Blackmagic Cinema Camera Review - DSLR killer?

[riogrande100]

Andrew great review on the camera, but your OS review is extremely poor!!!! Windows PCs are far better then people give them credit for. There is a reason many enterprises use Windows OS, and not OSX!

[Andrew Reid]

Please remember my blog is a personal view. It is not the encyclopaedia Britannia entry for Windows 7, I am reporting my personal experiences. Still as I write, Windows remains a pain in the ass for me and many others. My QTDecoder.exe keeps crashing during Resolve sessions through no fault of my own and it is a fresh installation of Windows 7! It really is far more unstable than OSX and that is a fact I'm afraid, even if you are one of the lucky ones who have never had to lose several hours sorting out Windows and driver issues.

You have been warned...

[noa]

Sigh...Let's just say you are right and move one, I"m sure many others would agree..

[galenb]

[quote name='riogrande100' timestamp='1353010111' post='21708']
Andrew great review on the camera, but your OS review is extremely poor!!!! Windows PCs are far better then people give them credit for. There is a reason many enterprises use Windows OS, and not OSX!
[/quote]

Maybe so but there is also a reason Mac sales are growing while the rest of Windows PC market has been pretty flat. Just say'n.

[tomekk]

Andrew, It’s more stable for the reasons I mentioned. It’s not your old MAC. It’s a PC with UNIX inside but Apple’s limiting GUI. Your petsonal view is flawed because apple is good at brainwashing people ;). Accept the fact, you’ve got PC with UNIX inside and you’re getting ripped off. It’s far more worse than your battle vs canon.

[jgharding]

But yeah, back onto the [i]cameras, [/i]it's good news about the BMCC manufacturing issues being sorted. Granted they have a lot of catch up to do though! But if they can pump everything into getting these out and [b][i]working perfectly[/i][/b] they could restore confidence in a shorter time than otherwise.

I hope they do, it'd be a shame to see a new contendor stumble at the first few hurdles! I also hope they don't start immediately releasing really overpriced and heavily tiered products after this one too. We are dealing with a profit-making company after all, not a charity. It's very easy to see the numbers roll up as you do bad things... :o

[tomekk]

@galenb. when you put UNIX inside which is superior for many reasons to windows at this stage (not graphic wise yet, hence the problems with ati cards) what do you expect? Just the problem is ppl doesn’t realize there is no apple left inside their box. what’s left is apple’s half eaten logo and hefty price. Apple is effectively selling PC with Unix. What suprises me, Andrew, constantly talking about how canon is ripping ppl off is defending much worse company. Must be true love. I dont expect him to say: yeah, I was brainwashed by apple but now I understand ;)

[tomekk]

@jgharding. yeah. it’s good they’ve finally sorted out manufacturing issue. I don’t agree with all that hate to profit-making companies though ;). If it was not for profit you would never see bmcc in the first place. Profit drives innovations and allows to expand.

[Bruno]

Calling a Mac a PC with Linux is plain ignorant. OSX is based on Unix yeah, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with Linux. I've been using Linux full time for over 6 years now at work, and I can assure you it's nothing like OSX, I which it only came close. (and let me tell you, I work on Boxx machines that cost more than Mac pros, why do they cost more? I have no idea!)

The fact that Apple uses the 'same' hardware as PCs is also very misleading, just open a Mac Pro and look inside, the thought and design put into it are unmatched on any PC I've ever seen. Same with laptops, every time i look at a PC it looks like i went back in time at least 10 years. 1 inch thick laptops? it's 2012 for fuck's sake!!! Windows is designed by software developers and engineers, including the interface, OSX and macs are designed by the best designers around, and even though they'll do the same thing at the end of the day, the experience (and transparency) is worlds apart.

[tomekk]

1. where did I say linux? I clearly said unix. I used it in the past and used mac OsX when it came out - once. So unless something has changed, when open up a shell, you get the structure and core of FreeBsd.
2. Hardware =/= design. So fine, you pay for the design. Quite a lot but fine. Your choice.

[Andrew Reid]

Not just design, you pay for better engineering and build quality.

[tomekk]

hehe, always last defence of apples funboys ;). ok design, better plastics. Can you explain how you understand better engineering? btw. afair youve built hacintosh. Why didn’t you go and pay full price to get built legendary quality, design and better engineering which all of those are clearly worth the premium.

[Julian]

How is a discussion about Apple vs Windows relevant in a BlackMagic review? Just use what you want, don't try to convince others what they should use or what is 'better'. What does it matter to you anyway if someone else uses something different then you do.. The whole internet is full of Mac vs PC, Android vs iOS etc. I thought on EOSHD I could escape that madness, apparently not :(

Anyway, thanks for the BMCC review Andrew.

Awesome camera for filmmakers. Dslr-killer for dslr-users who use their camera only for movies. Not so much for the hybrid shooters I think. If the BMCC came in a dslr alike body with reasonable photography features It'd be a no brainer for me.

[Bioskop.Inc]

Just to set the cat amongst the pigeons!

Have you read this?

[url="http://blog.planet5d.com/2012/11/blackmagic-cinema-camera-vs-the-dslr-video-world/"]http://blog.planet5d...lr-video-world/[/url]

Video Look? I suppose its all subjective in the end - always has been, always will be.

Would really love to see some anamorphic footage from you Andrew!!!!!!!

[milandirector]

Thanks for the review Andrew. I hope I will get mu MFT mount soon.
On the MAC vs PC discussion. I agree with Andrew... Once you go MAC, you just can't go back. :)

I have been using PC's all my life. tried MAC, but was never confortable with it. However in 2008, an editor friend of mine made me get my first macbook pro and I fell in love with it. No more driver issues, no more wizards (I hated those), no more crushes, and miracle blue screens (to this day that 2008 MBP never crushed on me), loved OS X, loved editing, coloring, and generally doing everything on it.

[center]However lately I have been looking into PC alternative again, due to MAC's being so expensive, and with limited specifications. My problem is that I need mobility, so I have to limit my computer search only to laptops. MBPretina look amazing, but their price is amazing too. For the price of top end MBPretina I found amazing PCs - complete beasts. [/center]

[center]Now for the interesting turn of events, I contacted Peter Chambrlain from DaVinci Resolve, to see what computer with what specification would work best for Resolve, and he told me that regarding Resolve, he only advices MBPretina laptops, no PC laptops, regardless of the monster specifications! [/center]

[center]I don't understand why, I have never been IT guy. That's probably why I love my MACs so much, I don't have to think that much about things outside my editing/coloring, etc, as much as when you use PC.[/center]

[center]Sorry for the long post...[/center]

[tomekk]

if you knew IT a bit you’d know you can buy pc laptop and install mac osx on it (they call it hackintosh) and get same performance for a fraction of price and yeah... you would never go back to overpriced MAC. MAC is the same hardware as PC laptops and is based on FREE UNIX operating system. They’ve just made graphical interface for it and called it Mac OS X to rip you off.
The guy didn’t recommend buying laptop PC because even though Apple is using open source software - the work of thousands ppl who contributed FOR FREE to built it, they don’t allow to use it (mac os x) on computers not branded as MACs. I won’t even describe what should happen to this greedy company. Canon in comparison looks like super honest company if u put it next to apple.
On a side note. This talk is relevant to the BMCC because postprocessing is part of filmmaking too. As of now I see only DSLRs sucks topics (yet there is nothing better from 5dmk3 for HYBRID work - stills plus video). truth to be told you can’t compare 3k 5dmk3 to 3k bmcc, because 5d is designed mainly for stills. So to be objective, true video part is worth probably between 1/3th to 1/4th of the current price for the 5d, yet noone seems to understand it.

[Mark Virtue]

Odd first post here:

OS X is based on the CMU Mach Kernel. It predates Linux. And was used as the under pinnings of the NeXT computer, prior to Steve Jobs bringing those ideas back to Apple on his return.

So back on topic. I don't think that the BMCC will kill DSLRs for video. But I have to say that for what I want, it is nearly the perfect tool. SSD prices are coming down, and are cheaper than large name brand UHS-1 SD cards, so storage really is a non issue. I do 3+TB of still photos a year. Managing large disk arrays is part and parcel of what I do there, so adding a few more TBs is not going to kill me. It will also get archived and off-lined faster than the stills, which I need to keep 100% accessible for 2 years.

[tomekk]

lets not go too technical on this forum. It’s a hybrid. mach component + bsd. The point is. Apple is not Apple :).

[HurtinMinorKey]

[quote name='milandirector' timestamp='1353084384' post='21780']
Thanks for the review Andrew. I hope I will get mu MFT mount soon.
On the MAC vs PC discussion. I agree with Andrew... Once you go MAC, you just can't go back. :)
[/quote]

That is not true. I have use PC's for work, a MB pro at home, and MB Air for traveling light. Windows VIsta was an abortion, but in my opinion Windows 7 is as stable and more intuitive than Mac OSX.

You can get the same mother-board, CPU, GPU on a PC and end up paying 50% less. If you want to compare Mac pro's to something, compare them to HP workstations, which will eat them for breakfast in terms of price for performance.

Of course the most cost-effective solution is just to build one yourself, and then choose your OS.

[Andrew Reid]

Let's test this intuitive Windows 7 claim :)

Task 1. I need to backup the entire system. I click Time Machine, it is done. You click....

Task 2. I need to have live mail, iMessage and twitter updates top right of my screen. I click Notifications in the control panel and tick a box. You click...

Task 3. There's a problem with your hardware configuration. Through research on Google you realise the BIOS has a wrong setting in it. Oh this never happens on a Mac, next...

Task 4. Your operating system is in German. I click Language & Text. You click... And tell me how many steps this takes in Windows 7 Home Premium.

Task 5 and final task for we want to go back out and shoot. DaVinci Resolve is crashing due to QTDecoder issue, you also have green speckles over video playback in ALL APPS... You fix it for me, whilst I play with my Mac :)