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Old May 31st, 2015, 01:24 AM   #76
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Quote:
Originally Posted by John McCully View Post
So when it comes right down to it what is it that the BMPCC brings to the table that is so special these days?
The bmpcc offers what Panasony and Canikon doesn't,
13 stops of dynamic range
Raw plus high bitrate codes
Great color
At a really low price.

Still unbeatable. If you haven't tried you won't know but once you get used to raw there is no going back to avchd, h.265 or that brittle XAV-C.

I've yet to see footage from a gh4 or Sony a7s that gets close to Blackmagic, red and so on.
Canon is decent with the c100 but the codec and DR isn't up to speed imo.
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Old June 1st, 2015, 03:38 AM   #77
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

For what it offers at the price it's hard to beat it.
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Old June 1st, 2015, 05:45 AM   #78
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

John, that was a very interesting post.
Mattias, I've seen your video online and you do say in one of them that you are not actually making film.
What am I saying this?
Well, if you're just going to have fun with a BMPCC and not really make movie, but just 2' clips, sure, you can handle to shoot raw as you film your dog. You're not really facing all the issues and headaches this cam could give you.
If you're going to shoot a low budget that last 90 minutes on screen and you choose to shoot raw, seems to me you'll need a very decent computer and around 15TB of hard drive. Do the math.
Now I've just had a brief glance at what the BMPCC can do, yes, it's great but frankly I've reached an age where I don't really care about the sky being blow out or not being able to see the cat in the shadow. Content, content, content.
I'll watch Death and the Maiden shot on VHS or an Iphone anytime, as long as Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver are still cast in it and it's still directed by Polanski. I'll watch Duel if Spielberg shoots with an Iphone.
That was shot with a GH4, and yes, Noa, this is indeed relevant to the BMPCC as we are now debating if that cam is really justified for the tiny bit of DN range it's going to bring. Most people who are not in the business of comparing cams, will, when they watch that short, bother about the story, how fun it is and won't realize anything about dynamic range. At one point a certain amount of headache should justify a big return, and I'm not sure this is the case with the BMPCC or any other BMC in the hands of 99% of the people who buy it.
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Old June 1st, 2015, 06:26 AM   #79
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

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I've reached an age where I don't really care about the sky being blow out or not being able to see the cat in the shadow. Content, content, content.
Why waste your time then talking about camera's, start your own thread about anything content related. You won't convince me I made a bad choice buying the camera, I"m sure I will have fun with it, not while shooting weddings, for that I have other camera's, including a GH4, but to waste my free time and harddrive space on raw footage from that little box with a sensor. :)

Also, that video you linked to, what I find most impressive is it was written in an hour and shot in 1,5 day, something I would not be able to do, but that's the only good part about it, the only thing I see when I start watching this is overexposed, out of focus images and bad sound and that made me stop watching after 2 minutes, this is not exactly a good example of what the gh4 can do and since I didn't feel like watching it completely the content was also not able to convince me either.
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Old June 1st, 2015, 11:15 AM   #80
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Whether I shoot in Raw or ProRes or whatever, I spend about the same amount of time grading so the only difference to me is how big an SSD I need to stuff in the BMCC (or how many .5TB SSD's). I already have several fast computers because I also do CGI and some of the renders run for a week or two on two or three machines - in fact I have my eye on a couple of used12-core MacPro's to add to the "local render farm"

Image quality is very important to me (maybe because I'm really a Large Format film stills photographer branching out into video in my waning years.) I shoot classical music performances so the "content" that I have to depend on to keep people glued to their seats is the music itself - I just have to be sure that the audio and video (in that order of course!) enhance rather than detract from the performance.

And yes, I'm crazy enough to spend hours grading footage of our cat!

Sort of way out in left field topic wise, but the only TV we watch is Japanese NHK via satellite, and they have a series running where some retired Japanese cameraman travels around the world filming cats on the street. Greece, Turkey, Italy - just cats! How he gets such great cat footage is a mystery to me. Cats on walls, under cars, on windowsills. Every time I point a camera at our cat she runs away or pounces on the camera!
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Old June 2nd, 2015, 01:34 PM   #81
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

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Originally Posted by Larry Secrest View Post
John, that was a very interesting post.
Mattias, I've seen your video online and you do say in one of them that you are not actually making film.
I've made a good living shooting/producing video, radio and TV-broadcast for the last 15 years.
Now maybe the productions with about 100 000 000 viewers world wide isn't something as fancy as "film", I still think I'm allowed to give my opinion on a forum.

And you do absolutely not have to agree with me in any way.

But please, we have never met, you have no idea about my life nor I of yours. So let's stick to what we know and give opinions based on our self, not others.
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Old June 4th, 2015, 04:09 PM   #82
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

My first more serious attempt to shoot and edit raw footage, dealing with raw in post is very timeconsuming and I"m not satisfied yet with the output as I noticed very fine aliasing, still need to find out what codec to use when I export from after effects. My workflow was to import the raw dng into after effects and colorcorrect in adobe raw, then export to canopus hqx avi and edit further in Edius, only that export to hqx avi does not seem to work very well, need to find another solution there.

My impression so far shooting with the pocketcam, it is worth shooting in raw for me, I have tried to colorcorrect prores but have a hard time getting good results, in raw however colorcorrecting is much easier but also much more timeconsuming.
The level of control is addictive, there were some very harsh shadow/highlight contrast in my video but I was able to balance that in post, something my GH4 would not allow me to achieve.

Only shooting itself is not exactly fun, I only shot for max 10 seconds per clip to save time in post when I had to render out the footage, I had a loupe with me for the screen yet I had several clips that where not in focus (I let the camera prefocus but I should have used the peaking as well on all shots)
Not being able to tilt the screen makes it impossible for me to shoot from low angles.
I only turned on the camera when I knew what to shoot, took my shot and turned the camera off, in total I managed to get 12 minutes worth of footage on one battery.
Setting exposure is a bit tricky, I used the zebra's set to 95% and just changed exposure until the zebras where gone in the image which worked well for some shots but not so well on others, this can result in getting more noise in your image, will have to experiment more on that.

This is a camera that I only will be using when I have a lot of time to setup, when there is a script so I know exactly what to shoot, when my shots are very short and for occasions where I will be dealing with shots that require a good balance between light and dark, shooting inside building with lots of backlight from windows should be easy for this camera to handle. Now I need ot find the time to figure out a better workflow :)



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Old June 4th, 2015, 05:02 PM   #83
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Well done Noa, very nice. On my screen there is a yellowish tint and it is a tad soft as one might expect. Glad that you are enjoying the process. It was definitely worth buying, eh :-)

Cheers...

John
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Old June 4th, 2015, 05:07 PM   #84
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Yeah, I did not get the color exactly right but I noticed many bmpcc clips have that yellowish tint, they all probably, just as I, don't know how to colorcorrect :D That tint should be easy to correct though in Edius but I it's not that I dislike the way it is now.

But I have to say, it's not bad for a first serious try, and that it's a bit soft, that's because we all are spoiled with 4K these days.
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Old June 4th, 2015, 05:29 PM   #85
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

I get that yellowish tint working with ProRes so it comes with the sensor, perhaps, as does the softness. I found sharpening in Vegas Pro worked just fine where it was appropriate. Clearly pin sharp is not always appropriate and I agree; 4k is something else in that regard.

I would go so far as to say for a first attempt it is more than just not bad but in fact is damn good! Lovely subject matter too.
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Old June 5th, 2015, 07:06 AM   #86
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

I had my wife take a look, she doesn't do video at all but has a canon 60d which she extensively uses for photos, I always show her my personal work and this is the first time she said the color looked weird, I"m going to have another go at it the following days to color correct so it looks more natural.
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Old June 5th, 2015, 02:59 PM   #87
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Made some changes, not directly in after effects with adobe raw but shifted the color a bit in Edius and added a bit more punch to the footage, I feel it looks better now.
I"ll go out one of the following days to shoot side by side with my gh4 so I have a better idea how big the difference can be and how much it's worth to shoot in raw, too bad I didn't have my gh4 with me at the time of this shoot, the very first shot of that lady sewing at that table it was very dark where I was standing and the window was very harsh in contrast yet I managed to balance the shadows and highlights pretty well, would like to have seen how my gh4 woud handle such a shot.
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Old June 5th, 2015, 03:08 PM   #88
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

[QUOTE I feel it looks better now.[/QUOTE]

Totally agree :-)
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Old June 6th, 2015, 03:08 PM   #89
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

I have to say it's pretty good! Good job!
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Old June 6th, 2015, 03:31 PM   #90
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Re: Bmpcc sold at 50% discount, is it still worth buying?

Nice Job, Noa.

Re Workflow:

My understanding is that RawPro4, assuming you have loaded the Cineform codec available with the GoPro Studio app, will convert raw footage to Cineform raw.

I actually have the last Cineform paid for version, but I saw Jake Seagrave indicate that Cineform's raw codec is available with the free GoPro Studio app.
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