bjohn

There's a big collection of rigs for the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera here, some of which might give you some ideas for whatever camera you're trying to rig. The BMMCC has a fan, so I never mount a microphone to it (even a shotgun picks up some of that fan noise in a quiet room), but clearly some people do; the fan is probably less audible outside. https://bmmccrigs.tumblr.com/

FYI, Blackmagic Design released Blackmagic RAW 1.8 today, which adds support for Sigma fp clips captured by Video Assist 12G HDR

I might not go that far, but it's fine if you're not doing extra-large prints. I think you can print billboards with the A7r iv. 😉 I'm still using a NEX-6 (APS-C) which is a 16 mp camera; it has better low-light performance than any of the A6000 series but I do find myself wishing for more resolution at times, especially since I frequently crop in post. This new camera or cameras from Sony will be deciding factors for me. I currently carry two cameras, one for stills and one (or two) for video, since the NEX-6 video quality is pretty close to rock-bottom bad. It would be nice to be able to bring just one camera, one set of batteries and charger, etc. so I'm hoping whatever Sony's coming up with may fit that bill for me. If not, I'll stick with two cameras, it's not the end of the world.

It's funny this is one of the strongest selling points for me for Sony. If I can update/upgrade a camera with almost no learning curve, that's priceless. Yes, it takes longer to figure things out at the beginning, but once you're used to it and know how to customize buttons to reach your most-used settings, long-term stability with no major changes is a huge benefit to people who use their cameras every day.

You should go back and read the original post. He said "I have always worked with video rather than photography (which remained an amateur hobby for me), so last year I sold my old and faithful 5D mark II to buy the blackmagic pocket 4K. This year I have worked very little with videos (I am a writer and now I concentrate mainly on this job) and I regretted bitterly that I bought the blackmagic. I'd like to go back to a classic DSLR, and I'm not sure which to buy after selling the pocket cinema camera." He's not looking for a video camera. He wants a hybrid camera, which the BMPCC 4K is not.

No, it's due to the filter. See this comment from Ryan Avery, who knows a thing or two about lenses and filters: http://disq.us/p/28697ul "As with all filters like the Tokina Black Alchemy, Schneider Hollywood Black Magic, and Tiffen Black Soft F/X; you have avoid long lens bokeh effects (in focus subject in the foreground with out of focus lights in the background such as cityscapes, streetlights, panel lights, etc), and avoid shooting wide open past T2 on sensors S35 and above. The filters hold up perfectly as long as very apparent point source bokeh where the subject is close to the lens are avoided. Once at deeper focus, further from the lens, the effect speckle bokeh is gone."

I have the 1/4 and 1/8 Hollywood Black Magic filters and they are indeed very nice (I got them to reduce the harshness of the Sigma 18-35 and give it a bit more character, which they sort of succeed at doing but I think I just don't like that lens). The main thing to watch out for with these filters is speckly bokeh, which can happen if you've got an object in focus in the foreground with out-of-focus lights in the background. It looks pretty weird when it happens; you can find examples by typing "speckled bokeh" into a youtube search or on Google.

That means the new owner would be able to downgrade the firmware and record CDNG with it. There are probably some people who want to do it (not many, but those who feel strongly that uncompressed CDNG has advantages for them over BRAW would be willing to pay extra for it). Rather than guess, why don't you put it on eBay and let people bid it up?

Considering that they're pretty hard to get ahold of in some markets, and BMD is notorious for hit-or-miss quality control (the two BMD cameras I bought new both came with problems out of the box and had to be exchanged), I'd say a practically new and somewhat tested (8-9 hours is better than nothing) BMPCC 4K should go for not much less than a new one. If someone's telling you it's too expensive, that's fine, but somewhere out there is a buyer who'd be willing to snatch it up. I don't know, knock off the price by 100 Euros?

Wow, I missed that, thank you! This is good for me, as all my MFT lenses are manual (Veydra, SLR Magic). I'll have to give this a try.

I would second this as well. I'm still using a Sony NEX 6 and it is an outstanding camera; it's actually got better low-light performance than the anything in the A6000 series, although the video is excruciatingly bad so I never use it. If you think you'd use video at all, the A6400 would be a good choice. The great thing about e-mount is that you can adapt almost anything to it (except micro four-thirds), including an enormous range of cheap vintage lenses. I've been building up a small set of 50-year-old Minolta Rokkors and they just sing on this camera (although since they were designed for full frame you won't really be able to get a wide angle...a 24mm on this camera ends up being 39 mm in full frame terms). The Rokkors duplicate much of Leica's look for a tiny fraction of the cost: my 55mm MC Rokkor cost me about $50 on eBay, shipped directly from Japan. Some of the others are more expensive but the excellent 100mm is typically around $100 USD on eBay. Here's an example shot of the Rokkor 55mm on the NEX-6: and here's a shot using the Rokkor 85mm (unfortunately mine has some fungus so I won't be using it any more but this photo came out well:

I stopped using all Adobe products (except Acrobat, which is pretty much unavoidable in my work) about 10 years ago for this and other reasons. Since the early 1990s, I have never once had a positive Adobe experience. The software is mostly great, but obtaining it, updating it, and getting support for it are among the worst experiences I have ever had with any company in the software business.

There are small individual recorders that can be clipped to a person's trousers or belt, and you run your lavs into those recorders, but then syncing can be a problem if those recorders aren't saving timecode that's synced to the camera. The ideal solution for this would be the Tentacle Sync Track E recorder, but it's not yet available (production got delayed due to COVID). You would get two Track E recorders for the people doing the talking and a regular Sync E for your camera and they'd all be in sync. You can sync by waveform, but that could be tricky if your hidden camera is at a distance (the waveforms will not match very well). There are a few other small recorders that do this, but none as far as I know do timecode. I have the tiny Zoom F1, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone as it has poor sound quality, gain settings for lavs in steps rather than a smooth dial control.

Yep, similar to what I do to avoid flickering in video in Europe vs. North America, but when I'm shooting stills I'm usually shooting manually in aperture priority mode (meaning the shutter speed gets set automatically) and I just glance at the shutter speed to make sure it's not too slow. I could switch to shutter priority in those cases to be sure I'm using a shutter speed that would avoid banding, but it would be simpler to use a camera that doesn't require me to consider workarounds like this. Unless the new Sony that'll be announced toward the end of this month fits the bill, I'll likely stick with my current solution of using separate cameras for stills and video. It's inconvenient but it works.

Haha, no worries and thanks for doing the test! The examples you provided above were enough to convince me that this is probably not the right camera for me; if I were only shooting outdoors it would be fine, but I do shoot a lot of stills indoors and more and more the lighting comes from LEDs, plus my cinema lighting is LED and if I wanted to take stills during a video shoot I'd be stressing about the possibility of banding. And I certainly don't need any more stress during video shoots. 😉

Yikes, this does look like a deal-breaker. There's an informative article about this issue in Sony A7-series cameras here: https://phillipreeve.net/blog/limitations-of-the-electronic-shutter-function/ The Sonys at least have a mechanical shutter with electronic as an option. The Sigma only gives you electronic and this confirms my fears that this won't work for me. Bummer.

I watched his Vimeo walkthrough of how he grades Sigma fp footage, which was interesting and weird at the same time. His method for adjusting white balance is like nothing I've ever seen before and I can't wrap my head around it. I can't see how it could possibly work but I guess he manages. Normally I color-balance using the curves while monitoring the waveform with all channels displayed, or else I monitor the RGB Parade and use the color sliders (rather than the wheels). He does it entirely using the puck in the Gain wheel. Anyway, I too am intrigued by the fp and have seen some inspiring footage from a few people (and a ton of uninspiring footage from others; I think there are maybe 3 or 4 clips on Vimeo that I like). Same goes for stills; most of the stills I've found on flickr or fredmiranda.com are unimpressive but the exceptions are really great and give you a sense of what this camera is capable of in the right hands. It ticks a lot of boxes to me. I never use autofocus and have little need for IBIS, so those are not concerns for me; my only concern in the stills department is the electronic-only shutter and the potential for rolling-shutter artifacts on fast-moving objects. Among other things I take photos of traditional musicians and I worry what would happen with a moving fiddle bow, for example, especially in low light.

I believe Sony made some significant improvements in the RX100 v4 vs. the version iii that I had. I felt the IQ of my stills was far below that of my NEX-6 and even well below that of the Pixel 2, although of course the RX100 is more versatile than a smart phone (and I agree that the NEX-series cameras take much better photos than anything you can get from the best smartphones). For video, one thing I discovered is that I could mount the RX100 on top of a Blackmagic Video Assist monitor and record ProRes HQ footage (it outputs clean video via HDMI), which gave me a bit more latitude for color grading although I still didn't like the quality of video from the RX100.

I had the RX100 iii for a few years and initially loved it then grew increasingly disappointed. I ended up replacing it with a Google Pixel 2, which took vastly better photos, even in low light, although video was a tossup. I actually bought the Pixel as a camera rather than a smartphone and didn't even have a SIM card in it for the first year or so. I've since downgraded to the new iPhone SE and am missing the stills quality of the Pixel but I think the video quality is better (and it's better than any video I got from the RX100). The iPhone has better audio capabilities, which is why I got it; I can get world-class audio recordings using a Sonosax M2D2 with a stereo pair of mics, recording into an iPhone. I haven't tried combining audio and video yet. In general, I feel like today's smartphones can outperform most real pocket cameras.

Well, that might be going a little far; it's like saying CDs are dead but in fact there's still a thriving market for CDs in some niche markets (classical music, traditional music, for example), and setting aside the fashion/fad for vinyl. Clearly phone cameras have destroyed the point-and-shoot camera market, but the "enthusiast" and "professional" markets are still driving camera sales and development. Whether it's sustainable remains to be seen. I actually bought my first smartphone a few years back (Google Pixel 2) as a camera only, and didn't even put a SIM card into it for a year. Of all the photos I have on Flickr, the only one that received a favorite was one taken with that phone, which is kind of depressing. I recently downgraded to an iPhone but am keeping the Pixel2 as a travel camera because its photos look so much better...still not as good as those from my "real" camera though.

Ah good point, I forgot about the lack of log profile, which of course isn't an issue with raw but would be an issue with ProRes. Got it, sorry for misunderstanding!

On the Blackmagic Design forum, Dmitry Shijan demonstrated how if you shoot at the camera's native ISO and "native" white balance (in the case of the Micro Cinema Camera, about 5500-5600), Prores HQ has exactly as much flexibility in terms of adjusting ISO and white balance as raw 3:1. I agree that in general you'll get more flexibility from raw, but ProRes HQ is actually quite flexible.

Someone does, of course, but nobody here unless they work for Sigma or BMD (and they wouldn't say!). But it's worth noting that Sigma has listed the BMD Video Assist as a "recommended accessory" on their fp website for a while now, well before the firmware was released, and more to the point I strongly doubt they would invest the time into developing a feature/capability that relies on a third party and then announce it to the world without ever having worked with that third party to ensure it works. Most likely what's going on is that BMD has other features and fixes to shoehorn into its next firmware update for the new Video Assists, so there will be some delay. It looks like the older Video Assist 4K can already record ProRes from the fp, not sure if anyone has tried that yet. In my experience, Prores HQ has almost as much flexibility in terms of changing white balance, ISO, etc. as you get from raw; BRAW files will be smaller of course and have a bit more latitude for change. But I wouldn't sniff at Prores HQ.

Technically it's true, but nobody's stopping you from continuing to use the enormous range of good cameras and lenses still available (even if only secondhand) for dead formats. Minidisc has been dead for a long time, but I still have a minidisc recorder that I bought in 1996, along with a lifetime supply of minidiscs (one minidisc can be re-recorded thousands of times and I have about 20 of them). I still use it occasionally for some recording situations and the sound quality is excellent. I recorded an interview on minidisc as part of a documentary I'm working on and the sound quality is indistinguishable from that of other interviews recorded on a Sound Devices MixPre 6 with a Sennheiser MKH 8060.

This is why I think it's worth seeing what Sony comes up with this year for its A7 line; there are lots of rumors of new cameras to be released soon but regardless if you're not in urgent need of a new camera it might be worth waiting to see what Sony has to offer; if the video specs are improved it could tilt the balance toward Sony.