Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[cantsin]

Blackmagic already answered in its Q&A (reposted here in this thread some dozen of pages ago) that the Pocket 4K will have the same IR filtration requirements as previous BM cameras, so we can expect a thinner filter stack.

[Anaconda_]

In the scenario where Metabones do make a new speedbooster, has anyone heard of them trying to build in an IRcut filter into the glass element? That would essentially give the camera a built in filter, so you don't have to buy a new one for every lens, or screw it on and off for lens changes.

I don't have any experience with the BMPCC or it's cousins, so not sure how much of an issue the IR thing is. From what I can tell, it's 'ok' until you start using NDs, right?

[cantsin]

48 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

I don't have any experience with the BMPCC or it's cousins, so not sure how much of an issue the IR thing is. From what I can tell, it's 'ok' until you start using NDs, right?

There are many situations in which you need IR filtration on the BMPCC even without ND filters - a scene filmed in bright sunlight or with non-LED light can be enough. You can easily test it by filming some black synthetic fabric, such as a sports bag, and see whether it turns out brownish-magenta on the footage.

In that respect, BM cameras are a lot like older digital Leicas and like RED cameras. More aggressive in-camera IR filtering also means less color resolution/fidelity in the red spectrum, this is why pro cameras often have weaker IR filters.

[John Brawley]

There’s no such thing as a standard filter stack. Each manufacturer has a different thickness. 

The filter stack by the way IS the IR filter, but many feel it’s not strong enough. Personally I think it’s bettwr to let more in as mentioned and then you can always filter further if you need, seeing as you’re using ND filters most likely anyway. 

 

JB

[Don Kotlos]

I agree with John. It might be anecdotal but I believe not being too aggressive on the IR filtration and you don't use NDs, it actually helps with skin tonalities. You can always add a proper ND/IR filter if you need to, but you can't remove whats in the camera.  

Here are some examples with the BM :

http://www.thehurlblog.com/what-is-ir-pollution-and-how-do-you-combat-it-tiffen/

https://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2016/12/blackmagic-ursa-mini-camera-test-series-part-1-9/8/?tm=ic

[webrunner5]

Sensor stacks also help manage distortion, focusing in the corners with lenses. m4/3 sensors have a Hell of a thick stack compared to FF.

https://petapixel.com/2014/06/10/sensor-stack-thickness-matter/

https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/01/a-thinner-sensor-stack/

 

[Damphousse]

11 hours ago, Savannah Miller said:

There was a post on one of the other forums where Brian said that he didn't see any need to make a speedbooster as long as Blackmagic used standard filter stack size.  He basically said he didn't want to have to make one.

As long as this is standard (which it hopefully is) then everything should be just fine.

The first camera BMCC was their ORIGINAL camera.  It's possibly they didn't think about the filter thickness or made a hybrid thickness to accommodate both EF and M4/3 mount.  The Pocket was their second, and the micro is just a variation of the original pocket design, hence it would have the same thickness.  They may even have used the same filter of the original BMCC. I doubt thickness has anything to do with cost savings and they have likely rectified this with their latest model as sensor stack thickness can also affect optical performance when not using speedboosters.

I don't know much about filters, but maybe it was made thinner because Blackmagic's IR glass lacks any low pass filtering.

 

10 hours ago, Savannah Miller said:

With micro 4/3 more popular than ever for video, Blackmagic now is building a 100% micro 4/3 only camera in both sensor size and mount, so they'll likely do things more normally this time.

 

Please stop telling people to buy a speedbooster before Metabones even has a chance to look at the camera.  I spent more on my speedbooster than my BMPCC.  It is an important purchasing decision.  No one should jump the gun and buy a speedbooster based on your questionable and somewhat strange conjecture.  I honestly can't figure out why you have such a strong conviction about your guesses regarding the sensor stack thickness.  This has to be the oddest debate in the history of this forum.  Sensor stack thickness on an unreleased camera?!  How did this become a controversy?

[andrgl]

3 hours ago, Damphousse said:

 

 

Please stop telling people to buy a speedbooster before Metabones even has a chance to look at the camera.  I spent more on my speedbooster than my BMPCC.  It is an important purchasing decision.  No one should jump the gun and buy a speedbooster based on your questionable and somewhat strange conjecture.  I honestly can't figure out why you have such a strong conviction about your guesses regarding the sensor stack thickness.  This has to be the oddest debate in the history of this forum.  Sensor stack thickness on an unreleased camera?!  How did this become a controversy?

Is there anything wrong with the following logic?

 

If the metabones is incompatible, so would any m43 lens.

I can use both the XL and Ultra Speedboosters on any currently released Blackmagic m43 mount camera.

 

Ergo unless BM completely fucked with the mount specs, anything designed to mount on a m43 sensor will be compatible with the Pocket 4k.

[cantsin]

It is not about compatibility, but better image quality. (Better sharpness, less CA with a Speed Booster optimized for a specific camera's filter stack.)

[Damphousse]

1 hour ago, andrgl said:

Ergo unless BM completely fucked with the mount specs, anything designed to mount on a m43 sensor will be compatible with the Pocket 4k.

Define "compatible".  Depending on how you define "compatible" it may not also mean "optimal".  I posted the M43/BM compatibility table already.  Read the second footnote.  Blackmagic spells it out in a very detailed manner.  I guess everyone is familiar with the type of mount and sensor crop.  What you guys keep glossing over is sensor stack thickness.  You can't just look at two out of three parameters and declare optimal compatibility.

[Savannah Miller]

9 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

In the scenario where Metabones do make a new speedbooster, has anyone heard of them trying to build in an IRcut filter into the glass element? That would essentially give the camera a built in filter, so you don't have to buy a new one for every lens, or screw it on and off for lens changes.

I don't have any experience with the BMPCC or it's cousins, so not sure how much of an issue the IR thing is. From what I can tell, it's 'ok' until you start using NDs, right?

Mosaic Engineering OLPF filters now have IR built in.  So if you want extra IR filtration, you can use one of those.

1 hour ago, Damphousse said:

Define "compatible".  Depending on how you define "compatible" it may not also mean "optimal".  I posted the M43/BM compatibility table already.  Read the second footnote.  Blackmagic spells it out in a very detailed manner.  I guess everyone is familiar with the type of mount and sensor crop.  What you guys keep glossing over is sensor stack thickness.  You can't just look at two out of three parameters and declare optimal compatibility.

It's not that simple.  The original BMCC was a confused camera.  Was it a micro 4/3 camera?  Not sure because it was a non-active mount, whereas the EF mount version was active.  Likewise sensor size fell between 4/3 and super 16 in size as well.  So I feel like they made both mounts so that people had more choices.  Speedboosters were nonexistent back then, and there weren't nearly as many preaching about the importance of a standard sensor stack thickness (even RED cameras don't necessarily care about standards so much as optimizing for their own camera) so Blackmagic didn't really do anything wrong with the sensor stack thickness they chose.  It works more than fine with both EF and Micro 4/3 lenses and wasn't a huge problem for most people.  Only when the speedbooster came out did this matter a lot more and seperate boosters had to be made.  

 

The new Pocket 4K is a more firmly decided micro4/3 camera and not a combination of both EF and Micro 4/3 so there's no reason Blackmagic would not use a thicker stack to match other cameras and the Speedbooster spec.  If anything, it's probably not hard considering Blackmagic has only IR cut and not an OLPF, so increasing thickness is likely not much of an issue.  Why do eoubt BM and think there will be any issues?

 

[andrgl]

1 hour ago, Damphousse said:

Define "compatible".  Depending on how you define "compatible" it may not also mean "optimal".  I posted the M43/BM compatibility table already.  Read the second footnote.  Blackmagic spells it out in a very detailed manner.  I guess everyone is familiar with the type of mount and sensor crop.  What you guys keep glossing over is sensor stack thickness.  You can't just look at two out of three parameters and declare optimal compatibility.

So then all m43 lenses will be not optimal?

1 hour ago, cantsin said:

It is not about compatibility, but better image quality. (Better sharpness, less CA with a Speed Booster optimized for a specific camera's filter stack.)

So the BMCC speedbooster preforms better than the XL on a BMCC?

[Savannah Miller]

Yes.  They're not optimal but everyone seems to forget that original BMCC was both EF and Micro 4/3 so not "optimal" anyway.

On top of that, the sensor in the BMPCC is pretty much THE SAME image as the BMCC, just a smaller 1080p sensor, and it's likely the same cut-down sensor.  So it does make sense that for cost measures they just reuse the same IR filter from the BMCC.

The pocket 4K is a completely new sensor that will have different filtering requirements, and will have a new stack.

[Jonn]

On 5/3/2018 at 5:58 AM, kye said:

I can't confirm it but your assumption makes sense.

It also means trouble for what is fast enough to write to it!  RAW at 60p would be 540MB/s

Taking a look at the most expensive cards on B&H:
ARRI 512GB Extreme PRO CFast 2.0 Memory Card - 450MB/s
Angelbird 256GB AV Pro CF CFast 2.0 Memory Card - 400MB/s
Lexar 512GB Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 Memory Card - 445MB/s
ProGrade Digital 512GB CFast 2.0 Memory Card - 450MB/s

of course, sane people would just shoot compressed, but considering this thread is about specs... 

Why didn't they bring over the internal SSD from the BMCC/BMPC4K? CFast is way more expensive, and SD cards aren't capable of these speeds. If they wanted to make this camera an affordable proposition, then an internal SSD would be miles better. The external solution isn't ideal for all recording situations.

[SR]

Apparently Ronin-s works well with the BMPCC4K.

 

 

[Samin]

I was wondering those who have pre-ordered or planning to buy this camera, which lens/lenses have in mind to pair it with bmpcc4k?

[webrunner5]

Well I plan on using my old standby Panny14-45mm , and the later G7 kit lens 14-140mm. Both are pretty crazy good copies I will never sell. Both just seem to work when you need something to get the job done. Not the most romantic lenses in the world, but they make stuff happen. But yeah a person needs some fast MF Cine lenses. Wide ones at that.

Trouble is all the above lenses are sort of too good for a Cine look. So I have found the cheaper the lens sometimes the better they look. Old Yashica,, Vivitar stuff is interesting, more so than Canon L glass to me. I sort of like to get a lot of character from lenses more than using a LuT, or filters to achieve. Soft edges, distortion, etc. isn't always a bad thing.

[SR]

Viltrox EF-m2 0.71x 

Tokina 28-70mm f/2.6

Possibly Sigma 18-35 1.8.

[kye]

On 6/4/2018 at 7:03 AM, Jonn said:

Why didn't they bring over the internal SSD from the BMCC/BMPC4K? CFast is way more expensive, and SD cards aren't capable of these speeds. If they wanted to make this camera an affordable proposition, then an internal SSD would be miles better. The external solution isn't ideal for all recording situations.

Everything is a compromise in product design.  The trick is making the compromises that please the most people

31 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Well I plan on using my old standby Panny14-45mm , and the later G7 kit lens 14-140mm. Both are pretty crazy good copies I will never sell. Both just seem to work when you need something to get the job done. Not the most romantic lenses in the world, but they make stuff happen. But yeah a person needs some fast MF Cine lenses. Wide ones at that.

Trouble is all the above lenses are sort of too good for a Cine look. So I have found the cheaper the lens sometimes the better they look. Old Yashica,, Vivitar stuff is interesting, more so than Canon L glass to me. I sort of like to get a lot of character from lenses more than using a LuT, or filters to achieve. Soft edges, distortion, etc. isn't always a bad thing.

My approach has always been to record in a neutral style and adjust to taste later on, but I don't have radical tastes, so it's not a big change.  Of course you're totally right that there's a bunch of things you can't easily change in post - try changing the shape or texture of the bokeh of a lens in post for example!!

[Eduardo Granadsztejn]

It is in half spanish but its very interesting...