BMPC vs Alexa

mainstreetprod

mainstreetprod

Veteran
On another board someone posted an interesting comparison - a 4K BMPC with a 50mm Samyang compared to an Alexa with an expensive Angenieux lens. Results are not as strikingly different as you might think.

 
Very close! Although the color is clearly different. Definitely getting more reds out of the Blackmagic than the ARRI.

I'm impressed.
 
I was certainly impressed but even more with the Alexa. It's the closest image to a photograph we can get today. Highlights are just incredible. But for comparing image to price ratio it definitely makes you think.
 
If you dare look back... seeing what these small affordable cameras can produce, one can almost laugh at what they though was ok 20 years ago.

90210 is being re-run here in Denmark all the time, back to the earliest episodes and it looks god awful! :) But apparently that was good enough for tv...... so, I think we can "manage" with something like blackmagic products.
 
Sorry that is a dumb test - nice controlled lighting - honestly my FS100 would sit against those shots.

Turn the talent so their back is to the window or at least place a dedo spot on the background and then the men camera splits from the boy cameras.

Of course with planning one can shoot a movie to 10 stops but it is slow (waiting for the light) or expensive (lighting)

S
 
Even on the freeze frame I could tell which one was the Alexa and it is quite clear that it is far better in the Vimeo.

As others have said pretty much most cameras would show reasonable results on such a test but what they look like after post and going through the transmission chain or on a big 40 foot screen is another matter.

But the real point in what you create with it, you could make a film on anything but still engage and entertain your audience.
 
I would have loved to see a comparison of the original BMCC vs the Alexa as I'm not a super huge fan of the BMPC4k Skin tones. though I must admit I didn't hate them in this comparison.
 
Ever had the experience of shooting behind the scenes with a iPhone on a really beautiful set and thinking well this camera is really amazing?:))
Where you start to see the worth of Alexa is when the conditions are not ideal. The bmpcc at 10 or 11 stops of range will perform very well within lighting conditions that fall within what it can handle. Ie. Profile the camera and shoot to it's strengths. Where things start to go south is when a weaker camera that performed well in a controlled lighting test is thrown into a feature that stresses the camera beyond its capabilities.
 
yeah I saw that they had used one in Mad Max and honestly in theatre I couldn't tell the difference.

My curiosity doesn't fall within highlight handling, noise, etc. I want to see how skin tones compare between the BMCC & Alexa. From my take, this comparison wasn't which camera could hold up under less-than-ideal conditions, it was showing how good they look under controlled conditions. And that's what I care about.
 
Less actually. The original has 13 stops and the 4K has 12 stops due to it's global shutter.
 
Has anyone measured the dynamic range of real-world scenes? I have. I keep getting about 11 stops, at most. That's someone in a black shirt under a tree, with someone in a white shirt out in the sun. Clearly you can get more by having the mid-day sun itself in the picture, but most scenes are 11 or less. An overcast day is 6 or 7 stops.

This flies in the face of what you might guess, because footage from cameras with 13 or 14 stops looks like it has wider dynamic range than cameras with only 11 or 12. But I measured it again and again and again.

So why do they look better? I think it's because the cameras with more stops also happen to shoot RAW or ProRes, and apparently shooters are better than manufacturers at grading footage. Proof of that can be seen by comparing a stock Canon 5D to one with Magic Lantern installed. Here is footage from a camera with only 11.7 stops:


(This video was shot before Magic Lantern released the mode that mixes ISOs for wide dynamic range. This footage is using the camera's normal dynamic range, 11.7 stops.)

I agree, however, that the lighting in this thread's first post is tightly controlled, and I believe when comparing cameras the tests should be extreme. I've looked at a lot of footage from the Blackmagic Pocket, though, and it has never looked bad in its dynamic range handling, unless it was obviously screwed up by the user's grading.
 
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