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My previous offer to "store" your excess camera gear at my house still stands!!

Thanks for the update!! The way I view this camera is for high quality in relatively controlled conditions - so the lack of features like fast AF and NR seems appropriate. Pulling focus manually is the norm for a cinema camera, and the lack of NR is actually an advantage I think because you can de-noise carefully in post, using the Resolve spatial and temporal NR features or plugins, for the best possible result. The substantial crop in windowed 1080 is encouraging, as for those capturing in 1080 it gives a good extension to their existing lens collection. The more I hear about this camera the more I think that BM is going to absolutely nail it for the low budget film-maker. Bring on the Pocket2 vs ARRI youtube clips!

Makes sense... everyone knows that we are 1% slimmer in 4K FF!!

I would answer your question with another question.... Where does the money come from?

That's interesting to me as well, not because of Prores RAW, but because it's a positive reflection for Slog2.

Yep, and here's what he does with that kind of responsibility...

I think it's easier said than done finding quality channels. You can't search for people that are intelligent, edit their content well, or are highly skilled... unfortunately! I think content-per-minute is the defining factor. It's a big differentiator between UK and US TV - I've found it common for the UK to put a similar amount of content in a 6 episode season that a US show might put in a 22 episode season. (Obviously there are exceptions on both sides!). YouTubers often have pretty low content-per-minute unfortunately.

Even then, the cost of the bodies might have been cheaper than paying everyone to mill around waiting for the lighting to be moved and fine-tuned in setup after setup after setup. I remember the first student film set I was on had a girl sitting at a table in a cafe, at first alone and then she was joined by someone else and they had a conversation. There was a small vase with a flower in it on the table and it took about 2-3 minutes every time we changed camera angles to move the flower to somewhere that looked remotely natural. I think it ended up covering about half the tables surface, and we all had a good laugh when both the Director and AD swore that they would never let an art director put a flower on a table ever again!!

Actually, @Oliver Daniel reminded me that often on other forums they have an "anything goes" type of sub-forum which is for the hot topics. In audio there are lots more hot topics than in cameras.. things like cables, ABX testing, etc. At least here we all agree that Mojo and Motion Cadence are real things, despite there being a complete lack of technical explanation ???

I have to laugh when I see the lowlight of these cameras. For years I have been using cameras that start being pretty shameful, even for home videos, at ISO 3200 or 6400. Nit-picking these cameras at ISOs this high feels like being judgemental of someone that won bronze in the olympics!!

Great responses I agree with most above and think that it is what people make it. I've had the most gratification with content where there is no dialog. Channels like Primitive Technology and many of the "maker" channels like Laura Kampf's early videos are excellent - I think it's easier to edit footage with no dialog, and it makes storytelling elements easier to see, so videos are more likely to be well paced instead of rambling, tedious and self-absorbed. Channels where people talk but the emphasis is on making something other than a video is probably the next most useful ones. I watch a lot of videos by people that have made their own log cabins, who restore old mechanical devices, or do wood or metalwork. Partly because it's fascinating seeing how people make beautiful things, partly because I'm living vicariously, and partly because the emphasis is on making something rather than on the creators typically unfocused thoughts that make most videos way too long. In terms of how people monetise videos, I notice a distinct gap between two different approaches. The first approach is to encourage people to buy something after watching the video, and so the temptation is for this to have vested interests skew the content, and to do tricks for views. The other is people who are paid by sites like patreon where making videos is the point rather than making sales or whatever. There are some who attempt monetisation via the former method but state that their views are entirely their own, but it's hard to keep credibility and not many manage to get it right.

Intersting overview of mirrorless technology aimed at people who aren't familiar with it, but he goes into all sorts of things we talk about on here, like AF, flange distances, sensor sizes, m43, etc..

I was surprised by a lot of the negative comments about YouTube and YouTubers in the Casey Neistat vs Logan Paul thread and wondered what the overall vibe actually was on here. I wrote deliberately polarising options in order to separate out the luke-warm opinions from those who feel very strongly about it. Please vote and share your thoughts

I agree that people are unlikely to change their minds on the subject. During the aftermath of the US election I read a couple of excellent articles that really gave me an insight into the thinking of people who voted differently to how I would have (I'm not a US citizen) but unfortunately most of the content / discussion on such topics does nothing to increase understanding or empathy of people with views that differ from your own. In addition to the freedom of speech aspect of art, I think there's also the impacts to the industry and people's livelihoods. I'm not familiar with the specifics of it, but things like globalisation, immigration, etc are likely to be relevant topics to those who are industry professionals.

Thanks @John Brawley - fascinating stuff! I was trying to work out the disk space required but there appears to be some confusion online around Prores 444 vs Prores 4444 which seem to be referring to the same thing? Assuming 330Mbps for Prores 444 the 12 hours of dailies would be around 1.8Tb/day I count there being 6 other master-quality copies of the footage made, which equates to over 12Tb per day, or 100Tb per episode of total storage for all involved..... ouch! (please someone double-check my logic / maths here...!) When you shoot with the BMMCC + BM Video Assist 5" what codec do you shoot then? BM doesn't list Prores 444 / 4444 on the tech specs. Perhaps 422? Otherwise I suspect transcoding would be required. Is there any discussion around what would be required if the network switched to airing 1080? Obviously the goal is to master in a higher quality than what is aired, but would the increased dynamic range and bit depth of your current capture be sufficient, or would you have to switch to a higher resolution as well? If so, I'm imagining that means 4K capture, but you could likely get away with a much more compressed codec in order to avoid the data rates jumping by 4X. Many years ago we tried encoding SD and 720 footage to h264 with the same bitrate and the 720 was the clear winner, so I suspect that the codec (but not bit depth) could be compromised substantially and still downscale nicely to a 1080 output. I think it makes sense commercially that studios aren't interested in 4K to future proof their productions, and I think this is where the prosumer might differ from commercial TV shows. I know one of the reasons that I shoot is that (I'm hoping) the family videos I make will be kept and referred to by future generations. If my grandparents and great grandparents had made home videos I would certainly be interested in them. Certainly its an excellent argument to justify camera upgrades to my wife!!

I don't read or post in the political threads, mostly because things just make me unhappy. I think that politics is one of those things that can make you go from liking someone to not liking them if you discover they have different priorities to you, so I don't think it really adds to the overall sense of community.

My condolences. As much as I like all the ins and outs of camera gear, the best footage is the stuff with our loved ones in it.

Do it!! I know people who specialise in directing dramas and they found that most scripts don't result in natural performances without a lot of effort. I think the progression went something like this: The script likely isn't natural, or isn't immediately natural for the actors, so the first run-throughs are mostly about remembering the lines instead of acting fully After more run-throughs they either internalise and/or tweak the language to feel more natural, but they get tired and the acting suffers After many many more takes you can sometimes get magic before you burn the cast/crew out for the day I've been on set when the 30-40 second long monologue got nailed on take twenty-something, and became the cornerstone of the artists showreel, but it's a pretty brutal way to make a film. The alternative is to improvise things, which makes the language natural, reactions genuine, but shifts the storytelling from the script and on-set to the edit room, and normally involves a multi-camera setup if you want to have multiple angles of the first time an exchange is delivered. This approach should also allow more authentic performances from less experienced actors. You can also run through a lot of variations and then combine them in post, perhaps taking the line from the "you've just found out she cheated on you" and the reaction shot from the "you've just found out she cheated on you because she found out you cheated on her first" etc. Six hours is a very short time to edit a 10 minute film, let alone do the whole thing! I started paying attention to my editing efficiency in terms of how many minutes of final edited footage I would create per hour editing / grading, and comparing that to feature films, TV shows, vlogs, etc. The comparison didn't really work because the shorter the film, the snappier and more carefully crafted it tends to be, at least for me. Each of the films below took only a few hours to shoot, but took perhaps 10+ hours in the edit despite being quite short.

No worries Kens site is a pretty good resource - his depth of knowledge is matched only by the strength of his opinions! Sometimes I disagree with him, but at least you know he's speaking his mind and not pulling any punches. He writes well and is entertaining and informative - I really like his site. Some fun articles with lots of opinions in them: https://kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-win-photo-contests.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/carry-less.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/upgrades.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/artist-or-technician.htm https://kenrockwell.com/tech/spectator.htm

I agree. There are still many many thousands (millions?) of Canon and Nikon lenses out there in the wild, and it costs a lot of money to change systems. Canon has continued making a profit despite providing quite poor video quality compared to others. Assuming they can make high-quality adapters for their own lens lines, this will continue to be an advantage. Ken Rockwell (a long-time Nikon follower) mentioned that sometimes Nikon included a feature in a lens in advance of it being supported by the body and wouldn't advertise that feature until it was fully available to consumers, and that this gave them an advantage over third-parties who could only support features that were full enabled, so who knows what tricks lie dormant in these lens catalogues that can only be unlocked by them. Source: https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/nikortek.htm (IIRC he spoke about this much better elsewhere but I can't find it). But the moral of the story is that the company that manufactures the lenses has a very real advantage over other parties, and Canon and Nikon have huge customer bases. Even if Canon or Nikon waited until many people have converted to Sony / m43 / other systems, this would simply mean that the second-hand price of their lenses would be even lower, so if they released a good camera at that point there would be a huge availability of cheap lenses to entice people back to their systems, or new users to start with them.

With the introduction of Prores RAW and the soon-to-be-released BMPCC 4K, professional quality codecs are now really entering the prosumer market. We've had some contact with RAW and High Quality codecs through BlackMagics BMPCC and Magic Lantern, but this is probably only a small percentage of us, even on these forums. There are quite a few challenges I see associated with this, including: Absolutely huge data rates Most 1080 prosumer cameras are around 25-100Mbps, BMPCC went up to around 600Mbps (6-24X prosumer), Prores RAW is 640-1120Mbps (6-45X prosumer), but the BMPCC 4K will go up to around 4352 (44-175X prosumer data rates!!) RAW requires extra processing in post-production DaVinci Resolve includes this functionality but it might require a separate piece of software for other packages, and will take significant time to transcode to large proxy files Image quality beyond 'good enough' The image quality from these RAW / HQ cameras is potentially more than is needed - in many cases shooting RAW 1080 or compressed 4K for a compressed 1080 output is going to be almost indistinguishable from shooting RAW 4K Commercial TV workflows are perhaps the best place to learn how other people manage these issues and why. I think they are better suited to our concerns than feature films because Prosumers and TV shows shoot over and over again using the same setups, so issues like scalability, efficiency, and so on are relevant here, whereas feature films only have to be done once. Who has worked on serial productions with RAW / HQ cameras, and what can you tell us before we fill our HDDs with RAW 4K files?

I'm not sure if you're being literal, or sarcastic (it's so hard to tell on forums..) but I think that fixating on just one aspect of this camera is a bit silly. It's also a RAW camera, a prores camera, a BM colour science camera, a m43 camera, a non-IBIS camera, a fixed-screen camera, etc etc etc. All equally relevant aspects to discuss. Talking about shooting 1080 in a thread about a camera that shoots RAW 1080 seems quite relevant to me, especially considering the enormous file sizes of 4K and high image quality of RAW 1080 I think a lot of people will shoot various flavours of 1080 with it when it comes out. My prediction is that lots of people will be viewing this camera as a BMPCC where they fixed the battery issues, the screen issues, the sound issues, etc, as well as the people who will be viewing this as a camera that shoots 4K. I'm not aware of many discussions around the BMPCC v1 where it was criticised for the image quality not being sufficient, and I'm sure that lots of cameras in 4K are poorer performing than the Pocket 1 or 2 are in RAW 1080.

Does anyone know how IBIS actually works? I mean, from a circuit / logic / engineering sense? Unless we establish that then we're all guessing.

This is the tech of the future for non-professional shoots I think. It's the perfect answer to recording everything and then sorting out later what was interesting and what wasn't. The fact you can hold it out in front of you and extract multiple camera angles from it and then cut between them is absolutely genius. It's basically a flying multi-cam setup that can record: You Wider shot of you in environment Where you're looking Interesting things going past etc. and all in a package that's no larger than a fat selfie stick. I imagine taking this to fairs, concerts, and on holiday. When it gets 8K capture with reasonable codec it will have the resolution required when you crop in, but currently consumer 4K doesn't cut it except for wide shots.