First RAW Blackmagic Cinema Camera Footage

With the release of the first RAW footage of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera we can start to take a good look at footage that the camera will record natively. At first glance it looks like an Alexa with a 2.3 crop sensor. If you look closer, you will see it only has one flaw: A tiny bit of aliasing and moire. This is not as bad of a problem as it is on other cameras since we can fix this mostly in realtime with debayering settings and chroma blur.

Here’s an example:

Certainly for me the moire is a non issue, and since were dealing with raw footage, there will surely be better fixes to come along. All in all the RAW footage released yesterday shows that the BMC camera is unmatched by most cameras under 15k and provides and image quality that can be graded and changed with as much flexibility as a Red camera.

Wishlist for Blackmagic Digital Cinema RAW camera

 

1. Make the mount extender detachable.

 

Right now the Canon EF/Nikon ZF mount sits past 40mm from the sensor. I know I went over this in my last post, but by reducing this distance to NEX or 4/3 20mm distance, a whole range of lens options open up. Lens options that work better with the 15.6mm wide sensor (2.1x 35mm FF crop)

 

2. Allow for line skipped higher framerate modes.

 

Cameras like the new FS700 change the sampling of the sensor to allow higher framerates. For instance, at 240fps you see a decrease in vertical resolution over the 120fps and slower modes. Certainly there may be limitations with the onboard cpu that might make this impossible, but if it is, people will gladly take a small resolution hit to get 60fps, or even 48fps like the Scarlet X at 3k. At the same time, it is also important, even without higher framerates, to have ramping options available  in camera from 1-30fps.

3. Timelapse mode.

 

It certainly hasn’t been mentioned yet as far as I can tell, but a RAW timelapse mode would be incredibly useful for this camera. Settings for variable slow speed frame rates as well as long duration shutter exposures would be equally useful.

 

4. RGB Histogram.

 

Monitoring the image/exposure should be done exactly as Red does it. They’ve perfected the RGB histogram and it is essential for RAW cinema applications. Shutter should also allow for settings in shutter angle as well as further synchroscan settings for shooting monitors and other equipment.