Davide Roveri

@majoraxis you're very welcome and yes, hopefully it'll be soon! 🙂 Hmm.. they showed us some farly detailed technical slides but i don't recall hearing anything about an increase in dynamic range, sorry!

Hello everybody! So, I've attended the Blackmagic Raw seminar held at CVP here in London yesterday and I thought I'd share some impressions: Let's start with the bad news first: unfortunately there is no official release date for BRAW on the PCC4K yet.. They confirmed it is coming to the camera 100% but they want to make absolutely sure that the update is safe and won't brick the camera (which sounds like a sensible plan indeed!) 🙂 That been said I can't wait to have the option to use BRAW, it's such a clever and well implemented solution and i reckon it will be the best choice on the PCC4K for 90% of the occasions. What really impressed me is how good the performance is in Resolve compared to CNDG, it is entirely possile to edit BRAW on a laptop without creating optimised media and/or dropping the resolution. To drive the point home even more they worked on a grading project that was hosted on a USB 3.0 spinning drive and it worked flawlessly, i was quite shocked when I saw a clip with a speed ramp set in optical flow playing at 24fps at full quality on an entry level MBP! Another super clever feature of BRAW is the ability to shoot with any dynamic range preset and being able to revert back to film mode afterwards, that is pretty awesome for dailies or things like that. I also very appreciated the fact that they were totally sincere in showing us the difference in visual quality between BRAW and CDNG and, although there is a slight difference in quality with CDNG being a bit sharper, said difference is only visible in extreme magnification (pixel peeping basically) so in real life BRAW is perfectly adequate especially considering the many advantages it offers in terms of workflow. The Blackmagic guys reckoned that CDNG would be the best choice only in very specific situations where having the best quality possible is paramount (like VFX for istance). Overall it's been a very interesting demonstration and i think BRAW will make the PCC4K even better value for money, exciting times ahead!

A very interesting video about how to optimise exposure on the BMPCC4K from one of the best channels about filmmaking and cameras on YT (IMHO), hope you guys will find it useful! 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8hHFt3ChZ8

hmm.. unfortunately it doesn't look like that's case right now. Was it like that on the original pocket as well? I don't remember but it would be good to have the WB change dynamically indeed or at least have an option for it.. I shot almost exclusively raw so far so i wasn't too bothered about wb as long as it was in the right ballpark but it would definitely be important when shooting ProRes.. Shall we compile a list of suggestion to send Blackmagic for the next software versions? Here's mine: - Playback mode to reflect clip metadata (both on the display and on the menu bar) - Thumbnail page in playback mode to quickly move between files - Better power management so the camera won't die on you suddenly - Possibility of using the iris and focus button as extra function keys when using manual lenses

So glad you finally have the BMPCC4K in your hand, looking forward to hear your impressions! :-) Quick tip re the WB, if you hold the WB button for a couple of seconds it will automatically adjust the white balance using the center portion of the frame, a wonderful timesaver (and just one of the many amazing features of the software in the camera!) To be fair the only thing that really puzzles me so far software-wise is the playback function.. I just don't understand why the clips are displayed according to how the camera is set in that particular moment rather than how the camera was set when you captured the clip, it makes very little sense to me but hopefully it will be changed on a software update soon. Have fun with the little beast mate!

Hello everyone! I received my BMPCC4K almost a week ago and unfortunately I haven’t had much time to play with it so far but I wanted to give you my first impression and observation in the hope these might be helpful! BUILD QUALITY / ERGONOMICS: The camera is pretty big (and wide especially) but it’s surprisingly light. I’m not a huge fan of the exterior plastic material as it feels a bit cheap and quite prone to scratches but at the end of the day this a professional tool so as long as it’s able to withstand normal use I’m not too bothered about it. I haven’t found any spots that are cause for concern, yes the battery cover it’s a bit flimsy like other people reported but it never came open on me (and even if it did the battery is safely hold in place with a spring loaded clip so it won’t fall over anyway). The lens mount seems pretty robust, I tried mounting some heavy lens and haven’t experienced any flex so it seems all good. The mounting points looks very sturdy as they’re surrounded my a metal plate so if you plan to mount something heavy without a cage it looks like is not gonna be a problem. The camera feels quite good in the hand the only reservation I have is that is fairly easy to obstruct the bottom exhaust while shooting handheld as it’s the natural resting point for the hand that operate the lens. The screen is pretty awesome I should say, it’s detailed, responsive has good colours and it’s surprisingly bright when needed. Is it usable under direct sunlight without a hood? In my experience barely but so is the vast majority of built-in screens out there, for that you need something very bright like a smallHD 1500nits or something similar. USABILITY/OPERATION: Like many other people said before this camera is an absolute joy to operate, the menu system is one of the best in the industry, it’s logically laid out and super intuitive. Overall the experience is much more akin to a RED or an Alexa rather than a hybrid camera and this is good given the this is a cinema camera after all 🙂 I like how everything can be controlled so easily via the touchscreen but I like even more the fact that you don’t have to rely on it if you prefer not to or you’re in a shooting situation in which is not practical. All the main functions have dedicated buttons (and a dial in the front just under the record button) plus the three functions buttons are completely programmable either as toggles for specific functions or you can assign a precise value to a parameter that you wish to quickly recall (say you want to go to iso 3200 with a touch of a button you can do that) The Preset menu is another gem of the OS, you can save camera configurations with totally different settings and recall them in a moment, it’s a massive timesaver! The screen, other than being of great quality, offers an impressive range of tools for a built-in screen the highlight of which (for me) is definitely the inclusion of false colours which is such a great tool to expose and is something that is never present in hybrid cameras. Battery life is not amazing but again it’s quite normal for a cinema camera with an actively cooled sensor I think. I would say you can expect 35-40 minutes recording time quite consistently. Like other users reported already original Canon batteries seems to give the best and most consistent results and are the only one providing a percentage to the camera so I might swallow the hefty price and buy a couple extra of them. I haven’t had any problems with stuck batteries so far and I hope it stays this way! I’ve recorded mainly on SD cards and I’m glad to report that my Sony G ones can reliably record 4K RAW 60fps 4:1 with no issues (although they’re not in the official list provided by BM but I suppose they’re very similar to the new “Tough” series just released which are approved instead). I also used SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I and although they’re not fast enough for 60fps they can record 4K 25 RAW 4:1 with no issues. I’ve also made a test with a random SSD mounted in a usb-c caddy and it worked perfectly so I’m probably gonna purchase a couple of Samsung T5 as soon as I find a nice holder that I can use without a cage. IMAGE QUALITY: This is where the camera really shines (and it’s kind of important I reckon, right?) 😛 The images are detailed and rich, the colour science is very very good out of the box and coupled with the ease of use and the big screen is easy and fast to acquire great footage. The dynamic range is not greater than other cameras like the GH5s or the A7III but the numbers on papers often don’t tell the full story.. The camera produces files that have not been processed in any way (if you shoot raw of course) so it’s actually easier to squeeze every bit of information from them compared to a heavily compressed codec. As other users already noted I found the highlights rolloff to be a bit on the harsh side so I’d say it’s a good idea to protect the highlights with this camera as a priority. The dual native ISO values of 400 and 3200 are a very good choice in my opinion, particularly in daylight when you don’t have to use a ton of ND filtration to get the correct exposure. Noise levels are pretty good although I have to say there is more chroma noise that I would like (particularly compared to the kind of monochrome noise Sony has accustomed us to with their sensors) but again, with files this good it’s quite trivial to use your denoiser of choice and get rid of it without murdering the image. I also noticed in a couple of shots some moire/aliasing and unfortunately this is quite inevitable since this is not an oversampled sensor readout and there is no OLPF… This is it for now, hope I haven’t bored you to death and that you’ve found useful information and I promise to follow soon with more details and some hopefully nice images too! Have a great weekend everybody!

Ahah, the hotshoe umbrella it's quite a cool idea! 🤣 Kidding aside you should be fine covering the camera as the two top exhausts are only passive and doesn't seem to give out a lot of heat, the active is the one at the bottom (and that one gets quite warm!)

Awesome stuff! Looking forward to hear your impressions mate, unfortunately i haven't had enough time to play with mine but I love it so far! (just make sure you have enough batteries with you!) 😛 ps. FilmConvert also just released the camera pack for the BBMPCC4K, result!

This! I got a license when I purchased my BMCC a few years ago and got every single update absolutely free. Not only this but the amount and the quality of work the programmers have put into the software is absolutely phenomenal, they're constantly adding features AND making sure your hardware is always utilised to the max (which sadly can't be said for a lot of software around today). So not only the feature set for the price point is incredible in my opinion, you also get a wonderfully written piece of software that is constantly updated and free of charge, what's not to like? :-)

I know it's probably not very relevant as price might change again many times before the actual shipping date but CVP lowered the price from 1029£ to 975£ (1235£ and 1170£ respectively inclusive of VAT). Is not much but is a slightly better exchange rate from $1295 :-) In other news we are above 500 preorders at the moment and this is just from one retailer in one country, I really hope they expected this kind of interests and will be able to ramp up production accordingly!

No, they clearly did not as per spec sheet and this Grant Petty interview (around the 5:50 mark) Only the 120HFR is windowed 😉

Not sure about that.. as far as I can tell 1080 still use the full width of the sensor and it’s downsampled in camera. The camera records windowed when you shoot HFR @ 120fps though, not sure if there is an option to do that at normal speed also...

Ok, now the pre-order link is live on CVP's front page.. apparently there are 300+ people looking at it and they sold more than 20 cameras already! :-P https://cvp.com/product/blackmagic_pocket_camera_4k

Awesome, thanks mate!! I was refreshing the main page like an idiot! :-P There was a pop-up saying that 9 people put the item in the basket in the past 24 hours so it shouldn't be too bad at the moment!

Where have you preordered mate? Can't find a UK link yet! :-(