Total costs of getting Black Magic Cinema Camera operational?

[Harrison Geraghty]

I am upgrading from my loathsome Canon 550D and will have approximately £5000 by December. The recent price drop in the Black Magic (MFT for me!) has finally convinced me after debating the merits of the Sony FS100 with myself but for the price and image compared to the BMCC it seems like common sense to me. I had my hopes set on the FS700 but for it's price tag I'll seldom be able to purchase anything else which is pointless and having rented the FS700 for my past two films I think it's time I avoid high speed for an entire production, I have a tendency to be far too indulgent with it. 

 

Anyway, I want to purchase a rig for studio styled use, matte box, follow focus etc. I want to know how many SSD's I will need (bare in mind I will predominately shoot pro res unless for a short film). I will also be buying an external battery, naturally. 

 

I also need to sell my 27" 2.8 GHz intel core i5 mac as it's incompatible with Davinci Resolve. I am begrudgingly moving from Mac to PC sheerly for the processing power bang-to-buck and will have to shell out even more money. How much would a PC capable of processing the 2.5k raw cost including all it's components such as graphics cards etc? 

 

With that money I will also be purchasing a jib as it proved invaluable in my previous short in achieving fluid camera motion which really dicks all over pans and fixed tripod shots. 

 

Forgive me if this post seems clumsy, I am still getting to grips with using a forum (as I rarely become members of ones) but was very encouraged after reading the discussions on this site regarding anamorphic adapters etc. It seems like a lot of knowledgable and helpful filmmakers actively use this service. 

[HurtinMinorKey]

cost for new PC approximately 1600.

 

If you ever plan on shooting/editting raw, you need at least a 2GB graphics card. I'd go 4GB GTX 780.

USB 3.0 or thunderbolt ports to offload the SSDs

Raid configured hard drive, or SSD  for read/write speed while editing.

Intel I7-37** or above for encoding.

 

There is no need for multiple SSD if you are doing work in the studio. Just get a caddy with USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt and you can offload you footage pretty quickly. 480 GB is plenty for shooting in the studio.

[Harrison Geraghty]

Cheers man 

[Harrison Geraghty]

What company would you recommend buying the PC from? 

[HurtinMinorKey]

What company would you recommend buying the PC from? 

 

If you want to get it as cheap as possible, you should put it together yourself. Basically you can follow online instructions for building a gaming PC.  If you really want someone to build it for you, i'd recommend ORIGIN. 

 

http://www.originpc.com/

[Joe Filipas]

If you're shooting mostly ProRes (which I've been doing), a single 240GB SSD should be plenty - that'll get you about 2.5 hours of footage on a single drive compared to 30min shooting in RAW. Getting another for backup isn't the worst idea in case you have one fail in the field. I've been using the Sandisk Extreme with zero complaints.

 

The other thing that surprised me with the BMCC is how heavy it is - invest a little in a serious set of sticks if you don't already have some, the DSLR-grade $100USD tripods aren't going to work well with a camera this hefty.

 

I ended up getting an Ikan basic rig setup for the camera to get some handles and a baseplate. The BlackFly works pretty well, although you need to loosen the camera to remove the SSD as the handle is in the way of the drive slot. Most importantly for me, though, is the baseplate/rod support is very sturdy and the price was very reasonable.

 

For external power I have the Switronix Powerbase 70 - with smart power management it's enough to get through a day's shoot.

 

So, to get the camera field-ready (and I already had a lens set), I put in roughly $700USD for the most basic components.