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BMPCC raw inferior to 5DMiii


Axel
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Hi friends,

sorry if this was posted already, I just need a place to express my disappointment. I am on the verge of cancelling my BMPCC-order. What could be seen of 'test shots' of the Pocket's raw so far didn't convince me at all, whereas the Miii's raw just shines. Am I missing something? If not for the different price tag, what other reason should I have to look forward to the final arrival of that camera? Please share your thoughts.

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Well, i got my pocket last night & quite frankly if you want 1 reason then ProRes HQ as its bog standard recording codec is that reason.

If not, then its size is an advantage & you really don't need expensive "IS" glass to keep things steady - just a few points of stable contact & some practice or a TRIPOD!

The screen isn't really that bad if you're coming from a DSLR & Peaking is excellent, no really its excellent.

Crop factor takes a bit of getting used to, but with an anamorphic its definitely better - speedbooster will be perfect.

Battery life isn't that bad, considering what is going on under the hood - about 1 Hour (if you're indoors then plug it in).

Sound is actually good, but only if you use the "Line In" mode from say a Field Mixer or Digital Recorder - a mic on its own ain't great.

I've not experienced any HotPixels or anything unusual/distressing.

And no, its not complicated to use - well, unless you've never used a proper camera before & that is what this is.

 

I'm with you on the "Test Shots" of RAW, but I think that is down to users/posters & not the camera - I'll have to wait for a new SD card to see.

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I just ordered a BMPCC a couple of hours ago.  BH has a special where you get Vegas 12 Pro for free.  Wow!

 

Like you Axel, I'm a bit nervous.  However, a 5D3 is $2,300 more AND as far as I know you need expensive CF cards AND glass, etc.  AND it's big.  

 

In photography I'd say bigger sensor wins every time.  Yes, the 5D3 footage looks really nice.  However, I don't see anything I don't like about the BMPCC.  I've looked at tons of videos from all RAW cameras.  The color and the dynamic range is simply beautiful.  Totally unexpected, I think I finally went for it after seeing Andrew's photos from RAW.  Not bad!  When I want to take a photo maybe I'll take a few seconds and choose the best frame.

 

I just looked at this BMPCC footage night.  Not my kind of thing (I like people), but the detail in the shadows!  

 

https://vimeo.com/79478553

 

No H.264 camera comes close, not by a country mile.

 

Finally, I don't trust ML, sorry.  I'm going to keep working with it, but as Bioshop said, shooting ProRes out of the box will get me to the fun part again, shooting, editing and posting!

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Finally, I don't trust ML, sorry.  I'm going to keep working with it, but as Bioshop said, shooting ProRes out of the box will get me to the fun part again, shooting, editing and posting!

 

I shoot RAW on a 50D from time to time but it is taxing.  ProRes seems more practical.  Only problem is grading... you have to be good at it.  I can get usuable stuff out of a Canon just by picking a particular picture style and adjusting it a bit in camera.

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I personally don´t think you can shoot RAW with either of these cameras on most of the shootings you are doing. Maybe some stock footage, but nothing "daily", maybe the one or another establisher or landscape shot. But the huge difference between the pocket and the 5D is with the canon you gotta use a hack and shoot raw to get a picture quality that is comparable to the pocket. But with the pocket you can just shoot prores and in 98% of your shootings this will be sufficient and its far far superior to any of the h264 crap of current dslrs. And it will be 100times better to manage than any raw as soon as you pull your card out of your camera.

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In reality you can basic grade a raw file in two minutes. Similar to what you have to do with BMD Pocket Pro-Res anyway.

Apart from the Resolve learning curve that I'm grappling with, and the subjectivity of grading colour, I find raw easier to grade than Pro-Res. Raw is open, pro-res can come in with issues from your shoot (colour cast, poor exposure, wrong white balance) and it's much harder to put right than in raw.

The big deal for me is the file size of raw.

You can really only use a couple of SD cards with the pocket camera shooting raw. The high end cards give you about 20 minutes of footage. And no deleting or reformatting in camera. With pro-res you can shoot hours of footage on an Atmos Ninja or similar.

One minute of pocket camera raw is about 1.65gb on my set up. So you need large and fast external drives for grading, uploading and archiving. For a day of on the road shooting you're going to need four or five 64gb Extreme Pro cards, or a handy laptop to load off onto and reformat.

I don't think there is ANY real quality compromise with pocket camera raw. But the logistical challenges are something you need to consider.

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I understand your pain with the BMPCC.   I decided a few months ago to go with the 5D after the Blackmagic price drop. That kinda did it in for me as the resale value of that gear has terrible depreciation.  Love the image.....but that wasn't enough for me to bite.  I already had alot of canon gear and didn't feel like changing over to a different camera system just yet.  So I decided to try the 5D out and figured RAW would be an added bonus.  So far I very impressed with it. The more I shoot with 5D Raw the more I like it and feel comfortable working with it.  In fact, I shot a music video this past Saturday using it and the only problem I encountered was running out of space on the 64 gig card(I will be ordering more!).  Here are some ungraded frames.
1.png

2.png

3.png

4.png

I like the colors and details that RAW provides. Also, on this shoot I didn't know what the subject would be wearing and when I saw his jacket I knew I could be dealing with moiré problems.  I struggled with moiré using the 7D until I got a Mosaic anti alias filter for it.  After that I told myself I would never deal with a camera that had moiré issues and wasn't good in low light.  I heard moiré affected the blackmagic cameras and that worried me.  Fortunately, the 5D handles both situations it very well so I went with it and it has done well.  

YouTube compression butchered this video up until 1:14 sec in and after that you can see crop mode shooting on the ants.  I will say that you can't record for very long using crop mode and it will drop a frame so I would not rely on that on a shoot.  

 

 

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@all
This helped a lot. I don't see myself shooting a wedding with raw, so for any practical reasons AVCHD (GH2, G6) suffices. Nor would I ever use the H.264 of the Canon (had the 7D before, have access to the Mii, have tried to talk my friend into trying one of those 'nightly builts' of ML, which answer the FAQ 'will it damage my camera?' with 'hopefully not'). I am not interested in shooting landscapes or flowers. Actually the availability of raw is a torture for me. Because I see how much images can be enhanced, I am postponing my more ambitious plans. It was especially one Miii-BMCC-comparison (the Kendo-teacher with the moire-suit) that made me worry. Thank you for your input. Go on.

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@enny: This video compares the BMCC with 5D3 H.264 - not the Pocket with 5D3 RAW.

lulz, I told him that last time he posted that in another thread. I don't  think he's listening

 

. It was especially one Miii-BMCC-comparison (the Kendo-teacher with the moire-suit) that made me worry.

 

Unfortunately they were doing a 1080 crop not down-sampling to 1080 and it made the moire much worse. 

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Lol.  That has nothing to do with this thread.

 

One thing the video does state though that reiterates my own statments is you can get pretty good results straight from the 5d MK III h.264 without any grading.  Grading every clip is a pain in the rear.  The results are nice but after a trip sometimes I just want to slap together a home movie and be done with it.

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The most impressing video (for my taste) of the Pocket I found so far is this:

 

Happy again.

 

By the way: Did anyone notice a peculiar thing happening in many other Pocket videos, looking as if the exposure abruptly changes? I hope this is only with Pana & Oly lenses ...

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The most impressing video (for my taste) of the Pocket I found so far is this:

 

Happy again.

 

By the way: Did anyone notice a peculiar thing happening in many other Pocket videos, looking as if the exposure abruptly changes? I hope this is only with Pana & Oly lenses ...

 

Not sure why you think this was shot on the Pocket? It says it was shot on Reds and Sony cameras.

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