NAB 2018: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[M Most]

I feel like anamorphic is a waste of time these days. The optical characteristics you get from an anamorphic image are not worth the extra headache of post production. You can't stabilize or reframe an anamorphic shot, and good luck doing matchmoves or camera tracking. The distortion and breathing is much harder to solve than shooting square images. Most TV shows don't shoot anamorphic because it's not worth the "look" that you get with the images. Even simple roto/paint shots take extra time vs. the 15 minutes or so it usually takes to do one.

And yet these things are done all the time on studio features that are shot anamorphic.....

As for stabilizing and tracking, that's why lens grids are shot during preproduction, a routine thing on large features, and largely unheard of by indies.

[Wayne Morellini]

Reduser was a lot better before fixed. They made a seperate forum to put those people. Then bmcuser came out and a number of ill people turned up there. But since the chesp fixed scarlet, we have had them left over here as well. There was a big desolate period, which in the recent 2 years seemed to have lifted. But bmcuser seemed like the pits when I looked there.

I just let silly people wear themselves out falling on me, like lemmings over a cliff. It's amazing the positive comments you'll hear a very long time latter, when they start to think, why were they acting so weird. Works brilliantly. "The sky is blue".."No it's not Wayne..it's got to be another color than blue. Why's he's insisting it looks blue. He can't be right, I'm a president level genius". Just substitute any substantially true statement for 'blue". Works like a charm. Don't listen to your emotions or your logic, but examine things first (redquotes again?). We all think or feel things, but until we examine and workout things, do we know what to think or feel?

Now, what Hrvoje may have said (I have forgotten if he started this). Lens have a resolving limit, that limit spreads the light like a OLPF does. Lot's of 2k old glass, some 4k, and some 8k new glass I presume. Now, an optical low pass filter tends to be a controlled quantity
Some spread light far and wired due to things like Bayer patterns, some are tight. They tend to be customised to the sensor. However, lens are not like this, and two different lenses can be different and may or may not give adequate results. However, as pointed out, the higher resolutions should lead to inadequacies from the lens doing this being less noticeable as the field of view covered by each pixel on the display reduces with resolution. So, a 2k limited lens might produce a mushy soft image on an 8k lens reducing alaising. 4k limited lens should be less effective. But even an 8k lens that doesn't get a sharp result may help. But in color science, you can design a debayer in consideration of the olpf characteristic (with BM this is likely no filter). Putting an olpf inba customised debayering psty might effect performance (maybe even positively) so the lens is likely to effect these things too. If you look at arrii they have long used good debayering color science. Try focusing some old lenses and see if it makes a difference?

[Wayne Morellini]

From what I heard it uses the same sensor as the GH5s.

https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/produ...x294cjk_e.html

Misha, is there any proof of this?

[Wayne Morellini]

"Pocket" . . . for some perhaps

Very sad Zeb. I saw Andre perform once or a few times as a kid. A tragic story.

[Wayne Morellini]

Misha. I can appreciate the quad Bayer, as long as you can do 2k pixels centerd onnthe division of the quad pixel group, giving a bayer based 2k pixel down res.

But I don't like the hdr scheme. You can have other schemes, pixel based gain and even the dual iso system could be adapted to hdr. But it is likely there is an electrical engineering issue with doing that.

But notice there is an 14 bit more. I WANT that. But notice it is contrived to only sn Arri like sub 4K p24 resolution in ninneude ratio. But logically, if not designed not to, it should be doabled in 16:9, maybe even at 50fps (haven't checked out the figures). But it could be that pixel data are packed in such a way that aligns with 12 bits but not with 14 bits, leaving up to 10 bits per 14 bit pixel wasted (but there are a number of things which can loose bandwidth on,).

But, depending on how the most and least significant bits are aligned, it might yeild more stops of latitude (having the lowest value aligned to pure black and not just above it, and the highest value as the true maximum and not just below it). But noise might stop it being that usable (but fine with.me,). BM should look at usung 14 bits beyond the specification sheet. That would be great.

[Misha Engel]

Misha, is there any proof of this?

Proof is a big word, but when you do the math it looks plausible.

Sony sensor has a pixel size of 4.63 um x4.63 um.

Effective Sensor Size 18.96mm x 10mm (Four Thirds) at 4096x2160.

4.63e-03 mm x 4096 = 18.96448 mm ~ 18.96 mm
4.63e-03 mm x 2160 = 10.0008 mm ~ 10.00 mm

12 bit at 60 fps

So to me it seems plausible.

[Wayne Morellini]

Sony, and others, make similar speced sensors. I'm excited about 14 bit mode (and putting a dry gas cooler into something like that to try to lower the noise floor). Yep, just got a great idea of how to extend the latitude, but maybe destroying the sensor and inducing noise. It may not be possible, but one could rapidly flip between the two iso's, and bring massive ND filters. This might not be possible at all. But frankly, if I buy it, I'm probably going to experiment with extending its Lattitude anyway. Now, where was that 1 millionth of a second electronic shutter I saw 14 years ago.

[Hrvoje Simic]

RED cameras are not cheap but at least they are putting in the R&D to provide you the best camera they can possibly make at a fair price.

As oppose to... ?

If camera companies that have 10x the experience of Blackmagic would not care about protecting higher cameras or not giving users certain features they could make a camera that could easily compete much of what Blackmagic is doing but they wont.

"Protect higher cameras" = business ethics & market segmentation.

[Alexander_Klose]

that new BMD camera is not a beauty indeed but it will sell like a hot knife cuts butter.

The specs are insane for the price compared to all the DSLR and mirrorless photo cameras this is big time.
The mainstream market screams for a super small package with les compression and other formats than H264.

And BMD just did it with this thing. Unbeatable in price and features. I´m really looking forward to see the first shots.
I´d buy one and use id along with the E-W for actionshots and all that stuff where you don´t want to put your RED.
Like under water with one of these waterbags or on a car at 200km/h

I think it has its place in the film industry and it will not replace a higher segment of cameras.

[C. Burkhart]

Keep breathing folks. It will be all right really.
It's just a camera.