Blackmagic 4K quick test / review

[Adam Myhi]

Peter,

 

I shot the video at the top of this thread and also graded it. I work as a colorist and understand the color science of the camera.

 

The footage was graded to put a reasonable amount of contrast back and to center the white balance somewhat.

My initial impression was that the on-camera whitebalance wasn't as strong/accurate as it needs to be, as I used a very familiar light which I've balanced to many times and know the temperature of, yet my footage came out surprisingly warm.

It's a great ISO 400 camera for the price, that's for sure, but I'd love to see the overexposure/clipping issue get fixed and I can't see why people would put money down until the RAW support is released. Card capacity and the ability to delete files is also a major drawback - perhaps firmware updates can address those things as well.. I hope so. If they can address those things they sure have a winner at that price.

[Phil Rhodes]

There isn't really on-camera white balance; you're limited to selecting a colour temperature and evaluating the results on whatever display you have to hand (which may simply be what's on the back of the camera). Lack of auto white balance (by which I mean "aim it at something white and hit a button", not automatic tracking white balance wherein it makes a continuous estimate) is a bit of a letdown that I failed to mention when I wrote it up. I did find that the 3200K made tungsten halogen incandescent look unaccountably warm, but it may have been a fault with the lighting.

 

I certainly wouldn't buy it in this state. Depending on the audio provision and rolling shutter situation, GH4 may be a better bet, and more flexible.

 

P

[Adam Myhi]

Yes Phil, exactly. I set the camera to the color temp of the light - done that before with other cameras and it's come out pretty white. With the 4K it was much warmer than I was expecting. Not a huge deal with RAW, but with the prores 422, I was adding a lot of blue to balance it out, and it's still warm..

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

On a related note, FYI: "CaptainHook" has created custom Lookup Tables (LUTs) for the BMPC-4K, for use in the Davinci Resolve software included with the camera. See:

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19731