Tyler Purcell

When I was on vacation earlier this year, I met up with some people trying to shoot a feature film with an A7S. We spent hours talking about the camera and he showed me lots of clips of what he was able to achieve with it so far. I was unfortunately very unimpressed with the output. It shoots acceptable stills, but video was no better then a standard Canon 5DMKIII, which in my view is horrible for the price. Here is the problem and I apologize if this sounds like a rant. Still cameras need to be still cameras first, that is why they were made. The "video" capturing aspect is second to the still portion. This is very present with Sony's continuous devotion to AVCHD MPEG2 @ 50Mbps being the highest codec available for internal video capture. Sure, the camera has an uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 output, but once you hit an HDMI cable, you're stuck with Rec709 color space. All of a sudden, you've just locked in whatever signal you have and are stuck working with it through post production. This means, whatever quality the imager actually has, is lost in translation. The Blackmagic Cinema camera series, offers direct RAW capturing to solid state memory or SD card, depending on the camera. This means, even if the sensors lowlight capability isn't the best, you can still get something out of the image as everything seen will be captured if exposed properly. Latitude is what saves you in dark situations, because it will provide you with the ample color space and dynamic range to deal with fixing problems in post, where the Rec709 material, simply won't. Being heavily involved in post production, I'd rather you showed up with original camera RAW files, rather then some hacked together Rec709 media which "looks" like Raw, but doesn't contain the proper data.

Howdy Gents, I've been working with the pocket camera for almost a year now. It's been a non-stop learning process and I finally have an abundance of material to use for a demo. My goal with this video is to share a cinematographers point of view. I was tired of watching still photographers or home-video makers, review cameras designed for filmmaking. The workflow for cinema is entirely different and I have yet to see a review discuss the elements I have in this video. It's unfortunate there is a severe disconnect between the final Prores file out of DaVinci and what it looks like on Vimeo. However, only a few shots are effected, it's something I haven't quite resolved yet and with every posting I get closer and closer to a solution, but haven't yet cracked it. So mind the odd-ball random color shifts, they are invisible in my pro-res file. :shrug:

I've done a lot of Bolex shooting and ya know, as everyone else said above, these are the issues with the design. I always used wider lenses and stopped the camera down almost all the way, practically eliminating the focusing issues (though making it very difficult to see through the viewfinder). I did a whole ton of "home movie" shooting with the camera using black and white reversal stock and it worked well. My camera had a built-in spot meter and I'd simply follow the meter and adjust the exposure accordingly. Its a great little camera and sure it has little problems, but I think the key is to understand them and adapt your shooting style to go around them. If you want longer lens shots with greater depth of field in darker conditions, the camera may not be the right one for you. My favorite camera is the Arri SR. I had the snap on back battery kit and it too had a built-in meter. I'd throw over my shoulder with a strap, go out and shoot, mostly reversal, but it worked just like a video camera with no audio. I had a nice cheap-ass zoom lens which was falling apart. Shoot like ENG, zoom into the subject, get focus, zoom out and roll film. Its a great "working" camera, allows the cinematographer to be focused on shot composition rather then the technicalities of the shoot itself. I figured out how to "wear" an extra magazine on my back with a little net backpack thing and 800ft of film was always enough for a day of screwing around with the camera. When I shot more serious things, I'd borrow better glass, follow focus kit and matte box. However, those were all ancillary, great for "serious" filmmaking, but not necessary for shooting fun stuff for myself. As a side note the Arri's mirrored shutter does work better with focus, its a lot brighter, but when you stop down, it still makes the viewfinder darker. You get use to this and use the zoom-in focus tricks.

Its still a Sony… which means; you can only use Sony hardware. You're stuck in their world, with them telling you what you can and can't do. No standardization of SD card's for instance, they want you to buy all new cards from them. Good form factor, but too much money for what it is out of the box. If it had pro res and raw recording onto a generic SSD card, it would be MUCH more powerful.

Firmware 1.9.3 is out today, it includes all the updates for ALL the cameras. -VU meters -Histogram -MANY MORE shutter and calvin settings -Full Prores modes - COUNT DOWN counter! (huge unexpected bonus) Can't wait to shoot with these updates, so happy! :)

its funny how you see a movie over and over again and never see stuff.

Man, the theatrical release of Bad Boys II had Micheal Bay in the background holding a monitor in several shots. They literally didn't have enough time to paint out all the issues. Its a common problem on movies, the issues are seen, but do they have the money/time to fix them? You'd think they would for the video release though…

I played with the URSA at a local conference. It was the prototype and honestly, it wasn't very noisy at all. I thought the image looked great, very crisp and with the rec 709 output in 4k, pretty damn colorful as well. Unfortunately, the camera has three HUGE problems. - The big beautiful display is absolutely worthless. I'm so depressed having used the camera because its even worse then I predicted. Not only is it HUGE, but it prevents the camera from being hand held. Its almost impossible to find proper focus with the display as well, because even with the focus aid, you still can't see how sharp certain parts of the shot were. Plus, add some sunlight and the glare washes out the display. These are problems filmmakers encountered decades ago and solved by making something called an "eye piece", something blackmagic designs haven't quite yet figured out. So now your buying an OLED viewfinder for a grand and not using that built-in display ever. - Two channels of audio. Seriously? Two channels of audio? Seriously??!?! Yea, absolutely worthless. If you're gonna make a camera with preamps and XLR inputs, that should be a minimal of 4 channels. Two XLR's in the front of the camera for an attached mic and two XLR's in the back for your wireless mic's. This in my view is a HUGE fail for them, having used ENG cameras for more then 20 years. - Weight/shape/size. Yea, its just not a friendly camera to hold. Its heavy, but what ENG camera isn't? I'm more concerned about its over-all design and how poor it was. The URSA has a great image, 4k sensor with rock-soild global shutter which is amazing. But unfortunately, its missing the features to make it truly an outstanding camera. I hope BMD realizes this and over the years builds the proper accessories to make the URSA whole.

I just bought a set of rewinds and rolled my own from 1000foot loads OR short ends.

Ya know, I've had a lot of luck with the Kodak vision 500ASA stocks, I think they're excellent. I've shot lots of commercials in 35mm and 16mm with that stuff, as it was my go-to stock. David is right though, you've gotta almost over expose a tiny bit because if you try to bring up the blacks in post from under exposing, you just get a mess of grain. The lower ASA stocks are better for this, but honestly even the older T grain vision stocks were amazing compared to the older EXR stocks we use to get for free from productions who switched to Vision when it first hit the market. I use to shoot stuff on short ends because I couldn't afford any other way of doing it. I'll put it a different way, if your shooting outdoors in high lumen situations, go with the 200D. If you're going to be doing a lot of indoor or night shooting, go with the 500T. I've pushed Vision 1 500T two stops in processing in a pitch black scene with only a flashlight reflection in the eye of an actor and it was grainy, but the image existed! :)

I remember seeing films like The Abyss and T2 in 70mm as a kid and peeking through the projection booth window to see the huge platter spooling off the film. Heck, I even saw a few films in the 90's in 70mm, with single projection. Film requires someone to build the platter, maintain the projectors and diagnose issues when they come up. Today, digital projection is pretty much automated. All the projectionist has to do is upload the files from a hard drive into the system and type in a unlock key, pretty simple. In roughy two years, we've seen the death of film in theaters. IMAX is the only hold-out with over 200+ screens still FILM ONLY, with no intentions on doing any modifications in the future. People forget this, but 15 perf 65mm is 18k worth of resolution. Standard digital cinema is 2k and a few theaters are starting to move over to 4k, even though most of the sources are delivered in 2k still. The worst part is, film scanners are still only between 4 - 6k, so when you watch a modern IMAX film, its still only 6k resolution because its been scanned and color corrected digitally and put back to film. In contrast, standard old 4 perf 35mm is 6k. So its still way more resolution then what we're presenting in current cinema's. Its sad to see film in theaters go away, so many talented projectionists retired or forced to operate digital projectors. We've lost what separates cinema from what you can see at home. Today modern home theater projectors are excellent and 2k sources at home are right around the corner. So without seeing something special at the theater, what's the point of going? I have a feeling film will make a huge come back when hollywood runs out of ideas on how to trick people with gimmicks. They'll realize, the best gimmick of all is what they've already been doing for 100 years, they just need to advertise it better!

Yep Phil, I agree wholeheartedly. I have the same problem and its the only reason I currently don't own a zoom lens. I've been told by some reliable sources that Rokinon is going to be making not only a 50mm prime, BUT they've been developing a cinema zoom for quite sometime. Their best guess was IBC this year or NAB next year. Another solution is a PL adaptor and running some S16 glass. It has enough coverage and the pricing isn't so steep today. I was looking at Canon and Angenieux glass on ebay and the pricing wasn't too bad, around $4k for a decent zoom. I know it sounds bad, but at least it would be workable. I think the Canon ENG lenses are very good. If I recall, they have a limited aperture, like F5 or something.

I've been doing some spec stuff recently, shooting with the hopes of getting a job ya know? Here are two very different spec video's, both from my recent trip to Boston. Edited on Avid Media Composter in Pro Res 220HQ and color'd in DaVinci. Unfortunately, there are some coloring mistakes, but its a learning curve and I don't have a color calibrated monitor, so I can't really find out how things look until I throw it up on my projector or upload them and watch repeatedly. Interestingly, I didn't have a tripod for either. Both were hand held with body/lens/mic only. Thats the only way I could shoot so spontaneously and not draw too much attention to myself. Enjoy!

The problem comes from "standards" and people's expectations. Film's "standard" with its 24FPS and photochemical color grading, is something we've all come to appreciate as a given norm. Because the digital world allows for much more manipulation then the analog/photochemical world, people look to mimmic what they're use to. In this case, 24FPS, photochemical color grading, grainy "filmic" medium. As a consequence, the digital medium's seek desperately to copy what they aren't, mostly because people refuse to accept anything else. Its not about comparing numbers, its all about generating a "familiar" image, one the audience can relate to. Its not just about the imager or camera electronics, but also lighting and most importantly post production. Cameras like the Arri Alexa have broken the paradigm of digital cinema my mimicking the look of a flat 35mm negative perfectly and then in post, correcting that into an image which is acceptable by the audience. As filmmakers/cinematographers, do we accept any other format outside of a "filmic" look? How about Peter Jackson's horrible looking "The Hobbit" in 48fps? Looks like a video game, in fact it looks worse then a video game, looks like a horrible television show. How about these new 120hz TV's which make every movie look like its in fast forward?

The one critical thing about shooting 16 is to have a ultra clean and tight gate. I've had nothing but problems with worn gates on SR's. So I prefer the newer cameras because the gate, backplate and mags are practically brand new! :)

Update is working fine for me as well.

The problem with the EF lenses is that they don't have an external aperture adjustment. So you're relying on using the camera body to adjust the aperture. Also, the EF lenses generally don't have repeatable focus. Some EF lenses have major focus shifts when you even touch the lens. In terms of which camera to buy, I've used the standard body BMC and its bulky. The extra resolution isn't worth the size increase in my view. The 2.5 still doesn't have a global shutter, it doesn't have a removable battery and the screen is worthless outdoors. So basically, indoors, closed environment with electricity, it works OK. But with the pocket camera, you can fill your pockets with SD card's and batteries, that will allow you to run for hours and hours. I'd buy the pocket camera and invest on cinema glass. The results are far better then using standard DSLR EF glass.

I love my BMPCC, but costs between $2500 - $4k to build a good kit. The camera is pretty much the last thing to worry about because its back to being all about glass. I'd focus more on having a decent setup; shoulder rig, glass, matte box/follow focus, sound equipment and then camera. I did a good explanation about the differences between the pocket camera and a DSLR on my web site. http://www.welovemotocross.com/equipment-2/

Stocks are so good today, the 16 stuff just looked like grained 35mm stuff since they used longish lenses in the fishing village scenes. Its only when you get to wider shots and look at depth of field, where the 16mm use is apparent. I would have shot the whole movie on the 416, it would have made for quite an interesting look.

Great to know Jean-Louis, thanks! :)

Ohh... here is the next episode of my series... Same lenses and settings as the other episodes above. I had some white screen door effect going on with a florescent light hitting the glass at a funny angle. So I had to do some massive multi-level corrections on the interview footage. Unfortunately, on my grading monitor and editing machine, it looks great. I hope it doesn't look to bad on an uncalibrated machine! HA! Gotta love digital! :( Enjoy

Looks good Will, very cinematic! :) Are you running a shoulder mount or any stabilizing system? Only ask because the rolling shutter syndrome was pretty bad. I find that if I run the camera at any less then 45 degree angle, it has a lot of rolling shutter when hand holding. In my video above at the fire station, I ran 180 degree shutter and it was OK because I used a viewfinder adaptor that I could push the camera against my face to help stabilize. Its the one of the VERY FEW things I don't like about the BMPCC, if they put in a global shutter, it would be a MUCH more versatile camera. Anyway, looks great anyway! Good job on the color as well.

Well, I started doing some serious color grading with the camera using Apple's Color which is a very basic tool, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately, I can't use DaVinci yet because it would take an entire re-build of my editing machine, operating system and software would need to be updated. I enjoy running the older software because it allows me to run MUCH older applications and not have to re-buy new ones. Here is the most recent episode of my series, its a bit more "colorful" heh ;) The indoor stuff was shot at 180 degree shutter at 1600ASA with a 14mm wide angle lens. The outdoor stuff was shot with a 45 degree shutter and my normal 200ASA setting.

Video mode has much less dynamic range... I made a template in FCP that I throw on all my "raw" mode footage and it works great. I shot a few things with video mode and the dynamic range was so reduced, if the exposure wasn't 100% perfect it would be completely washed out, peaking in fact. The camera is absolutely not designed to be used in Video mode... kinda bothers me they even have it as an option.

This is assuming you have a crew. I do documentary work, I have zero crew. I show up with two cameras, put one on sticks and hand-hold the other. I run a shotgun attached to my camera on sticks and a wireless kit attached to my hand held camera. Audio meters would allow me to make sure what I'm getting isn't distorting because very rarely am I in a quiet enough environment to hear distortion through headphones. Yes, it would be great to do sync sound, buy a portable recorder, record with a slate to sync and make it all "professional", but thats not in the cards. I turn around projects in hours, not days, not weeks. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera has a lot of flaws, but it also is the smallest, lightest, most innocuous camera one can own. People think its a still camera and as a result, I can shoot things, go places where "video" cameras aren't allowed. Sure, for making a feature narrative film, you'll probably have a crew. Unfortunately there are a lot of us who aren't capable of making that type of complex product every day of the week. ;)