Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[webrunner5]

8 minutes ago, Jim Giberti said:

Graeme did/does great work. I remember when he first got recruited for the team.

But you understand the difference between an opinion and a verifiable fact right?

Like you just learned in this thread.

The lesson is - don't be name calling and claiming knowledge when a bit of listening and learning will cure all of that.

Well I was involved in buying one. So I know a few more facts about Red then than most do in the early days. He had talked about making the camera for Years before he ever started the company just like anyone would do. I have owned 3 company's. 2 of them Incorporated. You don't just start up a company one day and the next day start making B1 Bombers. Sure it was a rush job when he went public. Every new Enterprise is a Cluster F..k in at the start.

[mercer]

2 hours ago, John Brawley said:

Thanks for the notes.

A great deal of The Resident is shot handheld with an Ursa Mini Pro and APO Hyperprimes from SLR Magic. We rig it in what I call “football” mode.  Body, wooden camera cheese plates, Dbox, MDR, battery, lens and side handle.  

I try to keep it as small as possible. Attcahed are a couple of shots I was operating on a pilot in Chicago a few months ago.

A lot is also shot with a minimally rigged micro camera, WC cage, self pulling with a 10mm SLR Magic lens and a 5” VA for monitoriing on an arm.  Idea being to keep it all very small.  There’s a picture here showing the way I work that rig here mid-take.  It allows me to get the camera inside the surgical feild and very intimate.

We work really hard on making the medical stuff as real as possible. It’s a real prop in that case.  Most of the extras in surgery scenes are realy life OR nurses and surgeons.  We have surgeons as consultants and we make a lot of prosthetics to be story specific.  

We have to take some liberties though, usually for time.  I mean it’s a 47 min TV show

I recall with the scene you’re talking about that graft would normally take about an hour to install and sew.  Mina gets it done in a few seocnds ?. The whole procedure would take a few hours.  

So we try to get the spirit right and we try to be very explicit and accurate with the medical depictions. We still get. alot of medical people flaming the show for not being “right” but usually they’re more upset with the way we depict the shortcomings and failings of the US medical system ?

We shoot, edit and master in 1920.  Fox does the downconvert.  You can get 1920 versions from other stremaing services though.

JB

Thanks for info... really invaluable!!! 

Out of curiosity, if the Ursa didn’t exist, is there another camera on the market you would use in its place?

[tupp]

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Anyway, fun fact: I believe even Kinefinity's earliest cameras used the KineMount

Nice article!  If most camera manufacturers adopted the KineMount, it would be great for the sole reason that there would be many choices of cinema cameras with shallow mounts.  No doubt that there would also be many more inexpensive, "universal" adapters available, as well.

 

On the other hand, manufacturers don't need to bother with proprietary or "standardized" hardware, as they can default to a simple, long-established, lens mount plate system such as the one adopted for Red cameras -- but much shallower.

 

 

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Nope, native Sony lenses won't work:

Quote

Attention: it does not support lenses which need protocol from camera, like SONY G series lenses, though the current E mounting adapter has electronic contacts. There would be trade-in plan with new adapters if new adapters support these electronic lenses in the future.

Thanks for the quote/link.  So, it appears that Kinefinity is considering electronic capability in future versions.

 

The question now becomes:  If this E-mount adapter is primarily mechanical, what prevents its use on other Kinefinity cameras with ≥S35 sensors?

 

 

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Imagine how great it would be if only more manufacturers did this, how would you like to use an URSA Mini Pro or Panasonic EVA1 with Fujifilm MK18-55, MK50-135 zooms or Veydra primes? 

I have imagined that world many times over and over, additionally with all kinds of focal reducers (including MF) and tilt/shift adapters.  Having a versatile shallow mount is a dumb-simple, inexpensive improvement for camera makers that don't have it.  I cannot understand why most manufactures (nor shooters) fail to grasp this basic concept.

 

By the way, some lens manufacturers exhibit a similar ignorance:  many of them offer completely manual lenses with EF mounts, but not with Nikkor mounts!  How does one use a lens with an EF mount on a Nikon D850?  ... or how does one use a non-Canon EF lens with an EF speedbooster that cannot accommodate the rear lens element of a non-Canon lens (while the Nikon speedboosters do accommodate such lenses)?

 

This EF-centric mentality is a scourge.

 

 

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

You get a sense of how truly tiny the Terra body is when you see it next to the already small Fujinon zoom, the lens looks pretty big in comparison!

That is an extremely cool and compact rig!  Too bad such a rig is impossible on BMD ≥S35, on Red, on Panasonic ≥S35 and on any camera with a Canon EF mount!

 

 

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

... and most of them stink.  [obligatory]

 

On the other hand, I agree with @Jim_Giberti that there is a difference between opinion and verifiable fact (subjective interpretations aside).

[webrunner5]

1 hour ago, Jim Giberti said:

Graeme did/does great work. I remember when he first got recruited for the team.

But you understand the difference between an opinion and a verifiable fact right?

Like you just learned in this thread.

The lesson is - don't be name calling and claiming knowledge when a bit of listening and learning will cure all of that.

You weren't there I was. So end of story.

[John Brawley]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

Thanks for info... really invaluable!!! 

Out of curiosity, if the Ursa didn’t exist, is there another camera on the market you would use in its place?

I used to use RED a bit as you can strip them down to almost nothing.  There are better cameras though these days.

 

[John Brawley]

1 hour ago, tupp said:

 

Thanks for the quote/link.  So, it appears that Kinefinity is considering electronic capability in future versions.

It's never going to happen.

Sony won't allow it.  They will never allow it.

Kinefinity can say "future adaptors" all they like.  Sony run a closed eco-system.  This is their MO.

Sony own the mount.  No other camera other than one made by Sony will have a native E mount.

 

 

1 hour ago, tupp said:

 

 

 

This EF-centric mentality is a scourge.

Did you know that this year they went past 130 million lenses made ?

130 million EF mount lenses have been made !

Think of it like this....that's 130 million potential customers.

Canon make the worlds most popular and numerously made lens mount.

I personally hate them.  They should NEVER be on a cinema camera and they suck the WORST for any kind of motion work.

EF is an idiotic lens mount for motion work and shouldn't ever be used in my view.

But there's a zillion of them out there and for the vast majority of those that are moving into a cinema camera eco system from a DSLR setup, chances are it's EF mount lenses they have.

So they make a camera that uses that mount.

Once you get serious about cinema glass, then you go to PL.

Adapted 135 format glass...is amateurish. I hate to sound like a snob but it's really really hard to make them fly on real jobs.  In the end it's often very difficult to make it work on set. Yeah I know you CAN do it,  yeah go post your vanity projects and your music clip that looks great but i'm saying generally, it's a pain in the arse and no one aside from hobby-ist and indie shooters can be bothered futzing around with these jigs.

Look at how successful that JVC was. Name a show shot with them. Show me someone who did some amazing creative work on that camera because it existed and did something no other camera could do.

They're like anamorphic adaptors.  Almost no-one uses them on paid shoots.  They're just too punk and couture for anyone to put up with.  You go get real anamorphic lenses. (and hey I've done it, I used a LA7200 on an Si2K and zeiss supers before anyone knew what an Si2K even was)

I'm a lover of obscure lenses, but the obsession with adapting and speed boosting lenses...  I say this with love of anything that isn't conventional, but to disparage camera manufactures for making a mount that services BY FAR the vast majority of the existing stills DSLR market for doing just that but holding up very marginal cameras like the JVC and Kinefinity as a beacon of success doesn't fly for me.  Because the market has already spoken.

We lens nerdists here on mostly THIS forum re the market. It's tiny. Making a camera that has a sensor that is LARGER than it's native lens mount (MFT) which FORCES you to always use and adaptor or advocating a mount that is proprietary (E mount) is commercial suicide.  It forces the user to have an adaptor. Imagine all the idiots who go buy an MFT native lenses and post about the lens not covering their sensor.

I'm a fan of MFT.  But I'm a fan of NATIVE MFT lenses on an MFT sized sensor.

JB

 

1 hour ago, tupp said:

 

[Jim Giberti]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

You weren't there I was. So end of story.

I wasn't where?

And where were you that gives you this magical power of creating new facts?

[mercer]

2 hours ago, John Brawley said:

I used to use RED a bit as you can strip them down to almost nothing.  There are better cameras though these days.

 

Right, that makes sense... especially considering the conversation. I guess I was curious about your thoughts of the FS5/7, EVA1, and C200 but I assume with the lens mount conversation, EF would be out of the question for you. 

[Savannah Miller]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

Right, that makes sense... especially considering the conversation. I guess I was curious about your thoughts of the FS5/7, EVA1, and C200 but I assume with the lens mount conversation, EF would be out of the question for you. 

It's not just that. Those cameras don't have PRO codecs internal or pro features that you need on bigger productions.

C200 lacks timecode, and maybe you can match other cameras if you shoot in RAW, but then your show has to allow for it when everyone wants prores.  FS5/FS7 aren't in the same league as other cinema cameras, and Panasonic has their weird codecs too.

[webrunner5]

3 hours ago, Jim Giberti said:

I wasn't where?

And where were you that gives you this magical power of creating new facts?

Did you buy one of the first he made?? Did you even put a deposit on it?

[Savannah Miller]

Ursa Mini Pro is a top-of-the-line model and is a bit more no-fuss if you want to use it on a bigger production.  The other cameras like C200, FS5, FS7, EVA-1 are a bit more compromised.

[John Brawley]

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Right, that makes sense... especially considering the conversation. I guess I was curious about your thoughts of the FS5/7, EVA1, and C200 but I assume with the lens mount conversation, EF would be out of the question for you. 

Mostly it’s about the codec and matching to another camera. Main camera is generally 12bit ProRes. To have secondary cameras that also shoot ProRes saves a lot of grief from post, and it’s very easy to make them almost indistinguishable from an Alexa. That’s harder with the other cameras you’ve listed. Especially with how much footage we shoot in long form TV drama.

JB

[IronFilm]

6 hours ago, tupp said:

 Nice article!  If most camera manufacturers adopted the KineMount, it would be great for the sole reason that there would be many choices of cinema cameras with shallow mounts.  No doubt that there would also be many more inexpensive, "universal" adapters available, as well.

Thanks, imagine if a few companies banded together on a new shallow cinema mount standard such as KineMount. Perhaps if Z Cam, AJA, and BMD had got on board. 

It would be like MFT is with their wide ranging support of manufacturers which helps makes MFT one of the most appealing mirrorless systems to invest into. 

 

[mercer]

15 minutes ago, John Brawley said:

Mostly it’s about the codec and matching to another camera. Main camera is generally 12bit ProRes. To have secondary cameras that also shoot ProRes saves a lot of grief from post, and it’s very easy to make them almost indistinguishable from an Alexa. That’s harder with the other cameras you’ve listed. Especially with how much footage we shoot in long form TV drama.

JB

Hmm, if I had to guess, I would have thought you shot the barebones of footage for TV. How many days do you get to shoot an episode? And how many set ups/pages do you shoot in a day on The Resident? Sorry for all the questions, but how often do we get a professional cinematographer around here willing to answer... it’s very appreciated!

[IronFilm]

6 hours ago, tupp said:

The question now becomes:  If this E-mount adapter is primarily mechanical, what prevents its use on other Kinefinity cameras with ≥S35 sensors?

All Kinefinity S35 cameras use a KineMount (and thus can have an E mount). 

And I expect the new Kinefinity MAVO LF will also use KineMount. 

6 hours ago, tupp said:

I have imagined that world many times over and over, additionally with all kinds of focal reducers (including MF) and tilt/shift adapters.  Having a versatile shallow mount is a dumb-simple, inexpensive improvement for camera makers that don't have it.  I cannot understand why most manufactures (nor shooters) fail to grasp this basic concept.

 

By the way, some lens manufacturers exhibit a similar ignorance:  many of them offer completely manual lenses with EF mounts, but not with Nikkor mounts!  How does one use a lens with an EF mount on a Nikon D850?  ... or how does one use a non-Canon EF lens with an EF speedbooster that cannot accommodate the rear lens element of a non-Canon lens (while the Nikon speedboosters do accommodate such lenses)?

 

This EF-centric mentality is a scourge.

While so few cinema cameras lack a shallow sub mount (like Kinemount or FZ mount) then hopefully we'll see more cinema lens manufacturer's over lenses with swappable mounts. Although often it will be options like PL or EF, still leaving Nikon out in the cold. 

Nikon needs to make a "N100" or "N300" cinema camera (their take on the C100/C300 that is) to keep themselves relevant. 

 

[IronFilm]

4 hours ago, John Brawley said:

but holding up very marginal cameras like the JVC and Kinefinity as a beacon of success doesn't fly for me. 

Not just Kinefinity and JVC, even the behemoth that is Sony used the FZ Mount which made it a breeze to swap over your main mount during a shoot. (for instance you might use mostly PL lenses, then just for that one shot or two switch over to a DSLR mount so you can get that super macro shot, or that super long 400mm tele shot)

Although sadly it seems Sony has killed off FZ Mount (as I own a fair few FZ adapters :-/ ah well), but still is holding true to the same general principle of including a shallow mount option on their cinema cameras by having a locking E mount in their new VENICE camera. 

 

5 hours ago, John Brawley said:

Making a camera that has a sensor that is LARGER than it's native lens mount (MFT) which FORCES you to always use and adaptor

JVC had smart scaling with their LS300 so you could use native lenses which only covered 4/3"

Plus there are numerous MFT mount lenses which do cover an entire S35 sensor, such as the Sigma MFT primes, Veydra primes, Fujinon MK zooms, etc

 

[John Brawley]

3 minutes ago, mercer said:

Hmm, if I had to guess, I would have thought you shot the barebones of footage for TV. How many days do you get to shoot an episode? And how many set ups/pages do you shoot in a day on The Resident? Sorry for all the questions, but how often do we get a professional cinematographer around here willing to answer... it’s very appreciated!

This is known as “the pattern”

Resident eps are are shot in 8 working days plus one day of second unit. The second unit happens concurrently with the first day of the second episode shoot. 

6 days are shot in studio and 2 day are out on location.

We average about 35 setups or “slates” per day. Have done as high as 60 on Resident. 

Many setups are three cameras. So that’s about 70-90 “shots” per day. 

Each camera shoots about 60-90 mins of footage per day but it’s not unusual to have 2 hours per camera (for action or slow motion heavy days)

i day we have three cameras but I really mean we have theee camera operators.

We have many more cameras that are pre-build for different roles. A, B and C are Alexa Mini. D camera is a full time Steadicam camera (Alexa XT for weight and mass).  It goes on down to letter q or something silly. 

There are three sets of Primo Primes and each camera has its own 11-1 as well. We also have a couple of other specialty lenses like a CP 50 macro, and I also use a lot of SLR Magic primes on the micro and APO Hyper primes on the Ursa Mini.

We shoot about 6-10 script pages per day.

I always say you can’t really go much faster than a setup every 15 mins.  That’s 4 per hour.  On a 12 hour workday it means we theoretically can do 48 setups.  It’s very hard to maintain that kind of pace in a day (and have it look good)

Sometimes you can get the shot turnover down by leapfrogging cameras. Have the A cameras do the first shot, prep the B camera to come right in after that setup is finished and the A camera pulls out.

There are 12 in the camera department not including me.  Ops, firsts and seconds x 3 plus two utilities and a loader.

Time is the thing we all struggle most with. Time to light, time to shoot, time to tweak.  

The pace of TV has a way of “honing” your choices and teaching you to react and trust your instincts. 

JB

[IronFilm]

3 minutes ago, John Brawley said:

Many setups are three cameras.

Ouch. I weep for sound!

Are there two boom ops on the show, or just one? (plus of course there would be a mixer. Does he have a sound utility too?)
 

4 minutes ago, John Brawley said:

I always say you can’t really go much faster than a setup every 15 mins.  That’s 4 per hour.  On a 12 hour workday it means we theoretically can do 48 setups.  It’s very hard to maintain that kind of pace in a day (and have it look good)

That is impressively quick! Especially for the quality you put out. 

 

6 minutes ago, John Brawley said:

There are three sets of Primo Primes and each camera has its own 11-1 as well. We also have a couple of other specialty lenses like a CP 50 macro, and I also use a lot of SLR Magic primes on the micro and APO Hyper primes on the Ursa Mini.

What do you mean by "11-1"? (did you mean "11-16"? The Tokina)

What made you go for SLR Magic for the Micro rather than other manual MFT lenses such as Voigtlander or Veydra? 
 

6 hours ago, mercer said:

Out of curiosity, if the Ursa didn’t exist, is there another camera on the market you would use in its place?

JB, have you seriously considered Kinefinity as one of the cameras you use? 

The Kinefinity Terra 4K is very compact and has been doing well, plus there is coming soon the new Kinefinity MAVO S35 and MAVO LF. 

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Right, that makes sense... especially considering the conversation. I guess I was curious about your thoughts of the FS5/7, EVA1, and C200 but I assume with the lens mount conversation, EF would be out of the question for you. 

The FS7/FS5 (because of their shallow E mount, and their FS7mk2 version has a locking E mount too), EVA1 (thanks to Wooden Camera) and C200 (as an option from Canon) all can use PL lenses, which JB has access to.  So I'd guess JB has at least giving a small amount of thought to possibly using them on a show? But the UMP won out. 

 

 

[John Brawley]

 

 

51 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Ouch. I weep for sound!

Are there two boom ops on the show, or just one? (plus of course there would be a mixer. Does he have a sound utility too?)
 

That is impressively quick! Especially for the quality you put out. 

 

What do you mean by "11-1"? (did you mean "11-16"? The Tokina)

What made you go for SLR Magic for the Micro rather than other manual MFT lenses such as Voigtlander or Veydra? 
 

JB, have you seriously considered Kinefinity as one of the cameras you use? 

The Kinefinity Terra 4K is very compact and has been doing well, plus there is coming soon the new Kinefinity MAVO S35 and MAVO LF. 

The FS7/FS5 (because of their shallow E mount, and their FS7mk2 version has a locking E mount too), EVA1 (thanks to Wooden Camera) and C200 (as an option from Canon) all can use PL lenses, which JB has access to.  So I'd guess JB has at least giving a small amount of thought to possibly using them on a show? But the UMP won out. 

 

 

Don't weep. I'm very kind to sound.

I used to be on the other side of that fence.  I had Zaxcom Deva serial number 4 which was lighter than the PD2 I started with. I went to the Zaxcom factory a few times and knew Glenn quite well.  Back in the day I used to hang with the likes of Glen Trew and John Coffee at trade shows and I cursed the day MS stereo was invented for all the BBC shows I worked on.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.arts.movies.production.sound/_pL641Crbhg/mJPF4mlnDNkJ

So I get it. I used to be that guy that no one talks too. (sound joke)

I don't shoot wide and tight.  I tend to shoot a lot of coverage first. I almost always cross shoot.  So matching frames and frame sizes.  Common head room mostly.  Three cameras, but the same head room means there's a pretty good chance to get in. I don't light them out of the set either.

AND, once i've been working with them for a while, they know that when I do a football pass, it's ONE camera, and it's in super close and they can get juicy good sound when I do that which usually covers any holes.

And sound always can look at me and say it can't be done and I'm fine with that.

In the US they seem to be all about lavs anyway, there's always 12 of them going.  But there's always at least one boom, sometimes two when there's a big spread.

It's mixer, utility and boom.  But utility is pretty busy with the lavs, and second booms about 50% of the time.

The 11-1 is the legendary Panavision 24-275.  275 divided by 24 equals 11.45 so we just call it the 11-1 (for it's ratio).  The Angenieux 24-290 is a 12-1. The zoom ratio is a common cinema naming convention.

I own the Veydras and some voightlanders too (and pretty much any m4/3 lens you care to name) but I keep coming back to the SLR Magic's because they're "interesting".

On the micro I use the 10mm T 2.1  Not many other lenses in m4/3 match those numbers and have cinema style gears and clickless aperture. And they're a great looking lens.

I would test a kinefinity if I could get my hands on one.  Seems like that's impossible to do.  I'm not interested in buying a camera to try it out.  I don't really want to own cameras.

I can usually test a camera by asking for one to try out.  I haven't done so with Kinifinity, but I'm pretty sure i wouldn't get a response.

I haven't been driven to really look because, frankly, I've not really seen anything that's compelling out of them in terms of footage.  Maybe that will change.  So far the DR looks pretty limited from what I've seen, the codecs have been a bit of a mess and they've never quite seemed to actually ship what they announce before they're announcing the next thing.

I had a good play with them at Cinegear, but I don't see much advantage. I'm very happy with PL mount and native MFT for smaller sensor cameras.  Unless the camera can do something I can't do with what I'm currently using there not much hunger for me to look.

I'm sure this is heretical, but I also hate the "sensor in a box" model that RED champion and that is aped by Kinifinity. Modular is crap when you're trying to balance something on your shoulder.  Give me a camera designed to be operated, fondled and used by human hands,  not a modular lego / mechano set with adaptors, brackets, machismo styling and nato rail.

JB

 

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, Savannah Miller said:

It's not just that. Those cameras don't have PRO codecs internal or pro features that you need on bigger productions.

 C200 lacks timecode, and maybe you can match other cameras if you shoot in RAW, but then your show has to allow for it when everyone wants prores.  

Agreed with you about lacking timecode with the FS5 and C200, but the FS7 (with the XDCA) and the EVA1 both support timecode. And all (except FS5) have SDI outputs and 10bit 4K internal. 

Although yes, I imagine ProRes is a big draw for the UMP (although Kinefinity also does ProRes as well).