2K BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, active m43, $995

chauncy

the gh2 also takes pictures. I've used it for years and it's been great with the patches. But the only reason I still have it is the hybrid bit. Otherwise, pocket all the way.

RAW wins. More important than anything else. The lcd is awful. You must use separate sound device. Battery is too short, you have to carry lots of cards. You need to learn how to grade it.

And... RAW wins.

aaronchicago

@captainhook that is awesome. I'm betting the new Micro Cinema Cam will get tons of use in features with global shutter and 60fps.

CaptainHook

Here's a cool article about Ben Davis where he talks a lot (over half the article) about enjoying using Pocket Cameras on the latest Avengers movie:

http://www.studiodaily.com/2015/05/dp-ben-davis-avengers-age-ultron/

brianl

I had GH2's and bmpcc. I found what Balazer found. You've got to finkle with the BM footage. Who has time for that? The screen was also total crap, and not really usable. I still have a GH2 and use it for back up or going to sketchy places. GH2 is still a rock solid performer IMO. YMMV.

matt_gh2

@Trumpetman I've been using a GH2 for projects, but was interested in the Pocket when it came out, but I never came across good looking work from it, probably because it cost too much(with all needed stuff) so I didn't follow it for too long. As price is coming down for Pocket, I'm interested in maybe trying it. If by chance you have some links to some of the nicer films/videos shot with the Pocket, I'd definitely be interested in checking those out. I'm okay with using GH2, but if dynamic range and other benefits of Pocket can be had with keeping color accuracy, I'd definitely check it out and try. Thanks.

Trumpetman

GH2 is dead. The pocket killed and buried it. End of story.

balazer

My conclusion after nearly two years with the BMPCC:

If you want even close to accurate color, you must shoot raw and process the DNG files using 3rd-party software. Davinci Resolve does not decode DNG files accurately, and the BMDFilm color space is useless, being proprietary and unspecified. If you've played around with the Pocket's DNG files in Adobe Lightroom, you know how much better of a job it does. But the workflow in Lightroom is impractical for video.

So I've built an ACES workflow for Sony Vegas Pro using dcraw to decode the DNG files: http://www.jbalazer.com/aces-in-sony-vegas

For all that effort, the humble hacked GH2 with its ACES IDT delivers better images more easily than the Pocket. The Pocket's large dynamic range and high quality recording are wasted on a camera with poor color accuracy and poor tools for adjusting the exposure.

CaptainHook

@_gl sorry for the late reply, i didn't get an email notification of your post for some reason. Yes, you can always downgrade by installing an older version of the camera utility onto your computer, then plugging in the camera and "updating".

Vitaliy_Kiselev

BMPCC kit offer - $995

Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera Kit with LUMIX G VARIO 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 Lens + battery and 64Gb SD card - http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1021120-REG/blackmagic_design_pocket_cinema_camera_and.html

_gl

@CaptainHook roger, I was going by the BMPCC FAQ Thread:

"Community Notes: - CAUTION: Some Pocket users have reported that video is not being recorded whilst in RAW mode on the latest firmware."

which links here, but I see you already replied there. I've got an important shoot coming up, but after that I'll try 2.0. Is there a way to downgrade worst-case?

CaptainHook

@_gl - There are no known reproducible issues with RAW on 2.0 that we're aware of. Again, if you know or hear of anything please let us know. :-)

_gl

@Peter123456, not perfect, but much better than the on-board mic. I tend to shoot outdoors with lots of ambient noise (or wind noise), so a superlow noisefloor doesn't always matter to me, but overall fidelity does. Plus it's harder to wind-jam the internal mic.

Obviously different for speech in a quiet setup. Although there are good denoising audio plugins that can work well, even just basic noise gating can sometimes work wonders. You often hear an extreme version of gating on old TV shows and movies that had very noisy mics (eg. the original Star Trek IIRC), where you get dead silence between sentences (the gate kicking in), and then the noise bursts up with the speech as the gate opens (but is reasonably well masked by it sometimes).

I'll try running my Olympus LS7 PCM recorder in soon (it has an optional dedicated bass mic to get sub-bass unlike most of their other models, lotsa rumble if you want it). Probably won't have time to do a video, but I'll report my findings.

Peter123456

@_gl,did you think the audio sounded good on the bmpcc in my test? I detected a constant hiss at every setting I tested. (Hmm... I wonder what 100% line in would have been like.) That hiss was gone when I recorded the same setup on a zoom h1. By the way, oddly, the best setting for the h1 for minimum noise is 37 out of 100.

_gl

@CaptainHook, this is on 1.9.10 (I hear there are RAW recording issues on 2.0? so I haven't installed that yet). Only happened once so far, I'll let you know if I get a repro.

CaptainHook

Hi, what firmware was this on? If you can reproduce it again please let me know and the steps to do so, or contact one of our support offices (which ever is closest to you).

_gl

Can be anything, it is FPGA based thing. Sometimes they can glitch in amazing ways.

Right, it was definitely in the sensor capture/processing somewhere. You can see the readouts are still fine, I could even go into the menus and they were fine too.

_gl

@Peter123456, thanks for doing that audio test. I've been using an Olympus LS7 to do off-board audio, but after your test it makes sense to also run it live into the cam for backup and not having to mess with syncing a separate file in post when the audio isn't super-crucial. It's far better than the built-in mic either way.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

The power-on problem persisted for a few reboots (needing the external power cut each time), now everything is fine again.

Can be anything, it is FPGA based thing. Sometimes they can glitch in amazing ways.

_gl

One of my Pockets just freaked out (see attached pics).

I was running it into an HDMI capture card, and changed the cam framerate (usually works fine). When I came out of the menu, it looked like that! Nothing would reset it except a power-off, after which it refused to power on again until I finally cut the external power. The power-on problem persisted for a few reboots (needing the external power cut each time), now everything is fine again.

Anybody seen this before? One-off glitch, or something to worry about?

MikeLinn

_gl

@MikeLinn, impressive. Problem with the balloon shoots though is the spinning - there has to be some way to stabilise it. Maybe some kind of internal gimbal that counter-rotates the attached wire.

Of course wouldn't it be sweet if you could get a fully remote-controlled gimbal up there ...

MikeLinn

kingmixer

To help start up some holiday spirit!

A just-for-fun shoot we did one day on the Pocket:

valdi99

Kamerar QV-1 viewfinder that fits BMPCC.

Here is my discovery regarding BMPCC with QV-1 viewfinder. After mounting the QV-1, you realize that the frame is positioned too much toward left edge of the BMPCC LCD screen. So you can’t see part of the screen by the right edge, especially battery power expressed in %, the end of volume meters etc. Adjusting its position doesn't help, but here is the trick to make QV-1 work much better with BMPCC:

all you need to do is to unscrew 2 of 3 screws at the bottom part of the viewfinder mount. But only those 2 on both edges (DON’T disassemble what holds the middle screw). Take out this part, turn it upside down, then screw it back where it was (see picture attached). After turning upside down this part (which holds a tiny, non-symetrical thing, that clips into the magnetic socket of a baseplate) it will allow you to adjust position of the QV-1 much more to the right, so it covers almost perfectly whole BMPCC screen (except 2-3mm on both sides). So the QV-1 can be positioned properly horizontally in relation to the LCD screen of BMPCC. Vertical adjustment also possible. So now you can see everything on the BMPCC screen. Not bad as for 70$ swivel viewfinder, well made ,with really good optic, diopter correction etc.

_gl

Quick reminder to always format your cards on the camera. It can make a big difference!

I just got what I thought was a 90MB write card from Ebay HK. Turns out it's the 45MB version. Formatted to exFat on Windows (default sector size), the thing could only cope with Prores LT, anything higher dropped out within seconds. After reformatting in cam, it now seems fine up to Prores HQ (at least so far).

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