Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[Dan Wake]

I wish this  camera may create proxy videos...

[kye]

11 hours ago, Dan Wake said:

I wish this  camera may create proxy videos...

You mean in addition to RAW?

If you shoot in Prores then you don't need proxies

My 350Gb of footage took 11 hours to render proxies.  Good thing I didn't have to go anywhere and take my laptop!

[wyrlyn]

 

[thephoenix]

11 hours ago, wyrlyn said:

 

cool stuff for people still using premiere. and nice french accent ?

 

[zerocool22]

On 1/22/2019 at 4:07 PM, Ehetyz said:

So I've seen some derision about Pocket4K regarding it crashing or behaving erratically, as well as issues with the batteries. I thought I'd share my experiences with these.

 

Short version: The battery that comes with the Pocket is utter, utter shit. Use original Canons instead and you'll see way less issues.

 

Long version:

That battery really is shit. I really can't overemphasize how shit it is.

So, for me Pocket 4K was a no-brainer because I already had a lot of it's necessities lying around - Cfast2-cards, tons of compatible batteries. So, the latter has meant that I've been able to run the Pocket with not just the battery it comes with, but with a couple of relatively fresh (2-year old) OG Canon batteries as well as a few different off-brand ones (4-5 years old). So here's a short summary on how they have performed:

 

Original Canon LP-E6:

- No problems, can be charged in-camera or with my canon rechargers. Displays remaining battery accurately. No surprise shutoffs.

- Drains the slowest of all the batteries I've tested. Still pretty fast, but quite manageable. Usually end up using 1-2 batteries a shooting day (b-cam).

 

Off-brand LP-E6:

- Like Canon, can be charged anywhere.

- Depending on the off-brand battery, might or might not display the remaining charge accurately.

- Can go from 40% to empty in seconds. So the 0-40% range is a bit of a wild card. May be due to inaccurate charge display or these might just be plain old and tired.

- Drains faster than the Canon.

 

The Blackmagic... thing:

- Can't be charged with Canon chargers, causes them to enter fault mode (continuous blinking.) Occurs with both my chargers. Googling the issue has led me to find others with same experiences. Can only be charged through the camera.

- Charge display is just whatever. Can go from over half-full to camera shutdown in seconds.

- Sometimes works like an off-brand one. At worst, from full charge, lasted me around 3 minutes of recording before the first shutdown.

- And notice the above? "First shutdown"? That was today. So, apparently the blackmagic battery is prone to just dying momentarily when there's a large power drain present. So what happened was, I set the camera to record, with battery at around 75-80%, and after a few seconds the battery meter goes haywire and the camera shuts down. Then it boots up again, and the battery shows up at 75%. Guess what happens when I hit record? Rinse and repeat. That was the moment I chucked the battery. Switched to Canon originals and the rest of the day went without a hitch.

 

So, taking from this, I think some of the reported erratic behavior can be traced to the completely all over the place quality of the original battery. Having the camera reboot itself during recording is something that could be blamed on the camera if you have no way to troubleshoot and find the real culprit - which was the blackmagic battery. Maybe there are good ones too, but to stay on the safe side, I'd recommend just using it as a last resort backup at most, and sticking to Canon originals or maybe some higher-quality off-brand ones.

Thanks for this! 

Looks I will be buying original canon batteries. As charging in camera sucks. 

[drm]

9 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Thanks for this! 

Looks I will be buying original canon batteries. As charging in camera sucks. 

I have also had good luck with the Wasabi batteries (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HFOJQ0I/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1). I have several and they all work better than the original BMPCC4K battery. They also show battery percentage. I don't have any new Canon's to test against, but these are just as good as my Canon batteries that are a year or so old.

[anonim]

 

[webrunner5]

I can't say I don't like the look of the PK4 but it is not what I think of when I think of a BMD camera. It just looks too good, too clean. A trend for sure now, but not a trend that I would like to pursue. Now for Docs, interviews yeah the PK4 would be the way to go. To me the special look Blackmagic has is gone in this camera. But times are changing and they have to change also. And the price is right. A way better overall camera than the cheaper previous stuff. I think they did well.

It will help young and old film makers learn the trade just like the original BMPCC, BMCC has. So that alone is a good thing.

[Emanuel]

It CAN be cleaner, it is not necessarily clean if you need, want or look for something else... You can have 1 million if you'll have a 10-million account. The opposite is harder to achieve on the other hand ; -)

[webrunner5]

Oh I will admit you are Not going to get some super clean look out of the older BMD cameras. But that is the reason you bought them LoL. You didn't want it to look like a Panasonic GH4. ?

[thebrothersthre3]

4 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Oh I will admit you are Not going to get some super clean look out of the older BMD cameras. But that is the reason you bought them LoL. You didn't want it to look like a Panasonic GH4. ?

People always said the GH4 was noisy?

[webrunner5]

4 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

People always said the GH4 was noisy?

I Never owned one and Never wanted to even now. I know they sold a lot of them because of the 4K, but it just didn't have a great look to it. I am sure some poor, innocent, good minded people on here actually purchased them but LoL. If you could eat one it would be on the table at Thanksgiving time.?

[thebrothersthre3]

10 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I Never owned one and Never wanted to even now. I know they sold a lot of them because of the 4K, but it just didn't have a great look to it. I am sure some poor, innocent, good minded people on here actually purchased them but LoL. If you could eat one it would be on the table at Thanksgiving time.?

I did, for the time it was pretty cool. Would have stuck with my GH2 had it not broke. The GH4 battery lasted forever tho that was nice.

[kye]

@webrunner5 @thebrothersthre3 @Emanuel I agree that we should be able to degrade the P4K footage to look like the older cameras.  Things like bit-depth, resolution, or noise can't be improved, but given a sufficiently high-quality source I think that the 'look' should be able to be replicated.

If anyone owns the P4K and other relevant "classic" cameras and is willing to shoot a short clip of the same scene (with both cameras right next to each other and recording at the same time) then I'll give it a red-hot go to "fix" the P4K footage and share the settings of how I got there.

[webrunner5]

Oh I will admit the temptation was there. It had amazing specs for the time. But I just couldn't warm up to the look. I had the GH3 at the time and that didn't up my love for Panasonic either LoL.

[kye]

2 minutes ago, kye said:

@webrunner5 @thebrothersthre3 @Emanuel I agree that we should be able to degrade the P4K footage to look like the older cameras.  Things like bit-depth, resolution, or noise can't be improved, but given a sufficiently high-quality source I think that the 'look' should be able to be replicated.

If anyone owns the P4K and other relevant "classic" cameras and is willing to shoot a short clip of the same scene (with both cameras right next to each other and recording at the same time) then I'll give it a red-hot go to "fix" the P4K footage and share the settings of how I got there.

And actually, it would be even better if we could get a GH5 shot in there too.  That way those GH5 owners who are fans of the classic look (like me!) can also benefit.  Maybe a P4K, BMPCC and GH5 lineup perhaps?

[webrunner5]

This shows a pretty good difference between what the PK4 mindset is for more of a Cine, Filmic look is than what Panny was doing to the GH5. Both have their place. A OG BMPCC would be even more gruff looking than the PK4. This video may have been here before. looks kind of familiar? Can you make them look alike, well yeah maybe, but not very easy to do. Now matching up with the GH5s might be a bit easier I would think.

 

[kye]

14 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

This shows a pretty good difference between what the PK4 mindset is for more of a Cine, Filmic look is than what Panny was doing to the GH5. Both have their place. A OG BMPCC would be even more gruff looking than the PK4. This video may have been here before. looks kind of familiar? Can you make them look alike, well yeah maybe, but not very easy to do. Now matching up with the GH5s might be a bit easier I would think.

 

I don't care what they look like when made to "look good" or even how well other people have matched the colours or whatever.

I'm talking about a full-out attempt to make them indistinguishable.  @Sage has included some modifications to sharpness of the GH5 vs Alexa in his GHa LUT packs, and I'm talking about that kind of thing.

If I can work out how to make the P4K look like the BMPCC then I think there are a bunch of things in there we can learn.  Yes, that's a pretty big change, but we can always apply the different adjustments at varying levels of severity according to taste.

At the very least we'll all learn something.  I don't have a P4K or BMPCC but I'm still up for it because trying things is the only way to really advance, and I know you guys can see stuff that I can't so I'm keen to see through your eyes as it were.  

I'm talking a new thread, posting comparison clips, sharing what adjustments I made, taking feedback from the group, and really trying to nail it.  Who can shoot the clips?

[thebrothersthre3]

54 minutes ago, kye said:

I don't care what they look like when made to "look good" or even how well other people have matched the colours or whatever.

I'm talking about a full-out attempt to make them indistinguishable.  @Sage has included some modifications to sharpness of the GH5 vs Alexa in his GHa LUT packs, and I'm talking about that kind of thing.

If I can work out how to make the P4K look like the BMPCC then I think there are a bunch of things in there we can learn.  Yes, that's a pretty big change, but we can always apply the different adjustments at varying levels of severity according to taste.

At the very least we'll all learn something.  I don't have a P4K or BMPCC but I'm still up for it because trying things is the only way to really advance, and I know you guys can see stuff that I can't so I'm keen to see through your eyes as it were.  

I'm talking a new thread, posting comparison clips, sharing what adjustments I made, taking feedback from the group, and really trying to nail it.  Who can shoot the clips?

I would but I unfortunately don't own any of those cameras. 

You should be able to get 14 bit RAW to looks like most anything though. Heck Sage is making the GH5 10 bit 422 H264 match an Alexa. 

Would be a cool thread though. 

[webrunner5]

1 hour ago, kye said:

I don't care what they look like when made to "look good" or even how well other people have matched the colours or whatever.

I'm talking about a full-out attempt to make them indistinguishable.  @Sage has included some modifications to sharpness of the GH5 vs Alexa in his GHa LUT packs, and I'm talking about that kind of thing.

If I can work out how to make the P4K look like the BMPCC then I think there are a bunch of things in there we can learn.  Yes, that's a pretty big change, but we can always apply the different adjustments at varying levels of severity according to taste.

At the very least we'll all learn something.  I don't have a P4K or BMPCC but I'm still up for it because trying things is the only way to really advance, and I know you guys can see stuff that I can't so I'm keen to see through your eyes as it were.  

I'm talking a new thread, posting comparison clips, sharing what adjustments I made, taking feedback from the group, and really trying to nail it.  Who can shoot the clips?

Hell I thought you were talking the differences LoL. I don't really think it is going to be the same ever. It is a Sony sensor. I don't care what you do with it, it is not  going to look alike. And all the cameras that use that sensor really look alike. None of them look like a OG BMPCC.

There has never been a camera that looks like the original C100. Even the C100 mk II doesn't look at all like it. Some cameras just have a certain, special look.