New Blackmagic Camera July 16th?

[Tom Roper]

I don’t think it’s IR pollution. You can see the same purple hair in the videos John Brawley shot.

[Tom Roper]

To be fair, I see some green/cyan hues to some of the R5 footage. It’s hard to know what’s responsible, the cameras or the lut/grades.

[Grug]

12K URSA Mini Pro VS 8K Canon R5 VS 6K C500 MKII:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGvfbJXZkk

I don't know what they were thinking shooting the Ursa at 12:1 (where the C500ii shoots 3:1), it also appears they've added digital sharpening as well, which skews things considerably too. Putting so much effort into these tests, and then compromising the results from the get-go is a real shame.

The moire from the Ursa 12k seems just as problematic as ever for Blackmagic (and it'll prevent me considering it for anything, at least until there's a third-party option for it).

[davedv]

Well, the whole down sample thing is somewhat murky waters, usually people want a 2K final image to originate from a 3K sensor, and 4K from 5.2-6K to deal with the de-bayering quality loss. However since this one doesn't de-bayer, it probably has another set of "best practice" downsampling. I.e. maybe the 4K ProRes version is sharper and have better pixel quality than the 4K raw, my thinking being that the 4K ProRes might originate from 12K downsample or 8K downsample to get basically perfect RGB-values, but a 4K will not be able to create "perfect" RGB-values in 4K but closer to 2K (since it is just using less pixels from the start, at least if doing faster framerates). Also, seems like their compression ratio might bugged as of now, in the video above they talked about 12 to 1 compression in 4K on the 12K camera was creating sub-par quality, and one had to choose at least 5 to 1 in 4K to get good quality (whereas in 12K and 8K the 12 to 1 ratio created completely fine IQ).

I myself ain't that interested in 12K, but the ability to maybe shoot anamorphic in good 4K or 8K is very aluring.

Note that given the sensor readout times of the URSA Mini 12K, it seems like the camera only does a full readout of all the sensor pixels when shooting in 12K: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread...post1986842959

When recording in 8K it seems to be doing some kind of pixel binning or other on-sensor scaling approach, as the sensor readout times are much faster than in 12K. The 8K and 4K (full field-of-view) recording modes both have the same sensor readout times, which probably suggests that an 8K sensor readout is done in both cases, with in-camera downscaling to get to 4K.

From the video it seems that it is possible to shoot in 4K RAW on the URSA Mini 12K without a sensor crop. But assuming this involves some downscaling of a higher resolution sensor readout, is this really RAW any longer? Anyway, it's possible that this downscaled RAW (however that is constructed) is part of what led to the RAW compression ratio issues when shooting 4K. It would be interesting to know if the 6K or 4K sensor crop modes share the same problems.

[Tom Roper]

It was a remote shoot, four hours from Toronto and civilisation.
JB

4 hours away from Toronto and any civilization would be Chicago.

[DLD]

4 hours away from Toronto and any civilization would be Chicago.

Like he said, "away from civilization".

[James0b57]

North Bay.

No active Covid for 50 days before we shot.

No good coffee. Luckily I travel with an espresso machine these days it wasn’t really so un-civilised.

JB

Traveling with an espresso machine. 4 BM12K bodies, and 2 Alexa Mini's as unused backups. A crew with departments. Starting to sound like civilization. haha.

[Joshua Cadmium]

We also had two Alexa Minis as a back up. We didn’t even use them once.

Well that is certainly telling as to the performance of the camera.

Have you done any direct comparisons between the two in terms of color fidelity and dynamic range? And what is your general feeling between the two? Would you shoot the 12K again for a feature, or would you go the Arri route? I know you said you were blown away, but I wasn't sure if that meant 12K going forward no matter what.

Did you have any issues with IR or moire? If Rawlite came out with a OLPF would you get it - do you think it needs one?

I'm glad to hear that a bubble approach worked for your crew. Also helps to have an espresso machine if you're trying to avoid dealing with the public, right? (:

[ahalpert]

Thanks for the thorough assessment, JB! All very interesting...

What lenses did you use, if you dont mind me asking?

Do you think BM can/will address some of the ease-of-use issues you mentioned? I assume you give them feedback?

Glad the shoot went well - do you know where/when it will be shown?

[Grug]

Moire...

It’s weird. I mean iv’e shot a LOT with the camera in various forms. I’ve shot resolution charts (which I’ve posted) and there’s no colour moire. And yet as soon as a few users get a cameras they’re triggering moire.

I don’t get it. Maybe it’s the way I shoot or the post process, but it’s not been a show stopper so far, and in theory, it’s less of an issue than on the G2 because the resolution is higher so the threshold / trigger point is much finer....therefore less likely.

So for me, hasn’t been a problem. But I’ve seen it appear in others work where I’ve not had issue isn’t he same situation...sooooo...dunno.

This I find really interesting. I've heard (both over the years, and now with 12k) multiple people express that moire simply hasn't been an issue for them with the Blackmagics. And yet, it's managed to kick my arse on the original BMC, on the original Pocket Cinema Camera, and on the Ursa and Pocket 4k. To the point that I'm simply not willing to shoot on them unless they've had the third party OLPFs installed (and even then, I'll still demand detailed wardrobe tests - for me it's always been clothes that have caused the biggest problems).

I really do wonder what it could be that separates people's shooting styles enough to prevent it becoming an issue for some people and not for others.