Blackmagic Micro Cinema Super Guide and Why It Still Matters

[bjohn]

6 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Awesome! Cannot wait to see some of that footage if you come around to post some.

Here's one from last week's concert. Shot with BMMCC and the Sigma 18-35; not my lens of choice but it's the one I bring when I don't know what I'll be getting into, and I'd never been to this venue before. It was basically a house concert, but amplified and with some stage lighting on the floor; there was a bit of feedback in the sound system that I tried to notch out with EQ in post and succeeded in attenuating most but not all of the ringing. Some handheld b-roll at the beginning.

 

[PannySVHS]

I will watch it later on the weekend. Thanks for sharing! @bjohn Have you also been using the  18-35 on the pocket for handheld work once in a while? I imagine it to help due to its weight. A smooth, damped focus ring does also wonders with a light camera, avoiding all these small shakes and jerks from operating and focusing. Did you use lens support for the Sigma with your Bmmcc when on a tripod?

[bjohn]

1 hour ago, PannySVHS said:

I will watch it later on the weekend. Thanks for sharing! @bjohn Have you also been using the  18-35 on the pocket for handheld work once in a while? I imagine it to help due to its weight. A smooth, damped focus ring does also wonders with a light camera, avoiding all these small shakes and jerks from operating and focusing. Did you use lens support for the Sigma with your Bmmcc when on a tripod?

Yes, I use lens support for the Sigma always; it's a long, heavy lens and the MFT mount on the Blackmagic cameras is weak. So I use a baseplate with rails, and a lens support on the rails for the lens. I have occasionally used that lens on the Pocket, supporting it with my hand, but when I'm handholding the Pocket I usually use lighter lenses (my favourite is the SLR Magic 10mm Hyperprime cine lens) and my Zacuto Marauder Mini. I do think just a pistol grip plus another point of stabilization would work; I also have the Zacuto viewfinder that clips onto the LCD and I use that as my second point of stabilization.

The concert was an interesting challenge to film; the room was smaller than I expected and the music started before sunset; there was a bright shaft of sunlight coming in. I had my expensive Sekonic colour-temperature meter with me and took readings on the lead singer's face before the concert, but of course all that went out the window as the evening progressed and the sun went down; at that point they were lit by two colored stage lights on the floor beaming up toward them plus the two lamps that they placed to their right and left. I am glad I shot raw (3:1 CDNG) for the maximum flexibility in exposure and white balance, although I'm sure ProRes could have handled even the huge adjustments in white balance I had to make.

[kye]

OG BMPCC and 45-150mm f4-5.6 zoom...

The cinema flows from the people through the equipment into the edit.

No excuses.

[PannySVHS]

Thank you for sharing! @kye That 45 - 150 is very intriguing and tiny! I've been owning one for years now when it came with my Lumix G7 and I still haven't ever used it. It is time to change that!

As two of my friends here on Eoshd already know, I have been out filming with my Bmpcc lately. I could write a longer paragrsph about it. No ibis, coupled with a 25mm lens felt challenging but also very freeing from perfectionism and especially rewarding. Four internal batteries lasted for 30min of material so I came to appreciate every time I pressed the recording button. In the edit I was grateful for every stable shot that DID get recorded and not screwed up by an empty battery. I got "full" four batteries waiting to fool me again. Maybe tonight. Last weeks magical night during blue hour with the Bmpcc and a Zeiss Tevidon 25mm:

 

 

[Emanuel]

As I've been telling you before, Marty, you have a particular sensibility/talent for handling colour, without mention framing... i.e., a very unique atmosphere of your own ; )

- EAG

[PPNS]

hey we’re actually posting our work on here again, finally! 
 

some nice looking stuff there marty!

 

13 hours ago, kye said:

OG BMPCC and 45-150mm f4-5.6 zoom...

The cinema flows from the people through the equipment into the edit.

No excuses.

while it looks decent, i do think this is incredibly vapid

[PannySVHS]

Thank you very much for your kind words, guys! @Emanuel @PPNS It feels very special to participate in a lively moment through the process of filmmaking and it can be even moreso satisfying to me in these little etudes and micro shorts.

Last year I was testing the LX10. In 4K it's a 2/3" camera because of the extra crop. I had been ignoring it when I got it two and a half years ago because I found colour to be awful. Then I saw a few video poems by Harrison Kraft who filmed in Vivid profile. Now I find it to be a Rec709 marvel with sometimes harsh highlights but with legit and effectively involving color after color grading. It's a quirky camera too but a marvel on its own right, with a beautiful lens infront of it.

[kye]

This is the kit for my trip to Korea coming up.

The BMMCC is slower to shoot with, but I think I'll try and make it the main camera of the trip.

Equipment:

• BMMCC
• GX85
• 14-140mm F3.5-5.6
• 12-35mm F2.8
• primes: 14/2.5 and 7.5/2 and 17/1.4 and ~50mm F1.4
• iPhone

The Helios 58mm F2 is pictured, but I might end up taking the TTartisans 50mm F1.2 instead.  Still deciding.

The BMMCC will benefit from the OIS in the zooms significantly.

I only have a couple of old Wasabi LP-E6 batteries, and so far in my testing I'm getting about 1h45m of battery life, with it not really mattering if the camera is on standby or recording.  I think when I'm there I'll probably buy some more batteries.

Pics:

[bjohn]

@kyeone word of warning: a few years back when I was shooting with my BMMCC in France, the camera started behaving weirdly with the Panasonic 12-35 zoom. Aperture control worked, but it would defocus the image as soon as I hit the record button and I'd have to refocus. I've read other accounts of this happening. I only use manual lenses on that camera now. I have two BMMCCs and haven't tested the Panasonic on the other; I should do that. But the other reason to use all-manual lenses (with a manual aperture ring) is that adjusting the aperture electronically via the BMMCC's menu will drive you mad unless you have a remote. I have the One Little Remote, which works well for this, but it's incompatible with my larger battery sources (it shuts down the camera randomly).

[kye]

1 hour ago, bjohn said:

@kyeone word of warning: a few years back when I was shooting with my BMMCC in France, the camera started behaving weirdly with the Panasonic 12-35 zoom. Aperture control worked, but it would defocus the image as soon as I hit the record button and I'd have to refocus. I've read other accounts of this happening. I only use manual lenses on that camera now. I have two BMMCCs and haven't tested the Panasonic on the other; I should do that. But the other reason to use all-manual lenses (with a manual aperture ring) is that adjusting the aperture electronically via the BMMCC's menu will drive you mad unless you have a remote. I have the One Little Remote, which works well for this, but it's incompatible with my larger battery sources (it shuts down the camera randomly).

How odd - I guess maybe it was a firmware bug?  or dirty electronic contacts perhaps?

Did it work at other times? or was it consistently playing up?  I've recorded a bunch of clips with the lens and not had any issues so far.

[bjohn]

52 minutes ago, kye said:

How odd - I guess maybe it was a firmware bug?  or dirty electronic contacts perhaps?

Did it work at other times? or was it consistently playing up?  I've recorded a bunch of clips with the lens and not had any issues so far.

Dirty contacts was the first thing I suspected, but that wasn't the issue. And that lens works perfectly on my OG BMPCC. It has had the same behaviour consistently on the BMMCC ever since it happened the first time. It's not a dealbreaker; during my trip I simply stopped trying to focus before hitting the record button and focused afterward. But I did notice focus drifting at times and fortunately I had some other lenses with me (all manual) so I finished my trip with those.

I remember seeing similar comments from other users on the Blackmagic forum. What's weird is that it happened all of a sudden; I hadn't done any firmware updates or made any other changes. It makes me think it's the lens that's the problem, but it does work reliably on the OG Pocket.

[bjohn]

A cajun band here in town (Montréal) asked me to shoot some video of them at an unplugged street concert last Sunday. The weather was dodgy, with thunderstorms in the forecast, and they just made it through their first set when the first drops of rain began to fall. But I managed to get some footage; they asked me to do a 1-minute compilation and a 3-minute video (which I'm still working on). Here's the 1-minute version, shot on BMMCC with Angénieux 17.5-70mm zoom.

 

[TomTheDP]

What are ya'll using for media. I really want to make use of this camera. I sort of wish I had the OG though as love a built in screen(even though the built in screen sucked). 

[bjohn]

5 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

What are ya'll using for media

I'm mostly using the old SanDisk cards I bought back in 2016 as I have a good supply, but I also have two of the newer, expensive Angelbird cards (which may not work for 60fps on the BMMCC, I haven't checked as I rarely take slow-mo footage). But I recently learned that Sony's Tough 300/299 mb/s disks work and I happened to have one so I popped it into my OG BMPCC and it was recognized by the camera and I was able to record footage, although I didn't test it extensively.

Will von Tagen tested a bunch of cards and found that these all work in the original BMPCC. Again this doesn't mean they'll be able to do 60fps in the BMMCC, but all the lower framerates should work; if you don't want to watch the video he has a list in the video description. I'd stay away from the Kingston cards, though, based on my bad experiences with them over time.

 

[kye]

6 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

What are ya'll using for media. I really want to make use of this camera. I sort of wish I had the OG though as love a built in screen(even though the built in screen sucked). 

If you have a local camera store that cares about customers, it might be worth going down there with your camera and a rig and saying you need a card but need to test it before purchasing.  You'll likely pay full retail but you'll spend zero time and energy buying the wrong ones or waiting for shipping on something that may not work.

[bjohn]

1 hour ago, kye said:

If you have a local camera store that cares about customers, it might be worth going down there with your camera and a rig and saying you need a card but need to test it before purchasing.

This is a good idea, but it's worth noting that a card may be recognized by the camera but still not be usable because it'll start dropping frames after awhile. I experienced this with a few cards: the camera would recognize and format them, but after 10 minutes or so I'd get dropped frames. So if you test, be sure to test for at least 10 minutes of filming; the best stress-test will be 10 minutes of CDNG raw at 30fps, but if you don't need that capability just test it with whatever settings you normally use.

[kye]

16 hours ago, bjohn said:

This is a good idea, but it's worth noting that a card may be recognized by the camera but still not be usable because it'll start dropping frames after awhile. I experienced this with a few cards: the camera would recognize and format them, but after 10 minutes or so I'd get dropped frames. So if you test, be sure to test for at least 10 minutes of filming; the best stress-test will be 10 minutes of CDNG raw at 30fps, but if you don't need that capability just test it with whatever settings you normally use.

Damn..  10 minutes is a long time in a test.

I've heard that cards can start off working fine but then after a while start to act up and miss frames after using them for months.  I think that was the Kingston ones, but can't be sure.

[bjohn]

7 hours ago, kye said:

Damn..  10 minutes is a long time in a test.

Yeah, the basic rule is that just because a card is recognized by the camera doesn't mean it can actually keep up with the data rate (no matter the card's stated read/write speed). On the Blackmagic cinematography forum there's this old thread where Frank Engel did 15-minute tests of a bunch of cards to see what would work:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91479

 

[kye]

Arrived in Seoul and recovering from flights etc.  A storm rolled in and I grabbed some shots with the BMMCC.  I'm just getting used to the low-light limits so these are test shots as much as anything.  I've done almost no grading to these at all, but they look like movie frames, I'm really impressed.