First Blackmagic 4K footage

Oh this is awful. The camera is getting its admittedly limited dynamic range by combining at least two different exposures. Without this trick, I guess the DR would be even less. I could see the artifacts clearly, for instance, when I paused the wide shot of the crowd crossing a street. People have three or four feet!

I think this really is the CMOSIS sensor, which has three different modes to stretch its native 10 stops of DR. Blackmagic claims 12 stops, so maybe it has stuck it one of its modes. Samuel H tested the CMOSIS sensor and talks about its modes here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?299568-Question-about-RED-s-HDRx-why-don-t-people-use-it

I'm all about global shutter, because I'm a big fan of what you might call "motion purity" (in the same way others are fans of high resolution or high color, which I don't appreciate as much) but this defeats the purpose. The Digital Bolex is looking better and better.
 
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combatentropy said:
Oh this is awful. The camera is getting its admittedly limited dynamic range by combining at least two different exposures. Without this trick, I guess the DR would be even less. I could see the artifacts clearly, for instance, when I paused the wide shot of the crowd crossing a street. People have three or four feet!

I think this really is the CMOSIS sensor, which has three different modes to stretch its native 10 stops of DR. Blackmagic claims 12 stops, so maybe it has stuck it one of its modes. Samuel H tested the CMOSIS sensor and talks about its modes here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?299568-Question-about-RED-s-HDRx-why-don-t-people-use-it

I'm all about global shutter, because I'm a big fan of what you might call "motion purity" (in the same way others are fans of high resolution or high color, which I don't appreciate as much) but this defeats the purpose. The Digital Bolex is looking better and better.
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Are you sure the motion's not something the uploader had a part in and it's definitely a dual exposure mode?

I mean, one-hundred percent positive?
 
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Here's a still from the actual 4K file, untouched, from the moment you mentioned:

actualshot.jpg


There's nothing wrong with the motion of the camera. Whatever happened, it happened in post.

About the DR: consider that this is someone's grade, not necessarily the optimal grade. There's a lot more information in those clouds and the dark areas than it lets on, especially when you watch the 4K.

I just want to help clear the misinformation before it gets going... lets allow some more material to show up, maybe, before jumping too far. xD
 
I apologize to all for freaking out. I don't remember ever seeing such transcoding errors in other videos, but neither do I see motion artifacts in this original frame.
 
The motion issue I would expect from this sensor is as follows: you have regular motion blur in the midtones and shadows, but highlights have the Saving Private Ryan stacatto effect. And the definition of "highlights" here is quite broad (i.e. it goes well into the midtones), because without the HDR mode the sensor has 5 or 6 stops less DR than the one in the original BMC.
Can't watch the clips right now (limited internet access), so I can't comment on the clips other than from what you say about them.
 
If I was going to post the very first footage of my new camera I'd make sure the footage was exposed correctly and graded properly. Sure, the image has detail, but I find it hard to see past the dreadful colour and poor dynamic range. Didn't they have a spare copy of resolve floating around? And why is there no camera movement? Something's not right here...
 
It's an engineer shooting samples here. Better footage will follow soon, there are cameras in hands of better shooters right now.
 
It is frame blending (auto enabled in old versions of Premiere when framerate was not in sync with timeline rate, now manually selectable at export)
 
Samuel H said:
It's an engineer shooting samples here. Better footage will follow soon, there are cameras in hands of better shooters right now.
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I know. And that is stupid. First impressions and all that...

I wouldn't let anything out for public consumption unless I was 100% happy with it. This is just shoddy workmanship and even worse PR.
 
Samuel H said:
The motion issue I would expect from this sensor is as follows: you have regular motion blur in the midtones and shadows, but highlights have the Saving Private Ryan stacatto effect. And the definition of "highlights" here is quite broad (i.e. it goes well into the midtones), because without the HDR mode the sensor has 5 or 6 stops less DR than the one in the original BMC.
Can't watch the clips right now (limited internet access), so I can't comment on the clips other than from what you say about them.
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There isn't a motion issue....

Liam Hall said:
I know. And that is stupid. First impressions and all that...

I wouldn't let anything out for public consumption unless I was 100% happy with it. This is just shoddy workmanship and even worse PR.
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Here's Grant's actual post on their forum: Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Update

Quoted:

Hi,
I wanted to do a quick update on the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K.

As I have mentioned previously we have been working hard on redesigning part of the camera due to differences in the production sensors to what we experienced in the early camera builds, however that work is completed now and we are in final testing.

I wanted to post some clips that I personally have shot from the camera as I know people are interested in them. We have other more experienced camera operators out shooting with beta cameras now and they can post more realistic clips with lens details and other shooting information soon, however I wanted to post something now so I thought I would upload some of the clips I have shot personally.

The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is very different to our other cameras, but I personally think it's quite filmy in its look, even though it's not really a digital film camera but more of a general production camera.

This camera is not a low light camera, however I have included some clips at night so you can see that. I spent a few weeks wandering around with the camera taking some different types of shots. One shot of the jetty has some clipping in the sky to see the affect of clipping. All the shots are ProRes as I did not shoot RAW. I did notice that later when the guys did some more tests on the camera and lens that it was not shimmed correctly so I think the results could be better than this. Some of the shots have different shutter angles and I used standard still camera lenses.

The download is at:

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Camer ... _Shots.zip

Its a big file at just under 10 GB so it will take a little while to download, but these 4K files are big. Also, I know you might want to color grade these shots so I allowed some clips to be longer at up to 10 seconds for some of them. I think when working in higher resolution, being able to see the movement in the distance in these shots is quite interesting. I will be excited to see if anyone color grades these shots up nice because I am a terrible colorist!

We expect to see some of the DOP's beta testing the camera to post some professional test shots with comments on how the camera performs in a few days. I hope that gives everyone a better feel for the camera. A lot of people think this camera is a similar camera to our other cinema cameras, but it's quite different and so I think these posts will be important so people know what it's like to use.

I think people's relationship to cameras is such a personal and deeply creative connection, so I never really know what will happen with a new camera until it's used professionally. It has been really fun to get time over the last few weeks to use it myself!

Regards,
Grant
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It may not have been the best thing to do, but he does say he let areas clip in certain shots to show the camera's nature. Sounds like he's trying to get ahead of all of the confusion and tell people/show people what the camera is or is not.

The link in the first post is from someone that downloaded the footage, did their own thing to it etc. There are a lot of those videos on Vimeo and YouTube with various different things done to it.

Should be some more footage and comments coming soon.
 
Having read Grant's post, I stand by what I wrote earlier. I also laughed at this ridiculous comment;

"The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is very different to our other cameras, but I personally think it's quite filmy in its look, even though it's not really a digital film camera but more of a general production camera."

Do these people think we are all idiots?
 
...yeah,.as Kholi said there is no motion issue. What it looks like is whoever rendered the Vimeo upload rushed it and forgot to "Disable Re-sample." That's the reason for the weird motion, Look at the original. dON'T JUDGE anything OF Vimeo. >>>Go to the link Kholi provided and download the original<<

My personal issue with motion was with playback....which is choppy due to my system....not the footage itself.

EDIT: If BM folks were smarter they would have released the footage on Vimeo and YouTube themselves and not rely on others. others are going to butcher it like we've seen at the start of this thread. And we all know what first impressions are (long lasting).
 
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A general production camera?? Far from it. The C300, the F3, even the Af100 are all working "production" cameras, made for work, this thing is made to be a crash camera, a weird B-camera or some student's A-cam at best.
 
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