Blackmagic Micro Cinema Super Guide and Why It Still Matters

[PannySVHS]

fantastic 3d effect. colour looks individual but tastful.:) @bjohn EVF situation is my main thing and a handle for the cage. In a perfect world I would have camera, evf and, wireless focus powered from one SWIT Npf battery. But I don´t think there are batteries like that with more than one ports for power out. EVF, small and with hdmi or sdi out for a hollyland wireless video transmitter. Is there a short word for that?:) I know, there are no affordable, small, 720p+ EVFs with throughput for the video signal. The small Portkeys LEYE EVF does not have signal through put  and seems tricky regarding powering options from what I watched.

Sucks that a basic smal affordable evf with these qualities is not there. But 8k everywhere.

Thanks for ellaborarting first hand. Just on that image it just looks biiiig and thick. Gratical eye from zacuto seems spiffy. Kinda heavy for its size due to its sturdy construction and expensive. @webrunner5

[kye]

15 hours ago, bjohn said:

Here's a still from one of my tests (during pandemic confinement) of the Zeiss ZF.2 Distagon 35/1.4 on BMMCC

Yeah, that lens should be a spectacular performer.  IIRC that's the same glass as the Zeiss CP.2? @mercer is that right?

[bjohn]

Another still from some tests with the BMMCC, this time with an Angéniux 17.5-70mm zoom (Super 16, PL mount). I love this lens but it has by far the most extreme focus breathing of any lens I've used...kind of amazing it was sold as a cinema lens.

[PannySVHS]

cat royale:)

[PannySVHS]

Posted this in the wrong thread yesterday, me silly.:) So here again where it belongs:

The evfs for photocameras like the lumix gx1 and oly pens were tiny. It would be awesome if someone did a mod to them so they could be hooked up to the bmmcc via hdmi.

I'd still like to know what evf Cesar Charlone was using here with a SI-2K. Looking very slim.

[PannySVHS]

So, some rigging goodness from last week. The baseplate and rods were in a package with a Gh4 i just got. Also in the package were different Cmount adapters and finally some which fit my Zeiss Tevidons. After owning the Tevidons for three years and owning a Bmmcc for a year now, I can finally achieve infinity focus. Yeah! So here is my beauty with a 10mm Zeiss Tevidon, on a pistol grip, which also was in the Gh4 package. Now, @webrunner5 , Don, dear friend I now own a Gh4 after you got your Gh5:) Here the pics with and without the BMVA. I just got the tiny Ikan v35 which is cute but drains battery after being switched off.😂

[PannySVHS]

[TomTheDP]

I am about to sell mine once again. Just can't find media for it. 

[bjohn]

21 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I am about to sell mine once again. Just can't find media for it. 

The only challenge I've found is finding new media that can support 60fps compressed CDNG. For everything else the Angelbird cards that were tested for original BMPCC work (although they are very pricey). The cheap Kingston cards seem to work for many people but mine only lasted about 6 months. I fortunately have a good stash of the original SanDisk 64 gig cards that met the spec back in the day and continue to use those along with the Angelbird 128gig cards.

[mercer]

This is kinda ridiculous...

But I kinda, really want one.

[bjohn]

11 hours ago, mercer said:

This is kinda ridiculous...

Haha, that's cool! The "follow focus" for focus-by-wire lenses may not work out too well, though; I've used that same feature on the One Little Remote and while you can focus pretty accurately with the dial, as soon as I hit the record button on either of my BMMCCs, the lens goes out of focus and you have to start over. This affects the Panasonic 12-35 zoom, which is the only focus-by-wire lens I own. Doesn't happen on my Pocket cinema camera, only on the BMMCC, and I've heard similar reports from other users. It actually used to work fine, but at some point it didn't anymore (I'm running the latest applicable firmware on all cameras, but this happened long after I updated firmware to the latest version).

[kye]

OG BMPCC - costs less to buy outright than renting a C70.....  in 2022!

 

[And1]

Made tests and thinking of shooting on the BMMCC (maybe with Zeiss 16s lenses) on a low budget feature film instead of the Bmpcc6k/4k or Red Epic MX/Scarlet MX.

Do you consider it to be crazy in 2023?

 

 

[PannySVHS]

@And1 I consider it crazy to shoot a no budget feature! Congrats, go for it! 🙂 Do you mean Zeiss Super Speeds? Bmmcc and these should give you some wowser results. From what I read you can shoot these beauties wide open iirc. Would highly recommend Rawlite IR cut and antialiasing filter. I love how it responds in grading. But i bet you already have some love for this cam, so you know about the colour. Keep us posted if you find time. cheers

@kye
Lovely video. I like the footage he was achieving with his camera. Looking magical.

 

[Matt Kieley]

10 hours ago, And1 said:

Made tests and thinking of shooting on the BMMCC (maybe with Zeiss 16s lenses) on a low budget feature film instead of the Bmpcc6k/4k or Red Epic MX/Scarlet MX.

Do you consider it to be crazy in 2023?

It depends on your project/needs, and if you already own any of the cameras mentioned. As someone who has owned the original Pocket, Micro, and currently the P4K, I would take the P4K with the 2.6K Super 16 crop over the original Pocket and Micro. You get color, dynamic range and image quality every bit as good as the older cameras (people like to wax poetic about the old sensors but any of these cameras can be treated in post to match seamlessly), plus you're gaining a dual native iso/better lowlight performance, better rolling shutter performance, more compression options (up to 12:1), better UI (the touch screen and physical buttons for ISO, WB, etc is a godsend compared to the fiddly little buttons and menu of the Micro), more media options (I can shoot up to 8:1 on a Sandisk extreme Pro sd card, plus there's cfast and SSD), frame rates up to 120fps, no moire/no need for the rawlite filter, and the braw codec is very edit friendly. The only thing you'd lose is ProRes. You can only shoot Braw with the s16mm crop.

All that said, if you already have the Micro and it's your only camera, shoot with what you have. It still produces a great image and is a perfectly usable camera, even if it is a bit fiddly. I'm actually planning on using it as a first person POV camera on a helmet for a project I'm working on.

[kye]

From the April edition of Film and Digital Times page 42:
https://www.fdtimes.com/pdfs/free/120FDTimes-Apr2023-150.pdf

Quote

Notre-Dame on Fire (Notre-Dame brûle) is a dramatic feature film based on the Notre-Dame de Paris fire on April 15, 2019, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Seven Years in Tibet, Wolf Totem, The Bear). Notre-Dame on Fire was released in France in March 2022 on IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and standard formats.

and later on...

Quote

Equipment: cameras, lenses, lighting, grip, cranes?

• 3x ARRI ALEXA LF — Large Format (Full Frame).
• 2 Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera with Panasonic MFT Zoom lens and Cosmicar 12.5mm S16 prime.
• 1 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K camera
• Angénieux 45-135 and 22-60 EZ Zooms.
• 2x Angénieux Optimo 12x FF (36-435) Zooms.
• Cooke S7 Primes.
• 2 Super Technocranes with Scorpio Mini EZ Heads and MoSys/Cartoni remote head.
• Dino Lights on a dimmers for exteriors to simulate the flames. • Skypanels in the studio to add flame effects.

and

Quote

For some special shots, we attached a helicoidal rail above the claustrophobic stairway on which a small head traveled with a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. This was pulled with a wire so we could follow the firefighters in their ascent.

It also showed that the BMMCC were put in fireproof boxes.

BMMCC and P4K on a €30,000,000 film shot in 2021 that screened on IMAX.  Just goes to show that these cameras are still relevant and in active use in productions larger than anything being discussed on here.

[PannySVHS]

Though I got to use my Bmmcc to film two buddies of mine last year, which turned out to be an awesome display of colour prowess and though I got to do some test footage for an upcoming project and some cool BTS from a friends project, I still have nothing from this beauty to post here due to the nature of the material. But I got to test my OG Pocket which I couldnt resist to buy about three months or so ago when the price temptingly low.:)

So I went with the tiny Panny 14mm F2.5 pancake, 800iso of course, Prores 422- not HQ, 360 shutter. Fstop up to 22. Lol. This camera is a dream in daylight. I had a test under tungsten and i found it to be just okay. But natural light or 5600K light fixtures are this cameras beautiful friends. So finally some rough n ready footage, collected over the course of a late afternoon to evening, shaky, clumsy but not withouth charme imho. Display and batteries were a challenge but workable for me. Sometimes sihouettes on the screen are enough when your eyes can see the real thing beyond the screen. Focussing was mostly prefocus and via AF button, so was the aperture adjustment with a bit of sneaking the histogram.

Anyway, here it goes, my almost Bmmcc footage. 🙂

 

 

[kye]

3 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Though I got to use my Bmmcc to film two buddies of mine last year, which turned out to be an awesome display of colour prowess and though I got to do some test footage for an upcoming project and some cool BTS from a friends project, I still have nothing from this beauty to post here due to the nature of the material. But I got to test my OG Pocket which I couldnt resist to buy about three months or so ago when the price temptingly low.:)

So I went with the tiny Panny 14mm F2.5 pancake, 800iso of course, Prores 422- not HQ, 360 shutter. Fstop up to 22. Lol. This camera is a dream in daylight. I had a test under tungsten and i found it to be just okay. But natural light or 5600K light fixtures are this cameras beautiful friends. So finally some rough n ready footage, collected over the course of a late afternoon to evening, shaky, clumsy but not withouth charme imho. Display and batteries were a challenge but workable for me. Sometimes sihouettes on the screen are enough when your eyes can see the real thing beyond the screen. Focussing was mostly prefocus and via AF button, so was the aperture adjustment with a bit of sneaking the histogram.

Anyway, here it goes, my almost Bmmcc footage. 🙂

 

 

There's definitely a magic to that image!  Nice work!! 🙂 

[PannySVHS]

Thank you:) @kye It was pretty interesting to finally grab that battery monster. But I enjoyed using this beauty so much I gotta say. Four batteries feel all right for a bit of careful roaming around. Btw, I have used the Bmmcc at 400 Iso and I had big troubles to do get a satifying image for outdoor shots. I got it to a point which is okay but nothing to write home about. Good thing, I had used it at 800Iso before with great results, capturing the delicate beauty of natural light. It even looked good in odd grading variantes. So native Iso only! I reuploaded the video with a beautiful semi legendary song and stabilized most shots. cheers 🙂

[Emanuel]

On 6/2/2023 at 5:41 AM, kye said:

There's definitely a magic to that image!  Nice work!! 🙂 

Marty is a hell of a filmmaker! :- )