Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[mercer]

1 hour ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

This project I was camera operator and gaffer

Cool! Out of curiosity, how did you guys get those jobs when you first started?

1 hour ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Recording straight to an SSD. I don't have access to the footage but everything I've seen so far looks really nice. We have been lighting things pretty well though.

Nice small set up. It looks tiny on that tripod. And the SmallHD monitor looks tiny on the camera. What lens(es) were you using?

[thebrothersthre3]

3 minutes ago, mercer said:

Cool! Out of curiosity, how did you guys get those jobs when you first started?

Nice small set up. It looks tiny on that tripod. And the SmallHD monitor looks tiny on the camera. What lens(es) were you using?

We were using super takumar 28, 35, 55, and 135, I personally get all my work from networking 

[The ghost of squig]

5 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

We were using super takumar 28, 35, 55, and 135, I personally get all my work from networking 

Love the super taks, my second favorite lenses after the Leica-r. Were you using pro-mist filters too?

[thebrothersthre3]

11 minutes ago, The ghost of squig said:

Love the super taks, my second favorite lenses after the Leica-r. Were you using pro-mist filters too?

I was pretty happy with the performance I was seeing out of them. I wasn't really aware of their existence previously. We didn't use pro mist filters. 

[kye]

Video from BM (with lots of low-light shots):

Cinematography: Dima Kalenda
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K
Blackmagic RAW Constant Bitrate 5:1
ISO 3200 6K (6144 x 3456) 50 fps
Atlas Orion Anamorphic T2 32mm @ T4 EF mount

 

 

8 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

We were using super takumar 28, 35, 55, and 135, I personally get all my work from networking 

The IQ from the taks is really nice, definitely good lenses.

[wyrlyn]

Footage is very noisy, I expected better for Pocket 6K

[thebrothersthre3]

1 hour ago, wyrlyn said:

Footage is very noisy, I expected better for Pocket 6K

hmmm looked pretty clean to me. Maybe you are viewing on a larger monitor tho

[MeanRevert]

9 hours ago, kye said:

Video from BM (with lots of low-light shots):

Cinematography: Dima Kalenda
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K
Blackmagic RAW Constant Bitrate 5:1
ISO 3200 6K (6144 x 3456) 50 fps
Atlas Orion Anamorphic T2 32mm @ T4 EF mount

 

 

The IQ from the taks is really nice, definitely good lenses.

 

I can't believe people like that much crop just so you can have 2x anamorphic.

[kye]

The footage looked pretty poor in shadows (watching in 4K on a 32 inch monitor) but that's pretty normal for YouTube compression in my experience.  It's also common practice to add grain in post in order to stop the YT compression from making horrific banding too.  I've seen videos where people de-noised the shadows in their video and the banding was so extreme that it looked more like a psychedelic fractal-trip video than poor video quality.  

I heartily recommend taking some test clips with increasing levels of grain applied and upload that to YT then watch it and see what it looks like once the YT compression has absolutely crushed it.  
I suggest trying 3-5 clips in varying lighting / contrast conditions and having a couple of seconds each, then having about 10 repeats of this sequence of images with gradually increasing levels of grain applied.  I'd suggest a processing pipeline of NR followed by added grain, either from a plugin or just noise, it won't matter much for this test.  And don't make the mistake of not adding enough grain, go from zero grain (so you can see what that looks like) to about three-times as much grain as you think is even sensible.  It might be good to put some text in the video with your settings so that you have a future reference.  I did this test, with the Resolve grain plugin at defaults except the strength pushed up to somethings ridiculous, and just ramped up the opacity of the effect.  The full effect was still far too much, but the sweet spot was about three-quarters of the way up, and the first two thirds was basically identical because the YT compression absolutely killed it.

It's a pity that the P6K video wasn't uploaded to YT in 6K.

2 hours ago, MeanRevert said:

I can't believe people like that much crop just so you can have 2x anamorphic.

Screw that...  I can't believe people go to so much trouble with 2X anamorphic just to get the aspect ratio they could get by just cropping!!  ???

[thebrothersthre3]

37 minutes ago, kye said:

 

Screw that...  I can't believe people go to so much trouble with 2X anamorphic just to get the aspect ratio they could get by just cropping!!  ???

Doesn't give you that anamorphic look though 

[leslie]

8 hours ago, kye said:

The footage looked pretty poor in shadows (watching in 4K on a 32 inch monitor) but that's pretty normal for YouTube compression in my experience.  It's also common practice to add grain in post in order to stop the YT compression from making horrific banding too.  I've seen videos where people de-noised the shadows in their video and the banding was so extreme that it looked more like a psychedelic fractal-trip video than poor video quality.  

I heartily recommend taking some test clips with increasing levels of grain applied and upload that to YT then watch it and see what it looks like once the YT compression has absolutely crushed it.  
I suggest trying 3-5 clips in varying lighting / contrast conditions and having a couple of seconds each, then having about 10 repeats of this sequence of images with gradually increasing levels of grain applied.  I'd suggest a processing pipeline of NR followed by added grain, either from a plugin or just noise, it won't matter much for this test.  And don't make the mistake of not adding enough grain, go from zero grain (so you can see what that looks like) to about three-times as much grain as you think is even sensible.  It might be good to put some text in the video with your settings so that you have a future reference.  I did this test, with the Resolve grain plugin at defaults except the strength pushed up to somethings ridiculous, and just ramped up the opacity of the effect.  The full effect was still far too much, but the sweet spot was about three-quarters of the way up, and the first two thirds was basically identical because the YT compression absolutely killed it.

It's a pity that the P6K video wasn't uploaded to YT in 6K.

Screw that...  I can't believe people go to so much trouble with 2X anamorphic just to get the aspect ratio they could get by just cropping!!  ???

i'm pretty sure there is some kind of mr smith artificial intelligence residing on the dark web whose only function is to crush anything sent youtubes way ?

back on topic, i have to wonder, to me it looks wider than the normal 2.40 aspect ratio. The black bars top and bottom look too wide for me, maybe i am wrong. I presume that was a styling choice perhaps ?  i do enjoy the anamorphic look but i think maybe that was too wide.

i really liked the first 15 seconds, i think its time to revisit some scenario that involves matches, empty drums and some suitable substances that are a little bit volatile. Of course It will have to wait till the current fire season and total fire ban is over however. better pencil something into the diary ?

[kye]

2 hours ago, leslie said:

i'm pretty sure there is some kind of mr smith artificial intelligence residing on the dark web whose only function is to crush anything sent youtubes way ?

back on topic, i have to wonder, to me it looks wider than the normal 2.40 aspect ratio. The black bars top and bottom look too wide for me, maybe i am wrong. I presume that was a styling choice perhaps ?  i do enjoy the anamorphic look but i think maybe that was too wide.

i really liked the first 15 seconds, i think its time to revisit some scenario that involves matches, empty drums and some suitable substances that are a little bit volatile. Of course It will have to wait till the current fire season and total fire ban is over however. better pencil something into the diary ?

I just conducted a very thorough analysis (I measured the height and width of the thumbnail image above with the screen capture thingy) and it was 3.334 so yes, somewhat wider than normal!

The Atlas Orion Anamorphic T2 32mm they used is a 2X, and if you film 16:9 that's 3.55:1 and 16:10 it's 3.2:1 so maybe they did 16:9 with the lens and then cropped the edges a little?

[leslie]

9 minutes ago, kye said:

I just conducted a very thorough analysis (I measured the height and width of the thumbnail image above with the screen capture thingy) and it was 3.334 so yes, somewhat wider than normal!

The Atlas Orion Anamorphic T2 32mm they used is a 2X, and if you film 16:9 that's 3.55:1 and 16:10 it's 3.2:1 so maybe they did 16:9 with the lens and then cropped the edges a little?

3.55.1 or thereabouts sounds about right. it looks like your on to it ? from the little i have done with my elmoscope it looked too wide or the black bars were too wide to be the more popular 2.40. If popular is the correct word.

[Adam Kuźniar]

Last weekend I shot a concert with my friend, myself on the GH5 and him on the Pocket 4k. After the first rehersal when we were setting up the shot, he came up to me and said "you know what the lights are all over the place so I'm just gonna set the exposure for the darkest moments and shoot BRAW so when the lights hit you'll be able to just bring down the exposure with ISO setting". I didn't know too much about shooting on the Pocket so I agreed and off we went.

 

Well, it turns out when you shoot above 1250, you can't go lower than that since it's when the second ISO gain engages. It's something I had no idea about (since I shoot on the GH5) and he neither (since he never shot above that before). Now I'm stuck with overexposed shots and an understandably mad client. So learn on my lesson and don't do that.. Or you know, read the friking manual like you should.

[Mr. Freeze]

2 hours ago, Adam Kuźniar said:

Last weekend I shot a concert with my friend, myself on the GH5 and him on the Pocket 4k. After the first rehersal when we were setting up the shot, he came up to me and said "you know what the lights are all over the place so I'm just gonna set the exposure for the darkest moments and shoot BRAW so when the lights hit you'll be able to just bring down the exposure with ISO setting". I didn't know too much about shooting on the Pocket so I agreed and off we went.

 

Well, it turns out when you shoot above 1250, you can't go lower than that since it's when the second ISO gain engages. It's something I had no idea about (since I shoot on the GH5) and he neither (since he never shot above that before). Now I'm stuck with overexposed shots and an understandably mad client. So learn on my lesson and don't do that.. Or you know, read the friking manual like you should.

 

That´s unfortunate. When I´m recording concerts I´ll expose for the brightest moments or at least for the spotlight on the singer. Those animated light-shows can really be all over the place, but that way I can have as much control as possible. Thanks for sharing that lesson, nevertheless! 

[Adam Kuźniar]

24 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

That´s unfortunate. When I´m recording concerts I´ll expose for the brightest moments or at least for the spotlight on the singer. Those animated light-shows can really be all over the place, but that way I can have as much control as possible. Thanks for sharing that lesson, nevertheless! 

Yeah he should've done that but relied too much on the RAW thing and that was the result.. 

On the other hand why is BRAW settings not working on this clip? Can't select anything

[Mr. Freeze]

I do my grading and correction only in resolve, normally you should be able to edit the braw settings in premiere with the plugin.

[MurtlandPhoto]

2 hours ago, Adam Kuźniar said:

Yeah he should've done that but relied too much on the RAW thing and that was the result.. 

On the other hand why is BRAW settings not working on this clip? Can't select anything

Up at the top, click "Sync * A005_12070220_C002.braw"

[Adam Kuźniar]

18 hours ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

Up at the top, click "Sync * A005_12070220_C002.braw"

Then there are no BRAW settings since I'm targeting the timeline clip, not the master one. 

 

I've found it fixes itself after restarting Premiere and reimporting the clip but then for some reason breaks again after a couple of minutes.

[Video Hummus]

On 12/17/2019 at 3:46 AM, Adam Kuźniar said:

Last weekend I shot a concert with my friend, myself on the GH5 and him on the Pocket 4k. After the first rehersal when we were setting up the shot, he came up to me and said "you know what the lights are all over the place so I'm just gonna set the exposure for the darkest moments and shoot BRAW so when the lights hit you'll be able to just bring down the exposure with ISO setting". I didn't know too much about shooting on the Pocket so I agreed and off we went.

 

Well, it turns out when you shoot above 1250, you can't go lower than that since it's when the second ISO gain engages. It's something I had no idea about (since I shoot on the GH5) and he neither (since he never shot above that before). Now I'm stuck with overexposed shots and an understandably mad client. So learn on my lesson and don't do that.. Or you know, read the friking manual like you should.

 

Ouch, lesson learned.

This is also a quirk of the dual gain circuits on the Pocket and GH5S. Sometimes, on the GH5S, I get better results (noise wise) by bumping up the ISO to engage the "high" circuit and then adjust exposure down. I loose DR but in a lot of those cases DR doesn't matter that much (low-light or not a high DR scene).