Leaderboard

Improbable predictions: BMD will announce that they have been acquired by Ricoh/Pentax Resolve will be fully dropping support for BRAW and adopting ProRes RAW New DaVinci Resolve Nano Panel with only a single trackball and no sliders/knobs/buttons New DaVinci Resolve Pico Panel with just a single small button that can only order pizza from Dominos. What flavor of pizza? It'll be a surprise every time. Black Magic Cloud is merging with frame.io so that customers will only have to pay one subscription fee to share with people on either system Based on strong sales of the UM12K, there will now be a UM36K which uses a beam splitter and 3 copies of the UM12K sensor for each of the R, G, and B channels similar to 3-chip camcorders of the past New AI assist camera module that detects if you aren't recording in BM raw - and if not, a small robot version of Grant Petty jumps out and punches the user in the groin until the camera settings are updated

So an update, if anyone's interested. I shot the first scene, which was made up of 5 distinct shots. They came out OK. They were... competent, but only that. The lighting was good - nice contrast, nice colours, well-motivated, but that's all. Can you tell I'm dissatisfied? I was so focussed on getting everything 'right' that I didn't pay enough attention to getting it good or interesting. So I'm going to reshoot and one of the things I'm going to do is lean in to the limitations I have - first among which is that I'm doing this almost completely alone. I am both crew and talent! The biggest limitation caused by that is that camera movement while I'm on screen is not going to happen, which means that to create interest I need to make my angles and composition more interesting. Also, the lighting as I did it the other night looked, basically, like a commercial, not a movie, so now I'm happy with my ability to get decent levels etc, I'm going to really try to push the envelope with ratios and temperatures and try to have some fun with it. Once I've reshot I may post both versions for comment before I continue with the remaining scenes (it's going to take a while to complete the whole project given that I work full-time and my main set is our kitchen, which is in near-constant use as my 3 children attempt to bankrupt me purely through food costs!).

There's almost no way that they're pushing enough data to actually require 16 lanes of NVMe, even if it's only at gen 3 speeds. Each lane of gen3 is able to carry about 1 gigabyte/8 gigabits per second. From what I read elsewhere, 12K at Q0 on the existing UMP is just over 1.1 gigabytes/second. Even the upcoming 17K should, then, be kicking out under 2 gigabytes/second (or 2 out of 16 lanes). That's also assuming gen3 speeds. If it's gen4 or gen5, it's even more overkill. A single modern high-performance NVMe drive can write at around 3,000MB/s. Anyway, to get to 8GB with off-the-shelf modules, it would either need to be 4 4GB drives in a raid 1 or 4 2GB drives in raid 0. At $1600, they could afford the former, but I'd bet money that they're doing the latter and pocketing the money. I'll hope it does drive them down, then - every so often, I get a fever and once again start leering at a used Monstro 8K VV and thinking which of my current cameras to sell/trade toward it - given that they're only about $6k used (in good condition) these days (well, probably about $7.5k after getting all the accessories that are needed for it to even function). Then I go read stories from small shops who needed to send in their RED for service (warranty or pay for repair out of warranty) and it's like a cold splash of water on the face (if you're not a major studio, expect long waits and bad communication). But slowly, the GAS starts creeping in again... "But it'll match the FOV of your GFX 100 II better... How often can a camera fail anyway? Well, it's a RED, but... how often? Really?" Well, that and the fact that I get really confused when I start trying to figure out which accessories are compatible with which cameras. Since I don't have much in the way of PL glass, I'd want an EF mount. Can a DSMC mount work with DSMC 2? Does it need to be a special mount for the bigger sensor? Does a freakin' lens mount cost that much? USED? Anyway, if those were to drop to $4k, I'd probably be unable to stop myself from trading some other stuff in toward it. I'm less optimistic about this. My guess is that most of the people buying it will be people already firmly embedded in the BMD ecosystem and thus other brands' cameras won't drop too much in price. Other than "has BRAW," nearly all of the other features of Pyxis have been present on the E2-F6 since 2019. Even after the price dulled any initial excitement, it got even duller when I remembered that I'd be trading the external monitor to record raw for an external transmitter for the image when on set. I always forget that BMD app control is just a control surface with no image preview.

Agreed. It's probably feasible to swap mounts between Pyxis models, but voids the warranty. BM probably manufactures the models exactly the same, with just that part different. Conceivably, they have some annoying firmware difference to prevent electronics from working, but that would be so difficult for them to manage for FW updates.

Wow, what a set of releases! The Resolve 19 presentation was pretty amazing. The audio panning tool in particular looked pretty sweet. Overall, I find the Fairlight tab to be rather unusable. Compared to Reaper, it's much harder to see large projects particularly compared to Reaper's amazing keyframe visualization and track parenting. So I'm probably going to stick with Reaper for large audio projects. And then on the visual side, a whole slew of AI based tools that look like a lot of fun. Some of the tracking tools looked pretty great, as do the new color plugins. Ursa Cine looks like a pretty sweet camera. I like the USB EVF solving both power and data at once, without proprietary connectors. I wish/hope that there can be an open standard for it, so other manufacturers can make interchangeable EVFs in that system. I can't say I'm that enthusiastic about the data rates required for 12k, but I guess it's the future. The footage looks good in any case. I'm glad they switched back to a larger, 5" 1080p screen, up from the rather smaller and lower res one on the UMP models. The screen on the old Ursa Mini 4K was nice to use. I'm a little confused on the media drives. I can't tell if they are off the shelf, user-replaceable M.2 cards (that's how it looks) or something more proprietary (which is what Grant Petty implied verbally). I'm intrigued by the USB ports along the right side, for "3rd party accessories". The Pyxis looks alright. I'm a little disappointed that they kept the 6k sensor from the previous camera, but it's what I expected. Keeping the accessory ecosystem from the Ursa Cine is great. I love the interchangeable side panel. For $3k, I don't think I would buy it over the Z Cam F6, with the main points being higher frame rate, H.265 options, interchangeable lens mount with eND option, and builtin wireless monitoring. I think the points in BM's favor are the screen, physical buttons, XLR connector, color, SDI, and timecode. Of those, color is the only one that I really care about and I don't know if it's that much better to justify the other cons.

Never thought I would buy a X100VI (and a limited edition too!), But after my name got drawn out of the lottery I say why not! The thickness of the X100 is similar to my Sony body without any lens on it, and even with that OVF it is only slightly taller but shorter than most other mirrrorless with dslr design. The ND and IBIS does it make a more compelling video camera, I really hate to screw on and off the lens filter on trip. Btw it can be powered by USB powerbank

The Pyxis looks good. No mention of global shutter so probably has rolling shutter of some amount. The thing I'm intrigued by is the USB-C EVF. I find out now this has already been out but I wasn't aware of it. Can it be hacked so it can accept HDMI and used on other cameras?

Oh, hey! They finally released a box camera. Pyxis 6K which uses the same sensor, apparently, as their full frame BMPCC. Pyxis is compatible with the Ursa accessories including the USB EVF. Does this mean I'm actually going to want a Black Magic camera for the first time since the original BMCC? It might. Let's see the price...

Anddddd there's the box camera!

Oh, posted too soon. They're also going to release an Ursa cine with a new 17K VV sensor around the end of the year. That's even more resolution than the GFX 100 has in photo mode. Same pixel size as the 12K version - just stretched out to 65mm wide.

Ursa Cine looks like a huge upgrade over UM12K - and priced to match. $15k for the base package. They kept 12K, but went full frame. It has much better DR and even though they didn't mention it (or if they did, I missed it), RS looked pretty good in their example footage. Media is up to 16 lanes of NVMe. I think Grant mentioned that the camera will come with an 8TB module which is made up of 4 separate drives (each with 4 lanes of NVMe). The camera also has 10gE for output. As far as why there's a USB-C on the front, it's actually for the EVF which connects by a single cable.

This might be the single largest release lineup Blackmagic has ever done. There's like a dozen new pieces of hardware plus DR and firmware updates. Craziness.

The new automatic parameters for denoising and the film look panel in Resolve are both a bit exciting. BMD might have just tanked sales for Dehancer and/or FilmConvert, especially if the new film look panel allows export/sharing of settings.

YouTube link is now up

Good catch! New EVF too. The body design is looking very similar to the existing Ursa Mini?

Looks like a user changeable lens mount as well

Well, they've definetely got a new camera coming. The 'Ursa Cine'. I'd imagine they will also announce other new hardware, the next Resolve, and software for the pocket cameras. Ursa Cine seems to have PL mount and some kind of wireless features judging from the antenna. I wouldn't be surprised if it was built with camera to cloud and all that stuff in mind. Also USB-C on the front? I doubt that's for an SSD, so maybe powered focus motor or something? .

I've never acted myself, but I used to be heavily involved doing backstage work for amateur drama groups (lighting, sound, scenery building etc.) so I've seen a lot of amateur acting go both well and badly. I think acting to an inanimate camera is probably quite difficult - the interaction and extra adrenalin provided by an audience often really helps. I've been at dress rehearsals where at the end you think 'Oh dear...it's miles off being ready', but the first night performance with an audience is 200% better. People seeing the performance/movie for the first time don't know the script or the movements, so as long as you stay 'in character' when things go wrong you can often ad-lib your way out of mistakes. But dropping out of character immediately says 'I've messed up'. I've worked on shows where sizeable chunks of the script have been skipped by an actor but the cast have held it together and got away with it. Remind yourself you're doing it for fun (I assume), so relax - it'll come out better if you're not worrying about every detail while you're performing.

As we always say, the camera, especially these days, is the least important part of the equation. Big camera has always equalled big production, but that is more about perceived industry ‘standards’. It all gets rigged out anyway so the size of these tiny cameras gets hidden.

Firstly, it's awesome that you're actually shooting something! and the fact that you're on-screen is next level above that even, so in my books you're already successful 🙂 I'm not sure what you're shooting, and therefore what making it good / interesting really means in your context, but here's a few random thoughts.. I normally screw things up the first (few/many) times I do something, so just chalk it up to a practice shoot and keep going If you're able to get a technically competent capture then you can really change the look in post, so I'd suggest just covering the fundamentals The success or failure of a film depends 97% on what is in the frame (with the remaining 2% being sound, and 1% image) so that's where your attention should be going Is there a way you can separate the various tasks in your mind while you're shooting? For example, maybe you put in a full battery, an empty memory card, and then completely forget the camera exists and just roll as you do 20 takes of the scene from that angle, focusing on your performance and emotional aspects while you're doing this? If there are small errors in continuity or performance there is always the option to just include them and make it a more stylised final film. For example, if things cut funny or jump around a bit etc, and you lean into it in the edit, then the impression might be that the character might not quite be in control of all their faculties, or might be drunk or on drugs, etc. Obviously I have no idea what the context is, so this might not fit your vision, but it might give you options where previously you didn't see a way forward or just couldn't get excited about the material If you haven't storyboarded or done detailed planning, one thing you could do is to pre-shoot the whole thing without lighting or performances etc, and then just edit it together in the NLE, and treat that as a moving storyboard. This would have the advantage of being able to anticipate any issues with any camera angles, and also to get a feel for the pacing and even things like if you decide to cut an angle or part of the film then you can skip filming it altogether. Best of luck and keep us updated - we are definitely interested in hearing how you get on!

I suggest you start with the finished edit and work backwards. Your end goal is to create a certain type of content with a certain type of look. This will best be achieved using a certain type of shooting and a certain type of equipment that makes this easier and faster. Then look at options for lenses across the crop-factors, then choose your format/sensor-size, then the camera body.

There are *some* advantages to being both crew and talent myself! Obviously this is a passion/learning project, though, so reshoots aren't a problem, except for getting the time to do them. In terms of movement - I'm not missing it too much. There is one point in one shot where a subtle push-in would really help to sell the moment. I can do it in post, but that it won't have the (very mild) parallax that a 'real' push-in would give me.

It's interesting to see the minuscule amount of hype around this Blackmagic livestream compared to the BMPCC4K in 2018. It's a ghost town here today.