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Black Magic: Official $1,995 raw cinema camera topic, series 2
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  • Thanks for the info shared, J.B.

  • @Aria My point is that I just need more reviews, from normal users other than the typical "big star" reviewer (that has access to all the extras to pimp this cam up). I am completely sold by the RAW format, and believe that BMCC is the best bang for the euro at the moment, but no one knows if it will be in March. At the speed that the industry is releasing new cameras with new features, ordering a camera that will probably be only available in half an year (or in five months) is dangerous for a SMALL low budget production business like the one I run. Don't get me wrong guys, I dream with this camera everyday and i'm going deep on Resolve Lite and I dream of having the full version of resolve for FREE with this camera deal. But still have a lot of issues: Will the new firmwares add new frame rates? What will I do with all my Lumix and m4/3 glass? Is the Active MFT mount being considered?

    I completely respect BMD for putting up a GREAT camera with GREAT price/features and going against the established BIG BOYS, and even understand all this production/shipping delays, but I will wait until more information is released about all the availability/firmware/mounts.

  • Why do you need the full version of Resolve?

    Why not stay in business with your GH2, the best settings for the hack, good shooting and good grading?

    If the BMCC is coming in numbers, it will soon be available to everybody. Look at RED: just one year ago the Scarlet pricing was announced and people pressed the button that same night, only to hold their camera in hand in February or March. Now they sell them for cheap (well, kind of).

    It will be just the same with BMCC…

  • @nomad i don't need it, but i would love to have the full version of resolve yes.~ I am in business with my GH2 and my 5D MKII. Absolutely love my GH2. Thinking about selling the 5D MKII... I believe i will keep my GH2 for a long time.

  • @Vitaliy

    Why do you actually mean when you said:

    "RED is producing good stuff. but the sooner it'll go bankrupt, the better for all."?

    Just curious on which part of RED that you want to relate this with? And no, I don't own a RED product nor that I am part of the Lemmings...hhahahaaha...just curious.

  • @kicap

    I meant exactly that I said and nothing more or less.

    I think it is best to use other topic for this talk.

  • @cupanudles More impressive footage.

  • Is it only me who see alot of strobing/stuttering in pan/tilts on the BMC? More than the 25p strobing.

    Example:

  • Well for one whoever is manning that camera is moving it around like a 3CCD video camera. Very poor example IMO. They are not following any of the basic rules shooting. But I could be completely wrong :)

  • I couldbe completely wrong too, but I have seen the same movement flickering, or whatever it is, on this camera alot. Might be my computer (though odd) but going to download the source file. Might be Vimeo I guess, or a high shutter or the IS, but I don't think so.

    To my eye it seems the treelogs flickers back and forth during the move. Some moves are somewhat fast, but I see it on the green pole in the elephant part. Hm.

  • A new update regarding camera delays:

    First a bit of a background in the issue.

    As I have explained in earlier posts, we have been dealing with an issue from our sensor supplier where the glass that covers the front of the sensor has been contaminated and they have been working on that issue. They realized they had a contamination issue that turned out to be caused by the packaging of the glass was shipped to their factory and so that contaminated glass was used on the sensors and sent to us.

    Now there were a few fundamental problems with this. Firstly we should never have received parts that had contaminated glass. It turned out their quality control software at the sensor company was poorly designed. Secondly it had taken them months to work out what was going on and to get new packaging to ship the glass to the factory mounting it on the sensors. It's been months.

    However a few weeks ago things were looking good and the supplier got glass that was clean, they updated their test software to correctly test the sensors and could start shipping sensors to us again.

    Now as I mentioned last week, the problem is while we did start getting sensors that passed our quality control when used in building our cameras, a lot of sensors did not pass. This was confusing because the sensor’s supplier was supposed to have fixed their test software and had new clean glass.

    Working out what was going wrong is what we have been busy doing over the last week. It's going to get a little technical here, however I think everyone wants to know what’s going on, instead of platitudes.

    In our frustration over still getting sensors that would not pass our quality check, we decided to move in and completely audit the sensor supplier’s process in detail using our engineers. We wanted to fully understand what was going on.

    We wanted to know how the supplier could the fix to get clean glass not be working 100% and how could the sensor supplier still let bad parts through their quality control process and ship them to us, in the belief that they were "good" parts? This was very confusing. I mean, fixing the contaminated glass should have been a quick simple job so how could they still not get it right after months of work?

    What we found when investigating their processes was quite surprising. Of course we had known the original problem with their quality control checks was their test software had not been modified for color sensors. In the past their sensors were used for scientific use and used in black and white. Also their glass was never used as other customers bonded the lens optics onto the sensor itself. In our case we use the sensor in a conventional way and the customers change lenses. We need the glass on the sensor like all other cameras do.

    Also, they had never built a camera using the sensor they make for us. We are the only camera that’s used this sensor and glass combination. It's like designing and building cars but no one at the company has every driven one.

    So it turns out their quality process is really only good at testing the semiconductor die. It's no good at testing the quality of the overall sensor product with the glass in front. This meant they could not even see the problems we were seeing, so that’s why we were getting bad parts. We sent them the information on how to build our test setup and yesterday they started testing using it. Now they are seeing the same quality problems we are seeing. This is good as it means we should not get any more bad sensors.

    The problem left is that out of a test batch of 30 sensors, only 4 worked well enough so we can build cameras using them. This is bad. So while the good news is they can now see the same problems we see, the question is why is there still contamination on the glass.

    The reason is the contaminated glass issue in many ways distracted them from the problems their manufacturer is having bonding the glass to the sensor itself. The sensor supplier now has two sources of glass, and both of them are showing the same problems. The parts without glass are ok, and the problems appear when the glass is bonded to the sensor. If the glass is clean then it's really the company bonding on the glass that are introducing contamination.

    Now the amazing part is that the first batch of sensors we got that we used for developing the camera and that were fine when we started production were manufactured by a completely different company to the second and subsequent batches of sensors. I could not believe this news when I heard it today as it explains a lot.

    Our current understanding is that the company that has been bonding on the glass is crap and they have been contaminating the glass when bonding it. Because the sensor suppliers test process was also bad, it meant that no one really knew what was going on and it's been weeks and weeks of confusion.

    The sensor supplier is getting some new sensors made at the original supplier, which we should get test data back on late this week. Once we see this we will know if the original supplier can make the parts without contamination and so we can start building cameras again. I don't know why they changed glass bonding companies.

    I am sorry this is a really long way of explaining what’s going on. It's a complex issue and the only way to explain what’s going on is to actually explain what’s going on in detail. It's been hard to update at times because there has been so much confusion at times about these issues and if they have been fixed or not. We don't know until we build a bunch of cameras.

    What has really shocked me is how long it has taken our sensor supplier to fix this. They have been very bad at moving quickly and really thinking about what's going wrong. If we had not moved in with our engineers, they still would have no idea what was going on. It's taken months and driven us crazy with frustration.

    So the current plan is to get some sensors from the original glass bonding company and based on their upgraded testing we should know more at the end of the week if we are going to get a good supply of sensors starting to ship using that new company.

    I will let you all know later this week or early next when we get some of these sensors to build cameras with and will know if we can start production full speed again.

    It's nice they are keeping us informed, but not looking good for us getting our cameras.

  • It seems more management issue, as we now see that all necessary process parts were not only uncontrolled, but even not checked.

    In fact, whole issue is choosing of sensor from the company who never made such sensors. Hence they did not know good suppliers, how to bond glass, how to test product. And they did not want to change, as I suppose that volumes from BM up to this point are very small (compared to their other products).

  • This is quite amazing. I don't know if it is good or bad that they would speak like this about such an important piece in a puzzle that they are themselves ultimately trying to sell us. Really a double edged sword.

  • Yes but they received so much slack from not communicating before that I think they were forced by the buyers pressure to be much more transparent.

  • Hopefully this will be a learning experience for all concerned, and they will establish more effective QA processes that take into account the tendency for certain Asian suppliers to switch to cheaper options on the supply chain, without transparency. This is a known issue in the car parts manufacturing business. Kudos to BM for their openness around this problem.

  • Is the sensor from Asia?

  • Is the sensor from Asia?

    Last time I checked motherfuckers tribe is evently spread across the Earth :-)

  • i don't understand people who constantly compliment companies. If you like what they do buy their shit, if not don't buy it. You don't have to kiss their assholes.

    "company x is so good to us, they are 5 months behind on release but they have an excuse, what a great company"

  • As a general rule of thumb I never prebuy something until it is in the field and proven by many.. Do I think the BMD is a good camera for the money , yes.. but I wont get one until it is in full production and well proven.. The way I see this situation is that now the big boys in the camera world have been given a chance to blow the BMD camera out of the water.. make us a BDM killer.. and actually get it in the field in qty and you'll win customers.. Not holding my breath on this but they were given a opportunity.. After I saw the new sony sports camera I was interested for a few reasons.. fps and image stability etc. but said no, Im good with my gopro hero 2 for now we shall see what comes of this camera, i want to see lots of field footage and user reviews ect.. waited a few weeks , BOOM GoPro out of nowhere drops the Hero3 Black on us.. never buy the first of anything.. especially a preorder of a product that is not actually in full production and in the hands of real users. I know BMD makes good products own many of there products., but still wont just buy anything they make. I need to see results before i buy.

  • @cls105 Very true. This affection with companies is a form of fetishism. Since people are afraid to believe in their own skills and resourcefulness (and in most cases they are of course correct in doubting themselves), they put their trust in a piece of hardware.

    Thus people will believe in a rock, a cross, an abstract idea such as nation or ideology, if it makes them feel better. This has been so apparent with the BM camera where hundreds of threads of anxious ex-dslr consumers are waiting in despair for the camera to come out, because before that, their cinematic potential can not be realized.

  • Company: lets announce a prototype at a show w/ a release date. All these people will advertise for us on these blogs... and it wont cost us a penny.

    I guess in the end its positive, you have other companies scrambling and knocking down prices. Guess it could be worse. If anything just start your "masterpiece" with the tools you have instead of waiting for these "game changers" to finally land in your hands.

  • I find customers who use products for a creative field are far too forgiving. It's like, "oh thank you for providing us with such a great product" and it becomes a cult. Pull this crap in a business enviroment that supplies other businesses and they would get eaten alive. Camera companies and the like know they can get away with this because of us and the way we react. We don't owe Black Magic anything, not a thing.

  • I don't like the fanboyism that prevails today toward x,y or z brand. But I think Black magic should be given credit to what they are doing. Do you think we will see a 2.5k, 13 stop, raw camera for $ 3000 anytime soon from any manufacturer. I don't see Sony, Canon or red coming close for the next 5 years at least. On the contrary, I see blackmagic coming with a S35 raw camera in the next 2 years.

  • I just need to stop getting my hopes up so high with announcements. I'm a slow learner apparently. moving on.