drm

1 hour ago, Kisaha said:

Oof..

What are the issues with the XL and Ultra then?

It is certainly annoying that we will have to buy additional adapters. It also raises the P4K "investment".

The 0.64X XL and the 0.71X Ultra work fine on the P4K. I have not had a single issue with my Ultra (0.71X) on the P4K (or my GH5/GH5s cameras) 

I think that Metabones is saying that they could provide a better experience on the P4K by making a specific adapter for that platform. Right now, we have to decide between the 0.71X (like I have) or the 0.64X, which can cause vignetting with some lenses. I am speculating that they will make a new adapter wider than the Ultra, but not quite as wide as the XL. They did mention that the P4K can't provide enough power for some lenses, so perhaps they will address that issue as well.

As a politician would say: "if you like your XL or Ultra, you can keep your XL or Ultra"  

4 hours ago, MeanRevert said:

On the subject of speedboosters, if I wanted to go with Viltrox and the Sigma 18-35mm Art lens, would this be the correct one?

https://amazon.com/gp/product/B072XF4L4J

There's no autofocus with these, right?

Thinking about whether I should try this instead of the Lumix 12-35mm. Any input appreciated.

The Viltrox adapter doesn't currently allow AF with any lens, including the Sigma 18-35. Although, perhaps they will add it via firmware update like Metabones just did.

The 12-35 f/2.8 is a great lens. I have a couple of them. But, the Sigma + Speed Booster will be much better in low light. That combo is ~ f/1.2 but has less range. The Sigma combo is roughly ~13-25. The 12-35 has IS and focuses *way* faster than the Sigma, just FYI.

10 minutes ago, AlexTrinder96 said:

Looks like Metabones will be releasing new speedboosters, specifically for the pocket 4k.

 

There will be new Pocket 4k Speed Boosters® with new optics specifically optimized for the unique characteristics of the new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. We will disclose details in a separate announcement. Each Speed Booster® is designed specifically for the filter stack of the sensor. The existing Speed Booster® XL 0.64x and Speed Booster® ULTRA 0.71x have excellent optical properties on JVC, Olympus and Panasonic cameras but the forthcoming Pocket 4K Speed Boosters will work only on Blackmagic cameras.

 

Looks like they've gone back on what they originally said regarding  specific adapters for the camera... 

https://www.metabones.com/article/of/BlackmagicPocketCinemaCamera_4K?fbclid=IwAR32Ck9ztExd8rXzKVwiRe0kaBuLSOY8sb9yIPHMY8D6hftGCWbgxQf26zY

I am really curious what multiplier factor they will use for the new Metabones that they release specifically for the PCC4K. The 0.71x that I use gives you roughly a Super35 look, depending upon the camera. I suspect that they will go for something between the two existing Speedboosters (0.64x - 0.71x).

I am not thrilled about dropping another $659 on another Speedbooster, but I will purchase when it is announced  

19 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Yes, it works : ) That huge monitor coupled to their tiptop focus assist is so efficient, I doubt you'll want to touch the screen to acquire focus... ; -)

A few days ago, I had my cams up high, with my tripods fully extended, shooting over a crowd at people on a stage. Manually focusing was very difficult, as I was well below the screen on the back of the camera.

Touch focus, came in really handy in that situation. I used it several times during that shoot. I could have used the app to focus with my phone, but I had several cameras running and didn't want to keep switching between each camera in the app. Having multiple ways to focus is a great feature.

I would love to have an external touch monitor, like my SmallHD, that I could use to interact with the camera. Alternatively, I would like to have a way to easily switch between cameras in an app. I almost always run a 3 cam set. 

34 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

"Autofocus is enabled for Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K but performance may not meet expectation."

I guess its better than nothing.

LOL...I am surprised that they put that but, yes. The AF *isn't* great. But at least it does work. There is no continuous AF, but the touch to focus does work. AF didn't work at all before, so I will take it.

I estimate that the AF is about 1/2 the speed with a Metabones lens as it is with a native lens. But, again, it works

By the way, here are the links to the Windows & Mac versions of the firmware to enable AF on the Metabones adapters for anyone who wants it:

WIN: https://www.metabones.com/article/of/EF-M43_Firmware_Win

MAC: https://www.metabones.com/article/of/EF-M43_Firmware_Mac

YAY! Metabones just announced support for the BMPCC4K!

https://www.metabones.com/article/of/EF-M43_Firmware_Mac

I tested the new firmware on my 0.71 EF adapter and AF does now work with my Sigma 18-35. Note that the AF does seem to be slower than with a native lens, but at least you have the option of using it now! 

46 minutes ago, xzobinx said:

any knows which store has this battery and ships to Australia? Thinking about switching to this power option when my shinobi arrives 

@xzobinx I am sure that you know this already but, the 12V port on the camera is designed to take 12V-20V. The battery outputs 8.4V-6V. I am surprised that the camera even turns on with only 8V plugged into the 12V port. I suggest that you get a 12V output battery sled like this one: https://amzn.to/2Fp0I4u  I have 3 and they work fine for me. I also use dtap straight from a v-mount battery to the 12V port and it works great. The camera lasts basically all day with one big v-mount battery.

If you run a cord straight from the battery, I recommend that you use a dummy battery. The camera is designed to use lower voltages from the battery port. If you use a dummy battery, you will also lose the ability to hot swap your battery during a long shoot.

I have 15-20 of those batteries and they work great. I have had only had one of them die over the past 2 or three years of regular use. I have the batteries numbered, but I don't keep track of when I buy them, so I have no idea how long the batteries lasted before dying.

IIRC, I think that Tom Antos mentioned killing some of his monitors that provide power to the camera because of the heavy power draw from the BMPCC4K, so I would hesitate trying to draw power from the monitor.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend a store that will ship those to Australia.

4 minutes ago, MeanRevert said:

Great, thank you for sending me the link.  I'll see if one of those will work. I'd really like to stick with either SD or CFAST so I don't have to bother with mounting an SSD but it looks like a T5 is the cheaper option.  How do you have yours mounted?

I have the SmallRig cage on all three of mine, with the SmallRig SSD mounts. The cage, holders, and drives work well.

I would also like to have the drives internal, as having the wires and stuff in the way is a bit of a bother. But for now, having 1TB of storage on each camera is very nice. The normal CFAST drives are just silly expensive for 1TB of storage for each camera (~1000 US per TB). Whereas, the Samsung T5 1TB is currently $177.99 on B&H. So, for 5x the price storage, I will put up with the USB C cable being in the way

2 hours ago, MeanRevert said:

Anyone successfully used the SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 mb/s card for 4k/60p? I just tried and it stops after 3 seconds. 24p was fine. I could have sworn I read someone posting on the Resolve forum that this worked.

https://amazon.com/gp/product/B07H9VX76D

There were a few memory card posts, including by me, around page 360 in this thread. Mine were at DCI4k/30, ProRes 422, though. I found a couple of posts on the BM forum here: 

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=87098&p=488690&hilit=SanDisk+Extreme+Pro#p488957

They said they were only to get the card to work at 12:1 & Q5 raw for 4k/60p.

That card is only a V30 card, so it isn't too surprising to me that it can't record at the higher data rates required for the higher quality raw formats. Just FYI, I use the T5 and it records all formats on my cameras. There were also some really cheap CFAST cards mentioned a few days back on this thread that should work.

1 minute ago, buggz said:

>>>>NOTE: My Metabones doesn't AF with any of my lenses (that I recall).

Why is this?  Does it not work with the BMP4K?

I actually don't know why it doesn't work. I assume it is a firmware issue with Metabones. It works fine on my GH5 & GH5s cameras.

My understanding is that other people have the same issue with their Metabones 0.71 adapters. I think that I recall seeing comments like that on this forum.

10 hours ago, Kisaha said:

Wow! That would be amazing, because I am litteraly ready to put my order. Are you going to have some news until tmrow do you think?! (I was litteraly speaking about the litteraly part! I just did one impulse buy today, do not want to do another one for such a serious thing. Just payed for the Insta X, going to get it now).

I do not see much vignetting on the 18-35mm, even the ultra seems usable, maybe with a slight crop. Them agsin, I am watching on my phone.

As it is, I believe the trio of Regain/Ultra/Viltrox EF-M1 make for an excellent set of adapters for all lenses and all uses. If I am getting a m43 camera, that is what I am doing.

Kisaha, I have used a wide range of lenses with the P4K and have been happy with them. Perhaps this will help you.

Here are a few:

NOTE: My Metabones doesn't AF with any of my lenses (that I recall). I also don't get vignetting with the 0.71 adapter (that I recall).

• Metabones 0.71 + Sigma 18-35 EF
• Metabones 0.71 + Tokina 11-16 EF
• Metabones 0.71 + Canon 24-105 EF
• Metabones 0.71 + Canon 100-400 EF
• Metabones 0.71 + Sigma 20mm f/1.8
• Panasonic 12-35 f/2.8
• Panasonic 35-100 f/2.8
• Olympus 12-100 f/4
• Sigma 16 f/1.4
• Sigma 30 f/1.4
• Panasonic 42.5 f/1.2
• Rokinon Cinema DS 85mm T1.5

45 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Q5 is the new Jack-of-all-Crafts tool, a true Swiss Army knife indeed.

In any way whatsoever, cDNG would benefit this capture device as a more powerful amphibian vehicle I'd much really love to not lose it : -)

Given what Grant said in the Blackmagic video announcing the 6.2 firmware, I seriously doubt that we will see CinemaDNG back on any BM camera. He said some fairly derogatory things about CinemaDNG during that video   I was very surprised that he was so candid about CinemaDNG, not that I disagree, CinemaDNG is a pain to work with...

1 hour ago, Yannick Willox said:

after seeing the footage, I think I don't care about what is missing with the latest update...

Found rentable bmpcc4k nearby, finally going to test one shortly ...

I used BRAW exclusively on a shoot for the first time earlier this week. The footage is *very* easy to work with. I was shocked when I just opened Resolve, pulled the DCI 4K clips in, and started editing, without creating proxy files or doing anything special. It was as easy to use as pulling a Prores file into Final Cut.

Given the advantages of RAW and the small file sizes of BRAW, I suspect that we will be shooting BRAW most of the time going forward.

13 minutes ago, xzobinx said:

I have similar issue.

From my observation,

• The BM battery came with my camera (2000mAh) ran fine with my external power rig for 2.5 hours. At this point, the battery bank cannot provide enough power any more and the camera start to drain the power from the battery. And I ran into the same issue of the camera can't turn back on again. 
• The OEM canon battery I have (1800mAh) can't work with the external power rig at all and drain after 1hour. Which is exactly like your case. 

My work around is having a few 2000mAh LP-E6 in my bag just in case. But I would like to see if there's better solution.

I thought that the camera should pull 100% power from the external battery / power adapter, then only pull power from the internal battery when the external battery is depleted. In my case, the camera showed the AC adapter indicator on the screen the entire time. I have several extra batteries, I just wasn't expecting it to drain the battery and die when plugged in to external power. The other camera ran fine, never turned off, and kept 100% internal battery, with the exact same setup.

Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps my external battery sled can't supply enough amps to power the camera. I will run tests with a different power sled and with AC power to see if I can replicate the problem. The camera drained so quickly that it seemed like it was only pulling power from the internal battery.

Luckily, I didn't lose any footage, despite the camera dying multiple times while recording.

Hi all. I had something happen on a shoot the other day on one of my BMPCC4Ks. I think that I remember seeing a post about a similar behavior, but I can't find it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I had two of my P4Ks set up on a shoot. Each camera was connected to a NP970 battery through the external power port. Each camera had an internal battery as well. Each camera showed the AC indicator on the battery, so it should have been receiving power from the external battery. Each camera was recording BRAW.

After I had been filming for a while (~45 mins?) I noticed that one of the cameras had shut off. I turned the power switch off, then back on. The camera came back on, but soon shut down again. It did this several times. To troubleshoot, I pulled the external power. The internal battery showed ~40% charge. The battery was fully charged in the beginning. I replaced the battery, then reconnected the external power. The camera came back on and ran fine. A while later (~45 mins) it turned off again. I removed the internal battery, then the camera ran fine from the external power for the duration of the shoot. So, the camera drained two batteries, while connected to external power and while showing the AC indicator on the battery meter display.

Obviously, I want to run a battery internally with the external power so that I can hot swap the external battery if needed. It seems as if the camera was running from the internal battery, then shutting down when that battery was depleted, despite being connected to external power. 

The other camera was configured exactly the same, but finished the shoot without ever turning off and with the internal battery at 100%.

Does anyone have any insights into this weird behavior?

Thanks!

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

I use these very cheap C.fast 2.0 cards and they keep up very nicely with ProRes. I haven't tried RAW, but I'm sure they can at least handle 4:1.

https://www.mymemory.com/integral-128gb-ultimapro-x2-cfast-2-0-card-550mb-s.html

That card (if it runs as advertised) has specs that are faster than the T5 drive. The card lists 550MB/s read & 540MB/s write. The T5 lists 540MB/s read & 515MB/s write. Of course, the minimum speeds are what really matters. It is a shame they don't have higher capacity cards as 128GB doesn't last very long at the higher quality settings.

That is a crazy low price for that drive. The cheapest CFAST 128GB on B&H is $179. Thanks for sharing the find.

4 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

Portability, reliability, size, not risk of damaging cables or ports, no risk of a cable snagging on your thumb as you reach to focus. Just a few reasons why many people might want to use card internally.

I much prefer internal cards and media as well. Having things sticking out from the camera is just an opportunity for problems.

One of my cameras had to be sent out for repair a couple of months ago because the HDMI cable got bumped somehow and broke the HDMI port on the camera. The bad thing is that I was carrying the camera from one location to the next on a shoot and I broke the camera but I have no idea how it happened. I don't remember anything touching the camera hard enough to break something. Now, I have HDMI clamps on all of my camera.

5 minutes ago, kye said:

The cheaper cameras that can create great images could be 10% of all shots in every movie and TV series and we'd never know.  The GH5 can be made to look like an Alexa, the P4K should be able to match basically anything.

I agree. Most people with any product are not online talking about it, unless they are having problems with it  

I do a lot of live broadcasting from events and a good bit of corporate work. I have yet to see a P4K in the wild (other than mine). The P4Ks also still cause a bit of a stir. I have had several people come over to see them and want to geek out and talk about them while we have been broadcasting. One wedding videographer swore he was dumping his Canon gear to switch to P4Ks (C100Mkii's). I am sure that will die down when you can actually buy the things in stores

Speaking of color matching, I created LUTs that match the P4K film to GH5s natural profile. My editor prefers to start with the colors from that profile, so the LUT for the P4K makes them match almost perfectly. My clients all seem to love it, so I don't care what colors they use  

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Well, I know one person that owns a Canon (myself) one person that owns an Olympus and one person that owns a Panasonic, so obviously only Canon, Olympus and Panasonic have sold any cameras in the past year... ?

But yes seriously... I really wonder how many units have been delivered. If I were to use this site and online videos as a metric... it could be in the hundreds or low thousands.

Either way what BM produced here for the price is pretty spectacular... I’m just curious if maybe they were using preorders to finance production and that is the reason for the hold up?

I mean, for a niche product, I would think 10,000 preorders would be a respectable number and I cannot imagine why it would take more than a month or two to fulfil those preorders. We’re almost 6 months out since September. It just seems odd. 

The good news is that most people that received theirs is really happy with it.

Perhaps Blackmagic just has a weird way of generating their serial numbers, but I have three P4Ks that I purchased at the same time. The three serial numbers are tens of thousands apart. The first is 502xxxx and the other two are 509xxxx. By the way, the 502xxxx camera is the one with the glitching screen, which is back for repair. One of the 509 cameras had a battery door that wouldn't close. I gently filed the catch with a nail file and it works properly now.

So, I suspect that Blackmagic had produced 100,000 cameras by October or November of 2018. I think they just have a popular product on their hands. It may also be that they are constrained by a component, like say...the sensor. 

49 minutes ago, vgsmedia said:

I am using the "ADATA SDXC UHS-II U3 Class 10 256GB Premier One V90" for months now with 4K DCI RAW 3:1 (24fps), 4K DCI RAW 4:1 (30fps) and 4K DCI ProRes HQ (30fps) without any problem at all.

Thanks for the info on the ADATA card. It sounds like your card performs really well. We have found a lot of variability in performance across the brands of SD cards that we have used.

Here are the listed data rates from BM:

Cinema 4K: (30 fps)

• CinemaDNG RAW - 270 MB/s
• CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 128 MB/s
• CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 96 MB/s

4K: (30 fps)

• Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 110 MB/s
• Apple ProRes 422 - 73.6 MB/s

The V90 rating guarantees a minimum sequential write speed of 90 MB/s. At those rates, I would expect a V90 card to maybe handle 4:1, but RAW, 3:1 and ProRes 422 HQ may not work, depending upon the performance of someone's particular SD card.

Prores is a variable bit rate codec, not fixed rate. So, it might work on some scenes. But, just because a particular SD card recorded one scene, it doesn't mean that it will always work (with ProRes 422 HQ).

1 hour ago, Jonesy Jones said:

So my client decided to go over and above and buy the 256GB sandisk sd's instead of the 128 ones that I recommended. Thoughts or experience with the 256 cards? Think there will be stability issues? Should we return them and just go with the 128 ones?

@Jim Giberti @Emanuel @xzobinx

Two things:

1. I have about a dozen of the 256GB SD cards from a couple of different brands. The 256GB cards perform as good as, or better than, the 128GB cards, so there should not be an issue with your client purchasing the 256 cards instead of the 128 cards. According to testing in the GH5, the avg. write speed for the Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card is 40MB/s on the 256 and 38.8 on the 128. These cards are V30 cards.

2. I know that people on here have had good luck recording various formats on the P4K with the Sandisk Extreme Pro SD cards, but given the data rates in the camera specs, you will likely have to use the CFast cards or external SSDs to record at some of the highest resolution/bit rates.

I just made a few recordings on my P4K using the Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB V30 card.

• Cinema DNG Lossless 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 3 seconds
• Cinema DNG 3:1 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 6 seconds. 
• Cinema DNG 4:1 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 21 seconds.
• Cinema DNG 4:1 UHD -- the recording stopped after 42 seconds
• ProRes 422 HQ 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 16 seconds.
• **ProRes 422 4K DCI -- the recording lasted 26:27:13 and filled the entire card. So, you may be able to record ProRes 422 on your card too.

According to the specs, even V90 cards should not be able to record the highest resolution/bit rates. We use the T5 1TB disks and have not had any trouble recording to them. Best of luck!

For everyone that hasn't seen a BMPCC4K freak out, I finally managed to record mine in action. The camera did this several times prior to the firmware upgrade to 6.1. I had hoped that the firmware upgrade would fix the screen glitching problem. Unfortunately, as I was setting up for a shoot the other day, the camera freaked out again with the 6.1 firmware. I managed to grab my phone and record before the camera did anything harmful, like formatting the T5 drive again.

Note that the camera was turned on and not being touched in any way when this started. You can tell when this problem is starting because it is like someone is tapping the screen to change the focus point. It will eventually open the menus and start going crazy, as you can see in this video. This happens with no apparent pattern. It has done it on the last two shoots. But, after restarting the camera, it didn't do it again, despite the camera running one of the days for 5-6 hours straight.

I spoke with BM about it yesterday and I am sending the camera in for repair tomorrow. The problem is apparently uncommon, as the BM tech support person said that he had never heard of it happening before my report. I know that someone on here commented that their camera had also had this problem. I think he said it was a bad digitizer. If your camera does this, contact BM right away.

Good luck everyone!

4 hours ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

Yepp! I do it all the time.

Good news / Bad news... I just tested a couple of my SD cards in the P4K on Prores 422 recordings.

Good: The Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB SD card (95MB/s) recorded a Prores 422 video at Ultra HD for the entire card without dropping frames or stopping.

Bad: The Lexar 1000X 256GB (150MB/s) card recorded a 154GB file for 34:25, then stopped recording with ~22 mins left on the card. 

I formatted each card to the Mac setting in the camera before recording. I have a couple of V60 SD cards, that will likely work better. When I get a chance to test those cards, I will post an update.

3 hours ago, mercer said:

You can shoot 4K ProRes HQ to the SanDisk Extreme SD cards?!?

LOL...I had the *exact* same thoughts. I have the 1TB T5 drives on all three of my P4Ks. I am going to grab my V30 and V60 SD cards tomorrow and see if I can get Prores 422 to work with them. That would be a great backup. I thought that I remembered the charts saying I needed V90 cards to save 422 (which I don't have...).

4 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Had mine do the phantom screen pressing last week and delete all of the LUTs I'd put on it.

I was watching it delete them one by one and half expecting a ransomware pop up to appear on the screen telling me it was going to delete more stuff.

I had the last laugh though as the LUTs were crap anyway.

Then on Tuesday it did it again but it was too fast to see what it was doing and I just switched it off to stop it doing it. I then thought it had deleted all the recordings off the cards as when I went to playback there was nothing there but after a mild panic I realised that "all" it had done was change recording format which of course renders recordings made in a different format invisible when you go into playback.

So it was the perfect storm of an actual defect interacting with a function that is so annoying that it should probably be considered a virtual defect in itself.

 

That "feature" of only playing files in your current recording mode is just bizarre. It is horrible from a user interface perspective. How is a user supposed to know the format of the files on the card or drive? The camera should at least show you all the files on the card and change mode as necessary to play that file type. Is there a way to see what is on your card, other than just pressing play and using the FF RW buttons?

I can't believe that someone actually approved that "feature" for release to the public. All of my other cameras just play the file, regardless of what mode the camera is currently using. Many other cameras give you thumbnail and other views of the card content. Do other BM cameras behave the same way with regard to file playback as the P4K?