BMMCC and URSA 4.6K finally shipping!

[tugela]

On ‎3‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 9:04 AM, mercer said:

I don't think that's fair. A lot of people have been waiting for a promised product, perhaps even started planning projects based on these promised specs, or decided against other equipment because of BM's promised specs. Why should they be told how to feel when disappointment is forced upon them?

I am not sure why they would feel disappointed, unless they are fools. After all, BM seem to do this just about every year, and if people watching/waiting for these products are not aware of that, they are idiots. Whatever the pros and cons of BM's products are, it is wise to wait until they are actually shipping them before making any decisions about them.

[Cinegain]

Delays. Yes. (That's why it didn't order it before it seemed to have reached testers and appeared 'In stock'). Faults/Bugs (like black hole sunspots). Yes.

Exclusion of promoted features that seem a realistic achievement. Not at all the same things...

I haven't seen many companies say 'yeah, remember when we told you it would have so-and-so, well, on 2nd thought, we'll ship 'em out without'. Not even BMD before.

Easy on the 'fools' and 'idiots' please. It was fair to assume the camera would be capable of global shutter. As advertised.

But Mattias is right, nobody is forced to still get one at this point. So whatevs. But how can you deny that a camera as described initially would've been cooler than the camera that will be shipping out now? It's not a delay and getting a better thing. It's not a delay and still getting the same thing. It's a delay and getting a worse thing. If that wasn't allowed to be disappointed about, what is? Are you now disappointed that people still get disappointed about how BMD goes about things? Shouldn't that require us to be disappointed in you for being disappointed in us, which was a given as BMD has a history of disappointing?

[Mattias Burling]

10 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

I haven't seen many companies say 'yeah, remember when we told you it would have so-and-so, well, on 2nd thought, we'll ship 'em out without'.

Just Red, Samsung, Fuji, Sony and I guess the rest of them but I don't have the energy to google it. It happens, what are you gonna do... nothing. Buy whats available

[tugela]

30 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Just Red, Samsung, Fuji, Sony and I guess the rest of them but I don't have the energy to google it. It happens, what are you gonna do... nothing. Buy whats available

I don't know about Red, but I'm pretty sure that the rest of them don't issue press releases and advertising material before the product is actually real. Most of the "issues" people have with those other manufacturers after release is that the camera doesn't behave the way they expect based on their personal interpretation of the product information. It isn't really an issue with the manufacturer, rather one with some customers and misunderstandings (together with a blind refusal to accept the fact that they misunderstood).

[Cinegain]

I don't have the energy to google it either. I can't imagine they all had finalized product pages with full details online and then had to scrap an advertised feature just as they come 'In stock'. We're not talking about what the rumors were or what some guy said in some interview what they'd like to be doing next. We're talking official product pages. And there I haven't seen many companies ditching a feature like that, especially after such a massive delay.

With Sony, they offer things as firmware upgrades. Which have to come out anyway as their initial release FW does seem a little rushed and bugged with child diseases. Other companies, like Canon only announce cameras they can deliver as advertised when they're already in production and hitting the shelves soon.

[tugela]

IIRC, one of BMs earlier cameras had some feature printed on the box that the actual camera inside lacked. RAW recording? I forget what exactly. Anyway, it was eventually implemented, but it was pretty clear that their marketing group was running off projections from engineering rather than what engineering were actually delivering. Then, when the cameras are eventually released (at least with the first few models) they often seem to have some pretty significant basic issues that should have been caught by QC, but apparently were not. And that is the general problem with them. Their marketing appears to be way too far ahead of engineering, while the cameras themselves seem rushed to market, and it creates a lot of issues. I don't think any of the mainstream companies do things that way.

IMO the best approach with BM is to wait until the cameras are actually in the hands of users and see if they do what marketing said, and are relatively glitch free, before buying one yourself. Until that happens, just ignore the hype.

[dbp]

With BM, it's best to wait until they are in the hands of users, and have been for a while. I love BM, but there's ALWAYS gotchas with their stuff.

What they are striving for is fantastic, but being overly ambitious at such a low price point is bound to have some bumps in the road.

[John Brawley]

10 hours ago, Tiago Rosa-Rosso said:

Don't take me too serious. I think what blackmagic is offering is really great. but they put you on hold. They keep you waiting and interested. And they can do that because they deliver. But while you wait you don't consume other brands. 

But that's your choice to make isn't it ?

The real takeaway is....

Don't plan for anything that you can't buy today and have in your own hands to test for your own needs.

Don't plant to shoot with anything you haven't tested and can't get your hands on.

Then you'll never be disappointed by a product being delayed.

Yeah they shipped a camera that said RAW on the box and enabled it a month later (the 4K).  Pretty sure they hardly had actually shipped any actual bodies but it was poor form.

JB

 

 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Having the absolute best image quality/dollar is also their thing. All the ripping would be cool, but it just falls flat when their is no competition. Its easy for BMD to say,
"Ok, go and buy one of the other super small 60p Raw shooting cameras with 13 stops for a thousand dollars....."

One can say Sony this and Samsung that, but at the end of the day, their by now old BMCC still runs circles and then stops and murder anything Panasony has tried to release the last couple of years. If we look at just the image.
Canon is sort of in the same league with some help from hackers. So is Bolex but they only have one model.
 

I agree and around this time of year with NAB everyone's always like...whooo wait and see what XXXX will show up and do and it STILL hasn't happened because no one's even touched their very first camera.  Who else TODAY does an internally recording uncompressed RAW / ProRes / DNx camera with such high DR ?  No one has actually matched it !  STILL  !!  That camera was launched in 2012.   

They even added features they didn't really plan to ever add.  When they made the first camera, they were just like, let's see if anyone buys this.....They dind't know it would be as successful as it became.  They started a whole new division.

The Ursa is a great evolution.  Look at how far they've come with the form factor.  They have done their own EVF....They've continued to add functionality, and they've still not really crippled any of their cameras for the sake of other tiers.  That's impressive for a small company in such a short amount of time.  

Look at the Cion.  They even are rumoured to use the same 4K sensor.  And they supposedly had the better form factor.  All the reviews were, Oh this is what BM should have done yet it's failed almost as miserably as Dalsa did.

Why ?  I mean yeah BM are infuriating with the way they operate but I don't see anyone else coming close to doing what they are doing.

JB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mattias Burling]

8 hours ago, tugela said:

I don't know about Red, but I'm pretty sure that the rest of them don't issue press releases and advertising material before the product is actually real. 

Yes they do.

2.5K in the NX500, Sonys lens road map, Red announce entire cameras.... The list goes on and on. Its not unique.

The only thing that is, is the products BMD offer for the price they are asking. 

[richg101]

Will this update actually affect anyone drastically?  No.

Have even one of the complainers even pre ordered an Ursa Mini 4.6k?  Probably not.  If I;d have pre ordered I'd either cancel my order or continue with it based on whether the new news affected me.   None of the resellers are taking full payment - most don;t even charge a card until they have stock.  We're lucky BM cameras even exist.  if you want similar images you need to invest in a RED Scarlet W, pay 3-4x as much, and no doubt have to wait for firmware fixes.  these are not consumer products.  They're professional ones with consumer pricetags.  That's the main flaw with BM - their pricing allows entry for consumers who have the time to make things into a soap opera rather than actually using the things they already have.

 

I hope the bmmcc has the gs enabled either on shipping or later.  if it doesn't I'll not order one.  if it does, I'll wait for samples to be made available and decide from there.

[Axel]

50 minutes ago, richg101 said:

I hope the bmmcc has the gs enabled either on shipping or later.  if it doesn't I'll not order one.

We've seen aerial shots from a drone already with the BMMCC.

For Ursa Mini: I've read it's a different sensor, not just firmware updatable. If you deem GS essential, you'd have to buy the big Ursa and then exchange the sensor. If that option still exists, I don't care. To keep a sense of proportion, did you know that even the big fat Alexa Studio has a RS, it only uses an analog trick to simulate a GS:

Quote

Rotating Mirror Shutter
A mirror shutter is a mirror, located at an angle in front of the sensor, that continuously rotates. Half the time it reflects light up into the optical viewfinder and the other half it lets light fall onto the sensor. Thereby the mirror shutter makes the optical viewfinder possible and determines the exposure. The advantage of a mirror shutter is two-fold: on the one hand it does not exhibit the rolling shutter artifact of electronic shutters, and on the other it provides a natural motion portrayal that is exactly as it was with film cameras.

All other models simply have RS with good read-out-times. You know the price tag of those cameras? Alexa Mini €38.000, Amira €39.000. How much is an Alexa Studio? From what we've seen so far from the UM, there won't be terrible jello.

[independent]

This looks like the best image you can get under 10K without buying into Red's ecosystem. This, coming from a former Red owner and operator - and I sold that once I saw how the very first blackmagic camera handled low-light noise. 

The Rolling Shutter, oh so what. Hey look, I'd rather have a company that tries to do something really amazing and fall short, rather than a company that intentionally cripples cameras to sell you the next model 6 months later, or are trying to protect their tiered market strategies. 

There is no false advertising or bait and switch. Because you technically didn't buy anything. It was a pre-order. And BM was upfront about the issue and now they're releasing the camera. They're actually pretty damn responsive without the attitude (RED). 

Yeah there was a delay - like other small companies in any industry. That's what happens when a company is driven by innovation and don't have billion dollar resources. A world without RED and Blackmagic would be immensely damaging to the independent film community. They've changed the market for the better.

The crazy sense of entitlement, construing this as some unethical business practice is hilarious. "I will never again buy a blackmagic product" - Ok, enjoy your hacked 5D or franken dslr, or whatever you shoot with. Because blackmagic doesn't owe you anything. If you sat in front of your computer hitting refresh for the past six months, you have every right to be angry. But not at blackmagic. You sad, sad little man.

I hope everybody cancels their pre-orders, so please! Keep complaining. 

 

[Cinegain]

Ok, so now I'm a sad foolish idiot. Glad you guys got that out of your systems. Does that mean you can focus on the topic title again?

[Tony Anastasi]

I'm guessing who ever designed and sold that sensor chip to BM had 'over stated' it's global shutter specs/ and BM couldn't hack their way around the buggy chips they were given... I feel sorry for the boys at BM. Thinking hard about grabbing a 4.6k myself in the future, it's way more then I need but I want to support the guys for their efforts in bringing something like this to market at these prices... and don't forget 'the compact URSA Mini camera with EF lens mount, 4K Super 35 image sensor and global shutter is' .... 4k with GS is just $2,995 usd. still a killer deal really...

[Tiago Rosa-Rosso]

 

some micro footage found in vimeo

[Andrew Reid]

2 hours ago, Tony Anastasi said:

I'm guessing who ever designed and sold that sensor chip to BM had 'over stated' it's global shutter specs/ and BM couldn't hack their way around the buggy chips they were given... I feel sorry for the boys at BM. Thinking hard about grabbing a 4.6k myself in the future, it's way more then I need but I want to support the guys for their efforts in bringing something like this to market at these prices... and don't forget 'the compact URSA Mini camera with EF lens mount, 4K Super 35 image sensor and global shutter is' .... 4k with GS is just $2,995 usd. still a killer deal really...

Apparently BM specced it out themselves, it's a custom chip not an off the shelf one.

There's a reason none of the major manufacturers are using global shutter apart from Sony as seemingly a weird one off on the F55. It is a long way off yet when it comes to image quality.

[John Brawley]

Just because the couldn't get gs working as well as they would like for the current cameras doesn't mean you won't see it in the future, like for example the over due Ursa 4.6K turrets ?

I think BM had to draw a line and ship the UM4.6K because for the vast majority of users the RS is perfectly acceptable for most users, while they keep optimising it.

jb

 

[Bioskop.Inc]

Having played with the 4.6k Cdng files, I think RS vs GS is a moot point - boy can you push those files!

I can totally understand why they decided to just release the Mini 4.6K without GS, as it will simply sell itself with that picture & the DR available.

Would've taken the hit with the Micro, but if the picture quality/DR is anyways near the 4.6Ks - that'll be one powerful little camera for the money! The only thing is, is that Grant didn't really mention the Micro in his comments - anyone can confirm anything?

[tugela]

20 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Yes they do.

2.5K in the NX500, Sonys lens road map, Red announce entire cameras.... The list goes on and on. Its not unique.

The only thing that is, is the products BMD offer for the price they are asking. 

I don't believe that 2.5K was ever promised for the NX500 in promotional material. What someone said is that in beta testing it was 2.5K, but that was changed when the camera was released. Rumors and beta testers breaching their NDAs does not constitute "promotional material".

[viranikenya]

On 3/18/2016 at 0:06 PM, Mattias Burling said:

Then the Micro is probably a great buy. Small and light as well, which of course is excellent for a b/c cam. 

If you arent too picky with resolution and want a Raw camera for slowmo that also doubles as a stills camera and has good lowlight, Im currently testing the 5Dmk3 and Im impressed. Easy to match since you switch it to BMD film.

I had the 5d mark3 for it was shooting in raw, but I sold it for A7s for its low light abilities which was more in line with my work shooting documentary in low light situations. A7s in slog2 & sgamut is a nightmare to grade is exposure is not right (ETTR). I own 2 BMCC they are super sweet for organized interviews but heavy to lug around week long field trips in remote areas. So BMCC with a speedbooster might bring joy to my life. 

Also even know I don't see too many BMCC sample footage online am getting suspicious how come?