BlackMagic: Official $2,995 raw cinema camera topic

johnbrawley

@JohnTollwannabe It's made by BMD themselves. They own their own manufacturing facilities.

jb

Rambo

@johnbrawley Hey John, off topic for a minute, just wanted to congratulate you on "Puberty Blues", some very nice camera work there. Looking forward to the next episode. Some nice water shots too.

killagram

"Seriously what has USA got to offer this days besides designing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction."

If that was true the government and DOE wouldn't be cutting position across the board. Unfortunately the truth is we're involved in foreign affairs that clearly don't involve us and that's what we're good at.

I agree though, who cares where the hell it's manufactured. As long as they release the damn thing and its a quality product. This latest round of delays is making me wonder how many times they can pull this excuse since now it will be at least two months late.

Brian202020

Approved SSD list just updated.

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/detail/faqs?sid=27541&pid=27542&os=win#

Vitaliy_Kiselev

jfro

If all the stars align correctly, I'm expecting my cam in 12-14 days. Couldn't wait any longer so bought a single Kingston 240GB SSDNow V+200 (SVP200S3/240G) ssd. Wanted to buy the vertex OCZ 240gb, but scared off by many negative reviews as well as JB's comments.

DrDave

Anxiously awaiting raw. Will trade burrito or pizza for raw.

JMZ

My Samsung SSD 830 just arrived. I'll see Dr. Dave's pizza and raise you a 12 pack of microbrew.

kavadni

I have to make do with my 3 x 120G Vertex 3 .. used in Hyperdecks I also have to make do with my canon kit zooms, and 60mm macro I have a handful of adapters for most of my vintage lenses to canon.

I have been told my Continio cage will ship today. The cage and the BMD cinema camera will be interchangeable with my GH2 on my rail system. The rail system is Lanparte. Power is from the Lanparte v-mount. I have a BMD SDI->HDMI converter for my small HD DP6

According to BMD's drive test utility, I will be able to play 1 stream of RAW at approximately 22fps .. off a 4 way RAID0 (7200rpm satas) .. the raid gets about 230Mbs.

I think I need a new motherboard with onboard USB3, as I am only getting 180Mbs from my SSD through a cheap USB3 addin card (Resnasas chip set) .. the SSDs are capable of more as they manage to record uncompressed in the Hyperdecks.

I am going to aim to get the Rokinon Cine Primes .. they fit my budget.

Basically I am ready to shoot .. depending on the job .. if I shoot RAW, I intend to make Proxies with Timecode in DaVinci, edit proxies in AVID, then either Grade in DaVinci or AE (I hold a belief that adobe will put the codecs in place, as will AVID).

My reading leads me to believe I will need a second graphics card to run DaVinci such that's it's repsonsive.

I should be able to post produce RAW, albeit I won't be able to play more than one stream at a time.

I am hoping my existing graphics card will handle a two or three of nodes of color correction in DaVinci.

If I don't get my BMD by the end of next week, I will stop being the biggest BMD fan boy here .. and complain :)

JohnTollwannabe

Even Australian companies have been known to outsource. I do believe we should care about the working conditions and salaries of the people who make our goods, don't you?

And the sad truth is indeed, the U.S.'s greatest exports are weapons.

jfro

No offense to anyone's political or religious beliefs, but I'm on this thread to read and talk about the camera. I don't use guns so it's of no interest to me. How about started a new category to talk politics or guns.

killagram

@JohnTollwannabe you're right, we should care IF the people directly had control of this. Unfortunately we don't - our voting system has much to be desired when ballots are skewed behind the scenes. @jfro Agreed.

kavadni

Thanks @EYESOUL

Vitaliy_Kiselev

First, it is great decision to lauch their forum.

Second, it is good news that Cinema DNG is available.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@johnbrawley

Thanks John.

Very glad that you have forum now.

bwhitz

@johnbrawley

I can't seen to open them in Resolve Lite. Doesn't Lite only support 1920x1080 files... ?

shian · Shot 6 (0.00.02.15).png

VERY Impressed with the DNG files. VERY!

They behave in much the same way as Raw R3D files in how AFX interprets them. There is a definite grain to the image. Not totally unpleasing. And, while it is a bit sluggish in AE CS6 (more so than 4k R3D) it grades VERY Nicely.

These were done with ColorGHear, it's a very heavy Bleach Bypass style look.... the footage holds together reeeeeeeally well.

This is nearly the same grade I did to the JPG files last month, but I cranked it up to see what would happen. I did limit the skin tone to around 65-70 which muted it a bit. The raw was exposed really high.

raw - interpreted using the auto function

others

bwhitz

Here are a few of my interpretations with AE importer...

Sewper-Awesum Look:

Normal Look:

'Cool-Grade 9000' look:

Here's something with a bit more blue/red and less contrasty skin... I've always been a fan of slightly under-exposing skin. I don't really like green tones in skin either. This is why RAW is so awesome. :)

Man, I already don't want to shot on anything besides this cam... :) (well, Red or Alexa aside)

johnbrawley

@shian They look very nice mate, you have a great eye. The sparkler shot is beautiful in your grade and that's a difficult one to get right.

You mentioned the exposure seemed high, but did you find anything was clipped ? Was there a downside to the high exposure ?

jb

shian

Thanks, John. I'm not totally happy with that one. I want to see if I can get a less muted look to the skin tone, but here is a quick video. I'll play with them more tomorrow. It's 2am here. Need sleep.

Download the mp4, and know that the Prores444 looks spectacular!

johnbrawley

@shian Can you tell me your impressions as a colourist of how it behaves ? I'm always interested to hear how colourists see the camera reacting. You already mentioned you felt the expsore was a bit high ? Did you feel the same about the evening shots ? Noise ? Skin tones ?

jb

kazuo

@Shian,

that is awesome work. I am still learning how to color correct and grade, but seeing John's clips and the way you have pulled the elements out of each clip has sealed the deal for me for this camera. My GH2 just died, so what a great reason to buy the BMC now. But in the interim, I need to find another camera to finish up my projects

stoney

@johnbrawley Did you apply ETTR? Is ETTR useful in this case?

shian

@johnbrawley It behaves very similarly to R3D, except it doesn't seem to live in quite the same LOG environment. (In other words, stuff I would do to R3D footage, I have to do differently with these.) It does seem to be more difficult to bend, as in many instances as you can see by the scopes her skin tone is exposed over 90% which, even for a white girl, is pretty high, but it's manageable and there's recoverable detail, except in the shadows in the background they are so black there's no detail. But There is plenty of latitude on her facial shadows, I can do a myriad of grades with this.

In the sparkler shot, I really had to spend a bit of time messing with the knee to get something that didn't mute the skin tone terribly. I like the options in AE for interpreting the images very much.

Even with the ECU I placed her skin above 80, which is still pretty high, but that seemed to be the most natural look given the exposure and contrast ratio.

I'd like to hear from you, where you actually exposed her, and if possible see a flat interpretation of that exposure - realizing that as it's RAW with a baseline of ISO800, and that you are basically changing metadata in cam per what you see.

I've also updated the video to show RAW unadjusted DNG vs. the grade.

another option

scopes

RRRR

Hey guys, this looks awesome.. :)

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