cantsin

I did not refer to you but generally wrote that people who haven't used the camera and don't understand the concept of a cinema camera should better shut up. If you feel that this was a personal attack, then it's your problem. Your second sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.

Aside from size, I don't see much advantage of that lens versus using the Panasonic 14-42mm or 14-45mm kit zoom at 14mm. It's merely a half-stop faster (2.8 vs. 3.5) and distorts as well. I'd rather go for the old Panasonic 14-45mm zoom which works as an optically stabilized lens on the Pocket.

Strange, I just format them as exFAT with Disk Utility under Mac OS X. No problems under whatever firmware version I had the camera running.

Sorry if my reply sounds rude: Sometimes, there's a point where people who haven't used the camera and don't understand the concept of a digital cinema camera versus a camcorder should just shut up. You only get noise-free images from consumer and ENG cameras because they have built-in noise filtering algorithms that, in most cases, can't be turned off. Likewise, your consumer or ENG camera will algorithmically sharpen the image and punch the colors. A cinema camera records an unprocessed image: without noise filtering, without sharpening, and with "dull" colors that optimally reproduce the sensor's dynamic range but don't optimally match the human eye. Noise filtering (if wanted), sharpening (if wanted) and color correction (absolutely necessary) must be done in postproduction. Judging from the Vimeo videos shot with the Pocket that run in ungraded Cinema log, it seems as if this camera asks too much from most people who buy it. They will be better served with a G6 or GH3 - and I don't mean this pejoratively at all. I'm just tired of these misunderstandings. It's as if we'd be on blog for audio production, and people would complain that the Korg synthesizer they just bought as an upgrade from their Casio keyboard has no built-in rhythm section and auto chords and no built-in speakers, and sounds dull over Mackie studio monitors. (In audio production, btw., the difference between consumer and semipro technology is no longer really a difference of price point. Video production now just catches up with something that has been the reality in audio production for more or less a decade.)

Well, 10 bits color depth per channel are nice but not exactly luxurious. If you have to correct such major color shifts in post, you'll lose quite a lot of them. It would be better if you could record the best white balanced image right away and gain optimal headroom for grading.

My theory is that Blackmagic doesn't own the intellectual property for doing in-camera formatting of exFAT and HFSplus, both of which are proprietary, partly patented standards. Very likely, Blackmagic's firmware is built on a Linux kernel (just like the firmware of other camera manufacturers such as Samsung and Sony), and Linux doesn't format exFAT and HFSplus either. If Blackmagic purchased the necessary licenses from Apple and Microsoft, it would likely make the camera more expensive - $50 perhaps - given that it's produced in much smaller quantities than ordinary consumer cameras so that economy of scale doesn't equally apply. And: While in-camera SD card formatting is a desirable feature, nobody should want single file deletion on a camera with a high bitrate codec. This will lead to file system fragmentation, resulting in non-contiguous writing to the SD Card, resulting in frame drops. To my knowledge, no digital cinema camera offers single file deletion. Simple solution: Format your SD cards before you go out shooting. You should do this anyway. The only real disadvantage occurs when running out of storage on the road, and you can't just buy a new SD card somewhere and pop it in for use.

On almost all digital cameras, white balance can not only be adjusted for light temperature (basically, on the yellow-blue axis), but also on the green-magenta axis, in order to compensate for tinted light; typically, the green tint of fluorescent light and energy saving light bulbs. The Pocket, unfortunately, does not offer this. It's irrelevant for raw video recording where you can adjust all white balance parameters in post, but it's a shortcoming for recording in a debayered 10-bit codec such as ProRes.

The lack of green/magenta tint correction is a bigger issue when recording ProRes. (I wonder, btw., what happened to part 2 of the EOSHD review.)

I can confirm that the Sony 95 MB/s cards work flawlessly.

Excellent review of the Pocket: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/camcorders/black_magic_pocket_camera.shtml

"The Hurt Locker" had a budget of $15 million. Shooting it on Super 16 was not a budgetary but an artistic decision: "We shot it Super-16, which gave me an opportunity to be very dexterous because the camera is very small." (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/07/qa-filming-a-war-of-bombs-in-the-hurt-locker). Same goes for "The Black Swan", shot on Super 16 with a similar budget - quote of the D.P.: "Darren likes 16mm because it’s small, he can do handheld, and he doesn’t have to wait around for camera setups." (http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2010/12/black-swan-canon-7d.html).

  16mm film (especially Kodak Vision negative stock), combined with a professional-grade camera like an Arriflex, Aaton or Ikonoskop, is infinitely superior to the digital video cameras you mention in your post. It's arguably still superior to the digital Super 16 image produced by the Blackmagic Pocket. I doubt that, for example, "The Hurt Locker" would have looked better if it had been shot on a Pocket.

I'd put it that way: Until recently, there was no alternative to Panasonic GHx bodies if you wanted high resolution video, interchangeable lenses and a decent sensor size under $1000. The Pocket is a game changer to the extent that paying $1000 for the 8bit video of a GHx isn't worth it anymore unless the camera provides really essential practical advantages for your particular project or style of shooting. In most cases, the ergonomic quirks of the Pocket won't be a deal breaker.   The situation is now the same as in photography where, for most means and ends, nobody would pay hundreds of dollars or Euros for a camera that only shoots JPEG. 

Small note: I'm not sure whether I'm a knowledgeable user, rather an enthusiast. Better make up your own opinion, perhaps borrow the camera to make an informed choice that works for you. Criteria and workflows are always personal and subjective, and hence also people's priorities.

The firmware update fixes the black spots, but the blooms can only be fixed by sending in the camera to one of Blackmagic's service centers and having it serviced with sensor hardware recalibration. I don't want to be rude, but BMPC-related web forums currently abound with misinformation, hearsay and hysteria (probably because so many people are still waiting for the cameras they've prepaid) although Blackmagic's information concerning the white orbs, black spots and their respective fixes has been very clear. Please don't spread more false rumors.

  And what consumer technology companies like Canon and Nikon do for sure: Factor in support and customer assistance costs. The fact that raw-like video won't work on 90% of the SD cards currently being used and sold (because they're too slow) would be enough to create a support nightmare. I think that this will remain a niche market for companies like Blackmagic for the next couple of years.

My 50 cents: Because of the scaling artefacts of the 50D, the Pocket produces a much cleaner video image, even in ProRes - unless you shoot your 50D video at 1:1 sensor crop/5x digital zoom or build a third-party anti-aliasing filter into the camera. For a comparison, see here (and click on the images to view them in full 1920x1080 resolution). Besides, the 50D can't record sound, and the MagicLantern version needed for shooting raw video is still experimental, complex (although the EOSHD guide helps), and (in conjunction with maxing out the write speeds of not-so-reliable CF Cards like the Komputerbays) less reliable for critical work. I sold my own 50D after obtaining the Pocket and frankly don't see much of a niche for it anymore aside for people on very tight budgets, very constrained needs of shooting (since a 128GB CF card for about 30 minutes of footage costs you 140 Euro), greater investments into Canon lenses, and generally a love for technical experimenting and tinkering - it's great as a hacker cam, since Magic Lantern makes it fully programmable. Magic Lantern raw video really shines on the 5D Mark III though.

For such shooting conditions, it's always possible to power the camera with a larger external battery. I'm pretty sure that we'll see third party external battery grips for the Pocket very soon. Likely as expensive pro equipment first, and a few months later as cheap China knock-offs on Ebay.

One dozen of batteries would only be needed if you shoot more than 8 hours nonstop without a power source. Even in such a case (let's say 12 batteries - I personally find having 6 more than enough), their total weight would be 500 grams, not that much.

Neither are likely to happen very soon. The sensor of the Pocket is already capable of outputting 60p but would overheat in the camera. You would need to build a camera with a more powerful cooling system, a camera that would need to be bigger and that would suck batteries dry even faster. The Pocket form factor wouldn't be viable anymore, and you'd likely end up with something that would resemble the larger Blackmagic cinema cameras. 60p are only likely to happen if CMOSIS, the manufacturer of the sensors used by Blackmagic, develops some next-generation chip with smaller structures and less heat dissipation/power consumption. In-body stabilization isn't very likely for near-future generations of the Pocket either. This is currently very advanced technology, mastered by only a few companies (Olympus, now also Panasonic with the GX7, Sony only with small sensor compacts). It's patented and nowhere near mainstream, and probably not achievable unless you develop sensor and camera body together. The reason why the Blackmagic cameras are affordable is that they're built on fairly standard off-the-shelf components (third-party industrial camera sensors) and technology/intellectual property that Blackmagic had already developed for older products, its field video recorders and DaVinci Resolve. The Blackmagic cameras are, in fact, little more than Hyperdeck Shuttles with sensors and lens mounts. There is AFAIK no professional cinema or video camera yet that offers in-body stabilization, a typical example that consumer technology can be more advanced in certain areas. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next years, we'll see large scale dramatic improvement of in-camera stabilization on the consumer market, very likely a switch to 4K/UltraHD on all fronts, but a persistence of highly compressed 8bit codecs. Just like the Canon C-series and Sony FS series has divided the first generation of DSLR shooters, Blackmagic's cameras might divide the mirrorless video shooters.

One should not forget that, in order to properly edit/post-process 10bit and raw footage, one needs pro editing software like Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid or Vegas Pro. Most home video makers use budget editors (like iMovie, Pinnacle, Premiere Elements) that only support 8bit amateur video. The enthusiast, semipro and low budget pro market in between video amateurs/cell phone shooters and bigger budget pros (who can easily afford a $15,000 camera) is a small niche and likely not profitable enough.

  I would agree with you in respect to camera ergonomics, user interface, storage etc. - cameras can be designed to do both well, as Panasonic's GH series shows (among others).   But there are differences and limitations in sensor technology that can't be overcome because of simple laws of physics. You either have a high resolution photo sensor with a small pixel pitch, which means relatively low native ISO, higher noise and lower dynamic range unless you enter full frame territory; or you have a lower resolution (1080p = 2 Megapixels) sensor with big pixels resulting in high native ISO (800 on the Blackmagic Pocket), high dynamic range (13 f-stops) and low noise.    The only way to work around this would be an APS-C/Super 35 size sensor with native 8 Megapixels / 4K video resolution, which would hit the sweet spot between the two. But I don't think that the photo mass market would accept APS-C with only 8 Megapixels.

Looking back at what I shot with the GH2, it's like night and day - or plastic vs. organic image. Honestly, I would keep using this camera even if it were much quirkier than it already is. As one can see in the first shots of the video that I posted, not even the white orb issue has been fixed on my camera yet. The real 'downside': You can't go back to AVCHD/8-bit consumer cameras anymore once you've got used to this video quality. It's like the red pill in "The Matrix".   (Important things to mention in the review, IMHO: The current 180º shutter bug and its 172.8º workaround - the sensible setting for 24p in PAL/50 Hz countries anyway. Another big issue is the lack of green/magenta white balance compensation which creates lots of issues for indoor shooting, especially under available light with energy saving bulbs.    And perhaps it's just my obsession, but I'd insist that the camera looks best with modern, contrasty and sharp lenses while most vintage glass disappoints on it. Unlike the GH2 whose video image shows crushed shadows and highlights when the lens is contrasty, the Pocket can adequately handle high contrast with its high dynamic range sensor. It also renders sharpness organically, with a pleasant fine sensor grain, whereas the combination of sharp lenses, in-camera denoising and artificial in-camera-sharpening of the GH2 resulted in plasticky images. So I'd go for soft, low contrast lenses on the GH2, and the opposite on the Pocket. Paradoxically or not, lenses like the Panasonic 14-140mm are a much better match to the Pocket than to the GHx. Modern primes like the Samyangs seem to be the ideal budget solution for the Pocket. Having said that, my old manual Nikon primes are fantastic on the camera, too, especially in combination with the MFT Speedbooster.)

  Hey, thanks! For sure, the optical stabilization of the Panasonic zoom lens helped me. (And perhaps the years of practicing a steady hand with cameras like the GH2.)

  You can shoot with the Pocket in the same mobile way as with a GH2 - and you can't shoot with a GH2 without somehow stabilizing the camera either. If you don't believe me, here's my first rough cut of a video I literally had to run&gun yesterday with a Pocket, a Panasonic 14-140mm lens (interior shots with a Nikon 28mm 2.0 + MFT Speedbooster) and this "rig", a Braun mini chestpod made for Super 8 cameras in the 1970s. It's 20 cm long and weighs 215g:       The video documents an audio walk (no sound on it yet). I had to follow the participants and shoot whatever happened, no time to plan any shot. Aperture mostly at 8, exposure correction with a variable ND, all manual focus (which was the hardest part and not always accurate). Only one single shot (1:23-1:25) was stabilized in post.   https://vimeo.com/75723978