. But common reason tell you that you can't be shipping in one week and still.................. tweaking with your camera. There are thousand of people that have pre-ordered the camera only on a spec list!!!!!!!!!!!!

    The worst for blackmagic is that the first image coming out of this camera is from some hobbyist would be cinematographer without experience in RAW workflow shooting his cat in an under-lit room.

  • @danyyyel doesn't the footage that John Brawley shot apply here? Or was that so long ago (lots of tweaks) that it no longer applies?

    I am still holding out hope for this cam, of course like the saying goes, "You can hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first!"

  • doesn't the footage that John Brawley shot apply here? Or was that so long ago (lots of tweaks) that it no longer applies?

    John footage was from some prototype, with different processing and had been graded and downsized thing as I remember.

    I am pretty sure that we never had even one frame in RAW from this camera. And on all shows they blocked recording in any format.

  • "Sounds so RED..."

    I think BMC is about 180 degrees from RED's "selling beta" B.S. My opinion? If the camera wasn't good enough to put "shipping" on it, why were you selling it? I can even describe all the production and post disasters that RED cameras created for several years...

    Face it. Who trusts any manufacturer's demo shots anyway. You can look at Canon history, and they have shown the same "shot on ____" on several very different cameras on their website. And who trusts clips on the Internet either? In my experience, it usually takes viewing hundreds of Internet clips to find a single shot that looks impressive enough to consider investing in a new camera. Just look at the RED shots on Vimeo. Lot's of scary poorly shot, poorly compressed RED footage out there still.

    The thing I look forward to with this is, Blackmagic actually has real post chops in their company, working on this camera. This may be the first time a camera has been released with a clear, supported RAW post pipeline. That alone gives people an all new breath of hope! I'm so tired of most camera manufacturers just dumping their latest creation out there with no thought of the project disasters they just created. Most just tell the user they have to figure out your own post data and image workflows. Good luck...

    Me? I'm excited to see what they ship.

  • A little tease

    Well. It’s been a while between drinks on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera footage front.

    I’m literally getting emails and tweets everyday clamouring for more footage ! I think I’m actually very close to being able to show some more clips. There some things coming up which I can hopefully talk about soon.

    In the meantime, I wanted to share with you some stills. These are framegrabs out of Resolve for a little test I did this weekend with writer/director Ben Phelps. You’re looking at ungraded and then graded stills. My Resolve skills are still amateurish at best, and these grades are single node grades with no noise reduction or sharpening.

    The footage was shot using ProRes 422 (HQ) with the “film” curve. This is still something that’s being feverishly developed, so it will still change by the time the camera ships, but you can see these lovely flat ProRes files are grading up beautifully.

    Lighting here is very very simple. I was by myself really with no electric support. (I did have the excellent service of Ella Gibbons who pulled focus for me. )

    I had just the ambient bounced daylight that was coming though the big windows. The sun was hitting the building across the street. I had a few pracs on which didn’t do much in the scheme of things. I also had a single Kino Diva set as a mixed grill and a 1×1 Lite panel. I was basically using these as edges and for shaping.

    There’s a lot of mixed colour temperatures in here. Daylight (changing as the light went down) plus the Kino, the daylight litepanel AND a mix of pracs in both tungsten and fluro. Plus some regular domestic fluro. A great test for us !

    The camera was shooting at ISO 800 @ 5600K and using Zeiss CP2′s in EF mount (supplied by my friends at Lemac rentals). Most of the CU’s were shot at T2.8. The wider shot towards the windows was T8 (from memory).

    Source: http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/a-little-tease/

    Since the full sized JPEGs aren't viewable if you're not logged in, here are some direct links:

    http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-22-2.jpg http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-22-1.jpg

    http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-2-1.jpg http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-2-2.jpg

    http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-13-2.jpg http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-13-1.jpg

    http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-39-2.jpg http://johnbrawley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/casey_1-39-1.jpg

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