Blog Post >> Testing out the BMC

Hi Everyone,

For those that are interested, here's a blog post we put together after testing out the Blackmagic Cinema Camera all weekend on a short film.

We want to give a MASSIVE THANK YOU to John Brawley for being so supportive, and allowing us to use his baby for the weekend – and also to Cail Young and the team at Inspiration Studios for organising all the camera gear, and making sure all our post workflows were in place to handle the masses of data.

Any questions, let me know!

Best Regards, Chris!

I'm getting a lot of grain from these samples in Camera RAW. Are the images a bit underexposed?

Hi Matti,

Thanks for checking out the blog.

Yes, the images definitely have a lot of grain/noise in the images, especially in the blacks.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in the blog post - we didn't really have any time to test out the camera prior to shooting - we just rated it at 800ASA (as per Blackmagic's Recommendations), and away we went. In retrospect, we probably should have rated it at 400-500ASA, and brought up the light levels given the Tungsten only lighting (with the exception of the shots in the kitchen, which were all lit naturally). The camera seems to perform a lot better in Daylight than with Tungsten only lighting.

However, although the grain/noise is definitely there - it's not a deal breaker. As we said, we haven't done any proper tests in regards to grading the footage yet, but it will be interesting to how we go once we put the DNGs into Resolve.

Also, keep in mind we were working with a pre-release camera - so the image processing may be improved with later camera builds.

Best Regards, Chris!

Thanks for the quick answer!

How did you light the dining table scene?

Anyways, it's looking good apart from the grain. I'm looking forward to a project like yours! Did you use the very same camera that John used in Afterglow? I didn't notice that much grain, so i guess he went 400-500ASA and maybe exposed the image more?

How did you light the dining table scene?

From memory I think we just had two Lowel Tota's bouncing off the roof, with black wrap acting as barn doors.

Did you use the very same camera that John used in Afterglow? I didn't notice that much grain, so i guess he went 400-500ASA and maybe exposed the image more?

Yes, we were using John's camera - which he very kindly loaned to the guys at Inspiration Studios.

Our footage DEFINITELY has a lot more grain/noise than the Afterglow footage. Even John's footage shot at 1600ASA looks less noisy than ours, which is interesting. We rated the camera at 800ASA the whole shoot - which in retrospect was probably a bad idea - I think 800 isn't a good exposure point on this camera, especially when you're shooting low-light situations with only tungsten sources. That said - I'm not a cinematographer or camera operator, so take my advice with a grain of salt!

Chris, could you upload a few seconds of the dining scene, or closeup of a men or woman ( dng )? The grain is there, but the question realy is, how it looks on motion.

I'm trying to find a best way to deal with raw, i have a lot of experiance in still photography, and some with red footage. I find the BMCC raw is more like older photo camera raws than mk2 mk3 stuff. Adobe raw is quite smart and even without using NR you can minimize the grain ( it is still there but it's less "noisy"). I want to check my old tricks and share the results on this forum.

Cheers.

Chris, could you upload a few seconds of the dining scene, or closeup of a men or woman ( dng )? The grain is there, but the question realy is, how it looks on motion.

The plan was always to upload some footage for people to play with - but to be honest, because the footage we captured is quite noisy and grainy - I feel a little bad distributing it, because it's not really an accurate representation of just how good the camera actually is.

When you compare our footage to the Afterglow shots - the difference is INCREDIBLE, despite the fact that it's EXACTLY the same camera, and in most cases, we used very similar lenses. Lighting, the location and art direction all play a massive role in the final result too - the Afterglow location was very colourful and vibrant, whereas ours was white and bland (because that's what the story called for).

Even though I feel our blog post is very useful, and it highlights some really important things to think about - I'm not sure that sharing the footage will be of any real help in evaluating the camera. I think you're probably better off waiting until other people around the world get their hands on the shipping camera, and can shoot some footage that more accurately represents what the camera is capable of.

Original -




Same grade -




The camera has not like the dark.
But you can work even with this!

Chris, could you upload a few seconds of the dining scene, or closeup of a men or woman ( dng )? The grain is there, but the question realy is, how it looks on motion.

The plan was always to upload some footage for people to play with - but to be honest, because the footage we captured is quite noisy and grainy - I feel a little bad distributing it, because it's not really an accurate representation of just how good the camera actually is.

I'm really far from judge the camera on the basis of a number of shots available on the internet. But I'd like to see how the camera behaves in different situations and how to deal with it. If you do not want to share files due to the large grain, maybe you can sent in to me these "dng" and I'd tested it at home and share with you the results. Then we wonder whether it is worth to share them online.

No worries Piotr - I'll upload some shots over the weekend so that you can have a proper play.

Aleksandr - thanks for sharing your grade! Here's some really quick 30sec tests I did in Photoshop. Keep in mind however, that I'm not a colourist or cinematographer!