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StHubbins

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Posts posted by StHubbins

  1. On 7/13/2019 at 9:30 AM, MeanRevert said:

    Jordan, I think you are the yoga king if that non-tiltable, non-movable screen doesn't bother you, my friend.

    As the former owner of a GH5, I must say, the tiltable screen was not very usable for me. 1) When you tilt it, the sun reflects directly off of it, so it's unviewable. 2) To tilt it up, you have to flip it out, and when you do that, it makes reaching the lens focus ring with your left hand almost impossible. You have to go under the camera, which is extremely awkward.

    I would have much preferred the Sony design, where it tilts without swinging out. The screen was a big factor in me buying the GH5, and I was wildly disappointed.

  2. Also, the only time I've ever been shut down for shooting something was with my Micro rig. And I was just filming my family ice skating!

    Granted, I live in LA, so people are more attuned to this stuff, but here I am, filming my family skating at an outdoor rink around Christmas, and the Manager comes up to me...

    "Hey man, you can't shoot with that thing here."

    "What? Why not? Everybody here is filming their family on their phones, etc."

    "Yeah, but you've got a whole professional camera deal. We've got rules about that."

    "Look, that guy over there is filming with a Canon 5D Mk IV, that camera costs three times as much as mine!"

    "Yeah, but you got this mic and stuff, it's making people nervous. Sorry dude."

    ...So, of course, I pretended to agree, waited til he left, then shot at waist level, glancing down at my monitor surreptitiously... Two minutes later...

    "No, dude. I can still tell you're filming. You gotta put it away or leave."

    "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WITH ALL THE STUFF IN THE WORLD THAT HAPPENS, YOU GOTTA SHUT DOWN A DAD FILMING HIS FAMILY?! C'MON EVERYONE, GET THE SKATES OFF, WE'RE LEAVING. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!"

    ?

  3. 34 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

    Agreed, the BMPCC is also easy. But once rigged (I never take it apart) the Micro is like most cameras if you are in somewhat consistent lighting conditions (changing WB without a remote is annoying to say the least).

    But those sort of things are a bit annoying on the original pocket as well. The BMPCC4K is more like the BMCC there. 

    Another nice thing with a Breakoutbox is that I can power both the camera and screen with the same battery. And since the screen accepts both Sony and Canon batteries it gives me options. On the BMPCC4K you obviously don't need to since it's screen is big enough.

    Hmm, what is this Breakoutbox you speak of? Is that Phil Lemon's project, or a standard breakout box?

    A great thing about the Micro is the 3:1 RAW, so thank God I don't have to worry about screwing up the white balance. BMPCC has RAW too, but it's ungodly huge and impossible to play without transcoding, so I never used it much.

  4. 1 minute ago, Mattias Burling said:

    A positive is that buying the Micro today used includes all you need. Fully rigged kits go for peanuts while people jump to the new one. Once the sales of the BMPCC4K has settled the prices might swing up again. 

    I had several to choose from before settling on kit with the camera, small rig cage, metabones bmpcc speedbooster, Ursa side grip, 512gb SanDisk Extreme, Breakoutbox, HDMI Clamp, artikeln rosette and a bunch of other little nick nacks. Set me back less than the retail of the camera alone.

    Added a screen and I was good to go.

    It's the same with the BMCC, BMPCC and the BMPCC. Loads of accessories in already affordable kits.

    True, it's best to buy already built kits. Which is one reason I'm NOT selling mine, NOBODY'S gonna slide in and take all my hard work and tears putting that crazy rig together!!1!

    I will say, the original BMPCC is MUCH easier to use (for me) than the Micro. All I need is the mini-shotgun mic, and a Kinotehnik loupe, and I'm good to go.

  5. 2 hours ago, mercer said:

    That’s not a bad deal at all!

    I’m looking at it like this... the Micro for the ease of ProRes or the GH5 for the ease of handheld. I haven’t decided which is more important to me yet... or if I need either.

    Yeah, the biggest problem with my Micro is that it is literally the most difficult camera to use in the history of cameras... and that's from an owner of the original BMPCC. To get my Micro to work for my run-and-gun style, I've needed

    1) A cage 

    2) an HDMI cable lock

    3) a Blackmagic URSA Mini handle, with LANC cable

    4) an offset Arri rosette, purchased from a guy who makes them in Russia 

    5) a right angle-to-straight HDMI cable for the monitor

    6) a monitor, with 6B) a battery sled

    7) a Sony battery (and charger) for the monitor

    8} a One Little Remote control box, and 8B) a separate mounting screw for the cage

    9) a Sennheiser MKE400 small shotgun mic for usable sound, with 9B) a screw-in cold shoe mount

    This rig took me a ton of research and about 3 months to get together. And the camera is still barely usable - even the One Little Remote (which is great, compared to the laughable buttons on the front of the Micro) doesn't have a screen, so you have to guess if you've pressed a button once or twice or 3 times to figure out which parameter you're on. He's made a new one with a screen, but I don't want to buy yet another thing (though at some point I will). And nothing's worse than having your monitor run out of juice... and realize that your camera is still going strong, but there's no way to see what you're shooting.

    Now, to get a fully useable rig for my BMPCC4K, I've had to buy...

    1) Nothing.

    Yep. Great (stereo!) audio from in camera, huge built-in monitor, tons of easy access buttons, plus a touch screen and amazing UI. I literally have NOTHING on the camera. And it's about 2 lbs. lighter than my Micro.

    The Micro's image quality is indeed delicious, but it's a preposterously huge hassle to shoot with, comparatively. Nonetheless, you'll never get me to sell it ;)

  6. I would not at all be surprised if part of the legal settlement with RED was coming up with a way that future cameras could not use the old firmware. It's not much of a settlement if the future users of the camera can still use the forbidden format.

    They just should've been up front about it.

  7. 43 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

    Not my experience, I got better looking footage with the older sensor in all lighting conditions. Specially in dim light (I shoot a lot of murky interiors and lights is not an option).

    But its great that others like it and I'm happy for you :)

    The more that gets to enjoy the Blackmagics the better. I might buy one again in a year or so when they can be had cheap on the used market.

    One really positive thing I can say about the new sensor is that SOOC with a in camera LUT looks very good. 

    I will say the classic BM cams have more of a "romantic" look straight out of the camera. To use guitar amp terminology, the BMPCC4K is more of a "transparent" image, clean and detailed, that you can put any look you want on after the fact. With the OG Pocket/Micro, you have one choice - "that look"... but damn, that look is sexy as hell, and I'll love it forever ;) 

    By the way, as a fanboy note, I've enjoyed your videos for years, you're my favorite camera reviewer!

  8.  

    4 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

    Yup, same experience. I wanted nothing more than to love the BMCCii.. cough.. I mean BMPCC4K. 
    And there was a lot to love like handling, controls, screen, braw, window mode, slowmo, I can make this list really really long.

    But there was one single thing where it imo lacked compared to my Micro: Image.

    I spent several days shooting side by sides. Then hours in Final Cut and Resolve tweaking and grading. 
    The image from the newer camera is nice, no doubt. But the old sensor was just so much better in my eyes. I could spend an hour grading pocket footage to get it good looking. And then on the corresponding Micro clip I just threw on one of my custom presets or even just slap on Filmconvert and it was spot on immediately. It kinda reminded me of the A7sii. Everything was perfect on paper, handling it was fine, footage looked great on the back display but then.. meh..

    I packed up the bmpcc4k and shipped it it out to its new owner yesterday. The extra cash went into some more parts for my Micro.
    Will make a few different setups that I can flip between depending on the shooting scenario. 
     

    As a passionate owner of the first BMPCC, the Micro, and the Pocket 4K, I'd have to say... it's just a different approach. I LOVE much of my Pocket/Micro footage. I mean, LOVE. But... there's plenty of footage from those cameras I DON'T love. Anything without a ton of light, or incredibly fast lenses... the footage is ehh. I mean, that which is even salvageable is ehh. And most of it is not even salvageable. The original cameras are amazing, provided you have tons of light. If not, they're pretty much terrible.

    The P4K can obviously capture 10x the amount of usable footage that the old ones can. Bright light, low light, no light, it's all good. And yes, the look straight out of the camera, on sharp modern lenses, looks video-ish. Blegh. But then I started using interesting lenses on it, and the magic came right back. If you want "filmic", do NOT shoot the P4K with clinical, modern glass. I am LOVING the combo of the inexpensive Kamlan 25mm F0.95 on the new Pocket. The creaminess and softness of the old Pocket returns (but with more resolution). Add grain in FilmConvert, and I'm back in love.

    In short... the old cameras had "mojo" from the sensor, but you had to add sharpness and light from the lens. The new cameras have sharpness and light, but you need to add "mojo" with the lenses.

    I love them all, and am keeping them all ;)

  9. 4 hours ago, Shirozina said:

    You are saying that if there is clipping at the sensor level with RAW then you can fix this in Resolve? This would be highly worthy of posted examples.  

    Yes... and no. What the "Highlight Recovery" setting does with RAW is find areas where one channel (say, red) is clipped, but another (say, blue) is NOT clipped.

    Resolve then fills that red channel with information from the blue channel.

    In ProRes, this info would just be "clipped", and come out as white. But in RAW with Highlight Recovery, that detail appears... but with a caveat. That detail is basically black and white. Because the actual red color info is gone, the best Resolve can do is kind of guess the color, and it defaults to desaturating (it used to make that detail pink, which was pretty ugly).

    So usually what this means is, instead of a window being blown-out flat white in ProRes, in RAW, you can barely see the frame of the window panels. It's not gorgeous, but it is kind of nice. More importantly, in a hot spot on someone's skin, RAW can bring back a bit of (desaturated) texture in the skin, which CAN be kind of a big deal.

    It's up to you whether these subtle differences in the extreme highlights are worth the trouble or not.

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