Savannah Miller

Blackmagic power requirements won't improve unless they switch to using an ASIC and use something other than Peltier cooling. I don't think either of those will happen, but their current cameras are optimized well enough that their batteries last fairly long for the features they have.

That makes a lot of sense. If the director and DP both like a particular camera and it shoots prores 4:4:4 then there are mostly no reasons you cant use it (assuming you can get the right number of bodies)? I only was theorizing specs because unlike subjective opinions and politics around convincing a particular studio that something is better, these are hard data that can immediately render a particular camera useless.

In that scenario, I would say the AJA cion is usable, but the images might not hold up. He listed dozens of cameras, but I would say every single one has some sort of limitation that would prevent you from choosing it as a main camera. If you ignore the images, then AJA Cion, URSA are also usable. Kinefinity MAVO is usable too, but that camera is not easy to get a hold of and is still very Beta in terms of firmware. If we make it super easy and then define a "usable" camera as a 4:4:4 shooting camera that has timecode and at least 2 SDI outputs, then it's quite easy to figure out which cameras work or do not. And let's for clarity say it has to shoot 1080p and 4K full sensor because you cannot always shoot 4K. Then if we start putting subjective rules about how much dynamic range and what kind of images the camera produces, that list shrinks to a very small number. Then you run into the debate of two cameras using the same sensor (AJA Cion, Ursa Mini 4K, etc.) If one of them produces a superior image, is the other one automatically disqualified as well since there's no point?

There's a very subjective opinion as to what people consider "usable" but there are basic things which you need for the camera to function properly that always aren't attached to the body. Ok. Let's make this easier. Let's assume you're now a DP on a new TV show for FOX or NBC. For some magical reason you only have $10K which you are going to purchase a camera that you can use for a single-camera series and it will be the only camera used to shoot the entire production. That means no RAW recording, no 4K without approval, and a camera that won't cause a lot of hassle if you decide to pick something new. Which cameras under $10K are now usable?

I say "usable" kit because it has to have SDI outputs. In order to use the Raven on pro productions, you would have to have one of the modules on the back, so you have to factor the price with at least 1 module minimum.

What I'm saying is there's a reason people shoot everything on the Alexa. It really is a better camera.

That is true. The amount of green screen depends heavily on the show. Comedy shows (american ones) love car driving scenes, and a lot of them use various methods to achieve them. If they do go with green screen, there can easily be 100 shots an episode if it's a longer scene. If they use projection or a trailer, then there is of course, none. For VFX though, a 4:2:2 image is just not nice to work with because you never know what you'll be required to do. I see no reason when your budget is high to shoot anything less than 4:4:4.

Terra 4K/6K does not do Prores 4:4:4. Red Raven does not do Prores 4:4:4 and in a usable kit is over 10K. Kinefinity MAVO is $9,949 for the basic package which is pretty close to $10K. AJA Cion is huge and not a nice image. Size/weight is the main reason you'd ever use a camera that's not a top tier manufacturer. Anything requiring an external recorder is disqualified too because I conclude that external recorders are lame. If it's a camera specific recorder that mounts to the back of the camera (like a codex recorder) then that's acceptable.

4:2:2 HQ is not ideal for green screen, although you can definitely work around it. It's much nicer if the camera shoots Prores as throughout the entire post production process everybody can I/O the same file format, but XAVC and other Sony codecs are not a deal-breaker. Good thing with Ursa Mini Pro is the monitor is at least adjustable so you don't need another.

Fair enough. I'm referring to high end, million dollar productions. People are suggesting other cams that JB could try out, but in reality as sad as it is, there aren't too many cams that can compete with the Ursa Mini Pro and what it offers. Ignoring price, the new Venice camera with the tethered head looks like an interesting option.

Name another camera under $10K right now that you could use as an A-camera to shoot a network TV show and no one would fuss. The closest thing is the C300 mark II which they used on Grace and Frankie, but I have experience with that show and those images sucked to use in post. And at $9,999 it's barely under 10K anyway.

In the professional world, which John Brawley works in, you CANNOT use a camera that doesn't do 10-bit 4:4:4 minimum as a main-body camera or secondary camera because it's not useful for VFX and post production. You can key 4:2:2 HQ stuff if you have to, but it's not a good Idea to use it for a large amount of shots. Likewise, it's very ridiculous to use a camera that does not offer any sort Timecode functionality when you're using multicam as a lot of people in the post production process rely on timecode, and it's an essential feature of modern production. Then if you go into the limitations of the camera and what it doesn't do compared to other similar cameras, then you start to see issues. FIrstly, the C200 has no timecode. It only has 1 SDI output, meaning if you need to use a viewfinder (the inbuilt one is not useful in a lot of configurations) then you can't wirelessly monitor as well. How are you going to convince production to use a camera where they cannot see it in video village or the first AC cannot use the monitor to check focus? Blackmagic builds cameras that are maybe not as practical as some other cameras for independent, single shooters, but when it comes to professional features, it's clear that Blackmagic cameras are in another league in terms of what they offer.

C300 mark II still doesn't do prores, so not useful as much as Ursa Mini Pro. Form factor sucks as well and viewfinder is useless in it's odd position. Ursa Mini Pro is clearly the only camera under $10K that is usable in professional workflows without a lot of hassle or limitation.

You can't use it for TV drama because timecode is required. You also cannot shoot raw or 4K acquisition without approval from very specific people, so not a chance you will get approved to use it anyway. VFX would not like it if you're sending them 8-bit 4:2:0 files. The C200 is a really good camera, but Canon was very direct and strategic with how they chose to cripple the camera. From an image standpoint, the color doesn't match as nicely to Alexa either, but that can probably be worked around with an experienced colorist. For single shooters not working with a crew, they might find the C200 better than the ursa mini pro, so it's a different market.

C200 has "15 stops" of dynamic range but that's a manufacturer claim. Blackmagic at least in my view is a bit more realistic with their dynamic range claims and Ursa Mini has about a 1 stop advantage over the c200. Like JB mentioned. No prores, no timecode, etc. It's like canon knew exactly what to do to make this camera not useful to professional shooters and crews so that you'll buy their better cameras.. Ursa Mini Pro has minor compromises, but it clearly shows the difference between an affordable camera built with market-segmentation in mind and a camera that is built with no limitations.

C200 is a crippled camera. No timecode, no Prores, only a "Raw Lite" codec that varies between 12 and 10-bit depending on framerates. Canon again did their sneaky business to remove any features that would prevent higher-end clients from ever wanting to use the camera. For single shooters it's not a bad camera. Dynamic range of the C200 is less than the Blackmagic too.

The Core SWX battery pack claims 4-hours of runtime. Not the most perfect, form-fitting battery pack but it will do the job. It's not a grip that holds multiple batteries, but I'm not sure you'd get 3 hours out of a battery grip with 3 batteries anyway. The windowed HD being referenced would be for Slow motion 120fps or RAW only. Otherwise you can do full sensor One of the areas I find problematic is what do you define as the "low budget filmmaker?" If you're truly low-budget then you might find a camera with IBIS and autofocus easier to use like the Panasonic GH5. If you're low budget, but above that tier that needs IBIS and Autofocus, then the Ursa Mini Pro is the right camera. Other than for tight spaces where you can't fit a certain camera, traveling, crash/action, and stealing shots, there's not a lot of scenarios where I can think that the Pocket 4K is an A camera. One thing Blackmagic does seem to do differently is they build a brand new color science and color gamuts for all of their cameras that use different sensors. The BMPCC, 4.6K and BMPC all have different color science. This one will be no different

This is a thread about a 4K camera, so it does seem odd to mention that you only shoot 1080p or that's what professionals use, but it is the truth.

So that guy claiming to shoot at 400 ISO gives you a cleaner more malleable image. Yes, although he doesn't do a good job of explaining WHY it gives you a cleaner and more malleable image. The Ursa Mini Pro is always running at 800 ISO and that's the only real ISO setting. Period. All of the other ISO settings are "fake" similar to the extended ISO ranges found on a lot of dslr cameras. So, when you expose for 400 ISO it's the equivalent of overexposing by 1 stop at 800 ISO and pushing it down in the grade. If you convert your prores film gamut into xyz linear (bypassing the bias of the log curve) and gain the image, you get the same result as changing exposure/iso in the raw controls. When you do that, you get 1 extra stop of shadow detail due to overexposing and you lose one in the highlights. Also one of the side effects of exposing for 400 ISO is that you can push the image up to 1 stop in post and still get the no significant increase in noise level because you would now be back at the native ISO of 800. So in run/gun scenarios, 400ISO gives you a safety net to accidentally underexpose by up to 1 stop with no consequences. It's a lot harder to tell if an image is underexposed rather than overexposed and clearly clipped.

I was referring to the Alexa not offering compressed raw, not that other cameras do not offer uncompressed raw. A lot of cameras do offer uncompressed raw, including early firmware builds of blackmagic and kinefinity cameras. Pocket 4K native ISO is 400 and 3200 depending on whether or not you shoot at 1600ISO or above. If you stick to 800 and below, it doesn't activate the high ISO mode. All sensors to some extent have an optimal ISO, but whether it's a true "native" ISO based around Exposure Index is another question entirely. Changing ISO does not give you less dynamic range when the camera uses EI, it just redistributes the dynamic range differently. In the case of HOW it distributes the dynamic range, it's unfortunately backwards. As you increase ISO, you get extra highlight dynamic range, and as you decrease ISO you get more shadow dynamic range. That's the opposite of what you want as shadow dynamic range is optimal in lower lighting scenarios and yet you would generally need to use a higher ISO.

Firstly, the Alexa only does uncompressed raw. Nothing else. Secondly, there's no internal pixel binning, so you have to record full sensor resolution to get the full sensor size. Not the same as 1080p prores. Thirdly, and a big problem is RAW is not as simple as prores. So at least at the VFX studio I work, we recieve the prores reels directly from editorial. Then we get the EDL, and we generate the plates necessary for the shots, directly from the EDL and original camera prores with the necessary handles. This would likely be DPX format. This is a 100% automated process. We then composite with the necessary changes. Any intermediate "precomps" would then be rendered as 32-bit linear EXR, and finals are exported back out as Arri-log DPX which are then converted back to Prores and delivered to the editorial/color. With RAW it's not as nice because we can no longer deliver back in the same format that we recieve. AND there are so many settings, especially with something like REDCODE that it's likely someone else now has to generate the dpx plates for us as we can no longer do that. The ISSUE is they're not a VFX house and they likely do not have automated tools that do this, so that means extra time and money. And then you might run into other problems slowdowns on the post side of things. RAW is nice but it's not so simple just to use it as it causes extra hassle. Prores 4:4:4 on the Arri Alexa makes everything work like a well-oiled machine. Lastly, a lot of people believe that you have to have 4:4:4 in order to get accurate green screen keys, but what if I let you in on a secret. I don't always KEY greenscreens. You'll never hear this from anyone else, but if you take a greenscreen shot and despill it to where it's just a person over a now grey background, you can then difference the despill and the greenscreen to get a sort of fake alpha channel. Multiply your background image over your despilled greenscreen plate and mask it by the result of that "fake" alpha channel and you get 100% perfect edges with no compositing. And then you just adjust the white and black point of your bg image until it has the right level of contrast and color.

There's maximum speed then there's minimum speed. Not all cards can sustain the max speed for extended recording. SD cards are particularly bad at this, that's why V60 and V90 standards exist.

John Brawley said that and it's true. 90% of American TV shows seem to be shot on the Alexa in 1080p Prores 4:4:4. Very few people do RAW or 4K, and if they do 4K it's usually Sony cameras shooting XAVC. Only times you see raw are very high-end TV shows and RED shows for Netflix. With now the Alexa LF, I'm sure a lot of shows will switch back to Arri. It's not because of storage either because a lot of productions are fine with shooting even prores XQ, it's the extra costs of shooting RAW which people don't like. I work in VFX where you occasionally will have shots where you push the Prores files harder than you ever would in grading and I generally see no issues. Even when I do greenscreen stuff, the Alexa does 4:2:2 HQ during slow motion shots, and even then, those files are pretty robust too.

Yes but maybe they're just buying the memory from the same places that the other guys do and have lesser quality control? RED, for example, sources their SSD's from multiple companies. The variance in speed of the compact flash could be due to the different companies where they get their memory from. https://www.amazon.com/FreeTail-EVOKE-Memory-VPG-130-FTCF256A37/dp/B074PDD1B6/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1532299720&sr=1-3&keywords=cfast+2.0+256gb#customerReviews Ok this one is even cheaper. It's 199.99 on Amazon for 256gb. A lot of these brands seem to be going on sale or something.

That's a pretty strong accusation to accuse a brand of buying factory rejects. Do you have proof of this? Sure the cards did not perform as advertised and you maybe had to buy a few and return the slow ones, but those cards are half the price of everyone else. Biwin was also really cheap, but they don't seem to be easy to buy anymore. But if you really want to find the cheapest, at $208 for 256gb, this is the cheapest I can find on the internet. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ATOMOS-NINJA-256GB-CFAST-2-0-Memory-Cards-240GB-SSD-Hard-Memory-Disk-for-4K-HD/32523607737.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.67.76886aa7oHHkZw&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_1_10152_10151_10065_10344_10130_10068_10324_10547_10342_10325_10546_10343_10340_10548_10341_10545_10696_10084_10083_10618_10307_10059_100031_10103_10624_10623_10622_10621_10620,searchweb201603_1,ppcSwitch_5&algo_expid=449fee53-93a1-4a6d-a8b6-94b429018733-10&algo_pvid=449fee53-93a1-4a6d-a8b6-94b429018733&transAbTest=ae803_2&priceBeautifyAB=0 There are no reviews of the goldendisk brand so I don't know anything about the specs or reliability.