osmanovic

We used the small pocket on the gimbal two weeks ago during film production in Bulgaria and Greece, the road was very narrow and there was only one solution, the small pocket on the gimbal. We use the camera for certain scenes and whenever the Arri Alexa is used as an A-Cam. Do you know why? There is no modern camera that combines better with Arri Alexa except the older Blackmagic cameras.
Smartphones will never replace it, because it's not the sensor size, but the sensor specifications, the color science, dynamic range and the possibilities in color grading. Some think that the sensor doesn't matter and that RAW or a good codec is all that matters. I can tell you from my experience with colorists that this is not true.

Sure - I'll revise my statement to "They're essentially really good, really small, really affordable, camcorders."
Were you comparing the "Smell of Village" video to the OG BMPCC?  If so, the video looked good and was obviously shot as RAW, but beyond it being RAW and deep DoF, it doesn't look anything like a OG BMPCC to me.  It looks more like a smartphone that can record RAW.
I looked at OG BMPCC footage only days ago, and even SOOC the footage just screamed "film" to me.  The grain and texture and resolution and sharpness are all on-point for film, and nothing like the high-quality high-resolution very-modern presentation of that "Smell of Village" film.
I've said it in other threads but it's worth repeating - I think people have forgotten what film actually used to look like.  If someone posted stills of non-recognisable moments from big blockbuster films and TV shows shot on film, the response would be akin to "your lens is broken" rather than "looks cinematic".

The usefulness of resolution depends how close you will sit to any given screen.

A BMPCC with a better body definitely would have been nice to have.

You said "some would argue that is a bit of progress" and I pointed out that the DR hasn't increased and the battery life also hasn't really increased.
That was 5 years after the OG BMPCC.
Personally, I think that given the huge increase in size and the time elapsed they could have made more substantial improvements to it.
If you can't see it then that's fine - more power to you, but just because you can't see it doesn't make it fake.
Otherwise, most of the stuff on earth is fake because I haven't seen it.
Actually, I think that a staggeringly huge number of people have 4K TVs now.
That's the whole point of the manufacturers flogging 4K and then 6K and now 8K and 12K.  They aren't doing that to sell more cameras, they're doing that to sell more TVs.  Go to your nearest big box store and see if they even sell a 1080p TV above a certain size....    I just went to target.com and looked at TVs from 30" up (they sell tiny portable ones too) and the cheapest one a 50" 4K for $319.

The PK4 to me is just too awkward of a camera body. And with a cage even more goofy. I get that 4k is never going to look like 1080p. It has it's uses. Even Arri doesn't really like a 4k camera. I doubt 4% of the world has a 4k TV let alone 8k. I don't, heck one of my 42" is 720p. Yeah, my 50" 1080p looks a Lot better. My 4k Monitor looks even better but...

There is no way in hell you are ever going to get the PK4 to look like the OG BMPCC looks like using Raw DNG. Blackmagic has lost it's magic since the PK4 came out. They looking nothing like the old stuff did. They look like everyone else now.

Plus it lost the filmic Mojo look of the OG. It looks better than a lot of cameras but it is not better.

Battery life is similar if you use current battery tech - I have personally recorded 49 minutes of uncompressed RAW from a single battery on the OG BMPCC.  Depending on which SNR figure you look at, the P4K has either 0.4 or 0.2 extra stops of DR.
Plus the P4K is almost 3x the size of the OG.
Definitely sounds like a decade well spent......  *cough*  *cough*  *cough*

Yeah, I keep saying this but no-one wants to hear it.
We had the OG BMPCC that shot RAW internal, had 13-stops of DR, and was under $1000, a decade ago.  What we have now - lots of cameras that barely improve upon this spec, except in resolution.
At the time there was the OG BMPCC (the camera we had and could afford) and the Alexa (the image we all wanted).  The Alexa had barely more pixels but staggeringly better quality pixels.  
What did the manufacturers do?  Basically zero improvement in pixel quality, but now we have 16 times as many of them.
*eyeroll*
BUT....  say that around here and the "progress is progress" people just shout you down.
Andrew was right about us getting what we deserve....  and what we got was manufacturers that just bamboozled people with BS and then everyone swallowed it.  Even with Yedlin proving that no-one could even see more than 1080p in most situations.

Images:
(Note, the Cosmicar needed to be cropped to 1.3x as it doesn't cover the full MFT sensor - no other lenses needed this cropping)












 

and here are the 2x ones....
 

Yet more:


Then the Voigtlanders.  I tested these at F2 as well as wide open and f5.6 because they're so much faster than the ~F2 vintage lenses.






 

More:












 

I'm contemplating investing in a vintage lens set, maybe FDs, maybe Rokkors, maybe something else, but figured I'd take stock of what I have and see what I can see.
First I'll post the images in case they're of interest to anyone, then digest them in future posts.
Test was GH5 in 400Mbps 4K ALL-I mode, Cine-D, Daylight WB, put onto a 1080p timeline.  I tested all lenses wide open (typically around F2) and at F5.6 (all lenses were closed down some by then).  I also did a 2X punch-in for each lens, because I like to use the 2X digital zoom function to grab quick shots, which also functions as a proxy for shooting 4K (although that doesn't matter so much unless you're doing VFX).
Test setup had some depth, some glare, some sharp detail in the background, but nothing too outrageous..

Lenses..

Interesting.
I've heard people say they compared images and they were basically the same, so assuming that's true then similar/same is good enough unless someone is planning on taking theirs apart and re-programming or re-using the chip in a different circuit - otherwise knowing the exact model number really doesn't matter 🙂
Great chip though.  Pity there isn't a camera with the 2022 version of the chip.  Considering how good it was at the time it would be spectacular with a decade of further development added to it.

Above must be my favorite post of the year @kye Super effective in showing colour response and metric and relation of pleasing palette and response to exposure in comparison to "objective" colours such as of GH5. Thanks a lot!

Thanks to @TomTheDP for finding this comparison between the Original BMPCC and Alexa, and thanks to Alain Bourassa for performing the test!  As @Matt Kieley says, the BMPCC and BMMCC have the same sensor, so it's a proxy for the BMMCC as well.
Not a bad match, considering that this appears to have no adjustments, and shots have different White Balances:

The WB comparison:

Latitude tests:








What I see from this comparison is:
Obviously the Alexa has more latitude, no surprises there Both comparisons vary quite a bit in tone and levels between the shots
(this is an indication to me that the shots were taken quickly and the results not processed too much, so I think is a good indicator of what things are like when used for real rather than in meticulous lab environments) The BMPCC fails at +4 and the Alexa doesn't, but both look reasonable at -3, so the highlights are where the Alexas increased DR is revealed The BMPCC looks very usable across the whole range and this reflects my impressions of shooting with it  Vectorscope comparisons, with colours extended 2X in the scope for ease of viewing..  
BMPCC Primaries:

Alexa Primaries:

BMPCC chart:

Alexa chart:

For reference, this is a colour chart I shot with my GH5.  The absolute level of saturation can't be compared as I can't remember what I did in post, but check out how different the overall shape is, which is much closer to 'correct':

I suggest this is a very good result, especially considering how old and how cheap this camera is, even after the price has risen since COVID lockdown and nostalgia shopping.

300EU is a steal.  Had you done the background research, you wouldn't have waited one minute, let alone one day.
It may seem like that's a lot for an older camera, but you're buying the image.  Used Alexas are still $10K because you're buying the image, so spending 3% of that on a camera that can be perfectly intercut with an Alexa.
The P4K is a great camera, but it's not the same as the OG BMPCC / BMMCC.  When you grade the OG BMPCC / BMMCC for two minutes you get something that looks like film, when you grade the P4K for two minutes you get something that looks like the Sony a7s3.  
It is possible to grade the P4K to match the OG BMPCC / BMMCC, but if you have that level of skill then you may as well buy almost any camera and grade it to look like whatever you want, because both tasks are about the same level of difficulty.

I have it and for my shooting in uncontrolled situations with varying WB I couldn't get good results out of the LUT at all unfortunately.  Maybe in controlled shooting it would be different, but it was too fragile to work in the situations I work in.
The BMMCC, however, gets spectacular colour right out of the gate.  It's literally giving me better colour after a 2 minute effort than I could get from my GH5 with hours of effort, regardless of the colour profile and use of LUTs, CSTs, of manual grading.
I believe people think about cameras in the wrong way.  The conversation is about "how good is this camera" or "how good is the image from this camera", and the answer to that is almost always "as good as the operator".  But some cameras are really easy to get great results from, and others are almost impossible to work with and only the best operators in the world can get great results from them.
The question should be "how good is the image from this camera when used by an above average user under normal circumstances and with a moderate amount of effort in post?".  In this instance, the OG BMPCC / BMMCC have to be some of the best cameras ever made.

One thing that struck me from the tests was how neutral the over and under exposures are.  That's absolutely not the case on most other cameras, and I speak from experience here because I have routinely exposed things poorly in the past and then suffered in post when things didn't behave how I anticipated/hoped they would!
Once again, the cameras that most remind me of this trait is the original BMPCC and BMMCC, which use very little highlight rolloff, so the way you use them is to ETTR and pull things down in post, and they look very similar (I did tests), at least when overexposing things anyway, if things are underexposed then the results aren't so good.
It might even be that the usability of the DR of the Alexa is more useful than the sheer amount of it.

The SD cards slow down over time or it comes dropped frames. The solution was to first do an LLF (LowLevelFormat) on the card and then format it in the camera. Try it. 
Sometimes it was enough just to reformat the SD card in the camera again.

We purchased angelbird SD cards some time ago. But these are very expensive. Then a colleague told us that the Canvas Select Plus (white green sticker) works just as well. We tested at 30fps raw (for an hour) and there were no drpped frames. 
If we had another alternative to og-bmpcc, we would certainly not buy rawlite, but another camera. But we chose it because og-bmpcc is still a great camera. 🙂 

Thanks, I've asked this question previously but hadn't gotten a definitive answer.
A couple of things that are interesting from that spec sheet are:
It can do 100fps It can do 100fps with rolling shutter and 50fps with a global shutter I wasn't aware that either the BMMCC or OG BMPCC have either 100fps or a global shutter enabled - does this mean that the sensor from all those years ago is only semi-utilised?  Wow.
Seriously Blackmagic - do an update on these cameras!!
I see minimalism has found another follower...

The SD cards slow down over time or it comes dropped frames. The solution was to first do an LLF (LowLevelFormat) on the card and then format it in the camera. Try it. 
Sometimes it was enough just to reformat the SD card in the camera again.

We purchased angelbird SD cards some time ago. But these are very expensive. Then a colleague told us that the Canvas Select Plus (white green sticker) works just as well. We tested at 30fps raw (for an hour) and there were no drpped frames. 
If we had another alternative to og-bmpcc, we would certainly not buy rawlite, but another camera. But we chose it because og-bmpcc is still a great camera. 🙂 

https://manualzz.com/doc/29120478/insert-month---fairchild-imaging
An interesting report about Fairchild Dual Gain, you can find here:
https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/5985-modern-sensors-produce-amazing-images-how-do-they-do-it