HurtinMinorKey

I'm telling you: As long as Nikon uses Sony sensors in their high end DSLRs, Sony will dictate how they get to implement video on them, and at what price.  

I see this as an attempt at bringing high end stills IQ to a lower price, nothing more. So i'm cool with it. 

All that being said, i think the overall lack of progress in the camera market is just another symptom of the collusion that is everywhere in asian manufacturing markets. 

http://vimeo.com/66170436

This video is a commercial for the 5D3, you'll notice the advert link right below the video.  It basically shows someone who doesn't know (or intentionally) f***s-up the BMCC in post. 

 

Here is good video comparing 2 cameras where black magic is way better then mk3

http://vimeo.com/49875510

 

This is comparing the BMCC to 5D3 h264, not 5D3 raw.  H264 makes the 5D3 look soooo much worse than it actually is. 

A more pertinent question is where's Nikon, Canon or Sony's answer to Blackmagic?

Canon's answer is "Magic Lantern."

Sony's answer is, "We don't believe in magic"

NIkon's answer is "No mas, por favor."

Quick question... is anyone here upset that the Blackmagic cameras don't take traditional still photos? 

Sure they do, they just take a lot of them in rapid succession!  :D

Personally, no. 

Here is the issue. If they continue to use Sony sensors, Sony is going to make them pay to have Video features (because that's a big market for Sony). So it's not just about demand differentiation, it's about supply cost differentiation too.

That video really looks too sharp to me. Like camcorder sharpness... but that's up to the sharpening settings in Resolve I suppose. Curious to try the Resolve 10 beta though, Canon DNG in Resolve 9 wasn't very good. DNG support in Premiere sounds nice, but after reading this I can't think of any good reason to use it.

I dunno, those images look pretty darn amazing. Movement still looks weird though.

As resolution increases on sensors, the need for anamorphic is somewhat diminished though, no? As long as you can get a good crop, without loss of res.  I

^ I really like the color shots. What did you grade it in?

You can use EF lenses on an MFT mount with an adapter, but not the other way around.

The 7D isn't really an ideal video camera (anymore), you'd be better off getting a gh3. So the way I see it, your choice should really be between a BMCC and gh3. Also, a used 7D will sell for less than $900, so that really won't cover the cost of a BMCC (maybe you meant the Black Magic Pocket Camera).  The gh3 is less, but a fine camera in it's own right.

It sounds like you are new to video, so instinctively I'd stay away from the BMCC.  But if you don't plan on doing a lot of handheld work, you have a good tripod, and have a good enough computer (see related threads) to handle raw and Resolve, i'd say BMCC.

As an alternative you could try out the new raw hacks on the 7d, and see if you mind working with the raw workflow.

When is storage read speed going to be a problem? You can hook up external raid configurations, ssds, or whatever with tunderbolt at speeds the same as internal drives.

That was my point: the internal drives are usually are not fast/large enough. You need to go external. Also, the 780M may not be the most overpowered out there, but if you are working in something like Prores, it'll run a dozen nodes just fine.

So get a MacPro (new one). Sounds like you can justify it for the kind of work you do. Starts at $3/€3K. With the kind of (compressed) files you are using you don't need to max it out with all the upgrades like a 12 core CPU.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/22/mac-pro-2013-launch-date/

Basic configuration with 3.7Ghz Quad Core, 12GB, 256GB SSD seems fine. Not sure about the GPU's, it's a Dual AMD FirePro D300 (2x2GB). If you pay more you'll get better GPU's. The $4K version with 6-core CPU, 16GB, 2x D500 GPU's (2x3GB) sounds killer. I'd say wait for some some reviews to see what you need exactly and how they perform. You do need an external storage solution but that makes sense anyway.

 

Upgrading an excisting iMac is kinda impossible. You need a better graphics card. There are external options that work via Thunderbolt I think. But your mac probably doesn't even have thunderbolt. Also not sure if this is a great idea - you could look into it though.

 

Buying and old MacPro seems like waste of money to me. They still might be powerfull now, but spend the extra for a new one and you're futureproof.

 

The MacPro is a lot of money, but it's an investment over time. GPU wise an iMac is never going to get close, unless you go for an external GPU solution.

 

If you want to go cheap, the PC route gives much more options though...

With the mac pro you will still be bottleneck with storage reads, and you don't need the killer server processors unless you plan on doing 3D rendering. The 4700 series CPU on the iMacs will be more than enough for encoding.

I'd go with the top speced iMac with Nvidia 780M, you'll be fine. Importantly you'll need some sort of Thunderbolt RAID array if you want to work with raw or high bit depth 4K.  They are expensive, but fast storage is a must, and only second in importance to a good GPU. 

Shot to shot times are currently 4s with JPEG.  What will they be with 41mp RAW images?

Could be less since there won't be any processing?

What are the chances we get short bursts of raw video?  Asking too much?

I think it would be nice if this test clip had some slow pans so we could see how movement affects the results. Who knows, it might just punish the 8 bit codec even more.

Watch videos that you like, take notes about the angles, length of shots, camera movement, and editing.  Try and emulate what you see.  This requires research.  I think learning by doing is the best.

Thanks!

Nothing. Just a short slider (1 meter), the lens has stabilizer but is not active. 

Which slider? Good use of it.

What did you use to stabilize? I like the subtle movement.

Karim,

The BMCC gives you two basic monitoring options: Film and Video, which can be used for any recording mode. I think by monitoring in FILM Mode (log), you will get a much more useful monitoring image for the purpose of lighting  Was all this stuff monitored in Video Mode? It looks like it.

If you want to see all of the detail you are capturing, Film mode is the only way to go. It won't look pretty, and you may want to punch up the contrast and saturation on your monitor, but it's definitely better than looking at the over-exposed video mode monitor.

Andrew,

Did you go straight from the BMD log mode to film convert, or did you apply a LUT before hand?

The video looks great. One of your best ever. 

Great exposure in the sunlight!

I see a lot of noise in the Epic footage...weird.  Thanks for posting this. 

Actually, looking at it again, I think the mentioned quality levels are related to the still shooting options. They are just placed a bit weird in the table...

 

Actually, looking at it again, I think the mentioned quality levels are related to the still shooting options. They are just placed a bit weird in the table...

 

I don't know. Could be, but they already stated that it does raw stills above.

^this

Unless you are going to spend big money on external recorders, just use a laptop. There are couple of cheep USB powered mics out there that are pretty good. Or you can get a cheap m-audio A/D converter.

Also, learn how to use SoundForge, or it's equivalent, and you can make almost any half decently recorded audio sound great, at minimal expense.  Spending $10,000 on audio equipment won't make much difference if you don't know what you are doing with compression and EQ.