Sean Cunningham

Oh, you meant the Pocket Version.  I thought you were talking about the Production Camera.   Yeah, the Pocket version is definitely intriguing and very awesome in its own right.  With the Speed Booster it'll basically be like shooting with a raw GH3.  I was more considering the original BMCC over the Production Camera for the extra DR and disinterest in 4K but the Pocket Camera has all of these qualities of the original as well.     I was considering the MFT original model for its double duty ability, shooting anamorphic mostly with the camera-as-is, switching to Speed Boosted when doable, and then Speed Boosted for all spherical stuff.  But if the timing works out that the PC version ships before the "classic" in MFT is readily available it wouldn't be a bad choice to get it and just be happy doing everything with the speed boosted PC.   It's just sorta hard coming to terms with a speed boosted PC still being MFT size for sensor but now, because of the mount adaptation, no more MFT Voigtlander or SLR Magic lenses :(

  Indeed.  It's frustrating though reading "Alexa look" which doesn't cover all the great looking stuff that doesn't have this look at all, that just looks like you're looking at film.  I particularly enjoyed John Brawley's available light shoot-out where I was convinced, until seeing the key at the end of the test, that the Alexa was the 35mm entry...it was hands down my favorite based on the online representation but I know that the projected presentation would likely have me in line with the prevailing attitude there, that 35mm was still the winner overall, even (or perhaps especially) digitally projected.  Without some form of faux analog processing, currently, digital projection isn't flattering for digital acquisition.

Pretty neat.  The "ground glass" idea is similar to what the Bellflower team built around their SI2K which gives the footage a different character and allowed the tiny sensor to feel like a large(r) format.

I'm still more interested in the original BMCC but in MFT mount.  Especially now that Metabones is shipping the first Speedboosters in MFT.  Now they just have to release the Nikon and EOS versions of the adapter. 

  No, it doesn't.    If you were to remain with a fully photochemical process you would have to choose to shoot for a low-contrast effect or deliberately print it seeking a low-contrast effect.  This is why "one light" prints using standard printer lights almost universally contain more contrast than the final, timed print of a film will.   Raw digital cameras and digital acquisition of film elements requires a viewing LUT and this has introduced repeated instances of seeing a misleading representation of the image acquired.  Worse than this is this low-contrast, bad LUT version becoming accepted as "that's just how it is" or creating a perception that "that's just how that camera shoots" (see: repeated references on camera forums to a supposed Alexa "look" that's utter hogwash) and so that version carries forward to the final version (see: first ever F35 film, Superman Returns...ugh).   Film is low-contrast straight off a datacine, viewed naively without a proper LUT.

And you should learn to read and find the proper thread.   Oi vei.   You weren't a troll you were just lost, lol.

  The BMCC doesn't have this, the upcoming 4K Production Camera does.  I guess that would be the BMCPC...and the new little one would be the BMPCC (Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera).  The BMCC (Blackmagic Cinema Camera) has a rolling shutter just like the 5D so they both are prone to jello, like all CMOS cameras.     Even RED and Alexa have this issue, though to a much lesser degree.  I've still seen, on cop shows, problems with police strobe lights tearing or only visible in half of a frame.  Southland is a RED show while The Following is an Alexa show.  Pretty sure I saw this in isolated scenes in both shows.  You gotta watch out for strobe lights too so, no shooting at the discoteque.

  Here, I'll fix that for you:   Can someone with a MKIII hack try shooting something in soft natural light that any compressed DSLR can also faithfully capture and post it up?   "filmic low saturation"?  What an odd phrase.

This isn't mine, it came up in my VIMEO feed.  I'm subscribed to this guy (Diego Contreras) and have really enjoyed his uploads.  I saw this immediately after seing James Miller's "Genesis" and the similar time of day, beach setting, etc. caught my eye.     http://vimeo.com/65144150   ...and that's only shooting ProRes, which I'd practically written off based on most of the other footage I'd seen originated that way instead of raw.     It really captured the feeling of the location.  I love visiting New York and went out to Coney Island on my last visit.  You get a few brief shots in the city but it's at the best time, with warm sunlight cutting shafts between buildings.

  Well, it was graded.  People uploading flat looking "raw" files that look no better than ungraded normal DSLR footage proves nothing either. The thing is, why doubt the shadow detail knowing this is 5D footage?  It's pretty clean well above 800ISO and this would have been like 200 max maybe.  Its DR is skewed to the lower end.  It's already a done deal that the BMCC has a DR advantage, at every stage from capture to bits hitting disc, but its own DR is skewed to the high end.

  So far James Miller's "Genesis" is the single best evidence for it that I've seen.  It's the only piece produced so far that's succeeded in actually proving the DR and gradability is there without the caveat of "you just have to see the raw".  It's the first exciting imagery the patch has produced AFAIC.

  And now you play the disingenuous troll card, "what?  who?  me?"     They never just own it.

Then be gone, troll.

  Is it the 105 f/2.5?  That's the one I have and really like it too.

  It's the same chip though...is there different color processing after capture that affects the footage?

Folks are posting "trees and shit" over in the 5D threads so no worries here.  You've got them all beat since you're scope and most of them aren't doing jack in their grades anyway to make their raw worth a tinker's damn ;)

4K on a laptop? This thread took a turn for the worst.

  But see, that's the thing and the thing that before a week or two ago Andrew was one of the biggest proponents of.  Done well, hacked GH2 footage cuts well and plays well in pro shoot-outs when you have RED and other un-compressed cameras shooting the same subjects.  It doesn't beat those cameras but in blind "taste tests" it fairs better on average than any other DSLR on the market, including the 5D before the raw hack.     Regardless of the "EOS" in the name of this site, that fact has been the prevailing mantra of this site and others for pretty much as long as the GH2 has existed (thanks to the GH1).  One could make a very compelling case for that fact perhaps buying, directly or indirectly, the 5D that Andrew is now enjoying so much more than he has in the past.   That didn't suddenly change, or get suddenly negated with this ML business.  It means the 5D moved up from its previously less-than-stellar showing, less-than-GH2 showing, to compete directly with the higher end cameras available on their own terms rather than just trying to fair well against them in controlled circumstances.  There's no more reason to hope the illusion isn't shattered by some uncontrolled picture event that reveals the ugly truth.     Why wasn't all, or any, of the "revolutionary" ML-empowered 5D test footage churned out the last couple weeks anywhere close to what James Miller did in "Genesis"?   Just one shot as immediately communicative that something new is going on inside that box in their hand?  Until the ML-generation is producing on an upward climb towards that level you're going to continue to see GH2 footage that fairs well against ML-5D online.

The way I look at it, any MFT lenses I get, whether or not I have an ~Super-35mm option, will be useful in my anamorphic kit. Or where big ass cameras aren't welcome.

Dunno, I'm more apt to go with the 12mm SLR Magic and just be all manual, all the time. Something like the Panny seems really good for exactly what was in the video and situations like that, where the hyperprime maybe not so much. Not much call for auto, electronic functions in narrative production, unless you're filming a chase through a bazaar perhaps.

I fail to see anything wrong with it, though I don't doubt manual focus might be an issue at times, as with pretty much any electronic lens. This has a simple LUT applied and Brawley states (on his blog) it's not really graded. The ND makes a big difference for focus control in this sort of light...you have to remind yourself how small this thing is. Brawley seems very enthusiastic.

Oh no, I wasn't meaning to imply the Malick stuff had anything to do with the BBL.     My only point with this connection is that The Birdcage, seems to be a DP magnet film,  I've heard it, more than almost any other film, lauded over and over and over by all sorts of DPs as something as close to "perfect" and beautiful as you might wish for.   I find it incredibly synthetic looking and am actually turned off by its lighting.   It's pleasing in a conventional sense, in that the whole thing is obviously lit with the biggest, softest sources known to man...or maybe not known to man, maybe so big and soft they had to bend space-time to fit them into the sets.  Anyway, it's one of the most obviously "lit" movies I've ever seen, so much that I'm just constantly looking at this impossibly soft lighting on everything and taken out of the movie.  I hate that as much as being able to tell that I'm not looking at location photography but something on a set, not lit like a real location at all.     Kinda like your rule for lighting the actors with logical light, more often than not movie lighting isn't logical or relative to anything in either the story or the location and that can be as distracting as the BBL DI.  3-point lighting for instance.  It has its place, sometimes even when you're not shooting a TV magazine talking head interview.  It's a basic beginning though, sometimes the first thing that needs to be thrown out.   Fast forward to, and get closer to Tree of Life and you see a shift in the Birdcage DP's work away from Hollywood studio lighting and far more naturalistic scenarios, culminating in his work on Tree of Life which was mostly artful use of available light and far more beautiful, far more stunning, than anything to do with The Birdcage.   It's the anti-Birdcage.  And the anti-BBL.

Cameron is kind of his own animal when it comes to color.  It's derived from "I forgot my 85 filter".  I'm not going to say "true story" just, word around the camp fire during True Lies was that his look, from T2 forward, was from seeing rushes of shots where the camera op had made this mistake but he really liked it and the rest of the movie fell in line behind that look.   And I actually like your rule.  Additive, practical-based lighting is my favored approach.  Mixed, un-corrected color temp.  That's why I love several of Fincher's DPs, like Cronenweth Jr. and the late Harris Savides.  Savides especially, and his embrace of the William Eggleston stills aesthetic for cinematography.  Light the room and let the people inhabit the room.  And a dislike for traditional film lights.   As much as I like instances of the BBL, photochemical or DI, these films rarely inspire awe (Bladerunner being an exception...every frame of that film inspires awe).  The BBL through DI is definitely artificial.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes not.  Its current form doesn't hold a candle to naturalistic light for pure photographic beauty.  All that work and toil and you're thinking it looks really slick and cool and then you turn over and see a Terance Mallick film and its like all of a sudden you can see again.     edit: I've found that a good test for knowing where someone is coming from, cinematographically, is to ask them how they feel about The Birdcage.  It's almost a trick question, considering that DP's transformation later on.

A really curious example of this look pushed to near DI level extremes, but on non-DI film, is Swordfish:     ...the cool part of the palette is skewed green but the principle is the same though way more stylized.  I think the look of CSI:Miami is at least partially influenced by this film.  Just a theory.     edit: and at the end of the day, I do prefer it done in-camera and then maybe just sweetened in the DI.   Maybe just not quite as radical as Swordfish, though I do remember at the time being really taken aback by how striking it was.

I'm not quite sure the bird video really shows off the ML hack, besides the crop mode.  It makes good on the failed promise of ETC mode on the GH2.  The ML "ETC" looks exceptionally useful.