The Dark Side of the BMCC

Prepping for a lowlight (candles, oil lamps and skintone) shootout between BMC and FS100.

And yeah, I know this is cruel, but I guess a lot of you guys want to know how the BMC holds up against the official "Queen of the Night"

Thanks for working on this Frank. Since I own a GH2 and often shoot with a FS100, I'm interested to see your results with the BMCC.

Related to this: The GH2's "feature" of putting a halo around specular highlights -- regardless of the lens used -- came to light, so to speak, when "low light" tests were first performed by end users.

So this sort of test can sometimes be informative for reasons other than what one might expect. If possible, repeat each test with more than one lens and/or filter to rule-out a lens/filter issues. Have at it!

Cheers.

maybe the BMCC will become the "prince of darkness"

Sorry for the shaky footage at the FS100 part, but it started raining and I just grabbed the Fs100 and shot the rest hand held in a rush.
I used a Samyang 35mm f1.4 at f2.8 and a Heliopan IR/UV filter.

Lighting was the oil lamp on the table, a oil lamp about 8 ft away on the wall and a garden torch in the background.

Changing the ISO on raw, doesn't make any difference, it`s just metadata (that`s the reason I just used 800 ISO), but makes a difference while ProRes recording.

Of course I could have gone way higher with the ISO on the FS100, but why compare ISO 16000 to ISO 800?
Regarding the speed of the camera, the FS100 wins hands down because of way higher usable ISO. It's the queen of the night, period.
But the BMC gets a way nicer image out of 800 ISO, than the FS100.

The grading was done pretty rudimentary. If I had used masks and secondary grading, I could have get even more out of it.
But this is just to give you guys an idea, what to expect.


Here we go:

http://frankglencairn.wordpress.com/201 ... est-diary/

Edit: just saw it looks awful on Youtube. I make the file downloadable and also try Vimeo.

Oh my!! Frank great test! Can't wait to download the footage! Super excited to get my BMC !

When exposing in raw are there any concrete methods? Use of light meters or vectorscopes?  

Cheers

M.

I use the waveform and false color functions of my outboard monitor.

If you have to use the BMCC monitor, set the zebras to 100 and expose, so that they just disappear.

looks awfull both cameras...but maaaaaaaaaaan!! this is waaaaaay better from what i expectedç!!!
wow!!! just wow!!! i'm impressed with the BMCC how clean it holds it!!!!

Vimeo version -

I recommend to download the original file there.

Frank

Nice work Frank thanks for the test. Excellent results really liking the amount of detail being pull out of the shadows in the raw.

And apologise to your wife from all of us—at least it was raining over the FS100 segment!

i think it is really nice. no vertical lines as some other cameras have in low light.

thanks for the test!

Here are some of the original frames, so you can play with them: http://www.filedropper.com/voodoo

Cheers for the tests Frank and can I say I'm always blown away with what you get out of the FS100. Amazing footage that blows away a lot of the others who play with more expensive gear. I can't wait to see what you do with the BMCC once you get the hang of it.

I realy like the raw structure - pro ress is nice in terms of dynamic range but raw is more like film. Thanks for that test.