bjohn

That all makes sense. I bought my BMPCC and BMMCCs for a documentary project (and future doc projects) and they'll work for that; most of my doc work is music-related and I don't need a "run and gun" setup. But I do a lot of concert and dance photography and am occasionally being asked to do video as well, and that's where something faster and easier to use would be helpful. My big requirement there is low-light performance, and it seems that despite its smaller sensor the GH7 might be better in that department than the FX30 (the FX3 is out of my price range, although the Nikon Z6iii could be a contender), plus I'd get the advantages of more depth of field (and thus more forgiving manual focus) when shooting MFT. I'm in no rush to make a decision as I can get by with my current cameras for now, but I definitely want a simpler, hand-holdable and faster option available when I need it.

Definitely useful. The big lesson I keep relearning is that it's more important to get the shot than to have optimal image quality; of course if you can do both that's ideal, but in my case I find that I rarely shoot video because my cameras are so cumbersome to set up and operate. For Halloween evening I got asked to make a short video of the trick-or-treaters in our neighbourhood and first I set out to do it with my OG Pocket, handheld (with three points of stabilization) but it all took so long and I kept having to adjust focus etc. that I quickly switched to my iPhone and got much better video for much less effort. "Better" in this case means I grabbed shots I would have missed with the Pocket; the Pocket video looked better but I was able to achieve much more with auto exposure and autofocus on the phone. The GH7 seems like a good idea, since the only autofocus lens I own is a Panasonic (the 12-35 zoom) and I have some nice manual MFT lenses I could use on it. But I use Sony for photography and have a huge collection of lenses that I use on E-mount with adapters (I have no Sony lenses and only two native e-mount lenses, which I rarely use). So I have to decide whether to go the GH7 route or the FX-30 route as a more practical video camera with built-in stabilization, autofocus, etc.

Yeah, I think the BMPCC 4K would be a more practical choice. Another problem is that even though the new Micro 4K collects gyro data, there's no way to enter lens information into the menu so the gyro doesn't actually work....at least for now, maybe that's something they could fix in firmware, but as a studio camera it's unlikely their target users would ever use gyro stabilization to begin with.

That's a good point of course, and I keep thinking about getting one of those cameras, especially since it looks like I could use all the same gear I use with my BMMCC. The only thing that put me off initially was the inability to play back what you've recorded, at least in-camera; that's important for me mainly when I'm shooting video in places with artificial lighting (especially stage lights) so I can check to be sure there's no flicker (that would require changing the shutter angle). I could record to a Video Assist and play back on that, which could be a simple solution although it means buying a new monitor (I have a Video Assist but it's an old one that's not compatible with this camera and the batteries run out after about 15-20 minutes).

There is a cheaper OLPF for these cameras available from Alt Cine, although I believe they make them in small batches which means there's a waiting list, and I haven't seen any reviews. https://altcinecam.com/product/altcine-optical-low-pass-filter/

I read a couple of years ago that the newest version of the Rawlite OLPF for the OG BMPCC and BMMCC has much less impact on sharpness than the original one did. I bought mine (two, one for each BMMCC) in 2019 and 2020 so not sure if that's the latest version but the images are sharp enough for me, keeping in mind that for video I have a personal preference for less sharpness (though it's better to have sharpness and dial it back than to try to add sharpness that isn't in the image to begin with). I have occasionally experienced moiré on my OG BMPCC (which doesn't have an OLPF) but the main reason I got the OLPF was to avoid having to use UV-cut filters on my lenses. One less thing to think about and carry with me.

Yeah, it was the building pans where I noticed the IBIS artifacts. In theory gyro should do a better job here because IBIS is always playing catchup; it's very fast but the lag can produce noticeable artifacts. There is no lag with gyro, but there's a crop and you have to use a lower shutter angle (typically 90 or even 45 degrees) and then add back motion blur in post. The lower shutter angle is to counteract situations in which the camera is moving faster than the exposure time per frame; if you use a 180 degree shutter angle the camera will often be moving faster than the exposure time per frame and you'll get blurry images.

Nice! Did you use IBIS or gyro for stabilization? I definitely see some catch-up jerkiness in the pans and some of the tilts so assume IBIS.

The lack of IBIS seems like a bad idea, though -- how effective will that electronic stabilization be? Probably most users will be shooting this handheld unless they really are thinking of it for vlogging where it'll be sitting on a tripod.

Working on these videos, where I'm panning from reasonably well-lit musicians to dancers who are basically in the dark, makes me realize that I need to make the effort to keyframe my colour grades. I've been too lazy but with Resolve's auto-keyframing it shouldn't be much work. In this last one I posted, there's too much contrast and saturation on the musicians because I boosted it for the dancers.

More low-light video with the BMMCC. Sigma 18-35 with speedbooster. I did some light denoising on this; there's certainly still noise in the footage of the dancers but that level of noise doesn't bother me.

Came across this potentially useful video. A newer trick to try is to use the density and saturation tools in Resolve's new Color Slice tool. The saturation controls there are by far the best in Resolve, and density makes a huge difference as well. I don't know how well they work on 8-bit footage but if I ever shoot any (I do have a Sony A7s that I still haven't used for video beyond a few experiments) I'll try.

I assume the old Canon D Mark II was 8-bit, right? It was used to shoot this (which was actually a clothing advert masquerading as a short film; the trailer was released and the other segments are available on Vimeo but no full-length film was ever released):

It sure is ugly, but I don't care as long as it takes great pictures, which it does. 🙂

I have several film cameras now (Leica M2-R, Canon P, Minolta XD, Mamiya C330) but the one I'm using most these days is a Fuji Work Record, a point-and-shoot film camera that was made up until 2006. It has an excellent Fujinon 28mm/3.5 lens and is totally waterproof (submersible to 1 meter) so I can shoot in the rain and snow with no worries. It cost me $90 USD in mint condition with the original box and manual (which is all in Japanese; this camera was never sold outside of Japan). I made an album of some of the photos I've taken with it here: https://www.lomography.com/homes/bernache/albums/2465864-fuji-work-record

There is certainly a brisk business in disposable film cameras; apart from the disposables and instant cameras there aren't many new film cameras being made these days. But disposables are very popular and my film lab sometimes shows photos of the huge crates of processed disposables that they have to put out on the curb several times per year for trash/recycling pickup. Film's popularity varies depending on where you live. I'm in Montréal, which has a high population of young immigrants from France, and film is huge in France. Most of the people who work at my lab are French and there is often a line out the door of people who want to drop off their film for processing. I'm usually the only person in that line over the age of 30. I see almost as many film cameras out on the street here as digital, but in the areas frequented by tourists it's mostly mirrorless cameras and of course phones. Sure, film is back and has been for quite a while but yeah, the claim that it's outselling mirrorless cameras is ludicrous.

Here's my first cut at the "souvenir" video for the dance weekend I filmed last month on the BMMCC (with a few small bits shot on the OG BMPCC as well). Much of this was at or over the limit of what these cameras can handle in terms of low light, and I had to do quite a bit of denoising (and still need to denoise one clip of dancers near the end). The denoising added some undesirable sharpness, which I'll fix in the next round, but overall I'm fairly happy with how this turned out, at least for the musicians and for the dancers who were in the light. The ones of dancers in the darker part of the hall were a lot less successful (I couldn't even see if I was in focus for some of those, it was very dim and focus peaking didn't even work). Mostly shot with Sigma 18-35 on a speedbooster plus a few shots with the new Laowa T1 cine 18mm lens; some of the outdoor shots were with the SLR Magic 18mm T2.1 cine.

Here's one on the original Pocket with the new Laowa T1 18mm cine lens, shot handheld with a Zacuto Marauder Mini for stabilization.

Nice! Did you keep the ISO at 800 (or 400) all the time? For daylight 800 seems to be the best choice as it gives the best highlight protection; darker shots work best at ISO 400 (counterintuitively) because you get less noise in the shadows, but if you're crushing the blacks anyway you might as well just keep it at 800 all the time. Whoops, we were posting at the same time; you just answered my question in your post above!

Here's a little clip from a balfolk dance last weekend, shot on BMMCC with the Sigma 18-35 and speedbooster.

That's the issue I brought up earlier in this thread; it's been reported by other users as well, always with Panasonic focus-by-wire lenses. It first happened to me during an overseas shoot. The same lens has never shown this behaviour on my OG Pocket, and the contacts on the BMMCC were clean (I cleaned the contacts on the lens and the camera, no change). I saw similar reports on the Blackmagic Design Cinematography forum and other forums. I think you just have to forget about focusing until you hit record. The cause isn't clear and it doesn't affect all users so it must be a camera-specific thing (the lens will be fine on one BMMCC but not another). It doesn't seem to be firmware-dependent either: when it happened to me on my first BMMCC a few years ago I was running the final firmware update that BMD released for this camera. I subsequently bought a secondhand BMMCC as a b-cam and its firmware was a few generations out of date; before I updated it I tested it with the Panasonic 12-35 and it exhibited the same focus issue (defocusing after I hit the record button). Updating the firmware didn't change anything. I've never had the infinity focus issue on mine. I only use manual lenses on my BMMCC now, but of course this means I have no access to any lenses with IBIS. I have an OG Pocket for lenses with electronics and IBIS.

Here's another short clip of that Cajun band from a few weeks ago, shot on the Angénieux 17.5-70 Super 16 zoom from the 1970s.

This is the lens I'd recommend; it's been my workhorse since about 2016 (I don't have the BMCC but use it on the original BMPCC and Micro Cinema cameras). There's some very nice footage shot with it on the OG BMCC here:

Yeah, the basic rule is that just because a card is recognized by the camera doesn't mean it can actually keep up with the data rate (no matter the card's stated read/write speed). On the Blackmagic cinematography forum there's this old thread where Frank Engel did 15-minute tests of a bunch of cards to see what would work: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91479

There are some good M-mount ones, which can be easily adapted to other mounts. I have the MS Optics Apoqualia 28/2, which is not much bigger than a lens cap and is small even with an adapter. On full-frame it vignettes wide open and shows strong field curvature effects, but those are fun and I enjoy shooting it that way. It's a wonderful lens on APS-C, and the tiny focusing stick is actually quite useful. Good luck finding ND filters for it, though, which is why I haven't used it for video. Brightin Star make a very similar and better corrected 28mm pancake lens for M mount. The Voigtländer 35/2.5 Color-Skopar pancake lens for M-mount is another good lens. These M-mount pancakes don't perform well on Sony and other non-Leica fullframe digital cameras due to field curvature issues with the thick sensor stack, but APS-C solves most of those issues. I have an album of photos I've shot with the Apoqualia here, on fullframe and APS-C.