majoraxis

And so it begins... in stock and being sold at a discount used. I figure if BH Photo selles it for $1129.95 with Resolve (used) - at least that’s what the description said when it was available this morning, then we will see it for $1000 without Resolve on eBay in the next few months... maybe less depending on the condition and the firmware version...

I don’t know the differences... I don’t believe there is a functional difference from an operationally standpoint. I think BRAW looks really good - the issue for me is that Cinema DNG gives you more/different controls over the image/highlights in post than BRAW. I believe this is due to the fact the BRAW de-mosaic filters in the camera so the highlight are more baked in than with Cinema DNG, which gives you more control over the highlights durning de-mosaic process in Resolve. The answer is IMHO for Blackmagic to give the end user back control of these image control options in camera. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than what have moving forward with only BRAW. This is kind of like how Sony gives you SLOG2 and SLOG3 as a choice and each have a different highlight knee. I would like BRAW to have a user controlable in camera highlight knee control or highlight control slider as part of the de-mosaic BRAW processing. An alternative way to do this is to have the pre-BRAW de-mosaic encoding controls settings as a metadata side car paired with each BRAW LUT tm. You could the highlight response setting of a BRAW file paired with a BRAW LUT that anticipates/incorporates that highlight curve/roll off and other image control settings. There setting are shown in camera and allow the user is allowed to tweet than so that the could also save them as a side car to use with their own BRAW LUTS.

Speaking of CinemaDNG and the Pocket 4k... Can't you just rollback the firmware if you want CinemaDNG on the Pocket 4K? NOT if you have the latest hardware revision with the new LCD screen. If you recently purchased a Pocket 4k and it came with 6.2.1 factory installed then you will not be able to rollback the firmware to 6.1 to get CinemaDNG. I purchased mine new just over a month ago. It came with 6.2.1. I was not able to roll back the firmware. I spoke with Blackmagic and they said that they have switched to a new LCD screen, which is only compatible with 6.2.1 (and higher). If you have the new LCD BRAW only Pocket 4k you will get a message that says your firmware is up to date. I did when I tried to install 5.2 or 6.1. Blackmagic also said that if I were to "force it" (whatever that means?) to go back to 6.1, I could brick the camera. Why does it matter? For many it won't, but for some who want the CinemaDNG's highlight control available in the Camera RAW tab on Resolve that is not offered with BRAW, this will be an issue. Also, for those who want a higher resolution image compared to BRAW, CinemaDNG was a good option.

@kye - thanks for sharing this! I did it blind and I put the Arri Amira last so it shows what I know. I think G the USRA was the best over all especially when it came to how it held the key. At first, I picked the Kinefinity Terra 4K first, but upon further review it became my number 2 choice. I'm looking forward to someone doing the GH5S, Pocket 4k, Z CAM E2, Kinefinity Terra 4K test. It seems like Kinefinity is in a league by itself when it comes to image processing from the Dual ISO sensors these camera's m4/3 cameras are using.

@Sage I'm ready to purchase your Alex lut tuned for the Blackmage Pocket 4k when available. Do you have and ETA for this? Thanks!

It really depends on what part of the image you are judging. I like the dynamic range of the Canon in the shadows better. The PK4 has better resolution by far . As for color, I like the extra gamma look of the Canon over the Pocket 4K, but I can tweak that in post. I also don't doubt that with the right lens (and speedbooster?) that PK4 could make up some ground when the f-stops are equivalent.

I took the attached screen grab of the explanation of the lens configuration from the video as I wanted understand how that made and stitched the image together. I really liked the image and may try to emulate it for a ultra wide angle shot some day when I have 3 camera synced together. To me this had a great wrap around 180 video feel without the distortion of a 360/180 camera.

Anything to eliminate the guesswork and potential for ruining an audio take, I am all for. The idea that you can set the level after the recording is made without penalty is pretty huge especially if you don’t have a dedicated audio person. Not that it would be as good, but the take itself will not be ruined by clipping or noise. If you use the single source dual channel high and low level recording technique on all sources, the F6 replaces the functionality of a 12-track recorder and eliminates the post work switching between tracks. All and all if the price is right I don’t see a down side and I see a lot of upside, especially for a one man show or those who are not audio experts.

He said the sound quality would be the same for loud vs soft sounds, so you just have to turn it up in your DAW. I does not seem like this can function as a USB audio interface. Using it for a dual purpose - field and studio, would help offset the cost. Hopefully they will include that as an option. If it works as advertised, it will be super useful to not to have to worry about setting/riding levels to optimize signal to noise and to avoid peaks. One less thing to have to get perfect in the field under pressure - it is like shooting RAW for audio. This makes a strong case for running your lav mic with an XLR termination directly into the F6 as apposed to wireless, which I anticipate in many cases will have less dynamic range.

Running resolve 16 - it seems pretty stable, but you still want to save frequently after you have made some progress so you don't lose your edits. The auto color can be really useful when it gets it right. I would suggest adding a blank node after your color correction nodes and then hit the Auto correct button, sometimes it is horrible wronge and other times it can give the image that extra little bit especially when it comes to tweaking the white balance... The new audio limiter plug-in called "limiter" is very good. It has a button labeled soft on it, which I assume is for soft saturate as it pumps up the volume a little and gives a bit more density in a good way. Next I am going try the elastic audio function. As far as I can tell Resolve 15.3.1 has been replaced and the database updated.

@KinightsFan - thanks for the explanation - I appreciate it!

As it appear to have no electronic - a third party knock offer may follow for cheap... at least that's what happened to the GH5 battery grip. And the third party version with electronics for the GH5 works perfectly for $50...

Lookout Avid and Adobe and any other company who's name starts with "A" and that makes video editing software - Grant and Blackmagic have kicked you right in the subscription. The 2 other leading companies that don't have to rely on video editing subscription software sales model are Apple and Blackmagic and what do they have in common? They make a broad range for hardware products (including prosumer product - the Pocket 4k) so they can sell at volume and afford to sell their software for a one-time reasonable prices. Apple now sells media subscription services and may someday go the subscription route for their software as well. Potentially, that leaves Blackmagic in the future, as the only widely adopted professional video editing software company that is not forced to beg its customers for a subscription like the little kid nextdoor trying sell you magazine subscriptions to help fund school activities and when a prize in the process. Blackmagic has my respect for not begging for my subscription each year and for making a better product than their competition.

Can some help me with the math and determine what 8k 10bit 4:2:0 therorically downsamples to? 4k 12 bit 4:4:4? 4k 12 bit 4:2:2? 4k 12 bit 4:2:0? 4k 10 bit 4:4:4? 4k 10 bit 4:2:2? 4k 10 bit 4:2:0? Thanks!

Hopefully Resolve 16 will not be subscription based. I bet it wouldn’t be when I switched over at Resolve 12 when I had to to choose what to do about my Adobe CS4 Master Collection software getting out of date and left behind. Thank goodness for a competitive marketplace where consumers vote with their pocketbooks. So I don’t have to eat my words, Blackmagic is one of the only companies I would consider subscribing to, but 16 would have to crush resolve 15.3.1 and be reasonably priced, which Blackmagic is known for. Then there is the question of if they will charge an upgrade fee and in this case I would purchase the Pocket 4K I have on backorder rather than pay an upgrade fee. Looks like Blackmagic wins either way, which is fine by as they have been putting out great affordable products year over year. Basically Blackmagic did what Red promised to do with Scarlet 3k for $3k. Sure, Red has had a good run, but in the long run Blackmagic ate their lunch.

Thanks Ed! I think with this particular focal length and aperture the difference in price is not worth it, though there is a difference and I believe more money in the instance equals better flares / less flaring which I like better.

Nice to see a decent zoom lens on the Pocket 4k in the Phil Bloom video. To me the shooting with a good zoom lens allows me to use more of the language of film. A couple of things that Phil could have mentioned, but it would have taken away from his pitch to sell multiples of each Fujinon zoom lens, is that you can get a m4/3 to E-mount adapter ring, though you would probably want to shoot no rails to make sure it is absolute stable. Also, there are adapters that will allow Phil to go from a B4 broadcast lens to 35mm for mirrorless cameras. They do eat a number of stops of light, but it can be done and is particularly useful if you are looking for a long parfocal zoom lens. For adapting B4 lens to the Pocket 4k the light loss is less and you could do it with an Abakus 132 and Olympus 1.4x m4/3 adapter for for slightly less that 2 stops of light loss, so your 1.8f B4 would be a 3.32f over probably 60% of the zoom range. So 20x B4 Zoom lens would be a 12x parfocal zoom lens with 3.32f constant aperture... but there is the is issue of the sensor glass thickness, which means it is not a idea optical solution, but still many may find it useful slightly stopped down.

Resolve 16 slogan is "the revolution in editing starts..." IMHO it started with Resolve 15.3 (now the audio editing is pretty much usable). But hey, if they took it up a notch - fantastic! At least now I can pretty much finish a project with audio and all in Resolve 15.3 - that is a revolution for my work flow. I would like see the something like what adobe has with a brainstorming clip based media organization tool that lets you output to timeline as well as the contextual erase functionality of after effects. Looks like I will be downloading 15.3.1 this weekend for hopefully more stability enhancements and bug fixes.

I thought the Natural Rec709 vl LUT did a good job of making the Pocket 4k closer to the look of the Alexia Mini - that said there is a dynamic range difference that is apparent in day light and makes the Pocket 4k image harder and more contrasty looking to my eye. I actually thought the Pocket 4k competed nicely for the night shot, as either would do IMHO. I think Sage can get even closer once he makes his LUT available for the Pocket 4k. What I was most impressed with is that BRAW did not seem to show objectionable softness due to the (b)raw "processing", which is of course a contradiction of terms. All and all BRAW is not what is hold back the Pocket 4k image - it is the sensor's lower dynamic range. There is a m4/3 Fairchild sensor that would fit nicely in the Pocket 4k body, which offers an additional 1 and 1/2 stop of dynamic range (14.5 stop and dual 11 bit dacs), so hopefully there will be a new m4/3 camera Blackmagic Camera based on the Fairchild sensor in the (near?) future.

Or you could get the Pocket 4k Cinema Camera and shoot windowed HD at 120 frames per second with a crop factor approximately 1.38% (so your lens would not seem as wide) and if you shot 4k you would cover approximately 2.7k at the wide end and depending on the lens as you zoom in, many zoom lens have a large image circle on the long end, so you could even shoot greater that 2.7k and in crop in post. The other interesting thing you could do is attached your lens to PL-EF adapter then to an Aputure DEC Vari-nd Wireless Lens adapter to m4/3 mount, then to the camera. That way you would have a high quality adjustable remote controllable ND filter, which would allow you to shoot the lens open or close to it. Further more you could try adding a 1.4x extender in between the the PL-EF adapter and the EF to m4/3 adapter. That should come close to covering the sensor and I assume will cover the send if your zoom into the image a bit. If you want 105% coverage, Tokin makes a 1.6x PL to PL extender so 12.52 mm x 7.42 mm becomes 20.032 x 11.72 and more than covers the Pocket 4k cinema camera sensor, but you lose more than a stop of light, though with the Pocket 4k this is less of an issue.

B4 lens are optically designed to pass through a prism, which splits the light waves into Red, Blue and Green light waves, one for each of the 3 monochrome 2/3" CCD sensors of the B4 Camera. Each color light wave has a slightly different arrival time, which the B4 lens optics are designed to compensate for. Without a prism in the optical path of the B4 lens, they do not perform well wide open at the wide end and are too soft. If you are stopped down then they can look OK especially at the long end of of the lens without an optical adapter. B4 lens can be adapted with an optical lens adapter that is designed to correct the arrival times of the Red, Blue and Green light waves so that shooting it wide open and at the wide end the of lens performs well. Depending on the camera it is possible to shoot 4k with a B4 lens. For example the the USRA Mini Broadcast comes with a 4k B4 adapter standard and expands the image from 2/3" by ~1.5x to cover the 4K 1" sensor. The GH5 in EXT Mode (~1.4x crop) with an Abakus 132 (~1.32x crop) adapter should cover the 4k cropped sensor EXT mode depending on the lens. Blackmagic also sells a 1.1x B4 adapter for the USRA Mini Pro. If you have a 2x extender on your B4 lens you should be able cover about a m4/3rds sensor crop depending to the B4 lens, so if you shoot 4.6k, your resolution is about 3k with the B4 lens and 2x extender. There are other B4 lens adapter options as well, just don't get the B4 Magic by Fotodox - you have to stopped down or it is soft, so what it the point? It's not magic to say the least.

Electronic ND is fantastic - even better if you can just insert the Aputure DEC Vari-ND and have it controlled from the camera or a camera app. I prefer SDI over HDMI as in my experience it has less lag/delay. I want the M4/3 mount version, which I could see not being able to add the e-ND or if they did, not being able to use specific lens and/or adapters. Hopefully the mount with be interchangeable to accommodate various configurations. This is shaping up to be quite a camera.

From the Vimeo C200 vs ALEXA Mini, I preferred the lower contact image of the C200 in daylight shot in C-log2 (as indicated in the Vimeo comments). I thought the ALEXA Mini looked better for the night scenes. I don't think there is a $50k advantage for the ALEXA Mini over the C200. I do think for polished commercial work, some may prefer the look of the ALEXA Mini. So, it would probably be better to rent the ALEXA Mini for that special occasion than to purchase it as your daily driver, unless you have money to burn and can afford multiple highend camera bodies.

Even though the price is higher than I would like, it seems to make sense with 6k 60p for $4k with 14 stops of dynamic range with RAW 14bit video and XLR audio in etc. If it is really good in low light with a small camera body, then it competes nicely with the USRA Mini Pro G2, if they can add internal ND. I could see even large productions using this as a crash camera, b-camera or a-camera for low light and for lower budget production as a-camera. There couldn't be a better time to be a digital film maker when it comes to purchasing a camera that is good enough for almost everything you could want to film... except say, two years from now when all of these great cameras are available used at a discount after the new 8k versions come out...

Yes. Interested. If it is 6k apsc size sensor does that translate to 4k for a 4/3 crop? If so and it is not much more then their current camera then that provides a lot of options lens wise.