Not having any idea where to post this, I chose the Black Magic Subforum.

It has been pretty silent since NAB, but the 31st of July is just about over, and there is no real talk anywhere. I posted deposit at one of DVInfo's advertisers, but he doesn't seem to have much more information.

I see Guy at DVEStore is taking orders, and I would have ordered from Guy had I known he was going to be selling them, because he has supported our DVInfo Challenges. Sorry, Guy !!

I see Guy and others are bundling with an SSD drive for the original price.

This raises some questions for me at this point:

1. Is an SSD drive part of Black Magics original package bundle ?

2. What is the latest expected delivery date ? Anyone from Black Magic have any thing on that ?

3. Have any new features been added as shipping date approaches ?

Chris,

Regarding delivery date, here in the UK, a major video supplier (CVP) are now saying it has been delayed by 2 weeks and should be shipped mid-August. Web reports in the last 24 hrs suggest the firmware is now finalised and units are already in production.

[I have no inside knowledge, just stuff I've read on the web, BTW].

I guess it would be good if Blackmagic actually confirmed all this directly!

Thanks Andy. Certainly not a way to engender confidence with those of us who have expressed interest by making deposits on these cameras.

Not having any idea where to post this, I chose the Black Magic Subforum. Once this camera actually starts shipping, we'll run a dedicated board for it.

<RUMOR ALERT> A BMC purchaser from another site said that his vendor told him the shipping date was now the middle of August, BUT could be later.

I received an email last Tuesday while on vacation from Blackmagic which said the official estimate was now that resellers would begin receiving units in the 3rd week of August.

Allan Barnwell
Omega Broadcast Group - Professional Video Sales, Rental & Services (http://www.omegabroadcast.com)

Anybody have new news on the Black Magic Camera- shipping anywhere yet ?

The rumors from various sites suggest the delivery date has been moved back until the end of August.

Grant Petty sent out this email today. I hope it is okay with him that I share this information, but it is more to do with Resolve than the camera.

<<< We have a new Blackmagic Forum on our web site now and we think it will allow people to help each other and share knowledge. If you would like to check it out then please go to forum.blackmagicdesign.com.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Files

We have posted some RAW CinemaDNG shots from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera for download, and people have been asking for these. They are RAW so they have the entire image of the camera available for color grading. Because RAW images are a little different to grade than video files, there is a post by John Brawley on our forum with more info on the shots and how to grade them. >>>

Okay, 8 days later, still no real word from any one, and it is now end of August. But wow, I just downloaded some ProRes files posted by John Brawley, and I am already hooked. Black Magic may have a winner here for sure, if we can just get it shipped.......

I got my unit last week. Some users in Singapore got theirs yesterday. Shipping has begun in low volumes already from what I heard.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Unboxing - YouTube

I'm testing it since a week - good clean fun!

I got my unit last week.

*Sigh* not another unboxing video ;)

I"ve been eyeballing the BM as well to be used for some more serious work, the low purchase cost seems tempting but I fear costs will add up quickly before it's production ready, also for workflow on a windows pc I have too many unanswered questions. Hopefully more users, like Frank, will be posting usefull video's explaining pro/contra and workflow.

Noa, if its any help, I downloaded Brawley ProRes camer files, and Vegas Pro 11 did fine...

Thx Chris, What I"m interested in particularly is how footage shot in raw is dealt with in post, based from what I have seen so far you get the most benefit out of this camera shooting in that format. I"d like to see a video showing how raw footage is processed (I take it it has to pass through Davinci resolve first and then exported for further editing in a NLE, but what format do you export in to retain the quality. it's 12 bit to start with but the NLE I use (Edius 6.51) supports "only" 10bit, what do you loose then, will it be obvious? It's that kind of questions. :)

I believe the workflow is, shoot raw, bring the footage into Resolve, export an XML or EDL file to your ediing software, import XML file into your editor & edit in 8 bit or 10 bit, export an XML or EDL of your fine cut to Resolve & then Conform & Color Grade the Raw footage, then export to the format needed.

For the time being you may want to take a look at Rick Young's new site where he has an video interview with Grant Petty plus a video of some footage that he shot with a loner shipping model of the camera. Rick should have a video next week of his results bringing the footage into Resolve.

All the best,

Dave

Rick Young's Movie Machine - The Art of Technology of Digital Filmmaking (http://www.moviemachine.tv/)

Thx Dave for the link, I just wonder if you would export from davinci first and import into you NLE and let's say the NLE only supports 8 bit, if you would export that again for use in Davinci to colorcorrect you should loose quite some color info going from 12bit to 8bit? I would expect doing CC in Davinci resolve first and then export and do further editing.

Noa, this is a digital cinema camera, so it helps to think in terms of motion picture film technology. The fine cut you export from your editing system, i.e. the cutting copy fine cut is like a film work print. The cutting copy is used for reference only. The conform process is like the neg. cutting stage in film production. The original (the raw files) are conformed, that is matched frame for frame to to the cutting copy (your fine cut exported movie) via the cut list (the XML or EDL file) the color graded & exported at the highest resolution.
This is the eqivalent to the film lab's answer print, from which you would make release prints. In other words the raw file from the camera is what you are working with in Davinci not the file from your editing system.

All the best,
Dave

Or you throw it into Cineform Studio, convert it to Cineform raw and start editing in realtime like you would do with ProRes, without any further roundtrips.

Yes, 99% of the people who buy this camera will probably never use the digital cinema possibilities of the Blackmagic Digital Cinema Camera & will simply use it as a video production camera using Pro Rez or Cineform. But it should cause us to feel all warm & fuzzy knowing that we are subsudizing the indy digital filmmakers who use this for the purpose for which it was created, by helping to keep the cost of the camera low by way of the volume of orders.

All the best,
Dave

I want to have choice of capabilities at this price point. From what I have seen of the ProRes captured files I downloaded, there is plenty of grading capability built in at that level--- at first look, at least, there appears to be a lot more detail on both ends to work with than with my normal AVCHD (Sony or Canon) to Cineform process.

We shall see.

IBC shound be interesting in a week or so. The announcement this week at the show in Berlin of 120 fps 4K for the Canon C500 camera, display pannels from Sharp of double the resolution of Apple Retina Displays, Sony & Samsung have announced their their home 4K tv sets to be sold to consumers this fall and Sony have announced their first 4K home theater projecter. This comming year should present a multitude of choise. As of the present the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a welcome entry to the digital cinema market & I'm sure there will be some interesting developments by NAB in april. We're in an age of rapid change.

All the best,
Dave

Yes, 99% of the people who buy this camera will probably never use the digital cinema possibilities of the Blackmagic Digital Cinema Camera & will simply use it as a video production camera using Pro Rez or Cineform.

Well, then I"m probably that other 1% :) The only reason I would buy this camera is to shoot in Raw and that's because graded raw looked much better to me in Franks video on his blog. I"m actually still not so sure it's a camera for me, I do mainly weddings and events and for that the BMC is useless for my purpose, but I do some controlled shoots now and then for corporate clients and then I do see the advantages of a BMC camera instead of the xh-a1 I currently use for corporate shoots. Shooting and editing raw is a whole new world to me but I must say it does intrigue me.

To keep all updated, this was posted today in the Black Magic forum:


"Blackmagic Cinema Camera

PostThu Sep 06, 2012 1:24 pm

Blackmagic Design has been overwhelmed by the fantastic response from the very first few customers that have received their cameras. Naturally the question on everyone’s lips is when is more stock shipping? As you can understand the Cinema Camera is a highly advanced piece of equipment and therefore requires only the highest level of quality components. At this time certain components are coming into our factory slower than expected and as a result the manufacturing of units has slowed. We ask that you please be patient with us as we are doing our best to get more stock flowing within the next few weeks. In the meantime we are pleased to announce that our engineering team has not been resting and we have more features and updates coming to the next free firmware update.

Thank you for your patience. We will be communicating more detailed updates on shipping when that information is available.

Terry Frechette"

Philip Bloom rides in, you need 45mins for this but as usual it's worth it ...

Video review of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera on Vimeo

IMO the production meetings at Blackmagic must last many hours :)

Cheers.

Watched Bloom's Video a couple of days ago. Only made me more restless about getting the camera.

It's always good to have reviews like this, not for it's advertisement for accessories, but because it gives a good idea what and who the camera is for and all that needs to be considered to have it production ready, I did find it interesting at first, but probably got blinded by it's low pricepoint, but now I"m sure it's not the camera for me. To have a decent workable solution in controlled shoots I guess you need to add at least the cameracost again in accessories.

Somehow I missed this a couple of days back. It looks like the reason for delay is defective glass cover for the imager chip, that resulted in dirty images. Here is text of post at Black Magic Forum from Black Magic official:

"Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:18 am

Hi,

I wanted to give everyone an update on where we are with Blackmagic CinemaCamera shipments.

As you know, we have been dealing with a supplier delay which has stalled our ability to build cameras. I thought it might be a good idea to explain in more detail what is going on, and do a technical "brain dump" on the problem so everyone understands the nature of the delay and what we have been doing about it.

Over a month ago now, we completed the testing of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and started production. Very quickly we started to see cameras failing our production testing as they suffered from blemishes on the sensor. These are high end cameras so need to be built to a very high specification.

We started testing to discover the cause of the problem and discovered that the problems were from our second shipment of sensors. The first shipment of sensors were fine. All the cameras you currently see people using had been built from this first batch of sensors and that is why we did not see any issues until we started to build cameras in volume.

While investigating the problem our engineers found the blemishes were in the glass that covers the sensor, and not the sensor itself. This is good because the glass might just be dirty so we saw this as a quick fix, but wondered how a supplier could deliver us sensors that had blemishes, as they are supposed to pre test them.

It is worth noting here what this glass does. Each sensor has a glass cover to keep contamination off the surface of the sensor itself, which is essentially a large semiconductor. If the surface ever got dirty, it would be impossible to clean, however the glass is easy to clean. All sensors have this glass cover. It is a high quality glass with optical coatings, similar to lens glass.

Anyway getting back to the issue, when talking with the supplier, it turned out they had a bug in their test software that tested sensors after the glass had been applied. That's why they shipped us bad sensors and did not notice. They fixed that problem and could then see the problems we saw and stopped production as about 95% of sensors were suffering this problem with the glass.

The next step for the supplier was for them to work out the cause of the blemishes on the glass. They developed tests for the glass before being bonded to the sensor, and discovered it contained the blemishes on the glass before being used in the suppliers factory. After more testing over the last few weeks, the supplier has discovered the blemishes are caused by a contamination from the packing materials used by the glass supplier to ship the glass to the sensor supplier.

So that's where we are at now. The supplier is due to get more glass later this week and then hopes to start up production again using new clean glass that will result in good quality sensors that we can use to start building cameras again.

We build our cameras in our own factory on a production line built for the camera so we can start shipping cameras again the day we receive good sensors.

I deeply apologize for the delay in shipping and it has been very frustrating for us as well to be sitting on a completed and tested product for a month that we cannot sell. Especially when people need them urgently.

As you can also see from the breakdown of the problem above, there has been multiple stages of testing to discover the cause of the problem so it has been hard to lock down dates or what was going on until now, so its been hard to update everyone on the exact details.

I hope this update helps people understand the delay. We should know more details about shipping times once the new glass arrives at our supplier.

We also have a new software update v1.1 for the camera due in a few days. The original v1 software did not have DNxHD support so thats now been added, as well as support for lens stabilizers and a bunch of other small features.


Regards,

Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design"

I still have confidence and desparately would like to have it in my hands. There is no doubt that Black Magic is learning about the camera production business and probably not announcing something until it is ready to shipi, but there is no hit on the basic product, in my mind.

There are some well shot BMD camera reviews and clips that can be downloaded at Vimeo. Way better than anything I've seen from any DSLR. I own Sony EX1 & Canon 5D mark3. IMHO neither come close to BMD camera in terms of image quality.

A Week With The BMC (1080P) on Vimeo

Comparing the Cinema Camera & 5D Mk III on Vimeo

I'm testing the BMC since quite a while now.
Since we have the 1.1 firmware, most of the quirks are eliminated now and I feel confident to shoot my first documentary on it, starting next week.

The picture quality she delivers is excellent. Once you shot with 13 stops of raw, it's almost impossible to go back to something else.

Just saying..

Frank

I get that delays are annoying. I get that it doesn't give great confidence. But Black Magic is bringing a camera with 13-stops dynamic range RAW and HDSDI out, Thunderbolt into a price range no one has seen before.

I'm not going to buy it, as we have a Scarlet at work, but that's just very impressive. RED also had delays when they started. It happens when you do something for the first time. It happens when you do stuff no one has done before. I think Black Magic is as annoyed as you are about delays and problems.

There are drawbacks to the camera from what I've read (battery and form factor being one of the biggest), but it seems Black Magic is doing a lot of things awfully well with their first release.
The company is listening to users to make the product, to make it better. Has anyone forget that they bought a 200.000 dollar piece of software, and made it available for 1000 dollars + a free version that has a LOT of features of the full version? Of which they recently released a new version with better UI, 64bit support and a lot of other professional features?

I think they deserve some credit for what they are trying to do. Have you seen the footage of this camera? It's very nice, especially considering the price point (did I mention you also get a DaVinci Resolve license included?).

DSLR's often had more limitations than this camera AND a lesser flexible format and image quality, still they were (and are) used on higher end sets also. If those were used on sets, I'm sure the Black Magic camera will finds it's way too.

My confidence in Black Magic is based on other products I have used from them too.

Looking forward to the day things start moving.

As someone who has a significant investment in BlackMagic Design products on the converter, monitoring and live switching front, one thing I CAN tell you is that most of their stuff never QUITE leaves permanent Beta status...

I expect the same from the cinema camera...

Remind you of another small form factor ciné camera manufacturer that SERIOUSLY pushed the boundaries of what to expect at a cost figure? (hint: their name is a colour...)

It's another tool in the arsenal. Don't think I'd trust it on anything mission critical for the first while but I'll soon have access to one through my buddy Dylan Couper, a moderator here on DVInfo, who runs a rental house out of Vancouver (you may see them listed in the sponsors/approved vendors box at the bottom of DVInfo from time to time)

The Scarlet didn't ship working quite right either.

$3k is pretty aggressive.

Screw that, it borders on revolutionary, even if the sensor is smaller than I would like...

Fan boy? HARDLY. But I have to acknowledge a manufacturer that is putting it out there as aggressively as BMD is.

They have changed the marketplace tremendously, especially from the position of a guy who has been doing this for a while...

Like it? Buy it/rent it/borrow it.

Don't like it? Don't.

Haven't tried it? Don't make assumptions. RAW workflow doesn't really work for the majority of my projects (I have access to a Scarlet quite easily) but again, another tool IF I should need it.

After 14 years, I've become format agnostic. This is just one more format available to us.

Thus endeth the sermon.

Having tested the BMC since quite a while now, I’m musing about the different options of post workflow. There are different ways to skin the cat in the moment, and – as usual – all of them have their pros and cons. Speed, convenience, storage space, quality and the balance of those are only some of the decisions you have to make. So here are my thoughts so far:

Post workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera Frank Glencairn (http://frankglencairn.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/post-workflow-for-the-blackmagic-cinema-camera/)

And here is a Dynamic Range Stress Test

Blackmagic Camera Dynamic Range Stress Tests - YouTube (http://youtu.be/_DKQQCSVx0w)

The latest on the Black Magic shipping wars is this post by company in the Forum:




Grant Petty

Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am

Camera Shipping Update: 10/19

PostFri Oct 19, 2012 10:36 am
Hi,

I was going to do an update today, but I still have not quite got the latest info I need to update everyone accurately. However what I do know is there is a small amount of cameras shipping again, but its slow because some of the testing software needed to qualify sensors before they ship to us was completed later than we expected. However things are starting to move. I hope to have more info next week.

The supplier is quite upbeat though and expects a lot more sensors next week to ship so that is good.

Sorry I cannot provide more accurate info, but I hope to get more details soon and then will update everyone.


Grant

This is latest update from Grant Petty at Black Magic Design:


Grant Petty

Posts: 27
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am

Camera Shipping Update: 10/29

PostMon Oct 29, 2012 1:35 pm

We are going to give an update in a few days, however we are shipping cameras, but less than we want to be. We are trying to get more schedule information from the supplier and will have an update once they can give us some numbers. We are only getting sensors in small batches, but they are working to improve speed. So we are shipping cameras, but just need to get it faster.

Will have more news soon.


Regards,

Grant

Here is the latest on the chip issue from Black Magic's Grant Petty:



Grant Petty

Blackmagic Design


Camera Shipping Update: 11/7

PostWed Nov 07, 2012 11:46 pm
Hi,

I have another update on the camera shipments.

First a bit of a background in the issue.

As I have explained in earlier posts, we have been dealing with an issue from our sensor supplier where the glass that covers the front of the sensor has been contaminated and they have been working on that issue. They realized they had a contamination issue that turned out to be caused by the packaging of the glass was shipped to their factory and so that contaminated glass was used on the sensors and sent to us.

Now there were a few fundamental problems with this. Firstly we should never have received parts that had contaminated glass. It turned out their quality control software at the sensor company was poorly designed. Secondly it had taken them months to work out what was going on and to get new packaging to ship the glass to the factory mounting it on the sensors. It's been months.

However a few weeks ago things were looking good and the supplier got glass that was clean, they updated their test software to correctly test the sensors and could start shipping sensors to us again.

Now as I mentioned last week, the problem is while we did start getting sensors that passed our quality control when used in building our cameras, a lot of sensors did not pass. This was confusing because the sensor’s supplier was supposed to have fixed their test software and had new clean glass.

Working out what was going wrong is what we have been busy doing over the last week. It's going to get a little technical here, however I think everyone wants to know what’s going on, instead of platitudes.

In our frustration over still getting sensors that would not pass our quality check, we decided to move in and completely audit the sensor supplier’s process in detail using our engineers. We wanted to fully understand what was going on.

We wanted to know how the supplier could the fix to get clean glass not be working 100% and how could the sensor supplier still let bad parts through their quality control process and ship them to us, in the belief that they were "good" parts? This was very confusing. I mean, fixing the contaminated glass should have been a quick simple job so how could they still not get it right after months of work?

What we found when investigating their processes was quite surprising. Of course we had known the original problem with their quality control checks was their test software had not been modified for color sensors. In the past their sensors were used for scientific use and used in black and white. Also their glass was never used as other customers bonded the lens optics onto the sensor itself. In our case we use the sensor in a conventional way and the customers change lenses. We need the glass on the sensor like all other cameras do.

Also, they had never built a camera using the sensor they make for us. We are the only camera that’s used this sensor and glass combination. It's like designing and building cars but no one at the company has every driven one.

So it turns out their quality process is really only good at testing the semiconductor die. It's no good at testing the quality of the overall sensor product with the glass in front. This meant they could not even see the problems we were seeing, so that’s why we were getting bad parts. We sent them the information on how to build our test setup and yesterday they started testing using it. Now they are seeing the same quality problems we are seeing. This is good as it means we should not get any more bad sensors.

The problem left is that out of a test batch of 30 sensors, only 4 worked well enough so we can build cameras using them. This is bad. So while the good news is they can now see the same problems we see, the question is why is there still contamination on the glass.

The reason is the contaminated glass issue in many ways distracted them from the problems their manufacturer is having bonding the glass to the sensor itself. The sensor supplier now has two sources of glass, and both of them are showing the same problems. The parts without glass are ok, and the problems appear when the glass is bonded to the sensor. If the glass is clean then it's really the company bonding on the glass that are introducing contamination.

Now the amazing part is that the first batch of sensors we got that we used for developing the camera and that were fine when we started production were manufactured by a completely different company to the second and subsequent batches of sensors. I could not believe this news when I heard it today as it explains a lot.

Our current understanding is that the company that has been bonding on the glass is crap and they have been contaminating the glass when bonding it. Because the sensor suppliers test process was also bad, it meant that no one really knew what was going on and it's been weeks and weeks of confusion.

The sensor supplier is getting some new sensors made at the original supplier, which we should get test data back on late this week. Once we see this we will know if the original supplier can make the parts without contamination and so we can start building cameras again. I don't know why they changed glass bonding companies.

I am sorry this is a really long way of explaining what’s going on. It's a complex issue and the only way to explain what’s going on is to actually explain what’s going on in detail. It's been hard to update at times because there has been so much confusion at times about these issues and if they have been fixed or not. We don't know until we build a bunch of cameras.

What has really shocked me is how long it has taken our sensor supplier to fix this. They have been very bad at moving quickly and really thinking about what's going wrong. If we had not moved in with our engineers, they still would have no idea what was going on. It's taken months and driven us crazy with frustration.

So the current plan is to get some sensors from the original glass bonding company and based on their upgraded testing we should know more at the end of the week if we are going to get a good supply of sensors starting to ship using that new company.

I will let you all know later this week or early next when we get some of these sensors to build cameras with and will know if we can start production full speed again.

Lastly, please take it easy on our PR folks. They want more regular updates and it’s me personally that are stopping that, because I don't want to do fluff updates that don't say anything and I don't want to lie to people.

Of course PR people want to do regular updates, but each stage in solving this problem has taken our supplier more than a week or so of work before we hear anything new, and then often we get more questions, not answers. It’s been frustrating, but our PR guys are only trying to help. There is some really crazy stuff being said, but at this point can only provide the info to you as we get it.

Sorry for the long update but I am just brain dumping the situation as it is today so you know what’s going on. I hope it helps.


Regards,

Grant Petty

I just checked the shipping thread over at Black Magic, and nothing of any significance is being reported. There was some indication that sensors were starting to come in clean to the factory, but nothing more has been said there.

Getting old!
Ordered in April after NAB from B&H and still nothing going on.
Seems like they are spreading the low volume of available units around to get the "buzz" going.
But it is getting real old man. Nothing but speculation reported.

Seems like Black Magic has come to a resolution of their suppliers situation. This post made at Black Magic Forum on the 14th of December:





Grant Petty

Blackmagic Design
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am



Camera Shipping Update: 12/14


Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:55 pm

Hi,

Ok good news everyone as the test run of sensors have just been built into cameras and they look good. Very good. So we have just given the sensor supplier the go ahead to commence volume production of the sensors and we hope to start getting them within the next week to start building cameras. How many cameras? I am not sure, as we have all stopped production and so we all need to restart production and see how many they can produce. However we will be working hard to build as many cameras as possible over the next few weeks.

I hope people start to see more cameras shipping, but it might be a good idea if I post another update early January to update everyone on how production is progressing.

As for the micro four thirds model, it's ready to go, however the problem is I feel until we are shipping a whole bunch of EF model cameras, there is little point building any of the MFT model. So we will ship as many as we can and then perhaps see where we are mid Jan and do a few MFT models then.

It is sure a relief seeing this problem coming to a close. I cannot believe this happened and it's been an incredibly frustrating delay. However I am feeling really positive now.


Regards,

Grant
Blackmagic Design

could someone explain to me the minutes per gigabyte that this camera consumes at its highest resolution and MPS?

could someone explain to me the minutes per gigabyte that this camera consumes at its highest resolution and MPS?

When shooting Raw, each frame is around 5MB. I worked up some data for Raw vs ProRes HQ at various shoot times:

Raw
5MB per frame
7GB per minute
140GB for 20 minutes

ProRes HQ
220Mbps
27.5MB/s
1.6GB per minute
32.2GB for 20 minutes

Can prores be imported to Premiere CS6 on PC?

Yes, CS6 handles ProRes nicely on the PC. Just need to have the free QuickTime installed and you will have the codecs.

Note that on the PC, there is no ProRes export option in CS6 (there is a convoluted way using third-party software hacks to create a ProRes file from a PC, but is not a simple task). But playback/editing is fine.

Thanks

When shooting Raw, each frame is around 5MB. I worked up some data for Raw vs ProRes HQ at various shoot times:

Raw
5MB per frame
7GB per minute
140GB for 20 minutes

ProRes HQ
220Mbps
27.5MB/s
1.6GB per minute
32.2GB for 20 minutes

thank you sir! I intend to use this information to purchase a solid-state drive for my laptop. My thinking is when my laptop reaches the end of its service life, I want to be able to pull out the solid-state drive and use it as media in one of these cameras. I plan on getting one of the newer units that are pretty fast such as Kingston HyperX 3K SH103S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III .

Delivery is now pending for me. Looking forward to the new challenges.

Chris: I would encourage you to mount one of the "offending" lenses as soon as possible to see if you need to send your right back for the well documented "infinity focus" issue, before TOO many are right back in the system... I've been able to replicate on a number of lenses already.

Supposedly, latest shipping ones are already recalibrated. Hope that is the case. My only EF lenses are the 18-55 Kit lens that came with the Canon T21, and the 28-80 mm Utrasonic I bought on EBay, just to say I shot autofocus on the 5D Mark II. Most of glass iI intend to use are old Nikon's and Pentax lenses with adapters and with out automated setting. I am curious to see how they will fare with the camera. Any one shooting that old glass yet ?

I use a lot of my old Nikon glass on the BMC with a cheap (35 bucks) Chinese adapter from ebay, Same goes for my vintage (1960s) medium format Zeiss primes (Pentacon Six) - they look amazing on the BMC.

Some of my favorite glass is two Vivitar Series one zooms though- from the first batch, that where still made by Kino Precession. They are a PITA to work with, since they are pumpgun style zooms, so it takes a real man to handle them, but the image they give is awesome.

Frank

I received by Black Magic Camera last week from Omega Broadcast in Texas. I am seeing no issues on any of my lens combinations at this point. My first shooting was to use it in a DVInfo UWOL contest which has to do with a horizon theme, and so I have had a bit of experience shooting distant objects and trying to get focus. I have used the Canon 18-55 that came stock with my T2i, as well as several of my vintage Nikons. My first foray with the camera demonstrates that I need to learn more about shooting in film settings and taking it to a finished image. I don't doubt that I have a lot more latitude just in my limited experience, but it still takes a better understanding than I have at the moment. Taking the shots into post, I noted I tended to push my final product into the greens because I was trying to push up the grasses that were predominant in the shot. I am pretty sure that if I had some knowledge of Davinci, I probably could have resolved that (no pun intended), but I just didn't have the time to devote at the moment.