Savannah Miller

If you have been wondering, the komputerbay seem to be the cheapest. https://www.amazon.com/Komputerbay-Professional-256GB-CFast-560MB/dp/B01NBAVA26 Only $220 for 256gb and a lot of people have good results. The new BM camera will sell so many units that CFast 2.0 prices might drop even more. That current price is the cheapest I've ever seen the Komputerbay cards, so maybe it's a good time to buy. They're normally $250-300 Those cards are priced kinda high compared to angelbird, komputerbay, etc. BIWIN was another brand competitively priced similar to that of Komputerbay, but they seem to be harder to come by these days.

Do you own Cfast 1.0 cards? I'm curious where you can even buy them or what cameras supported them.

In terms of connectivity, of course they're not, but for short distance, as long as you clamp down the cable and don't touch the camera, I highly doubt it's going to be unreliable.

Yeah I guess he can hot swap power cords. if he's switching locations.

Why is he using batteries if his camera is plugged in? And I guess you're right. If you're sitting on a tripod or a gear head, maybe cables everywhere is less of an issue. I am betting Blackmagic either comes out with some more audio gear, or some sort of wireless video given the price can be made more affordable and there is a huge need for market disruption.

It's the same tech that's in their Ursa Mini SSD recorder, only difference is it's a USB connection instead of SDI. Provided you do nothing to damage the cable or port, I see no reason it would be unreliable. Using it handheld is maybe more of an issue, but sitting on a tripod recording a 2 hour event is probably less of an issue. It does seem to be a flimsy connection, so if it's clamped down and you don't move the camera you should be okay. Blackmagic always shows ridiculous scenarios for their products as more to show off the features rather than practical usage. Like this is totally not how narrative episodic television is shot. Huge cables dangling everywhere

8sinn is building cable clamps that go on the pocket 4K and hold the cable in place. you could also get a usb-c right angle extender and find some solution to hold that in place as it will be very rigid as well as provide an entirely new port to plug and unplug the cable from, preventing damage to the camera. CFast is way more elegant, but USB is not too bad for long recording on a tripod where the camera won't be moved or touched that often.

Rx100 doesn't have more tech, but it has a lot packed into a tiny body. Look at the zoom range of that lens. The internal ND filters, that pop up viewfinder. Crazy stuff for a tiny camera. There's a few things Blackmagic does not have that the Panny cameras do have, but largely I feel if Blackmagic had more experience building a smaller dslr/mirrorless form factor camera, then the Pocket would cost exactly the same AND have more features. Blackmagic didn't add a waveform monitor because they said it's very computationally expensive, and probably not worth the tradeoff when they can add other features. They probably also felt that anamorphic is seems pretty niche and if you really need it, they have other cams that can do it. Rotating screen they do not have, but not sure how easy it is to build a 5" rotating screen. They did take the easy route and use a display they know that people are happy with. Autofocus is the main thing that Blackmagic doesn't have. If they were able to add phase detect autofocus and used some of the newer Sony sensors, allowing higher ISO performance, they would steal more business from other manufacturers. In many ways this cam at least fixes some of the gripes that people have about blackmagic's being either too big and heavy or poor ISO range. The aggressive pricing of this camera and better ISO performance is a huge step in converting a lot of new people to Blackmagic.

Does panasonic sell higher volumes than Blackmagic? The Rx100 series of cameras has tons of features packed into it, so I can see how development costs are high, but I do feel that the Panasonic cameras are just priced like everyone else, with higher pricing given to their better models. Blackmagic just prices things however they want, so you really see how cheap it is to build cameras. They priced this one at $1295, but if they could get it down to $1000, I'm almost certain they would. It does sort of put into perspective what stuff really costs, because this camera is basically an entirely new body design with a new type of sensor as well, with tons of PRO features as well. Blackmagic is the only company building cameras less than $2000 that license Prores inside of them.

yeah that too. I wonder if the GH5s is significantly cheaper to make than the GH5 because it lacks IBIS and is based around an existing body and color science but since it's a PRO model they have to price it higher I think when blackmagic fist came out and DSLR was all the rage the costs of accessories were significantly different to DSLR's because DSLR's came with a kit lens and included batteries that lasted for hours. They were basically usable out of the box, and because the files were so compressed, you could use cheap SD cards too. This camera with a DSLR form factor, high quality screen and micro 4/3 mount is the closest they've come to a camera that's usable with minimal accessories.

That cage is priced exactly 1/3 the price of the camera, so I'm not suprised if they did it on purpose. Makes me wonder what it really costs to design and manufacture something like that.

It's always been that way. Blackmagic cameras have always been really cheap, but they use professional accessories so the price seems really high in comparison. Rigs have always been a significantly priced in comparison to the cameras, CFast 2.0 was expensive when it came out, and SDI montors are more expensive than HDMI although there are a lot more available now.

Blackmagic always puts unusual lenses on their cameras. The first pocket cameras at NAB had outrageously huge zoom lenses on it. The veydras look very nice on the pocket camera. A nice size relative to the camera.

I think they should build out of the prototype Apertus Axium case because that camera is beautiful. Take that camera, build a pocket 4K version (should be easy because it's slightly bigger than the micro) and sell it.

You don't need shallow mount to use a focal reducer. You just need a mount that provides enough room for the lenses necessary to perform focal reduction. In the case of the Lucadapter, the lenses are in the tube that is inside the 4.6K EF mount, so you just screw a new one in. In the case of most speedboosters it's just easier to start with a shorter mount and expand to a longer one, such as EF or PL

The global shutter feature is built into the sensor. I wonder if that effects the noise and sensitivity of the sensor to have that feature? It would essentially be wasted design because it's not implemented anyway. The only camera that I know of that also promised to have switchable rolling and global shutter was the Terra 5K and they completely scrapped that camera. And Blackmagic does give a lot for a very little. If you look at cameras under $10K, outside of the Ursa Mini Pro, how many of those could you comfortably use on a major Union television production with no compromise? EVA-1 has crappy codecs, and no TV show is going to let you shoot raw. Same story with FS7, FS5, etc. C200 is the same story and lacks any sort of timecode which makes it pretty useless as well. Maybe you could use Kinefinity, but their cameras are priced in a clear bracket above what Blackmagic offers and their images don't seem as nice. Blackmagic just gives you a no-fuss professional camera with every logical professional feature they can while still making the camera desirable for a large market says a lot about what people will think about the camera. Blackmagic tries their best to not make compromises and give the users everything they want. Look how many Ursa Mini Pros they will likely not sell because for a lot of people and their needs, the $1295 pocket is a better camera.

I've never seen an example of a switchable global and rolling shutter so maybe the images in that mode were just not worth enabling? It's possible the global shutter mode had too many artifacts that they felt it was not worth adding to the cameras. I wonder if the global shutter sensor element affects the noise performance of the 4.6K sensor at all? I'm just wondering if there were any downsides to adding a feature to a sensor that never got enabled.

I wonder how far off they were from making that feature work? I wonder what the real issues were? Maybe the images looked bad and had enough artifacting during the GS mode that they didn't feel like enabling it.

Ok they did announce global shutter on both 4.6K and Micro cameras and I don't now the logistics of why they never added those. I don't think it's easy to do as Kinefinity cancelled their Terra 5K model as well that had switchable rolling and global shutter.

Also did you watch some of those CookeTV videos with Geoff Boyle? About 6 months ago they posted a video where Geoff talks about using a certain companies camera that lacks an OLPF and testing it for a few months. He doesn't mention said company by name but we all know who it is. He says if he shoots certain patterns he can produce moire, just like with the herrinbone suit that was seen during the HBO camera test. BUT after all of that he says it doesn't matter when you actually get the camera and shoot REAL jobs. Sure you can take a Blackmagic camera, underexpose it 2 stops and find more FPN than a certain competitors camera, and yes, you can maybe find moire if you shoot certain patterns, but in the small chance that it does happen, i can easily be fixed by moving the camera a little bit. The magenta issue was one of the only problems that was very "real" and I would define as a serious issue, but they fixed that almost completely with firmware updates.

I think this was exactly the kind of users I was referring to in my earlier post. There are different sensor designs, and each design has drawbacks and positives. The Ursa Mini 4K was the CMOSIS CMV12000 and that sensor sucked. This pocket 4K uses a back illuminated Starvis design so I doubt it will have issues with FPN like other Blackmagic sensors do. And as far as "unusable" in anything but bright sunlight. Are you sure you weren't just underexposing your images? First gen blackmagic cameras had a bit more aliasing/moire then previous cameras and they did have slightly more fpn than newer models, but they didn't have huge issues. And likewise, the 4.6K sensor as a whole is very good and doesn't have many issues either. Testing is mostly useful to calibrate and spot bad sensors, as not every sensor is perfectly made, and I assume you can streamline the process once you get better at making cameras. The "issues" you claim plauged first generation Blackmagic cameras have nothing to do with testing but rather their choice of sensor, which you seem to not like.

I would guess only a little, but Blackmagic probably figured out how to streamline testing as they know how to make cameras by now. I think whatever Blackmagic does to deliver their cameras at a low cost is fine by me because they at least seem to be very open about replacing defective cameras with a new one. And it's the same with computer hardware. If you look on newegg or similar sites all you see are bad reviews because no one who recieves hardware in good condition actually leaves a review. If it works as expected, everyone knows from benchmarks and specs how a particular piece of computer hardware performs. Likewise, no one is out making threads about how good their camera works, or how it arrived with no defects. Blackmagic seems no worse than other brands it's just due to the amateur pricing of their products, you get a lot of idiots who don't know how to use the cameras properly and claim defects because they don't know how to expose. There was a guy who compared a bunch of different cameras including Alexa Mini and a few others and he declared the 4.6K "unusable" due to magenta all over the images and the manufacturer Rec 709 lut looking bad. Maybe if he had used the same kind of ND that is internal with the Alexa Mini and learned how to grade he wouldn't be saying these ridiculous things.

Wait is there a limit on likes?

Weight was the issue. Red Scarlet and Dragon cameras in DSMC1 form factor were too heavy for the gimbals they had at the time, and they wanted to shoot at high ISO as well, so a no-go for Alexa. If Arri Mini was available, I'm sure they would have gone with that over C500.

Well you can't say because film used certain camera that it's somehow good? Shane hurlbut is always promoting the same crap on his blogs, and I feel certain brands pay him and give him free stuff. I never believe any of his opinions about what he says about gear. Look how he promotes those Xeen lenses so heavily when in fact they're garbage compared to other similarly priced lenses like SLR Magic APO, etc. Notice how in one quote the guy said, "We truly have tested every digital platform out there, and C500 is the best we've ever seen." Now either that's out of context, or they're paying him to say that because what is making him say this with other cameras like RED Dragon, Arri Alexa, F65 etc. also available? He only used the c500 because it was smaller and lighter than other cameras at the time and could shoot 4K. Now I'm almost certain he would have gone Alexa Mini to do the same things.