Because the BMPCC has no distortion correction (oops, you beat me on that). Plus, no manual focus. Oh, and quite slow, when there are native S-16 lenses with 10mm 1.4.

If you can live with that, it's a great lens.

ANYWAY.... let's talk about native lenses. I realize that many of you here don't really recommend using the Panadonic 7-14mm. But, based on my experience many micro four thirds shooters praise this lens so much. May I know why the 7-14mm doesnt really get that many attention among the future pocket owners?

Still not buying it. Horrible, uneducated comment as usual. Back to BMPCC stuff :)

If I understand @jimmykorea correctly, he's only saying that if there's no money for the camera, there's also no money for cast, crew, locations, insurance, food, transportation, etc. So unless you can make a great movie without professional cast and crew, convincing locations, etc., a great cheap camera doesn't solve much.

As for Park Chung-wook (re:@kazuo), it's unlikely he had an iphone budget, even if he used iphones. This was one of the more infuriating frauds surrounding the "Dogme" movement: the cameras may have been cheap, but the productions weren't. "The Celebration" employed the best actors and crew in Denmark, not folks who answered a Craigslist ad and worked for nothing.

So dare we say it? No matter how cheap and how good the cameras get, moviemaking still costs a lot of money. Consider that for more than 40 years, you could shoot a 90 minute S16mm feature film at a ratio of about 10:1 for $20,000 or less in stock and lab costs. If that was the only barrier to making great cinema, where are all the $20K masterpieces from the last 40 years?

@vicharris I doubt he meant exactly what you wrote.

If you want to make VFX -based narrative film, or storyless pure cinema that relies on special tech, or whatever other kind of film which relies on some technological capability that iPhone doesn't have, you won't be able do it well with an iPhone. You can do some great stuff with an iPhone no doubt, but only if your visual storytelling needs fit within limits of what is possible with an iPhone. Same goes for current G/GH series - you can do much with them, but there are some limits...

Here we come back to BMPCC - it's another step in empowering those filmmakers who can't afford Red or Alexa or whatever, but need high DR, ProRes or raw.

@kazuo, I agree on all points, though it is debatable what story means for a visual medium. Dramatic storytelling and theater tradition vs. storyless pure cinema, stuff like that...

As non-mainstream I mean not only the usual low budget indie stuff but all that gets made around the world that does not have multinational theatrical release and advertising campaigns and such. Including "made for TV" productions.

BTW, is it correct to call the recent wave of pure cinema (timelapse & other special techniques) web shortfilms "indie"? I like some of those as well, even though many are more like "tech demos" than intentional films. In any case, they're one example of filmmaker being very dependent on camera and rig technology to realize shots he/she needs.

@jimmykorea,

Since I assume you're korean, given yr nick, you shd have heard of Park Chan-wook. Dont ask me what he's made, if you don't know by now, what a shame. Not too long ago, he's shot a film using a set of iphones, am not sure if the end product's entirely a pile of shit. We can agree to disagree, but let's not be condescending when we profess little knowledge in a certain thing.

Indie simply means outside the studio system, and it's a term that's been used to describe filmmakers who operate outside this system (some may prefer to see themselves as having fallen through the cracks) So either you're funded by the system, or you're on yr own, hence indie. I wouldn't cite something like "criticwire" as an authority on this matter.

And within indie itself, there are subcategories - pp who have backers, and those who have not.

Which one are you?

@neokoo said, "As for quality of Hollywood storytelling, just look away from mainstream and there are more interesting things going on. Bigger problem is perhaps that there are too many films released all around, more than one has time to watch in a lifetime. And we're writing this thread because of intentions of making even more, heh."

1. If you find indies interesting, it's most likely not because of the cameras they use, but the quality of storytelling. I cite a recent case in point, Shane Carruth's "Upstream Color." It's such a narrative feast that after a while, you forget about the technology behind the film. Good filmmaking should make the filmmaker's craft/tool invisible.

2. We should shoot all kinds of stuff, but I agree we don't have all the time to view all of it. And not all of it is worth viewing.

3. At the end of the day, no matter how you push technology, it's meant to be the filmmaker's slave. The converse would spell tragedy.

More slight OT here.

Thing is, not everyone is using these cameras in same way. In some cases technological features become essential for creating images needed to tell the visual story or represent reality as intended by film creators.

One might need best possible chroma key for compositing - you won't get that with 28Mbps H.264, but raw and ProRes will do much better. One might need to shoot landscapes that have very high DR - shooting with HDR sensor in raw format will help. In a documentary or sports report, one might need to represent reality as well as possible within media limits - 48/50/60 fps create more convincing feeling of "being there" than 24/25/30 fps. One might need very fast framerate for slow motion or good timelapse features to show things from outside normal human perspective. And so on.

As for quality of Hollywood storytelling, just look away from mainstream and there are more interesting things going on. Bigger problem is perhaps that there are too many films released all around, more than one has time to watch in a lifetime. And we're writing this thread because of intentions of making even more, heh.

Maybe even the limits of medium itself are beginning to show. Maybe next really big thing will be a medium through which one can experience all kind of otherness completely as one's own reality. Video games can already go deeper than films in that regard, whatever comes after them will be even more groundbreaking.

Thanks @peternap! I am sure you will find great use for the BMPC.

There was a time when we even shot on VHS for broadcast (in some places). It seems to be the more technology has evolved, the more people have caught on the evolution without quite understanding the purpose of it. Toys have become more compact, they now pack hellavalot of power in a small package - just look at the iphone. But if technology has improved by leaps and bounds, storytelling hasn't. Hollywood has produced more re-runs in the last 10 years than it has any other time in its history. It has also remade films from Asia, capitalising on the films' profitability. Celluloid maybe dead, but has digital techno really taken storytelling as a craft to new heights (not talking about VFX here)?

@kazuo Excellent post! I have a BMPC on order that I go back and forth on every day. I've read all the tech stuff here and elsewhere and the question isn't if the camera can meet my standards,,,,rather are my skills and shooting style up to the camera.

In other words, will 13 stops of dynamic range be an advantage to someone that does only "who done it" Doc's, mostly Run N Gun.

Thanks!

@double_vision

It says in that video it was shot mostly with GH3, that almost answers your question already.

As far as I can say (2.5 years of using stock and hacked GH2, and now several days of using G6) the G6 won't be able to give flawless results in all kinds of shots shown in that video. It will be OK for well-lit, low ISO images without much movement. But it will not perform so well on high ISO settings and lots of moving details in the image. This is because long-GOP H.264 compression used by stock G6 works on the assumption that content of picture doesn't change much between consequent frames. If there are many changes from frame to frame (random noise, fast-moving water, street full of people moving in different directions, etc.) higher bitrate is needed to retain all that detail. 28Mbps bitrate limit on G6 is sufficient for many situations, but not enough in some extreme cases. For example, on ISO1600 and with many small details in the image, it is easy to see artifacts in files made by G6.

Then again, even hacked GH2 can have problems on higher ISO settings as it cannot reliably use highest bitrates for 720p60 mode. Usually it caps somewhere between 66-80Mbps depending on the card and specific patch settings, as far as I know. But for many cases that still gets noticeably better results than what unhacked G6 can do.

Still, no 100% clear answer on this one. Maybe try to ask a local store for some testing time with a G6, shoot to your own card, and then decide? Or look for some rent-to-own type deal on GH3?

If you buy a Gh3 you might as well wait out a little more for BMPC to be released in July. Between a GH3 and BMPC, the latter wins pants down. You want to talk about photography, then you gotta consider many things, ceteris paribus. But for the similar price points, BMPC's dynamic range is the best at this point money can buy. Add a Schneider Digicon 1/4 filter, you'll get beautiful filmic imagery