Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[Novim]

22 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Does anyone know if Black Magic ever officially confirmed BRAW will come to the Pocket 4k? 

Grant Petty, CEO of the BM Design, said so in his presentation of BRAW (at 4:29 and 27:14):

 

[matthere]

BM Raw coming soon?

[RWR]

Given the tour name, would be weird if it wasn't.

But..you know..it' s Black Magic

[drm]

9 minutes ago, matthere said:

BM Raw coming soon?

I doubt that the designer of that brochure has inside information about the timing of the release of BRAW for the P4K. However, that is only about two weeks away, so I will cross my fingers and hope for release within the next couple of weeks! 

I did notice that the new firmware has made the camera *much* more stable. I have taken it on a couple of shoots since the firmware update and haven't seen any of the previous issues that I encountered prior to the update (like the damn camera reformatting the T5 drive on its own while glitching #$#%#!!)

[graphicnatured]

1 hour ago, drm said:

I doubt that the designer of that brochure has inside information about the timing of the release of BRAW for the P4K. However, that is only about two weeks away, so I will cross my fingers and hope for release within the next couple of weeks! 

I did notice that the new firmware has made the camera *much* more stable. I have taken it on a couple of shoots since the firmware update and haven't seen any of the previous issues that I encountered prior to the update (like the damn camera reformatting the T5 drive on its own while glitching #$#%#!!)

Luckily I haven't had a single issue with mine.

[kye]

2 hours ago, drm said:

(like the damn camera reformatting the T5 drive on its own while glitching #$#%#!!)

wow.......

[drm]

2 hours ago, kye said:

wow.......

Yep. I was pissed. Luckily, I was just testing the camera at the time and only had test footage on the drive. Every once in a while, the screen will just go crazy and start acting like someone is clicking around on the screen. I have seen it happen maybe 3 or 4 times. At least once, the camera decided to open the external drive menu, then clicks on through until the drive is reformatted. I haven't seen this with the new firmware. I will let everyone know if I see it again.

[Turboguard]

21 minutes ago, drm said:

Yep. I was pissed. Luckily, I was just testing the camera at the time and only had test footage on the drive. Every once in a while, the screen will just go crazy and start acting like someone is clicking around on the screen. I have seen it happen maybe 3 or 4 times. At least once, the camera decided to open the external drive menu, then clicks on through until the drive is reformatted. I haven't seen this with the new firmware. I will let everyone know if I see it again.

I had that screen bug and they replaced it right away. Received a new camera just 3 days after I spoke to customer support. 

[kye]

36 minutes ago, drm said:

Yep. I was pissed. Luckily, I was just testing the camera at the time and only had test footage on the drive. Every once in a while, the screen will just go crazy and start acting like someone is clicking around on the screen. I have seen it happen maybe 3 or 4 times. At least once, the camera decided to open the external drive menu, then clicks on through until the drive is reformatted. I haven't seen this with the new firmware. I will let everyone know if I see it again.

 

13 minutes ago, Turboguard said:

I had that screen bug and they replaced it right away. Received a new camera just 3 days after I spoke to customer support. 

Sounds like a faulty touchscreen sensing ghost touches.  

...or you're haunted!!  (when is Halloween again? ???)

[leslie]

On 2/5/2019 at 1:13 PM, TurboRat said:

Wondering why Aus didn't get that much supply considering BM is based in Australia. Also went to Melbourne during the holidays and asked around, they also haven't received P4K stock

yer, wheres the love ?

[Anaconda_]

8 hours ago, drm said:

I doubt that the designer of that brochure has inside information about the timing of the release of BRAW for the P4K.

True, but every word on that brochure has been carefully crafted and checked by people who do. Also, it'd be very strange to hold the event and then not release it... but as other have said, it's BMD, so who knows - we can only hope.

[BTM_Pix]

Had mine do the phantom screen pressing last week and delete all of the LUTs I'd put on it.

I was watching it delete them one by one and half expecting a ransomware pop up to appear on the screen telling me it was going to delete more stuff.

I had the last laugh though as the LUTs were crap anyway.

Then on Tuesday it did it again but it was too fast to see what it was doing and I just switched it off to stop it doing it. I then thought it had deleted all the recordings off the cards as when I went to playback there was nothing there but after a mild panic I realised that "all" it had done was change recording format which of course renders recordings made in a different format invisible when you go into playback.

So it was the perfect storm of an actual defect interacting with a function that is so annoying that it should probably be considered a virtual defect in itself.

 

[drm]

4 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Had mine do the phantom screen pressing last week and delete all of the LUTs I'd put on it.

I was watching it delete them one by one and half expecting a ransomware pop up to appear on the screen telling me it was going to delete more stuff.

I had the last laugh though as the LUTs were crap anyway.

Then on Tuesday it did it again but it was too fast to see what it was doing and I just switched it off to stop it doing it. I then thought it had deleted all the recordings off the cards as when I went to playback there was nothing there but after a mild panic I realised that "all" it had done was change recording format which of course renders recordings made in a different format invisible when you go into playback.

So it was the perfect storm of an actual defect interacting with a function that is so annoying that it should probably be considered a virtual defect in itself.

 

That "feature" of only playing files in your current recording mode is just bizarre. It is horrible from a user interface perspective. How is a user supposed to know the format of the files on the card or drive? The camera should at least show you all the files on the card and change mode as necessary to play that file type. Is there a way to see what is on your card, other than just pressing play and using the FF RW buttons?

I can't believe that someone actually approved that "feature" for release to the public. All of my other cameras just play the file, regardless of what mode the camera is currently using. Many other cameras give you thumbnail and other views of the card content. Do other BM cameras behave the same way with regard to file playback as the P4K? 

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, drm said:

I can't believe that someone actually approved that "feature" for release to the public. 

I thought it might be something they got enough feedback about to change it in the new firmware release but apparently not.

I understand why it is done but there is a far more elegant way to make that seamless/invisible for the user.

[Turboguard]

7 hours ago, drm said:

That "feature" of only playing files in your current recording mode is just bizarre. It is horrible from a user interface perspective. How is a user supposed to know the format of the files on the card or drive? The camera should at least show you all the files on the card and change mode as necessary to play that file type. Is there a way to see what is on your card, other than just pressing play and using the FF RW buttons?

I can't believe that someone actually approved that "feature" for release to the public. All of my other cameras just play the file, regardless of what mode the camera is currently using. Many other cameras give you thumbnail and other views of the card content. Do other BM cameras behave the same way with regard to file playback as the P4K? 

Right, I can't see a single reason for this be like this. If they think it's smoothens the user experience by say, only showing raw clips cause I'm shooting raw, it's not. If I was shooting prores earlier and now Raw, and I click the playback button, my latest clips should be shown first right, so I'm not having to scroll through tons of pores and be like "OMG CAN IT JUST HIDE PRORES CAUSE I'M SHOOTING RAW NOW". That would NEVER happen, cause the prores would be AFTER THE RAW I'm shooting at the moment. Obviously this would go the other way around as well. BUT LIKE, what other camera does this in the world!? Sorry, i'm kind of pissed off about this as I had to delete a whole card on set last week cause I didn't have time to figure out what format I had shot stuff on it.

[Papiskokuji]

16 minutes ago, Turboguard said:

Right, I can't see a single reason for this be like this. If they think it's smoothens the user experience by say, only showing raw clips cause I'm shooting raw, it's not. If I was shooting prores earlier and now Raw, and I click the playback button, my latest clips should be shown first right, so I'm not having to scroll through tons of pores and be like "OMG CAN IT JUST HIDE PRORES CAUSE I'M SHOOTING RAW NOW". That would NEVER happen, cause the prores would be AFTER THE RAW I'm shooting at the moment. Obviously this would go the other way around as well. BUT LIKE, what other camera does this in the world!? Sorry, i'm kind of pissed off about this as I had to delete a whole card on set last week cause I didn't have time to figure out what format I had shot stuff on it.

FS7 does it too and it's a quite popular camera. Don't blame it all on Blackmagic. It might have to do with the frame rates. All Sony mirrorless cameras can't record in Pal and NTSC on the same card. There must be some kind of software limitation. It's like the clips you can't delete. At first you think it's poor ergonomy, and then you discover there are reasons behind it (for safer media for recording in the second case). But i'm no engineer, maybe someone more qualified can chime in and tell us more about it.

[Ehetyz]

So I've been shooting a new mockumentary/short movie where I'm using both the URSA Mini 4.6K and the Pocket 4K side by side, for interviews etc. Did some preliminary tests on grading the footage today, and they match quite nicely. Nothing scientific (and not all 100% going for cinematic since it is a mockumentary) about this one so it's not as if you can take it as a direct comparison - but I think some of you might find it interesting. Both cameras were at 800ISO (which theoretically is sub-optimal ISO for the Pocket but eh) and shooting at 4K Prores HQ, only difference in grading is that tint is set to -8 on the URSA and 0 on the pocket.

 

Top one is Pocket, bottom one URSA.

Looking at them full-res, the most obvious difference is that yes, the Pocket is sharper. I may have mistaken about in-camera sharpening in Prores - on the other hand, they have drastically different lenses too; Pocket is running on Sigma 18-35 at 1.8 and a speedbooster while URSA was shooting with a Takumar 50/1.2 which is quite milky by nature.

Anyways, it's proving to be a nice b-cam for the big bro Ursa.

[mercer]

At least you don't have to reformat the card every time you switch between Raw and ProRes. I vaguely remember having to reboot the Micro if I changed formats... but I may be remembering a nightmare or something.

@Turboguard @BTM_Pix

On 1/20/2019 at 8:39 AM, Anaconda_ said:

@mercer and anyone else, I couldn't get to some woods, but I shot some high contrast spots. As I said before, I don't shoot RAW, so I exposed as I normally would. I hope you can get the info you wanted from this.

Total size 1.72gb - https://mega.nz/#F!3Fs0mSSS!0gMCbZYRQ47KKrmY8WN_YQ

All shot with Sigma 18-35 f1.8 (set to f4) on the Viltrox booster. All handheld, so excuse the shakiness. 

The RAW files are 4:1 and the others are ProRes HQ. The last 2 clips are the same shot, from the same position to show the crop when you shoot 1080p RAW. I believe its a 4x crop in RAW and 1.9x in ProRes - With the booster, those crop factors change, but maths isn't my strong suit, so I'll leave it to someone else to work that out.

 

Thanks Anaconda!!! I just had the chance to take a look at these. The ProRes looks good... 1080p would probably be more than enough for my needs. Thanks for sharing them. Did you shoot them in Video mode or was that after a BM LUT was applied?

[mercer]

15 minutes ago, Ehetyz said:

So I've been shooting a new mockumentary/short movie where I'm using both the URSA Mini 4.6K and the Pocket 4K side by side, for interviews etc. Did some preliminary tests on grading the footage today, and they match quite nicely. Nothing scientific (and not all 100% going for cinematic since it is a mockumentary) about this one so it's not as if you can take it as a direct comparison - but I think some of you might find it interesting. Both cameras were at 800ISO (which theoretically is sub-optimal ISO for the Pocket but eh) and shooting at 4K Prores HQ, only difference in grading is that tint is set to -8 on the URSA and 0 on the pocket.

 

Top one is Pocket, bottom one URSA.

Looking at them full-res, the most obvious difference is that yes, the Pocket is sharper. I may have mistaken about in-camera sharpening in Prores - on the other hand, they have drastically different lenses too; Pocket is running on Sigma 18-35 at 1.8 and a speedbooster while URSA was shooting with a Takumar 50/1.2 which is quite milky by nature.

Anyways, it's proving to be a nice b-cam for the big bro Ursa.

Well now I want to see how the 18-35mm looks on the Ursa because it does indeed look nice with the P4K. Nice work matching them.

[Ehetyz]

It's a workhorse lens. Very sharp and good colors, not much character. Good when you want things to look slick and professional. I use it a lot on the URSA when doing corporate stuff. I think the speedbooster adds to the bloominess of highlights here.