John Brawley posts new Blackmagic Cinema Camera footage

[Andrew Reid]

[url="http://vimeopro.com/johnbrawleytests/blackmagic-cinema-camera/video/46460980"][img]http://www.eoshd.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bmd-pool2-660x371.jpg[/img][/url]

[url="http://vimeopro.com/johnbrawleytests/blackmagic-cinema-camera/video/46460980"]Watch it here[/url]

Please note the compression and noise is from Vimeo not the camera

[url="http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/pool-shark"]John Brawley[/url] has some new Blackmagic footage for us. Unfortunately Vimeo streams 1080p at something like 7Mbit and John has no download option on this clip, so watching Blackmagic footage when it is so heavily compressed rather defeats the object of such a lovely 12bit raw camera.

Nevertheless dynamic range and resolution are looking pretty good.

[PTRush]

Pretty exciting to finally get to see a little more footage out of the Blackmagic camera. It's so close to release you'd think we could get some raw files to pay around with. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but did anyone notice all the moiré in the mesh of the chair by the window? I don't think thats from Vimeo... This camera does seem to produce very beautiful detail, and organic feeling video.

[heliorr]

[quote name='PTRush' timestamp='1343355923' post='14585']
Pretty exciting to finally get to see a little more footage out of the Blackmagic camera. It's so close to release you'd think we could get some raw files to pay around with. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but did anyone notice all the moiré in the mesh of the chair by the window? I don't think thats from Vimeo... This camera does seem to produce very beautiful detail, and organic feeling video.
[/quote] yeah I notice that too, its strange. i didn't expect the Blackmagic Camera to suffer from moire.. but all around looked really nice. great dynamic range indeed..

[TC]

Oh wow.

[TC]

I love the irony of this. Theoretically, this little Australian company should not be able to compete with the market leaders such as Sony and Canon, who spend billions on R&D every year. I am sure the sensor in the BMCC is not as capable as the best that Sony and Canon can produce. And yet the strategies pursued by the electronics giants themselves have made this possible! By deliberately holding back their own hardware through firmware crippling and artificial market segmentation they have left the door wide open for a small company to compete with them by assembling a camera from largely off-the-shelf components.

And now that Blackmagic Design have done it you can be sure that other companies with similar strengths are looking at doing the same. The horse has truly bolted.

[Andy600]

In John's comments he states there is no Anti-aliasing filter in his prototype hence the moire issue [url="http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/pool-shark/#comment-1609"]http://johnbrawley.w...k/#comment-1609[/url] but that makes you wonder if a) there will be an AA filter in the production camera and b ) will it soften things up too much. Love the latest clip even if it is Vimeo compressed. Beautiful detail and sharpness. The DR is fantastic in ProRes 422 (HQ) so imagine this thing shooting raw. Wow! Saving my pennies ;)

[Ivor Koons]

It looks very clean, but I am missing something that the name Cinema Camera promises - a cinematic feel. The DOF is too big, even the GH1 and GH2 deliver a better image in terms of a 3D impression.
The colors look a bit washed-out, too.
The cheap-looking, commercial-like setting might add to that. I can't get rid of the impression that the scenes have been worked on to look as filmic as can be, but this approach somehow isn't successful.
I'm looking forward to seeing some less plasticky stuff. From what I've seen till now, the GH series, if handled well, seems to win over the BCC. But that is hopefully going to change.

[MattH]

[quote name='PTRush' timestamp='1343355923' post='14585']
Pretty exciting to finally get to see a little more footage out of the Blackmagic camera. It's so close to release you'd think we could get some raw files to pay around with. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but did anyone notice all the moiré in the mesh of the chair by the window? I don't think thats from Vimeo... This camera does seem to produce very beautiful detail, and organic feeling video.
[/quote]

That mesh looks extremely fine. Difficult to tell exactly how fine, but some meshes and fabrics are so fine that there is moire even when looking with the naked eye. The colour is the most distracting part of it. If a mask was used to desaturate the chair then it may just look natural. If the full 2.5k was enough to resolve the pattern then the moire might have occurred merely by downsizing to 1080. In this case I think one could apply a blur mask before down scaling which would act as an anti aliasing filter for that part or the image. It may just be that 2.5k isn't enough to resolve the detail, but that's the case with many cameras. I think an anti aliasing filter would just soften the image overall.

[AndrewP]

Finally a worthy upgrade to my trusty GH2. I waited many days for this moment. It's almost spooky how good BMC footage looks, very much like Alexa and far beyond anything red, which always had a pretty video-y aesthetic anyways. I need this camera in my hands like yesterday.

[PTRush]

[quote name='MattH' timestamp='1343392002' post='14615']
That mesh looks extremely fine. Difficult to tell exactly how fine, but some meshes and fabrics are so fine that there is moire even when looking with the naked eye. The colour is the most distracting part of it. If a mask was used to desaturate the chair then it may just look natural. If the full 2.5k was enough to resolve the pattern then the moire might have occurred merely by downsizing to 1080. In this case I think one could apply a blur mask before down scaling which would act as an anti aliasing filter for that part or the image. It may just be that 2.5k isn't enough to resolve the detail, but that's the case with many cameras. I think an anti aliasing filter would just soften the image overall.
[/quote]

Yes, I agree that an antialiasing filter would help, and I am in NO way bashing this amazing feat of technology. I am not expecting the world =] If it can only produce as little moire as my FS100, I would be ecstatic. Downsampling, lack of pixel binning, whatever-
I just want 2.5k Raw at 48/50/60 fps on this camera!! That would seal the deal for me =]

[richg101]

[quote name='Ivor Koons' timestamp='1343385635' post='14608']
It looks very clean, but I am missing something that the name Cinema Camera promises - a cinematic feel. The DOF is too big, even the GH1 and GH2 deliver a better image in terms of a 3D impression.
The colors look a bit washed-out, too.
The cheap-looking, commercial-like setting might add to that. I can't get rid of the impression that the scenes have been worked on to look as filmic as can be, but this approach somehow isn't successful.
I'm looking forward to seeing some less plasticky stuff. From what I've seen till now, the GH series, if handled well, seems to win over the BCC. But that is hopefully going to change.
[/quote]

depth of focus is more often than not determined by the lens aperture. Maybe the camera operator decided a deeper depth of focus was what was in order. Too much hyper shallow dof used by film maker wannabes at the moment. lets move away from that. Lets be sophisticated. The constant bashing of the sensor size is funny. very few seem to consider how 'low budget anamorphic friendly' a smaller sensor is? Anamorphic is true filmic. And this camera is likely to be a king at the job.

on a side note.. The model is rather lovely isn't she. As does the detail. re. moire/aliasing.. I was too busy looking at the subject matter to realize any aliasing. Most viewers of your work won't care about aliasing either.

[nickname]

[quote name='Ivor Koons' timestamp='1343385635' post='14608']
It looks very clean, but I am missing something that the name Cinema Camera promises - a cinematic feel. The DOF is too big, even the GH1 and GH2 deliver a better image in terms of a 3D impression.
The colors look a bit washed-out, too.
The cheap-looking, commercial-like setting might add to that. I can't get rid of the impression that the scenes have been worked on to look as filmic as can be, but this approach somehow isn't successful.
I'm looking forward to seeing some less plasticky stuff. From what I've seen till now, the GH series, if handled well, seems to win over the BCC. But that is hopefully going to change.
[/quote]


but it doesn´t at all look as desperately "i want to be cinema" than this gh2 clip from musgo last week. bmc actually looks very good and could be the end of hdslr filmmaking. hopefully.

shallow depth of field is only a byproduct of the s35 frame. the extensive use of it came about with video trying to look like film since it couldn´t reproduce the color or dr. before dops and directors were rather trying to get more light on their scene for deeper focus. documentary filmmakers always preferred 16mm. they could shoot pretty wide open but still have more in focus than a pair of ears.

the shallow dof "cinema" look was invented to sell inferior video products and make vimeo clips look nice. and beauty shooters like philipp bloom love it, makes their job so much easier making everything look like a pack shot from a tv ad.

i so hope the bmc is good! looks very promising. soft, nice dr, ok colors. only wideangles will be a real problem. the equivalent of an 18mm on s35 is what? 8mm?

i´d love to use my bolex mount 12.5-100 f2 kern vario-switar on this.
[b] [/b]

[GrantEllis]

I think the video is perfectly acceptable, even the vimeo compression.
Vimeo, being one of the most popular distribution formats, is what you need to prepare your output for, and it will create artifacts by default.
However, view this video on a phone next to Alexa, Epic, F65, etc etc footage...
View it on a tablet, view it on a plasma screen, and lcd, an old 4:3 tube, your computer monitor... watch it on a calibrated screen, on a screen with color presets, etc... realize, that we as media making professionals, may not have 100% control as to how our audience will view your motion picture, but we can get a great feel for the gambit it will run.

Naturally, we'd prefer the files straight off the camera, but the vimeo test gives us one circumstance that it can be viewed, however, we are going to view this on so many different screens, and on some the Vimeo compression is less an issue altogether.

Innovative camera, at least from a cost perspective.
I am interested in what the next gen model will have.

[Andrew Reid]

The Vimeo compression on this video was worse than normal, it is maybe an issue in the new Safari in Mountain Lion. Vimeo could possibly be giving me iPhone browser bitrates by accident on my desktop.

[GrantEllis]

It might have been the way it was handled on the export.
Regardless, I've purchased DVDs off the shelf that have lower-bitrates and a far inferior image to the Vimeo stream... but naturally, this video is meant to give us a look at the camera technology vs. tell a two-hour cinematic narrative that has to be squashed down to fit on a dual-layer disc with seven language tracks for our friends in Zhabimguardia.

Just watching it on my 37" monitor for the sake of watching it the image was more than acceptable given the amount of money I have spent on media over the past 20 years!

Hopefully we can get our hands on the original files, or a portion thereof.

[Bruno]

[quote name='nickname' timestamp='1343397108' post='14622']
i so hope the bmc is good! looks very promising. soft, nice dr, ok colors. only wideangles will be a real problem. the equivalent of an 18mm on s35 is what? 8mm?
[/quote]

The sensor is not that much smaller than s35/APS-C, i haven't done the math, but to get the same as an s35-18mm on this camera you probably need a 14mm or so. A Tokina 11-16 should be quite handy with this camera.

[HurtinMinorKey]

[quote name='Bruno' timestamp='1343401246' post='14628']
The sensor is not that much smaller than s35/APS-C, i haven't done the math, but to get the same as an s35-18mm on this camera you probably need a 14mm or so. A Tokina 11-16 should be quite handy with this camera.
[/quote]

It's closer to super-16 than s-35. Either way, I can't believe people were griping about the DOF, I felt like the director used the the proper DOF for all these shots(but I won't go as far as to say i loved the overall composition). The colors and the detail looked good. But I'm still expecting more in terms of test footage at this stage of the game. Who wants to take bets on the actual release date? I'm thinking sping 2013, November 2012 at the earliest.

[Ivor Koons]

[quote name='richg101' timestamp='1343395760' post='14620']
depth of focus is more often than not determined by the lens aperture. Maybe the camera operator decided a deeper depth of focus was what was in order. Too much hyper shallow dof used by film maker wannabes at the moment. lets move away from that. Lets be sophisticated. The constant bashing of the sensor size is funny. very few seem to consider how 'low budget anamorphic friendly' a smaller sensor is? Anamorphic is true filmic. And this camera is likely to be a king at the job.

on a side note.. The model is rather lovely isn't she. As does the detail. re. moire/aliasing.. I was too busy looking at the subject matter to realize any aliasing. Most viewers of your work won't care about aliasing either.
[/quote]

Agreed that anamorphic is true filmic, rich. That's why I would like to test The Blackmagic with my anamorphic lenses. And possibly true: the latter can achieve something that the BCC wouldn't get across alone. I don't want to bash the new camera; it is just that, and I think any Dp and even photographer will agree on that, what I'm yearning for is the [i]illusion[/i] of (a) space that you can immerse in whilst you're watching somthing. And let's don't forget the big screen. I'm sure the BCC will turn out beautifully. I guess we all just want to watch less and better stuff - to be honest, that is my impression.

[Bruno]

[quote name='HurtinMinorKey' timestamp='1343404799' post='14631']
Who wants to take bets on the actual release date? I'm thinking sping 2013, November 2012 at the earliest.
[/quote]

Well here they say they're ready to go and could even start shipping in July. Still want to bet?
http://youtu.be/mY0aqwflO_8

[tony wilson]

no disrespect but give the fucking camera to someone anyone


else
these clips are zapf dingbatssquelsch

although i would like the telephone number of the girl i left my dirty underpants on top of her toaster and need them back for sentimental reasons

andrew get the camera and have a play please : )