Come on, folks, there is a difference between a critical attitude towards business practices of a company (like Vitaliy's position) and making an individual fellow filmmaker not feeling welcome to our forum (like some others seem to do).

To me you are very welcome, John, since it's great to have someone on the forum who knows a lot of other cameras in and out to be able to compare once you are allowed to speak up and show more.

I've been in the same situation like you several times (tester under NDA restrictions) and have been treated bad even by people I considered friends – just because they were so curious about the 'next big thing'. But if you give in and start to leak, you'll never be a tester again (other than for public betas). That would be bad for all of us, since testers from the profession can influence the development of the next product (version) and inform us all with a lot more experience before we all can buy into something new (or decide not to do so).

IMHO, John wouldn't do us any service by leaking, but he can serve the whole community by staying!

May I ask for some courtesy and some patience? These are wonderful human virtues…

I think we just have to wait and not get personal with anyone on this matter. BM has decided to market it in a certain way. But I think they don't not comprehend exactly that marketing a cinema camera and some capture card are very different. They might not understand that the emotional background is very very different.

Now it is perhaps not there fault that people have pre ordered in droves. Perhaps it is the fault of the resellers. But not showing footage before launch could bite them very hard if it does not meet the insane expectation that people have put in it. People won't look at resellers etc, if anything is not as what most preordering think it would be. They are going to turn on BM. One possible pitfall could be the rolling shutter etc. You never know.

For now I will just wait an see. I sincerely hope this camera is as good as it seems on paper. If it is not, then BM will just have suffer the consequence. It will be utterly there fault.

I think the main problem here is many people are acting like they know for certain BM wont ship out on time. They do have 5 days left. Whether it is likely or not that they will ship out within these 5 days, I don't know. I just think people should wait until they are actually late on their shipments before making claims that it is bad business to not inform their customers if it will be shipping late. Because if it is going to ship in the next 5 days, then they have no need to. Now if they don't, then there is a problem. I have nothing fore or against BM, but I just feel we should wait until they are actually late before anything. I do understand the concern though, I have pre-ordered many items before, and if they ship late, it does make me mad, but I until it is actually late, I can't say a damn thing.

To those of you who pre-ordered and are waiting for it, best of luck. I hope it arrives on time, and hope its all its cracked up to be.
To those who are waiting like I am, lets see what they can do once they get their cameras.

Pool Shark (Footage)

This is the moving footage for the little test shoot I did with director Ben Phelps. He wanted to try out some visual ideas for another project he’s doing so it was a chance for me to steal some shot for you guys to see !

As mentioned previously, I kept lighting very simple. It’s a Kino diva in mixed grill, and a 1×1 Litepanel in daylight mode.

I also had a few pracs on in the background.

Lenses were the lovely Zeiss Compact Primes supplied by my good friends at Lemac. The 18mm for the wide, 35mm for the panning shot of Casey at the table and most of the closer shots were the 50mm or the 85mm.

Exposures were mostly T2.8 or T8 for when I was looking back at the windows. Shooting at ISO800 to ProRes 422 (HQ) in film mode.

Post on this was that I pulled the clips into FCPx. I threw a quick edit together of some shots, then XML exported to Resolve V9. In Resolve, I did a grade using single nodes and primaries only. Rendered ProRes 422 (HQ) back into FCP and then exported to 264 for upload here to Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Source: http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/pool-shark/ & http://vimeopro.com/johnbrawleytests/blackmagic-cinema-camera/video/46460980

@bwhitz

Yes, it's a bit distracting :-)

Okay, I'll be John Lennon to your Paul McCartney:

Am I the only one who sees the noise? Granted, it could just be the vimeo compression.... hard to tell.

And peep the crazy Moire on that black box near the window @ 0:21 (Turns out it's a computer chair)

But good news: Doesn't seem to be any crazy rolling shutter issues. Then again, he didn't really shake the camera in this. And the DR is very nice... not spectacular, but nice. So far, so good.

I see the noise .. it's quite fine in texture. I didn't see the moire until you pointed it .. I'd love to know what the box is .. looks like the moire is a reflection of the couch or something on it, or in the room. It would be good to know what the surface of that box is.

DR is better than even a hacked GH2, but yeah, crazy moire on the back of the black computer chair. It means there will be busy lines on screen if actor puts on wrong shirt for shoot.

Would like to have a look at the ungraded footage.

The noise is pretty accurately represented on the vimeo clip. So is the moire. Currently the prototype doesnt have an AA filter and they're thinking about if it should have one. What do you guys prefer ?

JB.

Ability to turn on and off would be nice.

Otherwise half the population will be dissatisfied putting it in, the other half dissatisfied if it's left out.

The ability to turn on for the SDI would be nice .. record clean in RAW .. AA compressed for client rushes previews.

Perhaps they can develop their updater similar to Vitaliy's pTools .. so we can 'compile' in filters

Hah .. edit .. I never realised the cameras have a physical filter .. I thought it was refering to post processing

my vote is to put it in, it's hard to say without seeing comparison, but I think the camera has resolution to spare (at least if its to eliminate that moire)

Edit: furthermore, after seeing the before/after tests eoshd did with the olfpf removal, I don't see a reason not to have it!

So the news is that the camera won't ship with an AA filter. They may make a user install able one later. For now you get all the resolution.

JB.