@rockroadpix

That was a good review, with the exception of Rick NOT knowing ANYTHING about shutter angle! Why would anyone ship a CINEMA CAMERA to someone with no film background? He thought it had only to do with exposure... meh

Yea, this always amazes me. "shutter angle? not sure what that does..."

...Uhh, why do you have a camera in your hands then?

@ahbleza - That was a good review, with the exception of Rick NOT knowing ANYTHING about shutter angle! Why would anyone ship a CINEMA CAMERA to someone with no film background? He thought it had only to do with exposure... meh

Here's a nice review from Australian native Rick Young in Perth, using a release version of the BMD Camera.

http://www.moviemachine.tv/video/shooting-with-the-blackmagic-cinema-camera/48431007/

John Brawley "Afterglow" sample files now available in ProRes 422 HQ format.

@Kristian_Lam

Thanks for quick update.

@vicx You're on the right track.

It's 16 Bit LIN-->12bitLOG when recorded as DNG and then back to 16Bit LIN again when unpacked into Resolve.

I'm just uploading some bracketed exposures here http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/blackmagic-cinema-camera-exposure-brackets/

jb

Got my hands on this thing, and I feel that the image quality is awesome. Ergonomically...needs some help it's true - but in terms of image quality it rooooocks.

http://dankanesbmcc.blogspot.com

@ahbleza

Sounds quite bad.

@kicap Thanks for being in agreement. Indie filmmakers, film students, and enthusiasts already flock to Apple Stores for their computers, it just makes sense for them to sell this camera (this affordable cinema camera, to be exact - 'cuz it's not just another camcorder) alongside its post-production companion tools. Blackmagic, Apple....are you reading this?

So I was looking at JB's DNG samples in Rawdigger and I'm trying to work out how he can have this dynamic range where a light bulb is not blowing out a lightshade but when you look at the histogram for the RAW data theres only 4096 levels of apparently linear data; and that does not seem enough for the sexy dynamic range that appears to be there during grading.

Another thing I found weird was some of the output from exiftool. Two tags: Black Level : 256 and White Level : 60074. The White Level value looks like a 16bit value but the RAW data is 12bit so perhaps this data is not linear. Around this time I was wondering what the linearization table listed in the exif data for BMCC DNGs was for so I went looking for the DNG specs and found an interesting resource here -> http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/specification.htm

And Barry mentions a linearization table in the spec. http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/specification.htm#linearizationtable

So I haven't read this anywhere but I think its possible that a lookup table in each DNG file is being used to adapt 16bit sensor values into 12bit values dynamically. I haven't tested this beyond opening up the table from two different files but there are 4095 values and they have different mins and maxes so there might be something there.

Bedtime for me but I just thought there might be other nerds interested. Pls add to the discussion if you know more.

Before I looked into this I was wondering if the GH3 with 10 or 12bit AVCHD could more or less match the BMCC for gradability. I'm not not so sure now because you need the DR to make use of the bits. If the GH3 comes with HDR well that might change things around again.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev - I see two differences on the FD -> EF equation. First, the sensor size is smaller on the BMCC. Second the mount may accommodate recessing the FD lens the 2mm difference.

Here is a quote from Kristian Lam from the BMD forum who works for BMD.

"The RAW bayered image size is 2432 x 1366 which gets debayered to 2400 x 1350. There is a slight crop to get rid of the edges of the image because when you are debayering, the very boundary of the frame will not have enough surrounding information to be accurately debayered and will need to be discarded. This is a pretty standard procedure for debayering images.

The DNG has a DefaultCropSize tag which is explained as:

"Raw images often store extra pixels around the edges of the final image. These extra pixels help prevent interpolation artifacts near the edges of the final image. DefaultCropSize specifies the size of the final image area, in raw image coordinates (i.e., before the DefaultScale has been applied).""

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15&start=70