Tag: Raw

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.

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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.

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Thoughts on the new 2.5k RAW Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Wow! What an announcement! This new camera is very close to the old Scarlet 3k for $3000 that was promised long ago. Instead this is a $3000 camera with a built-in $1000 RAW recorder, $1000 software, $750 Canon EF mount and a $250 camera?

Of course this has opened up more questions about how the camera operates, and the lens choices possible. The sensor itself is very interesting. 13 stops DR, if true, is much higher than competing DSLRs. Doing a little searching around, there was a sensor announced in 2009 – A sCMOS sensor with very high DR with an active pixel area of 16.64×14.04mm, exactly the same as this new blackmagic camera. Another camera with an sCMOS sensor is the pco.edge, an industrial camera, but maybe a good camera to look at the datasheet for to see lower resolution high speed options that are available with this sensor. I’m not saying this sensor is in the new blackmagic camera, but it looks very similar.

 

On to camera mounts: The ideal mount for this camera would be a 4/3 mount that is adaptable to PL, B4, OCT-18/19, EF, Nikon F, PK, OM, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. From the spec sheet and website it says that is supports both EF and ZF, but only pictures of EF lenses are shown on the camera. Hopefully this will be cleared up soon. With a 4/3 mount you could use the excellent lenses designed for this sensor size already from Panasonic, Olympus and Voightlander. For now, the Ideal zoom is the Tokina 11-16 – hopefully electronic in both Canon EF and Nikon G mounts.

 

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