Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K

[thebrothersthre3]

Depends on the test. But if you are testing for pure detail the best way is no speedbooster and shooting something that is fairly flat with a long DOF. 

[Kisaha]

The Lucadapter Magicbooster makes the 6K a more interesting proposition, in my opinion.

I know there is excellent S35 lenses to use, but let's get real, the vast majority of Pocket owners will be using EF glass on them.

It would be interesting to have a special/tele mode on those, I am using the S35 feature on A7 cameras and is a great tool, especially when you are running with only a couple of primes with you.

One big minus as of know is the - something I read - X2.4 more data needed, so a lot more money for media on the field and more additional hard drives and probably bigger SSDs for editing at home, e.t.c.

[thephoenix]

the issue at the moment seems to find a recorder that can handle the 6k@50 with best image quality, tom antos says he has dropped frames on his samsung ssd.

i guess a 970 in a case should do it

 

[docmoore]

I just ran a series of clips with a 2Tb T5 at 5.7K ... nothing dropped at 59.97 nor 23.976 .... since that is a 17:9 aspect and matches 4K DCI and 2K DCI 

I am relieved ... been acquiring CFast 2 cards but have 5Tb of Samsung T5 and EVO msata 860 SSDs that I used with the P4K. Need to run tests on the EVOs.

The problem may not be the drives so much as the USB 3.1 Generation 1 port .... should have moved it to a Gen 2 but I assume that would have added time and complexity

to the P6K rollout.

[drm]

I didn't have time today to do detailed tests, but I did grab a few clips while the kids were playing in the pool this afternoon. I haven't looked at the footage yet, but I did discover one thing:

As you probably know, the P4K + Metabones + Sigma 18-35 is a bit slow to focus (it sucks ~ 3 seconds each time you focus). I wondered if the slow focusing had something to do with the Metabones. Having the P6K gives a perfect opportunity to test the lens directly. Interestingly, the focusing on the P6K.....equally sucks. It takes about 3 seconds to focus with the 18-35 on the P6K. I didn't notice a difference in focusing speed on either the P4K + Metabones or the P6K. Not sure about other lenses, as I only tested the 18-35 today.

[Mattias Burling]

@drm would be very interested to hear if a native EF lens performs better. Keep us posted.

[MeanRevert]

That side by side from altizer was surprising to me how much better the 6k looked. 

[docmoore]

Focus with native Canon EF lenses is typically slow contrast based acquisition stepping past focus and then locking on ... very accurate but depends on the lens and ambient light. 
 

Canon 17 - 40 L is much slower than the 50 F1.2 in any light. Indoors in lower light the focus times are marginal and the camera occasionally hunts to acquire the best focus.

I only have Canon AF glass and Zeiss MF so cannot compare but while it may take a second it doesn’t seem to be as long as three seconds. 
 

Good for setting up a shot ... double tap for magnification and the adjust manually. 

[thephoenix]

some lenses are pretty slow with af, i had both the 50 and 85 1.2L from canon, nightmare autofocus, so slow.

i sold them since i didn't used them much and bought the 85 1.4 stabilized, much faster af and stabilized which is good with non is cameras

[Emanuel]

It would be nice to have a list of the the best performing units actually : -)

[Mattias Burling]

On Canon bodies they are of course snappy and accurate without any hunting. On the BMPCC4K I enjoyed the push AF very much with the Panasonic 12-35, specially since it's such a crappy MF. A shame if we can't get the same snappiness with native EF on the P6K.

[Avenger 2.0]

6 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

On Canon bodies they are of course snappy and accurate without any hunting. On the BMPCC4K I enjoyed the push AF very much with the Panasonic 12-35, specially since it's such a crappy MF. A shame if we can't get the same snappiness with native EF on the P6K.

I guess it depends with which Canon body you compare. The liveview cdaf from 60D, 5D3, 6D, etc will I guess be the same as bmpcc6k. The dpaf from 70D, 80D, 5D4, 6D2 will be way faster.

[Emanuel]

Mattias meant for pushing (auto) focus not video continuous focus Pockets don't offer... : -)

[BTM_Pix]

51 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Mattias meant for pushing (auto) focus not video continuous focus Pockets don't offer... : -)

Mine does.

[Emanuel]

21 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Mine does.

Selfish dude! ; -)

[Django]

 

5 hours ago, thephoenix said:

some lenses are pretty slow with af, i had both the 50 and 85 1.2L from canon, nightmare autofocus, so slow.

i sold them since i didn't used them much and bought the 85 1.4 stabilized, much faster af and stabilized which is good with non is cameras

Push Focus on EOS R with the 50mm F1.2 wide open is blazing fast (like maybe 0.4ms).

AF continuous takes about a second to transition a focus pull from +2m to near distance (with the AF settings I have). It's even faster on my 6yo C100 mk1 DAF.

[independent]

At the same camera position and the same framing, of course the 6K will have more detail than the 4K. That's the obvious advantage of having more pixels. 

If you have the 4K and want more detail in your subject, get a tighter shot! 

On the other hand, the 4K w/ speedbooster has remarkable advantages (until the aforementioned 6K adapter becomes viable). The 1.22x crop offers a field of view that exceeds nearly every raw camera except the top end large format Arris and Reds (and canon c700). That offers much more flexibility, and in some cases the wider FOV is very handy in tight interiors such as cars and bathrooms. 

And the extra stop can be critical. Especially while maintaining the deeper depth of field, thanks to the smaller image sensor. That offers a very good combination; it can help get shots in challenging situations, i.e., keeping focus in low light. 

Also, the ability to take sips of bootleg CinemaDNG in the 4K...mmm.

[MeanRevert]

On my phone, I couldn't tell the difference. 

On my big ass 40" monitor, the p4k footage looked like the 5dmkii.

I keed, I keed.. 

[drm]

Hey all. I was not able to set up a good shoot this weekend due to timing and the weather. But, I was sitting by the pool last night and grabbed a brief set of clips with the P4K and the P6K.

It was an overcast day, so there aren't huge pops of color. These are the clips:

• P4K: 4K - 24fps
• P4K: 1080p - 24fps
• P4K: 1080p - 120fps
• P6K: 6K - 24fps
• P6K: 2.8K - 24fps
• P6K: 2.8K - 120fps

Oh, these are all BRAW files Q5 and the date on the P6K files are wrong. Focus peaking showed that the flowers were in focus. I literally grabbed the camera out of the box, put it in the cage and shot, without doing a full setup. The cameras are in mostly the same spot. For each camera, I just changed the resolutions without moving the camera. The shots are close to the same location, but I grabbed the wrong tripod, so they are only close, not the same.

If you look carefully, the background waves in the 120fps clips are more blurred than the 24fps clips. I adjusted the aperture to keep the exposure the same. In hindsight, I probably should have done that differently. I also should have found something better as a target for the high frame rate footage.

As I said, this was *not* a planned shoot, but just a few minutes goofing around. Glancing at the clips in Resolve, there doesn't appear to be much (any?) of a quality drop when you go from 24-120fps. With my GH5s, there is a drop in quality as you increase the frame rate (of course, it will go to 240...)

Anyway, hopefully you find these at least a little bit useful. I put them on mega.nz. Hopefully you can download them without issue.

2.23GB: https://mega.nz/#!P1ZEAIRY!ljq9c0S4_1Ik4cM5Px5fKANxwJP-UN7Q2LR4cIDMVKQ

Best of luck all!

[Kisaha]

Very interesting stuff here

https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Test/Blackmagic-Pocket-Cinema-6K---Mehr-Pixel--weniger-Cinema---Stromversorgung---Gedanken--Marktstellung-und-Fazit.html#Gedan

This is the conclusion google translated.

"However, the biggest competition is the older Pocket 4K.Because this remains in our eyes the much better offer.At almost half the price, this offers hardly any disadvantages except for the lower resolution. The slightly smaller sensor width (19 vs. 23mm) is not so seriously felt in practice and the achievable dynamics are similar. The Pocket 4K can also be used with many Focal Reducers like the Viltrox-EF-M2 with full S35-aesthetics. And even with a far better "crop factor" of about 1.35. The EF-Mount does not allow such hacks, or only for much more money . Last but not least, even 4K resolutions for real "cinema" applications are usually much sharper than desired."

I read also that they test-proved that both the Sony Venice and the BMPCC 6k can produce a perfect de-mosaiced 4k-DCI (rgb) output. Pretty spectacular for a 2495$ camera!