bmp4k adventures

[leslie]

the  canon fd lens has turned up more than a week early which is a bit odd, considering aus post are claiming to be overwhelmed with parcel deliveries, however i'm not complaining.🤔  It does highlight another issue, no fd to m43 mount adapter. So i'm off to ebay to find a cheapish fd to m43 mount, hopefully i can find one in the country otherwise i'll be waiting awhile if it has to comes from overseas. The cardboard Box is a bit soft and has taken a bit of a beating, 🤕  i hope its been packed well.

Ok i couldn't wait any longer, i have opened the parcel and and it all looks good, well packed and still mint looking. At this stage it looks like i snagged a bargain. Cant do much more till the adapter turns up.

[kye]

hopefully you'll find an adapter in-country.

ebay and shipping times from china for accessories and adapters has significantly improved my strategic and long-term planning skills.  I've bought new equipment ahead of a big trip and had to sit and very slowly and methodically go through and identify all the adapters and accessories I'd need to buy so that they all arrive in time.

I've previously drawn pictures of the setup in order to identify things....

• camera body...  ordered...  <draw a picture of a camera body> ....    does setup work yet?  No, I need a lens.
• camera lens... ordered...  <draw camera lens next to camera body>...   does lens connect to camera body?  No, I need adapter.
• lens adapter...  ordered...  <draw a picture of a lens adapter joining lens to camera> .... does setup work yet?  No, I need a battery.
• .....

then at the end...    I pick up the camera, put the wrist strap around my wrist, turn on camera, it powers on. OK.  Light goes from scene through adapter into lens, then through adapter, then onto sensor.  I hit record, camera writes, files to memory card..  <ok..  google if my memory card will work with camera.  good.  what about for the specific mode I'm recording in?  excellent.  What about a backup plan if card doesn't arrive in time...>

etc

etc

etc

I replaced my XC10 with GH5 with only weeks to go until a major trip.  Requiring all new lenses, batteries, media, adapters, etc...   I had to get a lens shipped to a pickup point near the first hotel we were staying in!  Ah, those were the days.

[leslie]

wow your quite organized, must take all the fun out of it 😉

i'm more mix and match and sometimes i'll miss something that maybe should have been more apparent, but its not the end of the world stuff, usually 🙄

found one in sydney should be here before friday. It was a bit of an oversight i will admit. Still i have been experimenting. I now know i need to have quite a sizeable bonfire to light an area. Which has dictated a change , we are now moving to 205 litre drums, a couple of smaller fires rather than one huge bonfire which will make things more containable and less chance of me setting the state of qld on fire. 

[Andrew Reid]

Feels a bit more like it.

But the battery compartment wobbles.

 

[jack jin]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

Feels a bit more like it.

But the battery compartment wobbles.

 

This camera is looking more and more like a 80's boombox lol

[leslie]

8 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Feels a bit more like it.

But the battery compartment wobbles.

 

i do like the backdrop or whatever it is the camera is resting on 👍 i sure do hope that thing gives a large chunk of increased battery life. For me its reminiscent of some of the old film slrs with their add on battery compartments from the 80s - 90s very retro, brings back a bit of nostalgia, but that could be just me. I know some people aren't a fan of the shape however i'm not bothered by it.  Whats the extra  weight like ? I imagine those ninja assassins who want to run and gun may not be particularly impressed but then maybe the increased weight adds to the handling ?

Shame it wobbles, could you put some thin rubber / foam between the camera and battery to help take up the slack ? Like a shoe inner sole (preferably new ) their pretty thin.  I know you shouldn't have too, but a wobble may result in a lost shot depending on your shooting style at some point,   A wobble would definitely annoy me.

I'm actually onto the mark two base plate for mine as i want to hang a stepper motor of it for a project thats coming up plus the fact the mount i bought doesn't seem to tighten up and the camera and lens rotates pretty easily. 

One thing that may interest you is, i  did dl the 6.1 p4k update. Some time this week i'll have a go at putting the older version back on the pk4. I have no idea if it will go straight back over the top of a newer version or not, but i'll let you know how i go.

edit : btw if you get sick of that voightlander, ship it to me and i'll hang the elmoscope of the front of it

[leslie]

downloading  the latest resolve version however i think i'm temporarily rolling back to an earlier version  as the current version 16.2.1 and the version im downloading require 32 gigs. Ram has been ordered however the guy that runs the store has no idea when it will arrive as apparently corona virus has messed things up nicely and that was two weeks ago . Resolve does run and it hasn't fallen over yet, it does tend to be rather sluggish. The whole, is it running, will it finish or fall over is annoying to me ( not that i hold bmd responsible ) i just want it working like it did before in a previous version. Considering my editing is at a rather basic level, living with an earlier version isn't an issue  for me.

Teaser photo of the canon lens, still waiting for the adapter, should be here by friday i hope. I dont imagine it would be a cinematographers first lens choice. I have a couple of projects in mind where this could be useful. It does like mint inside and out. Once the adapter arrives i should be able to confirm if i got a bargain or not. Actually just had a brainwave i still have a canon t90 in the cupboard i can mount it to that and check out the optics. Initial impressions are, looks like i got a bargain i'm a happy chappy at the moment. Considering the pretty average light bulbs i have, things look good. while i have the t90 out, heres some vintage action for you   i had forgotten what lenses i had looks like the fd mount will get some use after all

[heart0less]

1 hour ago, leslie said:

downloading  the latest resolve version however i think i'm temporarily rolling back to an earlier version  as the current version 16.2.1 and the version im downloading require 32 gigs

Ayyyayayayayayay, does it really?

Hmmmm, I had only a feeling that the new iterations slowly start to work less and less efficient on my PC, but at first I put the blame on my parts that even 5 years ago were middle-tier.
Such a shame.

 

Actually, I've heard a lot of good opinions about the FD 50/1.4.
It's quite popular in the anamorphic world and, supposedly, only Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 surpasses it.

Can't wait for your review, man!

 

[leslie]

 

Minimum system requirements for macOS

macOS 10.14.6 Mojave

16 GB of system memory. 32 GB when using Fusion

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later

Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM.

GPU which supports Metal or OpenCL 1.2.

Minimum system requirements for Windows

Windows 10 Update

16 GB of system memory. 32 GB when using Fusion

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later

Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM

GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 10

NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU Driver version – As required by your GPU

Minimum system requirements for Linux

CentOS 7.3

32 GB of system memory

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later

Discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM

GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 10

NVIDIA/AMD Driver version – As required by your GPU

it was kinda late when i read the notes, i may have latched onto the linux release notes by accident which does requires 32 gigs. I do feel the memory requirements have jumped upwards as resolve worked ok  on my laptop up until the 16.2.1 then it got sluggish. The memory upgrade will drag me up to minimum specs again However after that it will be awhile till i  start chasing the rabbit again. sorry for any confusion

 

[heart0less]

8 hours ago, leslie said:

it was kinda late when i read the notes, i may have latched onto the linux release notes by accident which does requires 32 gigs.

No worries, totally understandable. 

 

8 hours ago, leslie said:

I do feel the memory requirements have jumped upwards as resolve worked ok  on my laptop up until the 16.2.1 then it got sluggish.

Same here, though I began noticing this trend even earlier, more like already in the first iterations of 16 or even 15.2

I rolled back to 14.3 and it does feel better, more responsive. 

Unfortunately, none of my projects load up and none of the power grades I created work. Shame. Nevertheless, I'll give it a go. 

Thanks, leslie. I wouldn't have thought about trying to do anything to improve the performance, if you hadn't justified your new purchase, hahahahha. 

[Dunjoye]

On 6/8/2020 at 11:55 PM, Andrew Reid said:

Feels a bit more like it.

But the battery compartment wobbles.

 

Looks nice. 

I was bidding on one of these via ebay to a UK seller brofre missing out. £138.   How long is the battery life on it now withthe grip. Is it worth it?

[leslie]

I'll check the version number that came with the p4k. I  kept everything in the box under my desk. That version wasn't very stable on my laptop and fell over alot, later versions ran ok up to 16.2.1  There's probably a good chance some of resolve falling over was due to my laptop but later versions worked ok so it seems odd to me that the first version i had wasn't stable.   By the way....

I'm excited, i hope your  all excited, because i'm excited.  Got some money today so i lashed out on a piece of alloy checker plate to aid product reviews i plan on doing. Did i mention i'm excited ?  Couple of quick and dirty photos to highlight the potential. Seems to me the a lot of products are black, cameras are black, lenses are black, torches are black, my  tv and stereo are black. I wanted to lift the base somewhat and add an industrial element as  most of my photos tend to be dark at the bottom  The most reflective thing i could find at bunnings was checkerplate. I quite like how it throws light around and allows the camera to be more defined. Seen someone else online do a similar thing so i cant take any credit for it.

 

[leslie]

6 minutes ago, Dunjoye said:

Looks nice. 

I was bidding on one of these via ebay to a UK seller brofre missing out. £138.   How long is the battery life on it now withthe grip. Is it worth it?

should be a stock item from blackmagic design. I imagine it would be cheaper to buy from a retailer rather than someone who's listed one on ebay, best to check around for pricing. 

[Dunjoye]

6 hours ago, leslie said:

should be a stock item from blackmagic design. I imagine it would be cheaper to buy from a retailer rather than someone who's listed one on ebay, best to check around for pricing. 

Yeeea. its like £239 retail

[leslie]

 thats only a new product most of the time things are marked up on ebay.  a hundred pounds cheaper seems like a good deal if yo u can get it. Still i would probably buy retail as i'm guaranteed a return policy here in aus not sure how it works in other countries.

[leslie]

well played around with black magic camera setup utility. I now have rolled back from 6.8 to 6.1 and it was quite painless. Trick is to uninstall your current version of black magic camera setup, reinstall the older 6.1bmd camera setup utility onto your desktop/laptop then you can simply update your camera over the usb cable to version 6.1. My laptop did stall at 70% for a minute or two, but the tally light on the p4k keeps flashing and eventually it popped up with an all good message. there's approximately 300 meg size difference between 6.1 and 6.8 which sort of indicates there's a bit more going on with later versions with braw,  i think probably other things as well.

[Yannick Willox]

On 6/9/2020 at 12:55 AM, Andrew Reid said:

Feels a bit more like it.

But the battery compartment wobbles.

 

A solution could be the cage Smallrig has on preorder ?

On the other hand, a better solution could have been a half-cage plus the NP battery holder plus power converter to 12V Smallrig has on preorder ? Much more compact and almost double Wh ... I guess you could even just screw it on the top, without a cage (almost no weight).

https://www.smallrig.com/smallrig-np-f-battery-adapter-plate-with-charging-cables-for-bmpcc-4k-6k-cameras-eb2698.html

I have to agree here, BM should have opted for a 50% more performant internal battery (at least), and the battery grip option is much too big for the Wh it gives. And wobbly ? So, putting the bmpcc with the grip on a stand with a cine zoom on it is not really an option

[leslie]

A quick google search has that smallrig np battery holder on preorder  for $ 95  aus from the videoguys.  I like it, if i bought the dc cables from bmd thats about the same price. With the smallrig option everything's done for you,  hard to screw it up and fry your pk4/6 with the smallrig as opposed to three sets of power cables from bmd but maybe, its the way i think. Nice that your get a dummy battery as well with the smallrig.

interesting video, once i saw the battery door come off, i just had to try it 😀 i also like the idea of hanging it off the opposite side to the of the grip as the p4k tends to be lopsided once its on the rails having the battery there may rebalance it.

not really a fan of half cages they just look like a job half done... the full cage looks much nicer,  again probably my thinking.

[tupp]

43 minutes ago, leslie said:

A quick google search has that smallrig np battery holder on preorder  for $ 95  aus from the videoguys.

NP batteries are a good way to go for most cameras, and there are plenty of options both more expensive and much less expensive than that small rig battery plate.

 

Here is an NP battery plate with a BMP4K connector for US$38.

 

If I had a BMP4K and I wanted to use NP batteries, I would just get a cheap plastic battery plate and wire it to a BMP4K connector (with pigtails), which would probably give a total cost of about US$15.  Here is Chung Dha's inexpensive NP battery plate video.

 

Keep in mind that some NP battery plates allow slight leeching of current from the battery by the connected equipment and by the plate's own LED indicators and circuitry.  Here is The Frugal Filmmaker's video on how he installed a cut-off switch on plastic NP battery plates that prevents that current leeching.

[leslie]

1 hour ago, tupp said:

NP batteries are a good way to go for most cameras, and there are plenty of options both more expensive and much less expensive than that small rig battery plate.

 

Here is an NP battery plate with a BMP4K connector for US$38.

 

If I had a BMP4K and I wanted to use NP batteries, I would just get a cheap plastic battery plate and wire it to a BMP4K connector (with pigtails), which would probably give a total cost of about US$15.  Here is Chung Dha's inexpensive NP battery plate video.

 

Keep in mind that some NP battery plates allow slight leeching of current from the battery by the connected equipment and by the plate's own LED indicators and circuitry.  Here is The Frugal Filmmaker's video on how he installed a cut-off switch on plastic NP battery plates that prevents that current leeching.

your right,  a quick look for np battery lists alot of options for cheaper and more expensive. it could soon turn into a real rabbits warren. I have to confess i'm nearly sold on the smallrig setup. Admitably more pricey than your suggestion, i feel the metal base with the mounting options and the dummy battery gives one a lot of flexibility.