Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[IronFilm]

On 4/15/2018 at 7:39 AM, BTM_Pix said:

This is what Grant Petty had to say when they acquired DaVinci in 2009.

"When we were doing the due diligence on DaVinci, I saw a $50,000 price in the price list if you bought a secondhand system, and now wanted to be supported by DaVinci. And not only that, you're paying upward of $80,000 a year for support contract after that."

That was just the service charge price you paid to get it checked out if you bought a second hand one.

At that time he was talking about getting the purchase price of the high end systems down from $850K to $500K

At $1299, I'd say its the camera you are getting for free and not the software.

Thank you for putting some perspective into this! Agreed 100%

[Dan Wake]

will the new blackmagic be compatible with this card? https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B00HUWW8KQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

thx

[Cinegain]

52 minutes ago, Dan Wake said:

will the new blackmagic be compatible with this card? https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B00HUWW8KQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

thx

Bro, like, just check: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera/techspecs/W-CIN-12 or something.

Quote

Storage Type

1 x CFast 2.0.

1 x SD UHS-II card.

Highest bitrate mentioned: 272 MB/s

So reasons the card you're looking at is a bad match:

•  UDMA 7 and not CFast 2.0 ~ http://www.lexar.com/products/memory-cards/
•  Card supports 'up to 160MB/s read, 155MB/s write', BMPCC4K needs up to 272MB/s maxed out write (and the '155MB/s' is only a top-out speed, it's not a min. sustained one) ~ http://www.lexar.com/portfolio_page/professional-1066x-compactflash-card/
•  Lexar = no longer Lexar. A Chinese firm acquired it and lord knows how they run it. Former Lexar execs then founded: https://progradedigital.com

Nobody actually has any hands-on experience with the thing. For the original BMPCC they said:

Quote

What SD cards should I use with the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera?

The following SD cards are recommended for Apple ProRes 422 HQ recording:

• Delkin Devices 16GB Elite SDHC UHS-I
• Delkin Devices 32GB Elite SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 8GB 45 MB/sec Extreme SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 16GB 45 MB/sec Extreme SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 32GB 45 MB/sec Extreme SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 64GB 45 MB/sec Extreme SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 128GB 45 MB/sec Extreme SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 8GB Extreme Plus 80 MB/sec SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 16GB Extreme Plus 80 MB/sec SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 32GB Extreme Plus 80 MB/sec SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 64GB Extreme Plus 80 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 128GB Extreme Plus 80 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 256GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 512GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I

The following SD cards are recommended for CinemaDNG RAW recording:

• Sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDHC UHS-I
• Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 256GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I
• Sandisk 512GB Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec SDXC UHS-I

So... they might be recommending these: https://www.sandisk.com/home/memory-cards/cfast/extremepro-cfast-2d / https://www.delkindevices.com/products/cfast/

[Dan Wake]

thx for your reply, I already own that card. I have checked the website but I have not understand if it will be compatible, for me would be ok to shoot in 1080p to start. can you help me to understand if it will be compatible please?

[Cinegain]

Well, like I said:

Quote

Nobody actually has any hands-on experience with the thing.

So, there's not knowing for sure, without having a go at it, or without Blackmagic making any specific statements about compatibility.

With SD cards there's the V-class. You can work out that a min. sustained speed is about 1/3th of the actual speed the card maxes out at (e.g. V90 = R280/W250). So R160/W155 would cover just a little over 50MB/s; which is where I think you'd be safe with the card and it does do that for all the 1080p resolutions except for the 'CinemaDNG RAW - 66 MB/s'. Of course I take it that's VBR, so you might not hit and therefor need to write away 66MB/s for some recordings. But CF is of course not SD (although coincidentally SanDisk mentions VPG-130 which also is a little over 3x to get from max rates to guaranteed speeds). So... my I guess is you'd be fine for:

Quote

1920 x 1080

• CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 32 MB/s
• CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 24 MB/s
• Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 27.5 MB/s
• Apple ProRes 422 - 18.4 MB/s
• Apple ProRes 422 LT - 12.75 MB/s
• Apple ProRes Proxy - 5.6 MB/s

Storage rates based on 30 frames per second.

But who knows, really. That's just what my logic would dictate. I'd pick up something new atleast, that's for sure.

[cantsin]

2 hours ago, Dan Wake said:

can you help me to understand if it will be compatible please?

Blackmagic has not released a list of supported cards for the BM Pocket 4K yet. So at this moment, we simply don't know which cards will be compatible.

[webrunner5]

Never mind, answered my own question. ?

[cantsin]

On 5/4/2018 at 11:58 AM, jonpais said:

This is fairly typical of what I've seen from 99.9% of original Pocket footage online (actually a little better than most) - soft and grainy; gobs of lens flare; ugly clipping of highlights; crushed shadow details; dreadful skin tones; strong cyan cast with ugly sepia tones; little to no cohesiveness; poor dynamic range; lugubrious soundtrack - much of it resembling lo-fi home movie footage shot on VHS, or worse - yet it gets oohs and aahs from viewers.

To reply to your post 20 pages later: The main problem is that people overdo grading because the camera allows it, just like people overdid shallow depth of field when DSLR video was new.

I just recorded a little concert video with the old BM Pocket that sticks to Blackmagic's default color science for the camera. For the most part, it doesn't have any color correction at all. In maybe 30 seconds (of the half hour video), there are slight gamma or gain adjustments, only for exposure, not of tints.

The equipment and workflow were as follows: 

• Old BM Pocket with 0.58x Metabones Pocket Speed Booster + Nikon-mount Sigma 18-35mm/f1.8 + Marumi IR cut filter + Ohrwurm binaural mic (connected to the camera, so all audio was recorded in-camera) + chestpod for camera stabilization;
• Everything shot handheld with manual focus + exposure, some shots stabilized in Resolve;
• Codec: CinemaDNG Raw, 24p, 172 degree shutter (some shots at the end with 360 degree shutter), at the camera's native 800 ISO. Most shots were shot with wide open aperture because of the light conditions. (I actually wouldn't have minded deeper DoF which would have likely been possible with the new Pocket 4K and its native ISO 2500 setting).
• All editing in Resolve 15 Beta. White balance set to 4500K uniformly, sharpening to zero, color space set to "Blackmagic Design Film" log.
• "Blackmagic Design Film" log -> Rec709 transformation done with Resolve's "Color Space Transform" effect. (Works much better for me than using Blackmagic's LUT or setting the color space to Rec709 in the Raw tab, because this function offers Luminance mapping for correctly exposed images; learned this from a video tutorial by Juan Melara.) - In other words: no use of grading LUTs, no manipulation of curves, just the vanilla image of the camera.
• Rendered out as 12bit DNxHR & converted that to h264 (bitrate: 20Mbit) with ffmpeg/x264.

In the video, you see that the shooting conditions were a mix of good and bad: One the hand, there was nice daylight through the pub's big windows. On the other hand, a lot of mixed light (tungsten + daylight) and lots of shooting against the light with a heavily backlit subject. (Didn't use any color/gamma correction in post, but tried to expose for the subject, accepting blown-out highlights.)

What you see in the video is a rather unprocessed image that is as closed to the native image of the camera as it gets. Which also means: All chromatic aberrations of the lens are in plain sight (while an MFT system camera such as the GH5 would have electronically filtered them out with MFT system lenses), and so is the sometimes heavy moiré that the camera produces, in particular with super-sharp lenses like the Sigma.

 

I'll leave judgment of the image quality - with all the points that Jon mentioned: resolution, shadow detail, highlight roll-off, skin tones, color rendering, cohesiveness, dynamic range - to the forum. [And expect the BM Pocket 4K to have similar strengths and weaknesses, only a higher resolution.]

[jonpais]

@cantsin Seriously nice color.

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, cantsin said:

To reply to your post 20 pages later: The main problem is that people overdo grading because the camera allows it, just like people overdid shallow depth of field when DSLR video was new.

Or over doing gimbal shots. Or overdoing drone shots. 

I just watched a short film that was 100% drone or gimbal! Why? Because that is what the director had purchased recently...

[webrunner5]

I am not a Hugh Drone fan, but I must admit it shows shots of things we never have really seen or maybe even imagined. But it can be overdone for sure, just like anything.

[mercer]

9 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I am not a Hugh Drone fan...

I’m not a Hugh Drone fan either. I enjoyed his earlier work but recently he really started to phone in his performances... and it always seems like he looks down on everybody. 

[BTM_Pix]

He was marvellous in Phantom Of The Opera but yes his latter work has lacked that same Spark and failed to Inspire.

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, mercer said:

I’m not a Hugh Drone fan either. I enjoyed his earlier work but recently he really started to phone in his performances... and it always seems like he looks down on everybody. 

Yeah he really drones on during his long monologues. 

[kye]

Huge props to everyone for all the drone jokes ?

[webrunner5]

On 5/4/2018 at 6:18 AM, Tone1k said:

Considering the subject matter and people in this 'film', I'm guessing whoever's 'film' this is is a 13-18year old and in that regard I don't mind it and willing to cut the person some slack. 

You could say it's lowfi, and I don't love the heavy cyan cast but I remember sitting in cinemas and watching 35mm projections of blockbusters and art house films alike and loved the fact that things were never tack sharp. I loved the softness, and the grain.... These days, more and more people  expect images to be clinical, super sharp and noiseless all the time. 

I am not a super fan of the turquoise look either but it did seem to fit this short. It is just amazing how damn good, either way, grungy like this short is, or Arri looking a cheap original BMPCC can be.

If this new 4K BMPCC is even 30% better this thing is going to be a Killer camera for a crazy cheap price. How does a little company like BM make a product that on paper that is better than a camera 5 times the price? I think the big boys are screwing us to be honest. Other than maybe Kinefinity nobody else is close money wise to a heck of a product. I will give Sony big credit for the original A7, A7r, A7s price and specs wise. They were game changers for not a lot of money at the time.

And well I will give credit to Canon for the new M50. I am not sure they even knew if you put a Speedbooster on it it becomes a half serious camera for not a lot of money? I think they may have had Vloggers in mind for it but. And well a1ex, admin on Magic Lateran, deserves a Super big hand for the Canon hacks.

[TwoScoops]

7 hours ago, mercer said:

I’m not a Hugh Drone fan either. I enjoyed his earlier work but recently he really started to phone in his performances... and it always seems like he looks down on everybody. 

[Turboguard]

3 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I think the big boys are screwing us to be honest.

I mean, that's not news. They know people will buy it while they make a 300% profit. Just how it works.

EDIT: 300% sounds like nothing, let's say 1000000000% profit ?

[Anaconda_]

Not sure if it was posted already, but this might interest some, a 20 minute interview with Bob Caniglia of BMD. A lot of it is quite obvious and standard questions, but they do talk about choice of a few design elements. Audio options, recording media etc.

SPOILER: Perhaps the best info comes right at the very end, Bob is proud that BM haven't charged for an update to Resolve in a decade. If you bought the software in 2009, you can still update for free to Resolve 15. I remember some people weren't sure if they can update from v.14. It also likely means that people who buy the camera will have Resolve for life - certainly a lot cheaper than Adobe's suite ?

[jonpais]

I can’t go along with the ‘they’ve been screwing us’ line. I paid $1,800 for the GH5, $1,880 for the a7 III, or around $500 more for the two hybrid cameras which admittedly pack a lot more tech. You may not need or want that tech, you might just want a sensor in a box that shoots RAW, and that’s fine, but that tech costs money either way. For working professionals who need a hybrid camera (read: most people), a full frame camera for under $2,000 is still peanuts.