tabac

A few more shots, lowlight. Raw and DNxHD. https://vimeo.com/59610038 Pass BMC same with heavy grade https://vimeo.com/59615785 same Pass

Yeah, was at 3200K - BMC was 4500K cause I started shooting at halflight and wanted to keep it constant.  Could probably easy match the colours, but I only altered the master curve.

Grabbed a few shots last night at a location I shot a while back on the Alexa - not a side by side, just a rough comparison.  Different lenses and white balance, I'm yet to get a handle on getting optimum exposure out of the BMC.  DNxHD and RAW look very different, also not sure about workflow.  For this I converted the RAW cDNG to Cineform RAW with filmscan, then AMAed into MC6.  More testing needed. https://vimeo.com/59594452 pass is BMC

I got my BMC yesterday, just shot a few tests so far.  I'm loving it, will do some tests to compare with the Alexa later this week.

[quote name='pss' timestamp='1346686316' post='17224'] well i guess the alexa does not even have the extra pixels, so 2.5k is better then 1080HD...it's not 4k of course but what is? and if you consider a 2.5k raw workflow to stop you from working creatively, i guess the EPIC wouldn't let you leave your room.... i just don't understand why 2.5k and raw is all of a sudden a problem?! just don't use it! shoot prores and be happy! if you don't see the advantage over a 7d, go with that! regardless: a great story well shot will be more interesting coming from an iPhone.... [/quote] ArriRaw shoots 2880 x 2160 in 4:3 or 2880 x 1620 in 16:9, so it actually quite a similar beast to the BMC.

[quote name='Axel' timestamp='1346577469' post='17142'] [left]Fundamental truth. Male brain stem. Threads like this (and the whole technical gadgets affairs) are more fueled by testosterone than by economical reason or technical needs (EDIT: You see that what you say about 'the people' tells a lot about yourself. Like in [font=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif][color=#000000][i]what I myself do think or do is what I expect of others too[/i], german proverb. [/color][/font]It's a mechanism called 'projection', which is my domain, but really in a technical sense ;) ).[/left] However, on a commercial film set (no matter if it's a film with Diane Keaton or if the director is a woman), you have at least four people responsible for the image: DoP, operator(s), lighting technician(s), focus puller(s), a few hundred dollars more or less for gear rentals simply don't count much. Why do we compare an Alexa to the cameras we can afford? Masochism? Penis envy? A sober calculation whether our finished feature might be rejected by the distributors because of some far-fetched color-issue? Are we indies or what? [/quote] I can agree with a lot of that.

[quote name='bwhitz' timestamp='1346576004' post='17141'] Interesting... I didn't know that the Alexa actually needed an external recorder for RAW. That makes the Alexa look like another over-priced hunk of crap, honestly. I might be the first person to state this... but the BMCC might actually be an Alexa killer. (well, besides over-cranking) But it does sound like Black Magic is working on the 60fps mode for 1080p... which would be amazing, even if it's only for prores. But for anything that's just straight narrative 24/25p... why even shoot Alexa now? Is that extra 1 stop worth it? Do you need more than around 24mm of wide angle? Maybe. I can't really see that many cases actually... You'd have to be frickin insane in this upcoming year to purchase a $60,000 camera that requires an additional unit to record RAW... which then becomes a 30lb behemoth of a camera. Do "professionals" realize that the support-gear and personnel you now need to run this is about 20x the cost of what it would take to support a small compact BMCC camera crew? The BMCC even falling a bit behind the Alexa spec wise... easily pulls ahead here. And this is where it matters most... getting your crew down from 100's to only a few key creative roles and cutting all the bullshit out. Now, isn't RAW starting to seem a bit more affordable? Again, while it does have some advantages, deep down... people really just like the Alexa because it's well, the most expensive digital cinema camera. People want to justify it's use, so that they can pretend like they're in another "league" of film-making than others. Well, I got news for these people... you aren't. People rave about the Alexa because, in the end, it's just big and show-off-y. Smoke and mirrors. People just want to get paid to play with big toys that other people can't afford. Well, uhh, I guess the Alexa sucks then... Pretty much. People seem to prefer spending their energy on over-complicating film shoots, so they can get paid $2000 a day to play with matte-boxes, then pushing the industry forward and innovating new methods of production. I estimate, that with a new modern-approach... throwing all the old industry and "pro" dogma out the window... you could make any given movie for about 100x less. [/quote] Not sure I can agree with any of that. Alexa is a Pro camera, no one ever mentions build quality. Alexa is a tank! we straped it to cars in the rain man, on a 40 day shoot, the thing gets bashed all over the place.

[quote name='EOSHD' timestamp='1346532196' post='17117'] You can't afford to shoot raw with a 4 million dollar budget? Amateurs are editing raw in their bedrooms on laptops for the price of the camera. Is creativity completely dead in the high budget movie world now? Is it all about the numbers and the money? Maybe try spending less on marketing and more on workflow? £1000 per day for the Codex is a lot of money but it pales into significance relative to everything else in a $4m budget surely? [/quote] Not sure how £1.6 translates into $4mil, what is this the 60s? But every budget is different. I can tell you on ours, the extra money for Codex is do-able, but the post ramifiactions are not. Most low budget indies require a post equity deal, and you would not get a pst house to include RAW workflow in that. There is no mystery to it, for a big distributer to give you that sort of money the project has to be bonded, hence the likes of [i]Wild Bill[/i] (2012) and major british high end TV show use Arri's implementation of prores as opposed to the Codex. Also the marketing is never in the production budget, the 1.6 is for delivery. Remember on 1.6m the major chunk goes on talent - actors, costume, camera crew, the sript, the catering blah blah. The actual kit hire is a tiny portion of any feature. To answer your question "Is creativity completely dead in the high budget movie world now?", ours is not high end - its low budget. And it's not dead, it's just walking with a limp. I'm sure you've seen the shit on cinemas lately. But thats why I said, the BMC could change a lot of this, accelerate change, fingers crossed.

[quote name='cameraboy' timestamp='1346523781' post='17108'] exactly because it's low budget they can't afford best possible quality ... now u start to make sense ... [/quote] At what point was I not making sense?

[quote name='Chris Santucci' timestamp='1346521323' post='17106'] The crop factor makes it unusable in my world, raw or not. [/quote] If I felt that, I'd have never shot on S16mm. It's not ideal, but for the money - it's a no brainer. Depends on your usual work.

"important projects are done in ARRIRAW ..." thats just wacky. No low budget feature I know of has been shooting ArriRAW, I asked for it. Got shown the numbers, then thanked god the Prores 4:4:4:4 on the Alexa looks damn near as good. (Low budget being 500K to 4Mil)

Do you guys know how much extra dough it is to shoot RAW on Alexa? I'm in process of working out a feature budget. On a £1.6M budget RAW is nearly impossible with Alexa. The Codex unit alone is around £1000 per day! let alone the Data wrangler & post ramifications. Is RAW better? yes, defo. I sat in on the Skyfall rushes last year (ArriRAW), looked amazing. Is it essential? No, most would fail to spot the difference without a bench test. I am only talking Alexa here, I fully intent to shoot both RAW and DNxHD on my BMC, that is the beauty of this cam, it can do both.

[quote name='John Brawley' timestamp='1345887562' post='16458'] All the sparkler shots were with EF Canon "L" primes. A 50mm mainly and a 24mm. The woman with the graffiti is a 50mm CP2. I did actually go to a [url="http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/afterglow-dngs-are-out-in-the-wild/"]bit of trouble[/url] to explain it all. jb [/quote]Loved the all the test footage John, great work. Did you use any Zeiss ZFs at any point? I got a set just waiting on a BMC.

I'm sure nobody here is saying they 'Don't' want to see chart tests, just maybe that's not the only way to judge a camera. No chart will reveal the 'Truth'. It may add to the info available, but I just really like what I see so far. I see it like a pocket Arri SR3, albeit a digital one. And at a price that is damn near risk free. For me it's a total no brainer, I like the 5Dmk3, but this is a totally different animal.

I would have thought this the perfect place for 'subjective debate' - a film making forum.

[quote name='Shawn_Lights' timestamp='1345664496' post='16235'] Personally I put more stock in the actual image. Not a fan of charts and graphs. The Blackmagic camera just has a lovely image. Even the noise in the low light shots are beautiful. I agree with you. Great camera. [/quote] Yeah the 'Dough to Image equation' was a little joke, cheap camera - great images.

Charts and number comparisons aside, this looks like an immense camera. Looking at it on the dough to image equation.

[quote name='HurtinMinorKey' timestamp='1344383220' post='15089'] You'd what? Take it like a man? Be thankful that someone was paying attention? Moebius, Black swan was shot on 16mm Arriflex, 5D, and 7D. [url="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/technical"]http://www.imdb.com/...47798/technical[/url] I think they blow the 16mm up to 35mm before they transfer to digital. [/quote] I'd spend more time filling in the massive holes in your knowledge, to highlight the value of your comments. But I can't be arsed. I think people got the measure.

Fair enough, but man, if someone jumped on my work like that! Kudos to John for being magnanimous. Keep the footage coming please John, very helpful. I got a shoot to prepare for in October.

[quote name='MaxAperture Films' timestamp='1344369266' post='15075'] If you want to judge a person's cinematography skills do it on your own time and critique their reel rather than some test footage from an unreleased camera. I would prefer that John continue to make appearances on this forum and answer questions related to the gear, and not have to listen to ridiculous jabs made toward his choices in composition which he decided to release for our benefit (and did not have to). [/quote] +1

[quote name='HurtinMinorKey' timestamp='1344368613' post='15071'] There is a difference between informal and sloppy. What we saw was sloppy work, for all the reasons I listed above. Last time I checked, a three man crew was enough to use a glidecam while someone else holds a reflector. After going to John Brawley's website, and looking at his reel (and seeing how good it was), I'm even more disappointed with what we see here. [/quote] Like I said, where'd you get the balls. Incredible.

[quote name='HurtinMinorKey' timestamp='1344364520' post='15066'] From a Y chromosome...duh. What part of my criticism do you disagree with? 1. The handheld was shaky throughout, starting with the very first shot 2. Sloppy focus at 0:15 3. Guys face mostly in shadow, with a bright spot ocasionally hitting his forhead (1:45) 4. Weird tracking shot swaying back and forth (2:40 ish) 5. Guys face is too dark in the last scene Look, it's not terrible, it's not even bad, but it's not what I'd put out there to show off new tech just weeks from the suposed launch. [/quote] First of all, you allude to John Brawley's abilities as DP being not 'someone who knows what he's doing' - if you had read his post you'd know it is rushes from a short. The aesthetic they choose was probably down to one of two things. A) they like it like that, loose and informal, can be read as intimate. B) or because it was a 3 man crew, either way your comment was ill informed. What does "not surprised about the low light performance" even mean, point me to the examples of footage posted in which the cameras low light has been tested. You've seen next to nothing yet you demand something that doesn't have "terrible lighting". It's a daylight shoot with a 3 man crew!

[quote name='HurtinMinorKey' timestamp='1344355635' post='15056'] Another Black Magic test that proves only one thing: They need to give the camera to someone else who knows what they are doing. I liked the pool footage better. This was shot with terrible lighting and bad camerawork. What's up with the huge sways durring the tracking shots? It's got a small sensor(relative to most of the competition) so i'm not surprised about the low light perfromance, but I want to know what this thing can do when lit properly. [/quote] Just signed up here just to say, where do you get the balls?