BMPCC4K and slow shutter speeds for timelapse etc..

Hi there,

I don't own BMPCC4K (yet), but I was wondering, is there an option to enable slow shutter speeds/long exposure for timelapse jobs? BMPCC has only time interval setting...

Piotr

Sorry, Piotr. The shutter angle can be set to 360 degrees, but the duration relates to one of the normal project frame rates such as 24 fps. Maybe one day they’ll try something that leaves the shutter open for a time you specify like on a stills photo camera, but since it’s a Cinema camera, that hasn’t been a priority.


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Yet, I'd consider that type of time-lapse very cinematic. Look at some of the night time-lapse in House of Cards show open as just one of probably many examples of long exposure time-lapse used in long form features.

For long exposure time lapses, it's probably easier to just use a mirrorless system camera anyway. Their batteries will last longer, they have more shutter speed options, and so on...

... but you can also just shoot timelapse with your cinema camera and use frame stacking to simulate long exposures. It's more work in post, but still doable.

Thanks! I was quite hoping for it. I usualy use 5D's magic lantern for this kind of stuff, as it gives me raw files, but 5D is heavy to carry around, especialy as a second camera, with huge lens and all. I thught, finally, the new pocket would roughly cover all my needs. Sigh...

Rick: I hope for future update. After all, many cinema cameras have a low fps option (adjusting shutter length accordingly to lens angle setting).

You can shoot a timelapse at 5 fps with 1/5 sec exposures.

Turn on Off-Speed as set your project to something standard like 25fps, and this will give you an undercranked/timelapse look. But if you need longer exposures than 1/5 sec, then your out of luck.

I use my Fijifilm X-T1 for timelapse now. The intervalometer is built into the camera's software, and it's small and light, especially compared to a Canon 5D.

Was wondering about this myself recently, since I have to shoot a few timelapses for a music video that was otherwise done on an Ursa Mini 4K. For a test I did a few days ago, I ended up using my 80D (no magic lantern or anything), which gave me full control over exposure and resulted in an 6000x4000 raw image sequence.

The only downside was that Resolve interpreted the stills as very purple and raw controls don't really work (I'm guessing it doesn't quite "speak" 80D's flavor of CR2), but after some experimenting with third party programs I decided that it's actually the easiest just to correct it completely within Resolve and retain full quality. Smart caching was invaluable here, btw, and very quickly gave me super smooth playback. Here's the result (not the final grade, but just something that made sense quickly):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1H0gkc ... UQJW13ybfe

If you have a smaller (APS-C) DSLR available, that should give you plenty to work with - and can act as a backup camera if need be. In my case it's simpler, though, since I intend to use the Pocket 4K primarily with EF lenses via a speedbooster, at least for a while.

Tristan: Thanks! That sounds great! Should be enough for most cases!
Bartek: I guess you could use Adobe DNG converter to CR2->DNG, and DVinci would then treat it as raw video.

Tristan: Thanks! That sounds great! Should be enough for most cases!
Bartek: I guess you could use Adobe DNG converter to CR2->DNG, and DVinci would then treat it as raw video.

That should work nicely. All you need is to have sequential numbers in the filenames, and Resolve will treat them like an image sequence.

I've tried converting to DNG using Adobe Bridge, but the resulting files made Resolve crash for some reason. Given that it's just 3-4 shots at the moment and I can grade out the issues, I'll probably stay with CR2 for the moment and play around more with alternatives once I have a bit more time. The important thing is that there is definitely a usable workflow.

Hi Piotr, I found this thread just now after being faced with the same issue and desire to shoot at longer exposure times. Been shooting timelapses for almost 20 years with DSLRs and had hoped the PCC4K would allow me to go MFT all the way. But alas, as great as it is during daytime, come sunset, it proves why it is still no replacement for a photo camera for timelapse shooting...although there is really no technical reason why it couldn’t be. Hope it will be at some point. Going back to folders with 8000 photos and more seems like a step back after capturing to BRAW, which is just brilliant. I can shoot all day, 10hrs, at the best BRAW quality, to inexpensive SD cards. Lots of potential there!

you can go to 5fps 360 shutter and timelapse, that gives you the longest exposure....about a fifth of a second.

yes, I saw that, thanks...but still far from what's necessary to do proper day to night timelapses, but alas...wish there was an override regarding the shutter/framerate relationship...it would make a very fine timelapse solution, this camera...the ability to capture to BRAW is priceless and unique to this camera...a paradigm shift over capturing to individual RAW files.

yes, I saw that, thanks...but still far from what's necessary to do proper day to night timelapses, but alas...wish there was an override regarding the shutter/framerate relationship...it would make a very fine timelapse solution, this camera...the ability to capture to BRAW is priceless and unique to this camera...a paradigm shift over capturing to individual RAW files.

quite right! ...and longer exposure for timelapses are quite nice indeed

Sorry, Piotr. The shutter angle can be set to 360 degrees, but the duration relates to one of the normal project frame rates such as 24 fps. Maybe one day they’ll try something that leaves the shutter open for a time you specify like on a stills photo camera, but since it’s a Cinema camera, that hasn’t been a priority.

I know I'm in my own echo chamber here, but if they should do this, some day (hopefully rather sooner than later), it would give the PCC4K a true edge over other cameras of its kind...cinematic timelapses have become not only ubiquitous in almost evry film and series of today, but also an income source for many cinematographers and photographers that license out their timelpases to such productions and beyond. As a matter of fact, UCLA paid me $1500 for just 2 seconds of a timelapse I shot with my Canon 5D mkII of a sunrise above Downtown LA, and HP magnitudes more than that to license a few of my timelapses for promotional purposes.

Being able to use the PCC4K to capture both full-motion material *and* timelapses would make it even more attractive to us cinematographers that come from photography. And as I had already mentioned, being able to capture a 6hr timelapse at one frame every 2 seconds (or 12hrs at every 4 seconds) at the best BRAW CQ0 quality to a $20 128GB SD card is, well, revolutionary. I even started experimenting with one of those $30 1TB micro-SD cards with good results...storage certainly isn't an issue anymore with this combination of technologies, while doing the same RAW quality with a DSLR would be. And having the shutter and mirror box replaced every few years is also an expense that isn't part of the PCC4K workflow; not to mention the satisfaction of knowing that I could capture 200,000 exposures in a few days without having to worry about the wear and tear (or the insane storage requirements of shooting in single-frame RAW).

Of course, I'm not gonna lie...shooting at RAW with my 5D mkII or mkIII with my Canon L lenses still looks quite a bit better than what I can do with my PCC4K and MFT glass, but for most purposes the PCC4K does what I need it to do and more than meets my clients' expectations, quality-wise.

+1 OP. I too desire long shutter speed options for time lapse. For my star videography.. e.g.30 to 50 second exposure time..a frame every minute. Etc.

+1 for this. We are waiting for this request for a long time..

There might be technical limits.
Even Red only goes up to one second, reaching 16 seconds by integrating frames over time in the camera.

Are there technical limits? If so, I'd really like to know what they are. Surely, a small-ish sensor like MFT will be much more susceptible to noise, probably, but that could potentially be dealt with in post.

I'll say it again: to get the option of doing this would be HUGE, if not to say a game-changer.

Just adding my +1 if this is technically possible...

As I have posted prior.. a big +1 request from me for this functionality.
For now I have to use my GH5 for such functionality.. I would much prefer to use my PCC4K.

Hi.

My suggestion is that Blackmagic, bends over this issue and extends the time range to at least 1fps or even longer, e.g. to 0,5", 1", 2",3" and 5" seconds. BULB mode is not so necessary but the possibility of exposure for a long time would be very helpful. In my opinion, the TIMELAPSE function is currently very limited. I hope it doesn't go beyond technical possibilities and that it could be done in next system updates.

Chris.

Any news on this "long exposure" feature for the Pocket 6K/4K? Would be superb if they can implement up to several seconds of exposure. Have some special projects coming that would really benefit. I find also that with BMD cameras you can very easy remove the IR cut filter yourself. That paired with long exposure and Dual ISO would make it perfectly

Heck I have also an old Production 4K camera that is collecting dust on the shelf. This would also work but there is no way to shoot long exposures with it. If I only find someone to modify the firmware to enable it.

with BMD cameras you can very easy remove the IR cut filter yourself.

What will that do to the image quality and/or behavior?

Yeah, I hear ya. I'd also be overjoyed if there was no limitation to the exposure time. Why not a freely adjustable exposure with a bulb mode? For me, it's become *the* go-to timelapse cam...unless I wanna shoot day to night or night to day. Wish I could take only one camera with me on my trips (well, two, counting my iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is a fine camera in its own right).

What will that do to the image quality and/or behavior?

Of course not for a normal use case. It's for a special use case when I want the IR cut filter removed for full spectrum sensitivity.

I can't find the posting now, but Kristian Lam from BMD has already stated, that it is a hardware restriction.

That's too bad, but I guess that settles it.

Found it - it was Brendan Dower, not Kristian Lam:

Hi Krzysztof,

Unfortunately, the 5fps off-speed frame rate is a hardware limitation of the cinema camera and is not something that can be changed.

When taking any long-exposure images such as what you describe here, noise is introduced into the sensor which can compromise quality. With still images, this isn't too much of an issue because DSLRs can apply time-consuming noise reduction processing on a still image. They do this by taking an additional dark photo and using that still image as a basis for this processing. This is why it takes a long time to process a long-exposure still image - it's essentially taking 2 long-exposure images. And your camera is completely unresponsive during this time.

Unfortunately, with a video device, this isn't really feasible. The video device will be continuously capturing video frames and is unable to stop the camera for time-consuming processing that is possible with still images.

Sorry if this isn't the answer you were hoping for, but I hope this helps to explain why.

Source: Brendan Dower, Blackmagic Design Developer Support

Found it - it was Brendan Dower, not Kristian Lam:

aahhh thanks! So it's not really a hardware limitation just not implemented because for for normal use case it makes no sense to do it. CMOS chips from 2008 and newer usually have dark current suppression technology built in to avoid blooming on long exposures. It's a pitty this new sensor could do so much more not cinema camera related thinking beyond boundaries.

Kristian Lam wrote in 2013:
All sensors, be it CCD or CMOS, will have a ‘blooming’ effect when during severe overexposure, the pixel is over saturated and excessive charges overflow to neighbouring pixels. It just looks different depending on the sensor type. We are not seeing this on some of our test cameras.

Some very good article about dark current suppression technology by "https://clarkvision.com"

Great post and example, Daniel!

Hardware limitation is not sensor limitation, hardware limitation, may be a combo limitation.

Anyway, dark subtraction work different in video and in photo, if a sensor was born for a task not mean are good for another. Why not ask to canon why they had so terrible rolling shutter on photo sensor? They had a very very fast readout when they is it for photo, why in video is not the same?
The answer is that hardware work in the different way.
Dark subtraction in video require a lots of processing power, more than necessary for common task.

Also Photo sensors has a limits to use them on long exposure every day, I had friends that do short stop motion and eat camera sensors every months. On manuals of every photo camera we are aware that there is a risk to do some kind of shooting in the last page.

The ability to do something and the fact that is good for a life of tool are two different fact.
Clark give excellent observation, but only about photo sensor that are good for single static picture, here we talk about motion picture, it’s subtle but important difference.

The reason that many photo camera render worst the motion and the reason that cinema camera are not optimised for single frame shooting is that both born to do a good one task.

Today we live in a world where all do all (see the smartphone) but if you buy a specialised tool (cinema camera), is to shooting motion not photo, if you can also do that is additional option, but you cannot have all option of tool born to do photo.

Ps I add this last line be cause if you googling you can find my post on my blog how to use Blackmagic Design cameras to shoot photo and do it good

Pps photo cameras are easy controllable from usb, from lanc to change value or shoot remote, things that not are builded in pocket4k, with except of hdmi by Atem mini (today), and also if you can, it’s not the best, the easy, the flexible way to do that.

I know me too that if you can have one tool instead of two is less expansive, but i have learned that often it’s better to do a small investment to have better tool instead to struggle all time to use not right tool to do the right work.
I can remove a bolt with a plier instead to use right sized wrench, but before or later I will damage bolt or break it.



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I agree Carlo, I have a Nikon Camera I use mainly for still photography and the BMD Cameras for motion work. It is a matter of picking the right tool for the job.
Cheers

Yeah, I want to use the Pocket 6K in a different manner thinking outside the box. I don't know if you are familiar with super resolution, averaging, etc. You have to take a ton of images and stack them together. With a DSLR it's not always practical.

The Pocket 4K/6K would be superb because of it's ability to shoot 4K/6K BRAW video, easy to remove IR cut filter and very good DUAL ISO and of course because I already have it. It produces already stunning images but of course it would be perfect to get a little bit more

And yes there are of course special cameras for this but honestly in this niche they're mostly overpriced and do not have all that huge usability therefore I love Blackmagic.

Mars stacked with 1000 video frames. Not mine just as an example how it works.


Jupiter


Of course it works also with different subjects.



ISS Space Station combined with 250 frames. Would love to get it in 6K


It's a little bit like CSI but it really works!

Daniel, when you stack frames like that, is it better to have individual frames as you would with CinemaDNG?

Daniel, when you stack frames like that, is it better to have individual frames as you would with CinemaDNG?

Not necessary, whatever the stacking software is compatible with. Right now Im exporting BRAW to 16Bit TIFF files because it can't read BRAW files. I also have a BMD Production 4K camera with CinemaDNG but that is collecting dust because it only does ISO 800 compared with the new Pocket 4K / 6K that literally can see in the night. Due to this whole COVID-19 lockdown I will try to tinker with the old Production 4K camera first to see what it can do nowadays

Yeah, I want to use the Pocket 6K in a different manner thinking outside the box. I don't know if you are familiar with super resolution, averaging, etc. You have to take a ton of images and stack them together. With a DSLR it's not always practical.

It's a little bit like CSI but it really works!

Yess I used my old production camera and later the pockets for shooting a lots of picture for 3d scanning and other vfx scene photogrammetry.
For many people 6k are a waste of space but if you work in vfx or (like me) you are a generalist that do many thing, 6k shooting to grab faster sequence of frame for photogrammetry it’s a god’s gift from heaven. You can color manage all together in resolve, export sequence and after few minutes or hours your 3d software give you environment where you can work.
Not only, the same color science of shooting allow you to shoot fast a clean plate that is very useful later for cleanup something that you not need.
I miss cdng with a cry that was very useful to avoid conversion tif, but ... amen... I do it.
I ask to Antoine from autokroma to add tiff exporter from its premiere / after plugin exactly for this reason.


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Thanks, Daniel. Exporting TIFFs from BRAW is a good workflow when CinemaDNG is not an option.

While researching slow shutter possibilities of BMPCC4K recently, we shot a little comparison test with a still camera (Sony a6300). 360 degreees (1/5s) shutter looks really nice, though I wish it were technically possible to extend exposure and create longer light streaks:

Thanks for that test! The 1/5 second exposure keeps everything recognizable and somewhat natural. The streaks from much longer exposures are unreal but still look good as a creative expression.

You can try a filter like S_TimeAverage by BorisFX to integrate several frames.