Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

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JoeZito

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Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostMon Aug 14, 2017 8:50 pm

Hello,

I will soon be shooting a doc about my family so instead of renting a bunch of gear, I figured I would buy a camera. I absolutely love the look of the pocket camera but wanted to know if anyone had experience with resizing the footage in edit. I'm trying to avoid spending extra for 4k and hoping the pocket camera holds up when enlarged from a medium to a close up. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Joe
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Johan Cramer

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 12:47 am

It won't hold up, since the native sensor resolution is 1080p (which, if you factor in Debayering, yields a real optical resolution of about 720p). Cropping in post should be avoided unless your delivery resolution will be SD.
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JoeZito

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 1:23 am

Thanks for the reply, Johan.
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John Paines

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 3:13 pm

Johan Cramer wrote:It won't hold up, since the native sensor resolution is 1080p (which, if you factor in Debayering, yields a real optical resolution of about 720p)


You can find resolution charts for the BMPCC here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acquisiti ... ras.html/4

The camera does appear to resolve 1080p, though you'll see artifacts in the vicinity.
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Dustin Svehlak

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 3:42 pm

I feel as though I'll get flogged for this but here goes-

As someone who shot a good portion of a documentary on the BMPCC, I would recommend looking at a different solution. I won't suggest another camera in that price range since this is a Blackmagic forum but the battery life limitations and audio limitations of the BMPCC did not adapt well for doc work.

All that said, the sections shot on the BMPCC for our film are gorgeous. Somewhat shameless plug, but the opening shot of this trailer is the BMPCC with a Canon FD 17mm lens and we used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera for A cam and the BMPCC for B cam on all of our talking head interviews

Last edited by Dustin Svehlak on Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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John Paines

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 3:46 pm

No one will flog you for pointing out that the BMPCC isn't a great or a good choice for documentary work. Reality is reality.
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Jamie LeJeune

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 4:39 pm

JoeZito wrote:Hello,

I will soon be shooting a doc about my family so instead of renting a bunch of gear, I figured I would buy a camera. I absolutely love the look of the pocket camera but wanted to know if anyone had experience with resizing the footage in edit. I'm trying to avoid spending extra for 4k and hoping the pocket camera holds up when enlarged from a medium to a close up. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Joe

If your doc is mainly composed of faces, medium shots and close ups, and you won't be doing any push ins or extractions on the image before your upscale to 4K, you'll be fine. Using good lenses, holding focus, keeping your camera steady, making sure you don't underexpose the image (BMD sensors need light!), color grading with care, and using a high quality algorithm for the upscale, will make far more difference to the end result than simply grabbing a different camera just because it is "4K".
If, on the other hand, you want extremely detailed wide shots (like some of the eye popping wides captured on IMAX in the recently released Dunkirk), you will need a camera that resolves more detail than the pocket. I don't mean you necessarily need a 4K recording camera, just a camera setup, even one that is "only" HD, that is able to generate more perceived resolution than the pocket which can suffer from aliasing in certain situations.

I've shot and graded a ton of footage from BMCC, and I own both the Pocket camera and the 4.6K Ursa Mini and to me the biggest difference in the images isn't the resolution I see on screen, instead it's the dynamic range and color quality I can get out of them. On the Ursa Mini 4.6K even when I'm cropping the sensor at 1920x1080 to capture 120fps, the dynamic range and color of the images are definitely better than the BMCC and Pocket. In other words, I don't think resolution should be your biggest concern. If you like the dynamic range and color you are getting from the Pocket, you will be happy with your final results, even once upscaled to 4K.

This recent demo by Steve Yedlin is long but worth watching from beginning to end because he illustrates in great detail how at normal viewing distances there is no visible difference in the perceived resolution between a high quality 2K source image upscaled to 4K versus a 6K source image downscaled to 4K:
http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/
www.cinedocs.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4601572/
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Denny Smith

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Re: Pocket Camera Resize for Doc

PostTue Aug 15, 2017 5:42 pm

I agree with Jamie. But since you are just shooting your family, a smaller camera might just fit the bill. A step up from the Pocket camera is the Micro Cinema camera, with a monitor like the SmallHD Focus, which gives improved battery life, standard HDMI out, faster shutter read out times, reducing RS artifacts, and 60fps in the shutter, for some simple slow motion shots. The Micro also has an improved video processor, but uses the same sensor as the Pocket camera.
Cheers
Denny Smith
SHA Productions

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