mercer

Maybe they should have named it the 4K Cargo Pocket II... But in all honesty, unless you used the P1 with native pancake lenses or c-mounts without a cage, it was never a pocket camera.

I don’t know, I think this is people’s problem with new technology... everybody is excited about the crazy new thing the gadget does but forgets the refined jewel buried in the menus. I saw this with the GH5... everybody went nuts for 10bit 4K... when the 10bit, 200mbps all-i, up to 60p is the jewel in that camera. In the P2, everybody is going crazy for the 4K, but the jewel will be the 10bit ProRes up to 120fps recorded to SD cards (hopefully). And in the Hydrogen, the hologram concept is so cool... it becomes our only hope... but the straight up video will be the star at that price point... especially if they have a Log Profile or RedFilm or whatever Reds do. Hell, even with the built in lens, this phone/camera could be groundbreaking for run and gun filmmaking. What Soderberg did with the iPhone should be nothing compared to what could be done with the Hydrogen... maybe. I agree about lenses. I have had some stinkers in my life and I’ve had some that were supposed to be stinkers but actually had some pretty good character with motion... for instance, the Nikkor ai-s 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 is regularly mentioned as one of Nikon’s worst lenses ever made. So of course, I bought one new for $50 and all in all it’s not that bad. It has good color rendition, with nice character, plus it’s tiny for a medium zoom. Hmm, I’ll have to dig it out and see how it fares on FF in ML Raw. It could be a cool two lens set up with my Nikon 50mm Series E.

Cinematographers use diffusion filters on the Alexa and it’s only 2.7K, 3.3K at open gate. The problem is camera resolution has been decided upon by monitor and TV manufacturers. Now if you don’t shoot 4K, your image supposedly doesn’t have enough resolution? In my opinion, I think a Pocket 2 could have had a 2.5K image and be equally as appealing. 4K at this price point, is usually best for downscaling, so it will be interesting for me to see what the downscale looks like from 4K P2 footage. But for the most part, I’ll shoot 1080p at the two base ISOs, on a clean sensor, with cheap SD cards. I already have a bunch of Canon batteries for my 5D3, so if battery time is bad (I suspect about 30-45 minutes) I’ll just swap them out. I’ll get a Rode NTG mic, and maybe a couple XLR lavs, for in-camera audio and have an amazing little, run and gun cinema camera... no need to rig up this little beast.

I have theorized this for a while now, about most forums. And it wasn’t until I started browsing Instagram, that I became certain of it. Obviously not everybody on every forum is guilty of this but fanboyism is every where. Even this forum has a healthy dose of it, as noticed in many topics lately. I, myself, am guilty of it on occasion. But if you look at Instagram and see the quality of work being done on Canon DSLRs and you begin to question everything you read on any forum. With that being said, the Hydrogen is one of the most interesting and exciting announcements of the past 3 years and if they can keep the price at a modest level and give us the ability to change lenses for only a fraction more, I could easily see myself going that route over the Pocket 2. Maybe the P2 will force their hand a little... because let’s be honest here... are people really going to buy this camera for its phone coverage or its holograms?

Actually I don’t know if we definitely know this yet. The past few models have been based on the powesgot but the first few were based on their DSLRs. I assume they are continuing the trend but I haven’t heard one way or the other. But this thing won’t be ported or even worked on Seriously for a very long time considering the new Digic processor used... they haven’t even figured out the 80D yet.

The Alexa Mini in open gate is a 7.5mp camera... I haven’t heard many people complain about detail. Obviously the P2 won’t be nearly as good as an Alexa Mini, but there is a reason why the P1 was often referred to as a Baby Alexa. But yeah if you prefer Red over Alexa, you may also prefer sLog from the a6500 over BMDFilm on the P2.

I’m not defending Canon here or even saying the image looks good. There isn’t enough footage out there to have an opinion on but the upscale theory is just speculation, correct? I mean, why would they crop the image and then upscale? Now the 1080p is supposed to be pretty good and a downscale of the 4K... so if the speculation is correct, then it would be a downscale of the 3.3K? And also isn’t the “4K” actually UHD which is 3.8K?

Awesome job as always Boz!!! I love that as the rest of us are raving about the new Pocket, you are shooting truly cinematic work with the original one. Nicely done.

I used it with an Ikan monitor I had for my Micro. I thought it worked really good as a quick reference for skin tones. Not the best way to compose, though. I hope we can set it up to a custom button to turn on and off as needed.

Oh stop acting all innocent. In another thread you made a bunch of snide comments about people’s grading of the Pocket II footage in this thread.

Seriously, though... I’m just joking around but really I don’t get why people are getting so fucking angry over a stupid camera... or even worse what some people on a nerdy camera forum think? If you like the GH5... then awesome.... there’s no reason to get the PocketII... really I’d prefer it. Isn’t there already enough footage floating around that looks exactly the same... do we really need more?

Who cares about the GH5. The IQ was always a little overrated with great specs. I’ve seen some really nice work from it, but I’ve also seen a some poop. Who cares? Cameras come and go. They get refined and a better one is released. And then a different camera is released that’s better than that one. Get over it already. The best camera is the one you have with you... even if it does have plastic looking footage. Hahahahaha...

I have it and it is pretty cool. I also like the Footage App. Does the MLV App export ProRes Raw now?

Good points and nice grade! Honestly, I’m not even being cautious here for myself... if I were to only get the bump in 1080p frame rates at that price, I’d be a happy camper. Everything else is gravy... especially not having to use an IR Cut Filter or anti-aliasing filter. But I will add, if people are curious about how good the autofocus is, this camera may not be for them... or who knows, maybe they’ll surprise everybody and have a usable tracking autofocus...

I was hoping Resolve 15 might have ProRes Raw as an export option... MLVFS to Resolve to ProRes Raw sounded pretty good to me. I’d love for the Raw Magic app to do a straight MLV to ProRes Raw transcode update.

No I haven’t, but I work in the trade show industry, so I was just curious. Pretty cool. I had an opportunity to work NAB this year but my schedule conflicted... maybe next year, it seems like a lot of fun.

@Luke Mason So, is that a lounge they have set up in their booth? Or was it at a mixer or something?

Yeah that does look pretty. I love the color!!!

That looks like an excellent prelit scene at 6400 ISO... one stop over base ISO... I imagine it gets a lot worse at 12,800? Don’t get me wrong, obviously I have no clue.. I’m just basing this off of other cameras BM released ever. I hope I’m wrong. I love everything about what this camera promises and I’ll love everything about this camera if they don’t deliver on half of the specs promised.

I fervently agree. I am as excited as hell for this camera... even though I’ll wait until they’re readily available to buy one. I was just trying to make a point that it’s possible that this camera’s specs, specifically high ISO, won’t live up to the expectations. These, all BM, cameras have quirks and issues like magenta casts, fixed pattern noise, black hole sun, deadlines not being met... so I hope people are prepared for this instead of jumping on board and expecting something this won’t be and then spreading hatred because their unrealistic expectations weren’t met. I mean, hell there are already posts questioning and hoping for great AF... I can tell you right now... it won’t be good.

Right at one stop away from Base ISO... at two stops or more, I don’t think they’ll be as clean. Most people who shot with the original Pocket would never change their ISO from 800 when shooting ProRes. And with Raw, you could change it all you wanted but the ISO was 800. Again, I assume it will be better but this won’t be an a7s or GH5s.

I agree and the ISO won’t matter, as much, with Raw anyway. But with ProRes, you will not have 13 stops of DR at ISO 12,800... you’ll be lucky to have 9 or 10 stops and your shadows will be a hot mess. Now we’ll probably get a little more wiggle room than we had with the original Pocket, but I wouldn’t expect miracles.

It’s clean af when you have noise reduction and sharpening. ProRes won’t have that. Trust me, you may get a little more wiggle room but this camera will not be as clean as an a7s or a GH5s at high ISOs and you will lose DR the further away from base... a noticeable amount. Not to mention, has it been confirmed that this is the sensor... because so far I believe it’s just conjecture... although likely.

Yup, the literature states 13 stops but that will be in the perfect scenario. I know with the original Pocket, the most DR came at the base ISO of 800. Since this camera has dual ISO, I can only assume that you will have two options for best DR... 800 and 3200. This is why this camera won’t be for everyone. Even with the “better” sensor, we really shouldn’t expect great results higher than 3200 or lower than 800 or anything in between. Since the camera isn’t due out for 6 months, I’d almost recommend that people who’ve never used a BM camera to pick up a used Pocket I on eBay to try it out. They’ve already come down in price since yesterday. Even with the better specs, a lot of the quirks will be similar.

To update a previous comment where I mentioned waveform. I had thought I read it on BH but apparently I read it in the Cinema5D article. There is no mention of it having waveform monitoring on the BH site and in the pictures it doesn’t show waveform as an option in the monitor menu, so unless Cinema5D is privy to information that we are not, then there is no reason to assume the Pocket II will have internal waveform monitoring. With that being said, it does have false color and in my experience false color can be more useful for quick, on the fly, exposure adjustments. Ymmv.