Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[anonim]

31 minutes ago, drm said:

I have three P4Ks. I had to return one of mine more than once for screen problems. I believe that it had a defective digitizer. I was eventually given a new camera. I know that other people on here have had a similar issue.

BM most likely swapped the screen for a business reason, like high failure rates on the old one, insufficient supply, etc. A new screen is very likely to require a new driver in firmware. It is likely that the new cameras (with the new screens) don't work with the old firmware because of a driver difference. Could BM have let people know about the hardware revision or update the old firmware to work with the new firmware? Sure, but why? Why would they let people know about the hardware change if the screens are technically similar, but perhaps just from a different manufacturer? BM is certainly under no obligation to let people know about a running change. Companies manufacturing products make running changes during production all the time. 

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but assuming that BM deliberately changed the screen in order to prevent people from downgrading the firmware is an exceptional reach  If they wanted to stop people from downgrading, they would just follow the lead of Apple and others by signing the firmware and telling the camera to only load approved firmware.

Question is not screen itself, but staying silence about changing advertised possibility that some or many users are finding competitively/comparatively important for buying decision.

[leslie]

i remember bm saying that braw would be coming to the p4k pretty early in the campaign. Although they did forget to mention that it would be at the expense of cinemaDng ?

i have to wonder if mine now has added value since i have 6.1. not that i'm interested in selling, took 5 months to get this one, couldn't do that again ?

[CaptainHook]

On 5/18/2019 at 2:59 AM, osmanovic said:

CinemaDNG and 4K is closer to true 4K
BRAW and 4K is about 10% less.

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.
 

On 5/18/2019 at 3:18 PM, majoraxis said:

I don’t know the differences... I don’t believe there is a functional difference from an operationally standpoint.

I think BRAW looks really good - the issue for me is that Cinema DNG gives you more/different controls over the image/highlights in post than BRAW.  I believe this is due to the fact the BRAW de-mosaic filters in the camera so the highlight are more baked in than with Cinema DNG, which gives you more control over the highlights durning de-mosaic process in Resolve.

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..

[osmanovic]

CinemaDNG is real RAW. This looks like this on the example picture, because CinemaDNG does not filter the finest details (which are reproduced by analog-to-digital conversion (ADC)). With BRAW, the finest details are filtered internally. RAW should remain RAW and the processing of RAW should be left to anyone, who has bought a camera because of RAW and also expects real RAW.

When I put on the CinemaDNG example image in DR some "Gaussian Blur"-filter (H/V Strength: 0.333), it looks similar to BRAW.  And yes THAT has something to do with sharpness.

[CaptainHook]

13 minutes ago, osmanovic said:

CinemaDNG is real RAW. This looks like this on the example picture, because CinemaDNG does not filter the finest details (which are reproduced by analog-to-digital conversion (ADC)).

This is not what noise looks like from the ADC. This is not natural and its not the finest details captured, its MORE. The information is made up in the debayer. I know it is.
People also seem to think cDNG has no processing before the file is stored in camera but cDNG is subject to calibration (which attempts to reduce noise and other issues) and other processing before those "RAW" pixels are stored as DNG also. Its okay to like it more too.

Quote

looks similar to BRAW

Doesn't mean its the same process or the same thing. An OLPF can look similar to Gaussian Blur too.
I get some people prefer cDNG, that's totally fine. But some people are acting like the image was faultless, which it certainly was not. And when there are incorrect statements made as fact, I will try to correct when I'm able to (IP and other concerns restricts my public involvement). The decisions made over a 2 year process developing Blackmagic RAW were not arbitrary or taken lightly either.

[BenEricson]

Finally picked up one of these cameras. The menus and touch screen interface are really nice. 4k 60p output is really impressive. I am also really blown away by the sharpness.

Using the P4K, really shows special the colors and skin tone out of the original bmpcc and bmmcc were. The P4K looks really nice, but doesn’t seem that far off from the GH5.

I am also a bit shocked to discover they managed to release another camera with poor battery life. I used it for a day before I ordered an external battery solution.

Does anyone know if the battery life is better when running CFast vs SSD?

 

[Yannick Willox]

2 minutes ago, BenEricson said:

Using the P4K, really shows special the colors and skin tone out of the original bmpcc and bmmcc were. The P4K looks really nice, but doesn’t seem that far off from the GH5.

 

That is strange. I used the GH5 once, and skin tones did not look any better than on my GX85. I used 2 bmpcc4K cams once (together with the GX85), and the skin tones looked dramatically better. Both conditions indoor, on a big (classical) concert stage.

Still waiting for the p4k to become available ... Luckily rental is quite cheap (but you do not get the Resolve license of course)

[anonim]

7 hours ago, CaptainHook said:

I get some people prefer cDNG, that's totally fine.

Alas, it seems to me not so "totally" fine... if you, as authoritative expert, claim that same 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".

Maybe because of my missing language subtleness, but I don't quite understand what does mean phrase "not necessarily..." in given case... Does cDNG debayer keeps more details or not, or it does keep sometimes and sometimes not, does it always - as "IS" suggests - creates false detail, does Braw corrects that creating of false detail?

 

[JordanWright]

I much refer images I get from the P4K than the GH5. Both are fantastic cameras but the P4K has much better colours, skin tones and dr to my eye... saying that trust your own judgement! 

[webrunner5]

5 hours ago, anonim said:

Maybe because of my missing language subtleness, but I don't quite understand what does mean phrase "not necessarily..." in given case... Does cDNG debayer keeps more details or not, or it does keep sometimes and sometimes not, does it always - as "IS" suggests - creates false detail, does Braw corrects that creating of false detail?

 

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/not-necessarily

[anonim]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/not-necessarily

Thanks, so I guess right this time  So, cDNG sometimes really has more detail, but not necessarily... Now we have to learn how often and when...

I'm personally interested for the simple reason: being extremely satisfied with form factor, rigging possibility and image of Micro 1080p cDNG, I'm not so satisfied with possibility that for similar 1080p quality I have to shot 4k in P4K. Also, if result of super (up)scaling Micro's 1080p to 4K is similar or identical with 4k of P4K, there's not too much advantage rest with P4K except framing. (I always shot rigged with external small audio recorder and Atomos recorders for the backup reason.)

[BenEricson]

6 hours ago, Yannick Willox said:

That is strange. I used the GH5 once, and skin tones did not look any better than on my GX85. I used 2 bmpcc4K cams once (together with the GX85), and the skin tones looked dramatically better. Both conditions indoor, on a big (classical) concert stage.

Still waiting for the p4k to become available ... Luckily rental is quite cheap (but you do not get the Resolve license of course)

Adorama has them. I ordered mine last week and it looks like they are still in stock.

interesting. That is very reassuring. I haven’t used the GH5 extensively but it looked nice in CineD with the contrast down. 

[osmanovic]

1 hour ago, anonim said:

Thanks, so I guess right this time  So, cDNG sometimes really has more detail, but not necessarily... Now we have to learn how often and when...

I'm personally interested for the simple reason: being extremely satisfied with form factor, rigging possibility and image of Micro 1080p cDNG, I'm not so satisfied with possibility that for similar 1080p quality I have to shot 4k in P4K. Also, if result of super (up)scaling Micro's 1080p to 4K is similar or identical with 4k of P4K, there's not too much advantage rest with P4K except framing. (I always shot rigged with external small audio recorder and Atomos recorders for the backup reason.)

CinemaDNG offers significantly more details. The comparison pictures BRAW and CinemaDNG also show that BRAW has no finest details. The image information is lost at both 4K and 1080P and cannot be restored. CinemaDNG is different, because it contains the finest details and you can see how good this is when you scale up 1080P to 4K. 

 

BRAW is also not an OLPF, the moiré improvement can be seen minimally in the horizontal area.  You can do similar things with CinemaDNG by applying "Gaussian Blur" filter (H/V Strength: 0.333) to CinemaDNG. 

[Anaconda_]

1 hour ago, osmanovic said:

CinemaDNG offers significantly more details. The comparison pictures BRAW and CinemaDNG also show that BRAW has no finest details. The image information is lost at both 4K and 1080P and cannot be restored. CinemaDNG is different, because it contains the finest details and you can see how good this is when you scale up 1080P to 4K.

That video doesn't show the point you're trying to make. You're comparing cDNG to Braw, but he states in the test that he's shooting ProRes - which if anything will be closer to Braw than to cDNG on any camera.

On top of that, before he revealed which image was which camera, the OG BMPCC was my least favourite, with the BMCC coming second and P4K being the best. That said, I wouldn't complain about any of them, and your findings may vary - which is fine. 

[osmanovic]

57 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

That video doesn't show the point you're trying to make. You're comparing cDNG to Braw, but he states in the test that he's shooting ProRes - which if anything will be closer to Braw than to cDNG on any camera.

You're right, it has something to do with pixel size. Correction: Another reason is that the older Blackmagic cameras with a no-Sony sensor have better image sharpness (due to the pixel size) than the 4K Sony sensor. 

There are new picture comparisons between CinemaDNG and BRAW: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91466&start=100#p510511

 

[anonim]

5 minutes ago, osmanovic said:

You're right, it has something to do with pixel size. Correction: Another reason is that the older Blackmagic cameras with a no-Sony sensor have better image sharpness (due to the pixel size) than the 4K Sony sensor. 

There are new picture comparisons between CinemaDNG and BRAW:https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91466&start=100#p510511

 

It will be nice to see some Pocket 4k CinemaDNG image/footage in comparison from users who still take a walk through firmware versions... This, actually, from my side now just out of cheap curiosity, while waiting arrival of mine piece of P4k camera  I'm sure we all here are well aware of enormous potential and liberating $$ affordability of BM cameras and artistic direction. Let's hope that hawk eyes of users will result in some nice next firmware addition and further progression of BRAW quality.

[webrunner5]

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

That video doesn't show the point you're trying to make. You're comparing cDNG to Braw, but he states in the test that he's shooting ProRes - which if anything will be closer to Braw than to cDNG on any camera.

On top of that, before he revealed which image was which camera, the OG BMPCC was my least favourite, with the BMCC coming second and P4K being the best. That said, I wouldn't complain about any of them, and your findings may vary - which is fine. 

The PK4 to me was the worse. Not even close. But we all have different ideas what is good or not, and not the same monitors looking at the footage, which by the way I just re-calibrated mine 3 days ago.

[anonim]

14 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

The PK4 to me was the worse.

To me also, mostly because of red-ish bias in color. Who knows what's the reason, but I'm not at all interested in prores comparison - in spite some other opinion, from my practice any Prores is noticeable behind RAW in BM cameras.

[osmanovic]

4 hours ago, osmanovic said:

You're right, it has something to do with pixel size. Correction: Another reason is that the older Blackmagic cameras with a no-Sony sensor have better image sharpness (due to the pixel size) than the 4K Sony sensor. 

There are new picture comparisons between CinemaDNG and BRAW: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91466&start=100#p510511

 

As a better explanation, I would like to add that: http://rubenkremer.nl/2013/08/27/theoretical-light-sensitivity-of-the-pocket-cinema-camera/

"Down to the micrometers

The sensor of the 550D is 22.2mm wide and has a height of 14.8mm. It's resolution it 5.184 × 3.456 pixels. Simple math will tell us the pixels are 4,28 × 4,28µm. 

The legendary Canon EOS 5D Mk. II has a large fullframe sensor, one of the (relatively) few. It's measures 36 × 24mm and has a resolution of 5.616 × 3.744 pixels. Zooming in on the actual pixels on that sensor we're getting a pixelsize of 6,41 × 6,41µm. That's 150% of the 550D's pixel size. This makes perfect sense and is in-line with the expectations.

Now we're coming to the interesting part: what's going on on the surface of the Super16 sensor of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera? The sensor measures 12,48 × 7,02mm. It has a resolution of (merely) 1920 × 1080 pixels, because it doesn't need to take 21 megapixel stills - only (just over) 2 megapixel video. When we do the math we get a pixel size of 6,5 × 6,5µm.

And the winner is...

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera! Theoretically.

Wait! What just happened there?!

So, there it is. If we consider each individual pixel on the sensor as a sensor of its own - the camera with the largest sensors is actually the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. It's pixels are 1,4% bigger than those of the Canon 5D Mark II and 52% bigger than the pixels on the 550D/T2i. So theoretically, solely based on the numbers - the BMPCC should theoretically have a better light sensitivity than practically all DSLR's on the market today.

"

Therefore, old Pocket and Micro, with  up-scaling from 1080P to 4K, is still very good today. But with Blackmagic RAW this wouldn't be as good as with CinemaDNG, because Blackmagic RAW is less sharp. If Blackmagic RAW is also released for Blackmagic Micro and Pocket, I will not upgrade. That CinemaDNG is better is my personal conviction and opinion. It shouldn't speak for everyone at all.

I hope this is now understandable.

[Emanuel]

cDNG is better. Period. And such comparison above-posted proves it once again.

P4K brings higher resolution possible to find on doll's hair as for instance, but loses compared with BMCC as far as color concerns; .braw shows less detail.

Just checked on a screen 80" wide along a calibrated 4K projector from a 1080p copy. Fairly visible.

 

Last but not least and overall, BMPCC outcome is the worst sample shown there IMO.