F35 vs BMCC and BMCC 4K Today....

T

TheWakePlace.com

Well-known member
So today i got to shoot some footage with some other local filmers, and both came with their Black Magic cameras in hand - one was the new 4K Cinems Camera.

Now lets remember how old the F35 is, and that in terms of menus, ergonomics, shooting Raw etc, that this camera will continually be overlooked. I am now describing the F35 as a camera that "if i can see it with my own eyes, i can shoot it", and today was yet another demonstration of how much less i had to work to get an image out of this camera.

The 2 different BMCC units had to approach the image aquisition differently to me to get the same look. As the shooting went on, we were adjusting the cameras to get the exposure needed that suited the cleanest image for that perticular scene. Now i haven't seen any of the footage from the 2 cameras just yet, and have only looked at my own footage in Resolve quickly, and i have to say that the F35 is still the best camera that i have ever used.... with the nicest image out of the lot.

Here are some video samples from some of the stuff i shot, and then some stills below. I hope to have some comparison video very soon!



photo 1.jpgphoto 3.jpgphoto 2.jpgphoto 4.jpg
 
I look forward to seeing the results from this. Personally I expect the BMCC to beat the F35 on some technical levels - they'll probably be a cleaner picture and they might be it on DR but i gather the resolution of the F35 will hold up very well against even the 4K. I also reckon there'll be a bit of magic in the F35 picture... which is what you get from $100,000 of processing boards!

Then there's the small matter of ergonomics, ie. the F35 probably sets up quicker than a full blackmagic setup (I can certainly rig it quicker than a DSLR) and of course no silly touch screen etc...
 
I don't look at it as an either/or situation, but rather as a "good to have both" issue. Each have their strengths and use-scenarios. I'd rather put a BMCC up on a drone, crane, or slider than the F35. Truth be told, some of the best stuff I've ever shot was on a DSLR...not that it was technically superior, but it was creatively superior. However, if I'm shooting faces, the F35 wins hands-down due to color rendition.

On the BMCC, the crop gives me a brain cramp: I'm at 24mm and it's not wide enough...wtf? But, the Black Magic shoots to an internal drive RAW and ProRes, so NO external recorder with failed promises of a "popular compressed codec." :kali:

Fast motion or action=F35--forget it BMCC. Phfttttt...rolling shutter...what the heck is that?

BackToAwake, I realize you already know all of this and appreciate your diligence in all of the shooting and posting. It's good stuff...I'm just streaming my consciousness! ;)

DISCLOSURE: I don't own a BMCC..chose C100 for smallish camera and it continually surprises me at the cost:IQ ratio!
 
DSLRs/BMCCs/EPICs are all fun for "throwing up on a small crane", putting in a quadcopter or whatever but I would much rather see entry level filmmakers nail the basics before they get too fruity with shots.

I had a teacher once who asked students after they'd done a film which their favourite shot in the movie was. When they told him, he always told them to cut it out because it was always just a gratuitous shot and not necessary at all!
 
JMtheDP said:
I had a teacher once who asked students after they'd done a film which their favourite shot in the movie was. When they told him, he always told them to cut it out because it was always just a gratuitous shot and not necessary at all!
Click to expand...

This is absolutely BRILLIANT!! Love it...I have a young "rockstar" kid that works for me from time to time that's gonna have to feel that!
ROFLMAO! This made my day!
 
Personally I expect the BMCC to beat the F35 on some technical levels - they'll probably be a cleaner picture and they might be it on DR but i gather the resolution of the F35 will hold up very well against even the 4K.
Click to expand...

In my opinion from being around all the cameras yesterday, i dont see where the BMCC 'best' the F35 for several reasons, but the main one being shot set up time. I am, with my superspeeds, literally able to look at a shot and achieve mentally in 10seconds, and then set the camera up very quickly after that point. I felt that the BMCC involved too much guess work to get the same matched shot. Now this was matching the BMCC to the F35 and not the othe way around, but keeping things like skin tones at 70IRE and using my waveform, i was getting super consistant shots in a shorter time.

I am now going to describe the F35 as the most 'Human' camera out there.... and i mean that in this context: In the Hollywood Reporter Round Table with Cinematographers, one of them said "....with film i know i can use my own eyes to set the camera up. But these digital camera attempts are now making me rely on this monitor, a piece of equipment, to make sure i have my shot, and i really dont like that at all. Especially as the cameras are now able to see more than my eyes can, i don;t see what was ever wrong with film"

That quote made me first look at the F35, and unless someone has shot with one, they can not comment on the image just from the fact sheet of specs.... being an Epic, Scarlet, DSLR owner myself, the F35 is the best and most organic digital image i have shot!
 
Agreed. It's much less fiddly than other cameras. We've grown used to all of the bells and whistles (read: blinking lights and buttons) on newer cameras with a striving for technically accuracy.
However, viewers love the film look due to it's imperfections, color rendition and "organic" look. We've arrived at an era where things look so technically good, that people now want to dumb them down. This is why the "spit-on-the-lens" and polaroid looks of Instagram are so popular--as soon as we've "arrived" it's time to revisit "what we've loved."
 
As a red owner, i can get away with saying this.... but i feel there is this very strong marketing machine at work, convincing a filmmaking public that never worked with film, that high resolution is the replacement for film - along with raw. Now that is a very genralized statement, and the people over on RedUser would lynch me for that. But i find whenever a discussion come around about comparing camera, some are very quick to bring up the resolution and raw side of things. While they have their place, yes, film is anything but Raw, and the 5K capture of the F35 is right up there close to a raw film resolution. So really i feel like camera companies should have built upon something like the F35 image, rather than these other chips that have been made....

I can't quite see what sony is trying to do woth the F5 and F55, as their image i feel competes more with the Red image, than this organic beauty that they developed for the F35 :)
 
It's sales and marketing for sure...combined with a pure numbers game. Compare the amount of F55's sold to F35's. Probably 500:1 at this point. So, that's appx. $1.9M to $200K ratio.
This is partly/mostly due to a lower buy-in cost, a promise of new "shiny trinkets" coming in firmware updates and hardware adds (apparently touting ProRes with 4.x) then an up-sell for all of the add-ons at a later time.

Look at FS700: sold as a "4K ready" machine and then when 4K is ready, "Oh, sorry gonna have to pony-up another $5K for the recorder and lunacy pricing on media cards...but hey, you got 4K now."

On the "...i feel like camera companies should have built upon something like the F35 image, rather than these other chips that have been made." issue, I wonder what the actual cost is for the F35's sensor and processing vs. the F55!?

I do give Red kudos on one issue: internal recording--nothing else needed. I think Arri (and possibly BMMC) is the only one other who's figured this out. We don't want a bunch of stuff hanging off our cameras. Could we PLEASE have a camera with proper color, appropriate viewfinder, lens mounting options,and recording internally to a reasonable codec? Red sorta fulfills that list, except for the RedRAW issue and who wants to deal with a group of elitist rogues? (I sold my EpicX when I bought F35.)
 
I sold a Red when i got the F35 too....

Whats interested, and a completely different thred, but look at how many camera accessory companies there are now.... some paying a royalty to certain camera companies. There is such a huge acceoosries market its insane! What that means for cameras: less features on the cameras themselves.
 
I can tell you, unofficially, that when new a chip for the Panavision Genesis cost $600. However, to get one good enough they put nearly 600 of these chips in the bin for each one that went into a camera!!

I remember when the RED came out and a lot of people were all over it for the shallow DoF look as "instant film in a can". I was doing my last student films at the time, shooting on S16 (the only person in the class to use film). There was stuff from the RED, stuff from DSLR and my 16mm stuff. I can tell you which one had the shallowest depth of field, but it wasn't the one which looked most like film :)
 
JMtheDP, it appears that clients really like that silly-shallow DOF though. I recently lost a bid on a quite large TV spot series to someone who shot on 5D with a single zoom. Clients wanted that crazy-shallow DOF more than color, film-quality, res, etc.

Regarding Sebben's comment, I've been noticing a whole rash of TV spots that look to have ungraded or poorly graded LOG content. Will probably become the new "hip" and "creative" low-effort approach kinda like it has to be shooting shaky-cam since buying decent sticks would cut into the budgets for beard-oil and Buddy Holly glasses.
 
And in the 90s some scandinavian types made it look "hip" to shoot on DV. Didn't make DV better than 35mm.

All we do is shoot movies, we can't cure stupid.

I've lost bids to people like that as well - people who owned ONE LENS and called themselves "DoP with kit" - and then i get a call from the directors saying "uhhhh there's something weird going on and the DoP doesn't know what it is"
 
No point being jerks about people having different tastes. There is no one right way.
 
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