Black Magic PocketHD and 4K production camera

I think RAW for under 1k is amazing. Even with the crop factor it will be a lot of fun to color grade.
 
carlmart said:
I was thinking of this lens as the starting point for my Pocket:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...314040BU000_12_50mm_f_3_5_6_3_ED_M_Zuiko.html

Has anyone used or is using it?
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Haven't used it personally, but it looks like it might be a pretty good match, with a good zoom range. 12mm will still be decently wide on S16. Only issue I see is that I don't think the Olympus lenses have image stabilization built in, and that could be a real drawback if you're going to use the Pocket handheld. Something to consider.

If you could buy only one lens for the Pocket, the Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 is looking like it might be it, IMHO. It's pricy though, but is faster than the Olympus and has optical image stabilization. But to repeat, it's expensive...more $$ than the Pocket itself.
 
At $ 1,300 the Lumix is very expensive indeed! With a shorter tele reach.

As I come from film, particularly 16mm cameras like Arriflex and Eclair, and even Bolex, I am not so worried about IS. Of course it's a nice thing, but something you can get used to. Good support and tripod routines solve that.

What concerns me more is detail resolution on a large screen, particularly if you are going to go for an anamorphic ratio, and color quality, particularly aberrations. Modern lenses seem to solve the later quite well with good glass and good anti-reflection coatings.

In "my times" the lenses we used from Switar or Angenieux had very poor AR treatment and we used them anyway. Films like Woodstock were shot in 16mm with such lenses, and many others.

They were not particularly low F either. The higher sensibility of cameras like the Pocket, with high ISOs, should allow using them in almost all situations, perhaps leaving the fewer low-light situations to other lenses, perhaps primary ones. Which is what we did too in film. If Kubrick had to use a primary lens for his candle lit scenes, why shouldn't we? ;)
 
carlmart said:
At $ 1,300 the Lumix is very expensive indeed! With a shorter tele reach.

As I come from film, particularly 16mm cameras like Arriflex and Eclair, and even Bolex, I am not so worried about IS. Of course it's a nice thing, but something you can get used to. Good support and tripod routines solve that.

What concerns me more is detail resolution on a large screen, particularly if you are going to go for an anamorphic ratio, and color quality, particularly aberrations. Modern lenses seem to solve the later quite well with good glass and good anti-reflection coatings.

In "my times" the lenses we used from Switar or Angenieux had very poor AR treatment and we used them anyway. Films like Woodstock were shot in 16mm with such lenses, and many others.

They were not particularly low F either. The higher sensibility of cameras like the Pocket, with high ISOs, should allow using them in almost all situations, perhaps leaving the fewer low-light situations to other lenses, perhaps primary ones. Which is what we did too in film. If Kubrick had to use a primary lens for his candle lit scenes, why shouldn't we? ;)
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Good points. If you're going to be using tripods and such, then O.I.S. becomes unnecessary.

I think for a lot of people, I.S. enabled lenses will be highly desiriable. They say that the best camera is the one that you actually have. Being as small as it is, the BMC-Pocket is going to be a camera that you can have handy at all times. With a good pancake lens, you can litterally just keep it in your pocket and pull it out whenever you see something of interest. I imagine that most people will be using similarly and will probably gravitate toward the Lumix glass for that reason.
 
Ok, let's play lensing with the pocket BMC...

I'm not a fan of zooms, and even less, long-range zooms (that 12-50 becomes 36-150, I haven't tested it, haven't read anything, but with a 4x range and a price tag that is not five figures long, I wouldn't expect much from it; could be wrong, of course)

I would go for:
* wide angle lens: panasonic 7-14 f/4 ($950)
* normal lens: voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 ($1250)
* portrait lens: voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 ($1200)
total, $3400

or, on a smaller budget:
* wide angle lens: panasonic 7-14 f/4 ($950)
* normal lens: sigma 19mm f/2.8 ($200)
* portrait lens: sigma 30mm f/2.8 ($150)
total, $1300

The voigtlanders are so fast that you'd get shallow DoF even on the pocket BMC (they become f/2.8-FF-equivalent in terms of DoF). The sigmas, not so much (f/8-FF-equivalent in terms of DoF).
One of the biggest issues with that set would be lighting for the set: the wide-angle is 4 stops slower than the other two! If you're going to use it at all, you have to light for f/4, then put tons of ND on the voigtlander if you want shallow DoF.
An imperfect solution for this would be the olympus 12mm f/2.0: also very sharp, and 2 stops faster than the 7-14, but not really that wide on the pocket BMC.

wide-angle resolution test results here:
http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/05/wide-angle-micro-43-imatest-results
 
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Wesley Byram said:
I think for a lot of people, I.S. enabled lenses will be highly desiriable. They say that the best camera is the one that you actually have. Being as small as it is, the BMC-Pocket is going to be a camera that you can have handy at all times. With a good pancake lens, you can litterally just keep it in your pocket and pull it out whenever you see something of interest. I imagine that most people will be using similarly and will probably gravitate toward the Lumix glass for that reason.
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What you say is quite likely to happen. But I think anyone can be steady enough to use the non-OIS lens. Maybe it's time to get used to that and see how to get around it.

Very much, in my mind, as getting around rolling-shutter limitations.

What about image quality of that lens?
 
My grain of sand on what was normal in my 16 times, which should be the same for S16.

What we considered normal lens was 25mm, and the 10mm Switar our wide angle. They should correspond to 50mm and 20mm in 35mm film, which later I found not to be so.

That is because when you framed for 1.85:1 on a film camera, cropping up and below the 1.33 frame, you needed a wider lens for same picture height. And that lens was the 40mm, which became "normal" lens in film. The wide lens in general was the 28mm.

So I think, practically speaking, a 25mm lens should provide the right perspective for a "normal" lens in an S16 frame because that frame does not crop the original 1.33 of the 16mm frame. A 17.5mm lens is a bit wide in perspective, I think.

As you may know, a lens is called "normal" when it shows the same perspective the human eye has.
 
^ I didn't follow that. If you want a wider lens to frame with a 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 crop, it means you want a 14mm or 15mm instead of a 17.5mm, not a 25mm.

The crop in the pocket BMC is 2.9x, so the 7-14mm becomes a 20-40, the 17.5mm becomes a 51mm, and the 25mm becomes a 73mm.

(And yes, I meant voigtlander 17.5mm as normal lens, voigtlander 25mm as a not-really-that-long portrait lens; corrected now on post of previous page)
 
I'm not sure what the BMC Pocket crop is, but if it is an S16 frame size then the normal lens should be 25mm. Please do consider what "normal" should be.

If the ratio to be applied is 2.9, then it's not an S16 frame, it's smaller.

The S16 frame kept the same height as the 16 frame, and used the space left on the side by using one-sprocket film.

What you ended up was a 1.77 frame (16:9), which could be used for blowing up to 1.85 film with minimum crop.

The only problem in picking S16 lenses was that the center of the lens was displaced on S16 cameras, and some lenses did not cover the whole frame, vignetting with aberrations on the sides.

Also there were not that many lenses made for S16, which had limited applications for TV production and was mostly used to blow up to 35mm. The ones that were made, particularly by Zeiss, were very expensive and limited in production. So difficult to find nowadays.

What I wonder is if some 16mm lenses can be used on the BMC.
 
carlmart said:
What I wonder is if some 16mm lenses can be used on the BMC.
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Probably so, but I think John Brawley (or maybe it was a Blackmagic rep? can't remember) said that the sensor in the BMC-Pocket is actually a hair larger than true S16. That could be potentially problematic for adapting standard 16mm lenses.

Edit: Never mind. Looks like Samuel is right and the Pocket sensor is just a little smaller than S16.
 
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carlmart said:
I'm not sure what the BMC Pocket crop is, but if it is an S16 frame size then the normal lens should be 25mm. Please do consider what "normal" should be.

If the ratio to be applied is 2.9, then it's not an S16 frame, it's smaller.

The S16 frame kept the same height as the 16 frame, and used the space left on the side by using one-sprocket film.

What you ended up was a 1.77 frame (16:9), which could be used for blowing up to 1.85 film with minimum crop.

The only problem in picking S16 lenses was that the center of the lens was displaced on S16 cameras, and some lenses did not cover the whole frame, vignetting with aberrations on the sides.

Also there were not that many lenses made for S16, which had limited applications for TV production and was mostly used to blow up to 35mm. The ones that were made, particularly by Zeiss, were very expensive and limited in production. So difficult to find nowadays.

What I wonder is if some 16mm lenses can be used on the BMC.
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Ok, I get all that now.

16mm film: 10.26 x 7.49 mm
super16 film: 12.52 x 7.41 mm
pocket BMC: 12.48 x 7.02 mm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:16mm_and_super16.png
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera/techspecs

Is it possible that you're saying 25mm when it was really 15mm? that's what would become a 43mm-FF-equivalent on super16
 
Samuel H said:
Ok, I get all that now.

16mm film: 10.26 x 7.49 mm
super16 film: 12.52 x 7.41 mm
pocket BMC: 12.48 x 7.02 mm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:16mm_and_super16.png
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera/techspecs

Is it possible that you're saying 25mm when it was really 15mm? that's what would become a 43mm-FF-equivalent on super16
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In the days of 16 a 25mm was considered the "standard/normal" lens, where for 35 it was a 50mm. Whenever we did the conversions back and forth we used a 2x factor. If I was going to slate a 35/50mm shot I would stand about 5 feet from the focal plane....if I was slating 16/25mm I would still stand about 5 feet from the focal plane.
 
Yes, that I was talking about. To get the same size on frame for the same distance, you roughly split the 35mm focal length in two for 16mm film. A 50mm normal lens in 35mm film became a 25mm lens for 16mm film.

But that was for the full 1.33 frame. When you considered the 1.85 standard industry crop you really had to re-adjust that. For 35mm film the same size you got with a 40mm lens, or you had to move back to get the size with a 50mm.

Not that much in S16, which kept the same height (a hair less) as 16mm frame. So lenses values were retained, even if lens center (on cameras) had to be moved.

In fact, there might be some problems with many 16mm lenses to cover the S16 size with no aberrations.

And no, I was not confused on the 16mm lens length: the "normal" lens was the 25mm. The 16mm lens was considered wide angle, even if it was not too used, at least what we did. The 10mm Switar was much better.
 
Ok, then. My conclusion: you oldies were doing some weird stuff back in the celluloid days... :)
(because 50mm on S35 or 25mm on S16 is more telephoto than what I would consider "normal"; 50mm on APS-C, which is basically just like 50mm on S35, is my main portrait setup)
 
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