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Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4k G2 - now shipping


kye
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18 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Same impression going on here... Looks funny the first footage seen over here is not from a studio setup! LOL Looks like they should have trading names between both models instead : D

 

Curious to check it accuracy too... ; ) Seems this one is what the other one has missed to be, size and convenience ;- )

The first footage I saw was in a studio, but everything looks so good in a studio now that it's not a test that really stands for much.  

I've also seen a couple of videos of it on FPV drones, but those were coloured badly or weren't that useful.  I wasn't sure that people would even use it outside a studio at all actually, but thankfully I was wrong 🙂 

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This one allows enough image quality for anyone of us. I wish for a M4K version with internal recording and an add on tilteable  2.5-3" monitor. Also give it optional S16 and 2x crop modes. For the Studio Micro G2 it would be cool to have a neat seamlessly connected ssd case like for the Sigma FP. Imagewise this is just as rocksolid as the P4K.

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  • 2 weeks later...

More M4K footage....

Cat video was apparently shot on the Voigtlander NOKTON25mm 0.95, but details are sparse.  The second video has no details at all, and the first simply had "#cat" as the description, but someone asked about the lens in the comments!

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But the smallest braw or any kind of recorder-monitor is a 5inch biggie lumbing on that tiny cam. @kye With internal recording of braw and prores i would have been interested in it. With a top monteable 2.5 to 3 inch tilt screen designed for this camera, even moreso. Do that for a Bmmcc 4K and call it M4K, Blackmagic! Great naming btw. @mercer 🙂

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11 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

But the smallest braw or any kind of recorder-monitor is a 5inch biggie lumbing on that tiny cam. @kye With internal recording of braw and prores i would have been interested in it. With a top monteable 2.5 to 3 inch tilt screen designed for this camera, even moreso. Do that for a Bmmcc 4K and call it M4K, Blackmagic! Great naming btw. @mercer 🙂

Yeah, it's hardly the ideal package size if you want a tiny setup.  If I went this direction I would fit it with an external SSD and small monitor like the Ikan VL35 3.5" 4K monitor I have with my M2K and a battery plate.

Still, the other options for a RAW setup also have pretty significant compromises:

  • OG BMPCC - small all-in-one package and internal RAW/Prores but only 1080p and screen is fixed and not bright and tiny batteries and no 60p and no dual-ISO
  • OG BMMCC - same size as this plus internal RAW/Prores but only 1080p and no dual-ISO
  • P4K / P6K etc - internal RAW/Prores but ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS
  • Sigma FP - small with internal RAW (in limited resolutions/bit-depths) but fixed screen and RAW not compressed so file sizes are large and some modes require external SSD
  • Various mirrorless cameras - much larger to begin with but also require 5"+ external recorder to record RAW

The ideal package would be this sensor in an updated P2K chassis, but I doubt this will ever eventuate.

In terms of this only recording BRAW and not Prores, I do wonder what the computational differences would be between BRAW and Prores - they might be similar in practice.

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If your budget is decent, the Canon R5 is really not much larger to begin with when compared with the Sigma fp, does decent 12-bit raw internally, and has a decent flippy screen.  By the time the fp is rigged to do 12-bit raw (and you add a small grip so you can actually hold the thing!), it’s already about the same size as the R5 (and still has a fixed screen).  It’s one of the reasons I sold my fp and fp-l and kept my R5.  Sometimes I thought about shoving the fp into a small space without a screen to get something, but then I remembered there’s no built-in wifi and by the time you add even the smallest cineeye/hollyland transmitter to it, it’s… about the same size as the R5.  😛


If the new BMMCC 4K can do monitoring over wifi to a phone and can do 12-bit raw to a really small external SSD (like a Sabrent Nano or something), it could work well for that kind of thing.  If not, by the time you add an external screen (even the VL35) and small SSD, you have a kit about the size of an R5 (with worse ergonomics).

(With that said, your computer’s likely to be able to edit raw from the BMMCC a lot more smoothly than from the R5 - my M2 Max is just barely tolerable with R5 stuff in Resolve)

Also, I’d add in (though I haven’t used) a hacked EOS M as an option for a teeny tiny camera that can record raw internally.  From what I remember, it can do some sort of 2.5k, though that might only be in a 2.35 mode or similar.

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6 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

If your budget is decent, the Canon R5 is really not much larger to begin with when compared with the Sigma fp, does decent 12-bit raw internally, and has a decent flippy screen.  By the time the fp is rigged to do 12-bit raw (and you add a small grip so you can actually hold the thing!), it’s already about the same size as the R5 (and still has a fixed screen).  It’s one of the reasons I sold my fp and fp-l and kept my R5.  Sometimes I thought about shoving the fp into a small space without a screen to get something, but then I remembered there’s no built-in wifi and by the time you add even the smallest cineeye/hollyland transmitter to it, it’s… about the same size as the R5.  😛


If the new BMMCC 4K can do monitoring over wifi to a phone and can do 12-bit raw to a really small external SSD (like a Sabrent Nano or something), it could work well for that kind of thing.  If not, by the time you add an external screen (even the VL35) and small SSD, you have a kit about the size of an R5 (with worse ergonomics).

(With that said, your computer’s likely to be able to edit raw from the BMMCC a lot more smoothly than from the R5 - my M2 Max is just barely tolerable with R5 stuff in Resolve)

Also, I’d add in (though I haven’t used) a hacked EOS M as an option for a teeny tiny camera that can record raw internally.  From what I remember, it can do some sort of 2.5k, though that might only be in a 2.35 mode or similar.

It really depends on the situation you're in.  For me, the choice between the M4K and the FP and the R5 gets solved with lenses.  Specifically that I have them for MFT and don't for the others.

So the above comparison wasn't to say "here are many options to explore", it was really saying "the M4K isn't perfect, but everything else is far from it".

The M2K is a very unique camera in terms of its size/performance/features (especially the fact it can do 3:1 compressed 60p RAW internally) and the M4K is better in some ways, despite also being compromised in some other ways, but for some situations it might be a step forwards.

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  • 1 month later...

Will has just released his full review of the new M4K and it looks like the sleeper camera of the decade....

One thing of extreme interest to me was that it has AF, and although he only shows it once in the video, it looks pretty snappy.

Of course, he also mentions that it's the same sensor as the P4K...  sooooo, the P4K sensor has AF, but the P4K does not!

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8 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

The P4K does have CDAF AF-S, does this variant have AF-C then?

Really? I never realised that...  I think M4K just has AF-S, not AF-C.

Maybe I just saw how huge the P4K was and never paid much attention beyond that!

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If it's CDAF, it will pretty useless for AF-C anyway.  Panasonic spent years of time and tons of development hours trying to make AF-C not suck and in the end, they made it suck a little less.  AF-S can be pretty great with CDAF, though.

I'll have to check out the review - I'm not usually a fan of BMD's consumer/prosumer line, but I DO love tiny cameras with a good image...

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10 hours ago, kye said:

Really? I never realised that...  I think M4K just has AF-S, not AF-C.

Maybe I just saw how huge the P4K was and never paid much attention beyond that!

Yeah, they improved it’s performance over firmware updates but it’s AFS only and still fairly basic, hence why I developed the AFX to give it AF-C without having to use the internal CDAF.

Its really bizarre why they excluded BLE on the new micro as it has closed the camera to products such as AFX and other external controllers, something that is actually even more applicable to this form factor as it has such limited direct control.

Obviously it’s a differentiator to keep it in the realm of being a studio camera - hence why it can be fully controlled through an ATEM - but it’s a shame nonetheless for people who want it to do double duty as a cinema camera.

It has three great uses for the USB-C port in that you can use it to record BRAW to an SSD, connect BM’s excellent and pretty affordable focus demand controller and finally connect an Ethernet adapter to enable it to be controlled with a REST API.

Unfortunately, with it only having a single port you have to pick only one of those features when it’s easily foreseeable that you might want to use at least two of them simultaneously.

For the purpose that they are offering it, the camera is absolutely fantastic it’s just frustrating that it is so close to being a bit more things to a bit more people.

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2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Yeah, they improved it’s performance over firmware updates but it’s AFS only and still fairly basic, hence why I developed the AFX to give it AF-C without having to use the internal CDAF.

Its really bizarre why they excluded BLE on the new micro as it has closed the camera to products such as AFX and other external controllers, something that is actually even more applicable to this form factor as it has such limited direct control.

Obviously it’s a differentiator to keep it in the realm of being a studio camera - hence why it can be fully controlled through an ATEM - but it’s a shame nonetheless for people who want it to do double duty as a cinema camera.

It has three great uses for the USB-C port in that you can use it to record BRAW to an SSD, connect BM’s excellent and pretty affordable focus demand controller and finally connect an Ethernet adapter to enable it to be controlled with a REST API.

Unfortunately, with it only having a single port you have to pick only one of those features when it’s easily foreseeable that you might want to use at least two of them simultaneously.

For the purpose that they are offering it, the camera is absolutely fantastic it’s just frustrating that it is so close to being a bit more things to a bit more people.

Yes, a pity it doesn't have BLE.  Controlling it with the BM camera app would have been really good.

Will said that you can use it with a USB-C hub to connect an SSD while also powering it via USB.  Have you tried that?  Maybe it is just limited to connecting to one device and the USB charging doesn't count?

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8 hours ago, kye said:

Will said that you can use it with a USB-C hub to connect an SSD while also powering it via USB.  Have you tried that?  Maybe it is just limited to connecting to one device and the USB charging doesn't count?

The camera itself can’t be powered over USB but that hub does allow the zoom on demand to be used simultaneously with SSD recording so that is a positive, albeit that BM doesn’t specify it in the manual.

He reports no issues with doing it so that’s all we have to go on and it might well be that BM doesn’t specify it because there are a LOT of USB hub/SSD combos that people could use that would make it a support nightmare.

The zoom on demand handle is very much a sledgehammer to crack a nut to get that external control though as it certainly takes away the Micro element and its primary function is only compatible with a few very average lenses.

The hub usability (difficult to refer to it as compatibility until BM official support it!) does open up the possibility of them making a more appropriate form factor interface for some external control.

Or maybe someone else will if there is sufficient demand from people buying the Micro as a cinema camera…

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I just realised that you have to have the handle in order to use AF...  it appears there's no way to configure the buttons on the camera body itself - the manual only talks about configuring the buttons on the optional (and huge) handle.

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On 1/28/2024 at 4:52 AM, kye said:

More M4K footage....

Cat video was apparently shot on the Voigtlander NOKTON25mm 0.95, but details are sparse.  The second video has no details at all, and the first simply had "#cat" as the description, but someone asked about the lens in the comments!

 

the amount of noise in these videos and its ugliness is staggering. Especially the second one. There is no info on the ISO value but it must be exaggerated.

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15 hours ago, Davide DB said:

the amount of noise in these videos and its ugliness is staggering. Especially the second one. There is no info on the ISO value but it must be exaggerated.

It looks to me like it was added in post as part of the grade, but obviously can't confirm that.

Apparently it's the same sensor as the P4K, so until we get ISO tests I'd just assume that it's the same as that?

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