Pieces. A new selection of footage.

[AndrewDeme]

Pixel Peepers help develop technology, not content.....all good stuff but seriously different goals.

One of my all time favourites vids to watch is Martine Scorsese's film (Shine a Light) of the Rolling Stones at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

Had the pleasure of seeing Brian Ferry play there and think Scorsese captures the mood perfectly.....with really subtle cuts.

I own the iTunes version of the vid and AirPlay it to my TV and am yet to hear a single person comment on the depth of field, dynamic range, moire, chunky compression etc......

And to think this is something I play repetitively, where most scenes we see once, for a split second and never again.

Digital Cameras have attracted a whole new market of technologists, who are cool....knowledgeable, skilled but absolutely not representative of the market for content.

[Willian Aleman]

While I don't discount the idea that some are more sensitive to temporal / rolling shutter issues, is it really "always interfering with the story" ?

Personally, I don't think so.

I think, as image makers, we have a much lighter threshold or tolerance for things like this. Most of Joe Public probably doesn't go "hey what's with all the rolling shutter - I want my money back"

jb

Thanks John for your prompt response and insides of the camera to this community.

Probably, in some sectors of film making and audience, "jello" is starting to become an integral acceptable part of the film-story as the "hiss" in audio tape and the LP became part of the media at some point, which is still used today more as a effect-reminiscence of the era than as part of the media itself.

My question is: As a cinematographer, would you recommend or use the BMC camera to a director or producer for an action sequence in a film?

[razz16mm]

Pixel Peepers help develop technology, not content.....all good stuff but seriously different goals.

Digital Cameras have attracted a whole new market of technologists, who are cool....knowledgeable, skilled but absolutely not representative of the market for content.

Image is content, this is a visual medium. We pixel peep and worry about the performance of our cameras so we can make appropriate creative choices about the images we make.

The audience may not know why they react to content in a particular way from a technical standpoint, but to say their impression of a film is not affected by the visual choices of the cinematographer is false. Image quality that does not adequately serve the subject matter does negatively affect audience response.

[Willian Aleman]

The audience may not know why they react to content in a particular way from a technical standpoint, but to say their impression of a film is not affected by the visual choices of the cinematographer is false. Image quality that does not adequately serve the subject matter does negatively affect audience response.

I really couldn't say this better. Thanks!

[Willian Aleman]

Looks like Digital Bolex would be the camera for you.

Thanks for information.

[Joe Giambrone]

I have yet to see any rolling shutter OR noise from this camera. Not sure what the nitpickers are all in a huff about. I'm too busy comparing the beautiful rolling off highlights that look like film (which also has "imperfections" called "grain").

Granted, I haven't seen anyone whipping the camera ll over the place or holding it while riding a bucking bronco. In that case, maybe the CCD chip Bolex might be a good idea. But people have been looking at smeared slow-shutter motion blur on film for over a century, and no one complains (except maybe Peter Jackson and James Cameron). So I'm not worried at all about the level of "skew" allegedly there from the BMC camera. I like stable shots with jibs, tripods and steadicams. I actually don't like actual handheld footage at all. To me, cinema is controlled and fluid, not jerky and wobbly. As this is a cinema camera, I have no problem at all with this. The Red and Alexa are also CMOS cameras with skew issues, if you jerk them around fast enough. This one costs 1/12th the price of an Epic and 1/20th the cost of the Alexa. The value is beyond debate.

[awbacon]

I think "pixel peeping", or finding the flaws in any camera you own, is useful for one single reason, and that is KNOWING your equipment. A good DP / Camera Operator will know exactly how to get the image they want / need out of the camera they have. Part of getting the best results is understanding the limitations of the equipment you are using.

If the bmc has some rolling shutter, it's best to find out how bad / how miniscule it may be, so that if it's something you actively want to avoid capturing in your image, you can base your images around minimizing instances where rolling shutter might occur.

Or perhaps, as has been said, rolling shutter isn't a concern for the story you are telling and the images you are presenting. If that is the case, then awesome! I for one don't have much of an issue with rolling shutter in my current work, but if I was still shooting action sports films (heavy panning required) rolling shutter would be a much larger concern for me.

Point being is that any camera can achieve amazing results, and the images coming out of the bmc @ $3000 are incredible to my eye. It's all about how you use your equipment. I still have a Nikon D90 body, and while I never use it anymore (Except for timelapses controlled via laptop) it can still get nice images if you treat it well / work around its severe limitations

But like I said, knowing how to "break" your camera means you know how to avoid its potential short comings. That's important in a way

[AndrewDeme]

No question it makes sense to make the best of what equipment you have.....all the while knowing that youtube's revenues are approaching $4B for what is mostly pretty crappy content technically but some of the best content emotionally.

Would the audience prefer higher quality, probably......would be interesting to know, where there is choice, how many click the higher quality button.

On a side note, I consider myself a pixel peeping technologist through and through, just love the stuff.

Trick for me is to spend fewer hours of my life on technical systems and solutions and more hours in my life producing content that people fall in love with.

[nyvz]

I haven't been that interested in the BMC before but the image quality and price of the camera is a little tempting as I see more footage like this. Certainly impressive for the feature-set and price range. This camera is positioned interestingly as my FS700's gamma curves leave a little to be desired, my GH2's dynamic range can be a little lacking, and my Scarlet has a somewhat large footprint and cumbersome workflow for smaller budget productions.

Overall the gamma curve and sharpness looks great from this video.

On the other hand, a couple of image issues that are indicative of the camera's limitations:

0:40 - there is a wide shot with some really serious fixed pattern noise that looks like it also had some noise reduction run on it that didn't help much besides removing color noise.
2:27 - Wide shot with a fence in the background, and the fence is almost entirely covered in aliasing artifacts, the slightly off-horizontal lines of the grey metal fence appears entirely as alternating red and blue detail

What is interesting is that those color artifacts from aliasing occur in many places in that short but it is not overly offensive because it is such fine detail, and the aliases are no more than one pixel wide in size, I've seen this in Alexa footage to some extent as well. However it would likely become very offensive very quickly if the image is cropped/panned/scanned at all.

Also, to be clear, am I right in saying it sounds like this video was not color graded at all? Direct representation of the in-camera "FILM" gamma curve?

[RyGuy]

Also, to be clear, am I right in saying it sounds like this video was not color graded at all? Direct representation of the in-camera "FILM" gamma curve?

I'm not JB, but I think that this was first passed in Resolve using only one node. So yes it was color corrected/graded. But it looks minor as far as pushing it stylistically. Only some white balance, contrast/curves and saturation to my eye.

[John Brawley]

Also, to be clear, am I right in saying it sounds like this video was not color graded at all? Direct representation of the in-camera "FILM" gamma curve?

I did a very basic "balancing grade", but didn't grade for "effect"

jb

[nyvz]

I did a very basic "balancing grade", but didn't grade for "effect"

jb

Ah ok, good to know.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the fixed pattern noise and aliasing I noticed. The FPN is particularly odd because it is very visible in only one shot and not in any other shots. Is it simply that that shot was underexposed and corrected to match, bringing out some otherwise very deeply buried pattern noise? Or is there something else special about that shot or just a camera failure during that one shot?

Other people see that strong FPN in that shot too, right? Just want to make sure I'm not crazy...

The aliasing question is always an interesting one, no OLPF means lots of detail but also extra aliasing. I usually feel like the strong OLPF of RED cameras is too much and loses too much detail that is quite noticeable at 1:1 viewing, but I recently had a shoot where aliasing on a very very fine pattern was visible even on RED and I can only imagine the problem it would have caused in a camera with no OLPF.