
BlackMagic 2.5K Cinema Camera with 12bit RAW for $3000  - salimmadjd
http://www.eoshd.com/content/7927/the-downfall-of-the-big-guys-just-began-blackmagic-2-5k-cinema-camera-with-12bit-raw-for-3000
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kitcar
While this stuff gets me excited, it never ceases to amaze me how indie movie
producers/direction keeping thinking it is the price of technology that is
preventing them from creating an oscar-worthy film.

As a proportion of overall budget, Labour is a much higher cost than equipment
in film products. The cameras could be given away for free and it would STILL
be difficult / expensive to produce a good movie, because what you really need
more than anything is high caliber people (writers/actors/DoP/etc...)!

~~~
gcb
Heh, living in LA i can say the cheaper part is talent.

Half the recordings i see in the neighborhood are huge budget series. The
other half is a small production where everyone is working for film credit and
lousy catering lunch.

~~~
GoodIntentions
ok, asking from total ignorance here - I know 0 about the film industry and
live 1000s of miles from LA, but sorta curious.

Isn't there a minimum scale for wages required for any film? Or is it only if
the film somehow becomes a "union" job?

~~~
gcb
when you are a BIG studio, and want to hire the best guys, they will only work
if the union allows. and for the union to allow your production has to use
professionals from all other unions (guilds).

And that reciprocates so many jobs that everyone i know pays (or are making
ends-meet to pay) the union (most are something like 5k for actors, 20k for
photo, per year).

But, small indie movies, just shoot for a couple days and nobody has any pay.
They usually gets people with little experience via email chain and facebook
noise.

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weego
Is it really 'disruption' when someone just starts selling a new product at a
lower price than higher overall spec competitors?

No negative feeling towards the product, I just have an intense dislike of the
current use of the word 'disruption'.

~~~
omershapira
The "disruption" is the promise to get 12-bit RAW out of it for this cheap. It
isn't necessarily disruptive (RED cameras are still competitively priced,
considering the budgets of productions that could harness what RAW has to
offer), but it's an interesting promise. Then again - just because it's RAW,
doesn't mean that it's divine. Before a raw signal becomes a RAW file, it
still has to go through a Wavelet/DCT compressor and might end up not being
very useful. RED cameras have between 1:3 and 1:18 Wavelet compression. It's
RAW, so nothing is pixelated, but you can't argue with entropy, and trying to
only gets you more noise.

In other words, RAW could be a buzzword, Blackmagic are new to sensors, this
might be a big hoax, but having a perfect track record with Blackmagic
products so far, I'd consider switching, which is sort of what you're looking
for when you say 'disruptive'.

~~~
erichocean
The RAW capture is uncompressed (unlike RED), and further, you can also choose
to encode 10 bit 4:2:2 1080p in ProRes or DNxHD.

This cameras is going to sell tens of thousands of units, which in the cinema
world, is a huge amount. I think RED has sold just north of 10,000 cameras in
the last 6 years. This could easily double or triple that.

I own a 5K 16-bit RAW cinema camera (the Red Epic) and I'll be picking one up
as a B or C cam. I expect many other people will as well, if only because it
includes the full version of DaVinci Resolve 9 (normally $1K) and UltraScope
(normally $700). It's almost like getting the camera for free, since I'd buy
the other stuff anyway.

~~~
omershapira
Oh wow. Forget my graduate studies, I'm buying two.

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illumen
This company has been making pro digital video hardware for years. So I'd
expect it's a high quality product.

<http://www.blackmagic-design.com/>

Go Melbourne! It has quite a scene of small high tech video companies.

~~~
sirn
I've been using their low-end product for a while (Intensity); both their
hardware and software so far has been solid, especially considering the price.

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omershapira
The thing to remember is that no matter how good the output format (and this
one is quite good), the biggest problem with these cameras is still the
CMOS/CCD. RED cameras have a notoriously noisy output, and I've been cursing a
Canon 5D for weeks now because I couldn't get a decent grade without taking
care of banding. The other thing is the dynamic range (again, sensor only),
which is still a setback for most cameras. DSLRs have pushed the boundary
there, but it still feels experimental working with them.

This doesn't mean this isn't impressive, but cameras are something I'd like to
put under a microscope (er, vectorscope?), before putting any of my precious
creations at stake.

~~~
beagle3
You're probably already aware, but if not: Magic Lantern alternative firmware
for the 5D makes it much much nicer for making videos. In the right hands
(which are not mine ...) I've seen it make low-light video results much, much
better.

~~~
omershapira
Haven't tried it yet, unfortunately. Not being your own DP has some
disadvantages too...

If you've seen any low-light footage with with manageable noise on it (forget
manageable, just make it pretty) shot with Magic Lantern, I'd love to know
about it.

~~~
beagle3
<http://vimeo.com/6602274>

This movie is from Trammell Hudson, the guy who created Magic Lantern. He
doesn't mention that Magic Lantern had anything to do with the low light
performance, so I assume the performance is plain 5DII - however, features
from Magic Lantern can help you get the focus, exposure etc much better than
stock firmware. (I am sure, however, he used ML when taking this video)

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fsckin
Source: [http://www.blackmagic-
design.com/products/blackmagiccinemaca...](http://www.blackmagic-
design.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/)

I've used their Intensity Pro and Intensity Shuttle for capturing 1080p/60
HDMI (gaming consoles) and those are the cats meow for under $250. Nothing
else comes close for the price.

I can only assume this will be similar. Nice job guys.

~~~
rdl
I love the intensity extreme with a MacBook Air. They make really good
hardware -- just sometimes slips in general availability by many months.

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protomyth
I don't think this is going to be a game changer, but it think it will be a
success. It competes against the Canon 5D mk III. It will do well because of
the RAW which Canon seems to be unable / unwilling to put in anything but the
new C500. The main problem is the sensor size. It is not FF35 or even S35.
This bucks the current trend. Black Magic is well known for its hardware and
bought into software nicely, but this is their first camera.

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salimmadjd
Actual footage from camera along with more details:
[http://blog.planet5d.com/2012/04/new-video-from-the-black-
ma...](http://blog.planet5d.com/2012/04/new-video-from-the-black-magic-camera-
surfaces/)

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mark_l_watson
This is a great price point. I have similar functionality with an external
Samurai SSD recording box and a Sony EX1, but this product is much, much less
expensive, and being self contained would be more convenient.

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swah
When I read they filmed a House finale all with a Canon 5D MkII, I thought was
pretty cool.

What are the differences of using something like the MkII vs something like
this (for folks that don't know anything about movies)?

~~~
excuse-me
Resolution (and image quality) wise - none really

The big reason for using a 5D in house is both it's size compared to a movie
camera - you can get in to closer shots. But mainly it has a larger sensor -
most movie cameras (film and digital) have a sensor half the size of a 35mm
frame so movie lenses are effectively 1.5x as 'long' as you are used to on a
SLR camera.

By using a full frame 35mm camera (Canon 5D) the lenses become wider angle
than on a movie camera and you get a much smaller depth of field (for the same
aperture) which lets you create shots that isolate a persons face in close up.

It's a little surprising that this camera didn't have the APS-C/super35 sensor
size used in most movie cameras - that would mean that a lot of standard
lenses would work as expected.

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Keyframe
Even though it is not PL mount and that camera is a tiny fraction of budget in
a movie production I'm looking forward to see this one myself. I wonder how
are they managing heat issues in that body size.

~~~
latch
I don't know anything about movie production, but are camera costs really "a
tiny fraction of budget" for indie film makers?

Also, doesn't think make movie production more accessible?

Isn't this similar to < $1K DSLRs? Sure, the cost of a camera might be nothing
to National Geographic, but for everyone else [interested in photography]
they've had a pretty big impact.

~~~
chc
If you can't make do with a cheap camera, you probably will want good lighting
and sound (or else the expensive camera is literally wasted), and that is
indeed much costlier than the camera in my experience.

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nirvana
When it comes to cinema, optical fundamentals are the most important for
getting high production value from an indie budget. That means lenses of
course, but this is a camera we're talking about, which means sensor size has
a huge impact. Compare the size of this camera's sensor (About micro-4/3s) to
APS-C and Full frame 35mm. It is about 1/4th the size of a full frame sensor.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlaid_ins...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlaid_inside.svg)

A larger sensor allows for better low light images with less noise. It also
allows for significantly more control over depth of field (and it is this
control that distinguishes "cinema" from "video" in people's minds to a great
degree.)

You can buy HD (2k) shooting cameras with full frames from Canon for about
this price. You can buy APS-C 2k cameras from Sony for 1/3 the price (leaving
more money for nice lenses). The NEX-7 seems to be a pretty ideal choice, in
fact.

Sure, these cameras don't shoot RAW, but then, you don't really need RAW. RED
made RAW popular with their no compromises approach and that's very nice, if
you have the money, but notice that RED didn't compromise on their sensors,
and actually has (or is promising, you never know with RED) very large
sensors. 24mbps HD is more than sufficient for indie filmmakers in most cases.
Granted, I think a 48mbps compressed stream would be about ideal. I wish Sony
and Canon would make that an option.

I think in this camera, so much went into the ability to record in RAW that to
make their price point they had to compromise on the sensor, and that's the
wrong compromise. You pull raw off of the sensor in every camera, but carrying
it all the way to the storage medium forces you to spend a lot of money on
each stage, including shipping the camera with an SSD, and naturally,
Thunderbolt then makes sense, but it too adds to the price.

At sundance I've seen movies shot on DV (an SD format) that worked as movies.
We've all seen HD movies in the cinemas- for instance Revenge of The Sith was
delivered as a 1920x817 frame- HD cut down to make a wider aspect ratio.[1]

And of course when you're working with RAW it affects the rest of your
production pipeline- you need more storage space to keep your footage, backups
get bigger, you need more bandwidth to your storage and you need a heavier CPU
to work with it, etc. The final deliverable isn't going to be RAW, its likely
to be HD (at least in many cases) and so I'd rather spend that budget on
optical quality, and in a camera that means sensor.

I do hope these guys find great success, as the japanese really could use some
good competition.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CineAlta>

\-----------------

Edit to add: I wrote the above response based on the EOSHD article, but
checking the BlackMagic website, I better understand why they made the choices
they did. I still think that if they'd gone with an APS-C sensor, or full
frame, this would be much more exciting. But now I'd weight their choice of
improved capture via raw as about equal to the impact of sensor size in image
quality.

~~~
salimmadjd
I would have loved it if they used a larger sensor. However not like canon
dslr but more like sony FS100. Canon 5d2/3 have a problem reducing all these
pixels down to HD. And it's not the sensor size but pixel pitch that impacts
S/N ratio. At 2.5K I think this camera has a better pixel density than the
canon5d2/3.

The biggest issue is DOF. Which will require fast lenses at shorter focal
length that don't readily exist yet.

