Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[BTM_Pix]

6 hours ago, Thpriest said:

It took an age to start up and even longer to read the SD to be ready to record (nearly 2 mins!).

Had this a couple of times with SD cards that had a lot of clips on them.

Seemed more related to the amount of clips rather than the capacity used by them.

 

[Thpriest]

1 minute ago, BTM_Pix said:

Had this a couple of times with SD cards that had a lot of clips on them.

Seemed more related to the amount of clips rather than the capacity used by them.

 

I would say that was my experience too. It became worse as the day went on. Is that the same with CFast and SSD?

[BTM_Pix]

1 minute ago, Thpriest said:

I would say that was my experience too. It became worse as the day went on. Is that the same with CFast and SSD?

It was happening when I was app testing and I only use SD cards when I'm doing that so I can't really give any idea on whether it affects the other media types.

I meant to do a bit more of a scientific test on how many files and/or what codec was causing it but to be honest I was just so relieved that it wasn't a bug in my code that I just moved on when formatting the card fixed it  

[drm]

8 hours ago, Thpriest said:

I would say that was my experience too. It became worse as the day went on. Is that the same with CFast and SSD?

I have heard of that issue when some people are using SD cards that get over 1/2 full. I bet it has to do with the speed of the cards and their write speeds as the card gets full. 

I have never had that happen on any of my 3 P4Ks or the P6K. *BUT* I use 1TB Samsung T5s, exclusively. I have filled up T5 drives completely several times and never had a dropped frame.

I have only had two issues with any of the P4Ks or the P6K, despite using them on many jobs for extended periods of time. Problem 1: one of my P4Ks had a defective touch screen. BM replaced the cam and I haven't had an issue since. Problem 2: one of my cameras was draining the internal battery and shutting off, despite a Sony NP battery being attached via a battery sled through the 12V port. I swapped the sled and have never had that issue again. I know that some people have had problems with their cams, but I have had so few problems with my 4 that it never even enters my mind during a shoot.

Best of luck!

[dslnc]

On 11/5/2019 at 3:35 PM, Thpriest said:

On 11/5/2019 at 3:32 PM, BTM_Pix said:

 

I would say that was my experience too. It became worse as the day went on. Is that the same with CFast and SSD?

It happened to me with the firmware 6.1? (the cdng release version from one year ago) with a sandisk extreme 512GB ssd - with sdcards I never had an issue. It seemed to me as if it was calculating something. Amount minutes left to record and clips recorded and it somehow took quite a bit of time. And worst - one could not start recording until then.

but with the next camera update (the braw one) it was gone (at least for me )

[Dunjoye]

Beginning to get the feel of this camera. It's a beast. Something I am going to avoid doing moving forward,  is watching alot of these cameras reviews from these so called experts. Nothing beats your experience with a cam.

For me, this camera is the best bang for £. 

I hate rigging cameras , unless necessary.  I have kept my setup light. LP batteries and Lens with a hot shoe handle. 

The images below are from a shoot I dod recently.

Set up:

1080p pro res Hq 24, 60 and 120 

Tamron 24-75mm 2.8

Iso: 800 and 1000

Shot in film Graded in fcp x

No lighting setup, just the fluorescent bulbs from the gym. 

When with the green tint for the look. I am a canon fan boy so, I want my colours to be rich and pop.

 

This camera is shockingly better than I expected

[thebrothersthre3]

Yeah I used it on a three day shoot last week. Battery life wasn't that big a deal. Worked great with a monopod and minimal rigging. For handheld a monitor is necessary, we used the small HD and one of these little swivel mounts. Worked great. 

[Gregormannschaft]

Thinking about selling my A7SII and buying the 4K BMPCC. Does anyone have any experience with using this on a gimbal? Is it a hassle to balance? 

I currently run the A7SII as a B-CAM for my C200, but the slow mo quality is really getting to the point where it sticks out like a sore thumb. I run it nice and light with manual focus lenses on the Zhiyun Crane v2, so I'd be looking to upgrade both the camera and the gimbal.

[thebrothersthre3]

12 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Thinking about selling my A7SII and buying the 4K BMPCC. Does anyone have any experience with using this on a gimbal? Is it a hassle to balance? 

I currently run the A7SII as a B-CAM for my C200, but the slow mo quality is really getting to the point where it sticks out like a sore thumb. I run it nice and light with manual focus lenses on the Zhiyun Crane v2, so I'd be looking to upgrade both the camera and the gimbal.

If you have the right gimbal its no issue. The camera is on the bulky side but its not heavy. Definitely a different image than the C200, but it can hold its own against a C200 imo

[MeanRevert]

13 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Thinking about selling my A7SII and buying the 4K BMPCC. Does anyone have any experience with using this on a gimbal? Is it a hassle to balance? 

I currently run the A7SII as a B-CAM for my C200, but the slow mo quality is really getting to the point where it sticks out like a sore thumb. I run it nice and light with manual focus lenses on the Zhiyun Crane v2, so I'd be looking to upgrade both the camera and the gimbal.

You'll need an offset plate or a cage since the Pocket 4K is too wide for the popular gimbals out there.

[Anaconda_]

It fits well on the Weebill Lab without an offset plate, but you need to counterbalance it. I've used it with the Viltrox booster and 24-105 f4 and the results were really nice. My counterweight was the NPF battery sled with a 970 battery, which was handy because I could shoot like that for hours should I need to.

That said, if I were to buy again I wouldn't necessarily go with the Weebill Lab as I've found I quite often need to use some post stabilisation as well to help it out a little.

[Emanuel]

15 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Thinking about selling my A7SII and buying the 4K BMPCC. Does anyone have any experience with using this on a gimbal? Is it a hassle to balance? 

I currently run the A7SII as a B-CAM for my C200, but the slow mo quality is really getting to the point where it sticks out like a sore thumb. I run it nice and light with manual focus lenses on the Zhiyun Crane v2, so I'd be looking to upgrade both the camera and the gimbal.

You have here a full thread specifically on topic:

 

[wyrlyn]

any info/experience about the cctech pocket 4k battery?

[osmanovic]

On 5/20/2019 at 2:01 AM, CaptainHook said:

Ignoring the made up numbers here, in terms of debayer quality the method for cDNG is much older as not anywhere near as good as Blackmagic RAW. I see a lot of people mistake the artefacts of the DNG debayer as sharpness. Its not that the cDNG debayer is necessarily keeping more details, but it IS creating false detail. An interesting comparison was just posted here that's worth looking at :

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=510320#p510320

Especially this image - what you're seeing on the DNG is not real information the DNG retained, it's CREATING it (falsely) and it can look like sharpness/detail when it's over areas of real detail, but it's a very "hard" and digital feeling look IMHO :

But also pay really close attention to the resolution image at the above link. You can see on the right hand side the artefacts between the red and yellow resolution lines and around the edges of the circle. These artefacts are not real detail or sharpness that you lose with Blackmagic RAW, they are created in error.

Something to consider as well is we get a lot of feedback from customers that 4.6K Blackmagic RAW still has more resolution than some "other" cameras 8K RAW images - likely because of strong optical low pass filtering that without could produce similar artefacts as shown in DNG.
 

The highlights and shadows sliders in cDNG are NOT debayering RAW controls and work on debayered data only. They are the exact same (mathematically) as the ones in the primaries tab and work exactly the same on Blackmagic RAW as the DNG RAW tab ones. I demonstrated this for someone on Facebook last year..

 

I would like to return to this contribution.

Here it is claimed that the cDNG example is false details. I quote "Especially this image - what you're seeing on the DNG is not real information the DNG retained, it's CREATING it (falsely) and it can look like sharpness/detail when it's over areas of real detail, but it's a very "hard" and digital feeling look IMHO"

That's not correct. The solution can also be found in your Blackmagic forum:  http://54.172.192.242/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=51936&start=350#p310046

Or: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=75290

The solution is very simple: "use the "pan/tilt" setting in the Color Tab (same values of 0.5 each)" 

Thanks to Dmitry Shijan for the advice!

If DNG does false details, why is it that they are back by simple correction without affecting the sharpness? 

This is probably a firmware bug that has not been fixed by the Blackmagic team. 
 

 

[JordanWright]

Here is my P4K Film - Rec 709 LUT with built in natural highlight roll-off. 

I created it for myself for monitoring & fast colour correcting. Hopefully someone here might find it useful, if you do let me know what you think!

P4K - Rec709.cube

[Anaconda_]

Thanks @JordanWright - I'll check it out later today  

[Anaconda_]

Here's my unscientific test - I shot this interview viewing the Leeming LUT in camera, so there is a bias there as that's what I exposed for. In Premiere, I've tried to closely match exposures between the Leeming, BMD Extended Video and Jordan's LUT. Other than Exposure adjustments, all other settings are exactly the same - and Exposure is not a perfect match between them.

Extended Video:

Leeming:

@JordanWright

[Yannick Willox]

The yellowish cello is with the Jordanwright lut, the reddish is the same fram with the standard p4k to extended video lut.

I can disclose that the real instrument is quite yellow, but I am not sure about the hand. No other grading done on these shots, straight out of camera.

[JordanWright]

Initially I created it to view in Rec709 with highlight rolloff but Ive found it useful for a base to start a grade.

Heres one of my samples.

BMD Film
My 709 LUT
BMD Extended Video

[leslie]

I have just spent hours looking around for a type c male to male with a 90 degree head. The standard cable that came with the samsung t5 ssd cable hanging out the side has been bothering me. I bought this ugreen cable from china maybe it will turn up before xmas. Its 50 cm long maybe a little long but should be better than most that are 1 meter or longer. I run my ssd under the camera on a plastic homemade holder, I figure i should be able to vary the excess cable by moving the ssd either forward or backwards, plus i like that the ssd is out of the way under the camera. Curious as to how others with ssd's and cabling have solved their issues ?