Blackmagic Forum

I am looking to get a BM Micro Studio Camera 4K for a wide angle archival/education recordings. We record school (k-12) performances so they can view the next day in class and critique themselves. I am having trouble picking the right lens for the camera.
Distance to focus is about 60'. Width of area is about 75' at the focus distance. Think theatre proscenium.

Was looking at a Rokinin prime lens, but not sure if 50mm lens would be good or 35mm or ??? Would be nice to be an active lens to control from an ATEM switch.

With a test, a Canon 40D with 18-135mm lens, at 18 the view is good, 20-24mm might frame the area better. I believe its a APC-C sensor and not sure of the conversions.

Any help?

Thanks

With a Micro Studio camera at 60-feet, you will need either a 10mm to get a similar AOV the 18mm on the Canon APS/C camera, a 12mm would give a little tighter framing. That said, the Micro Studio is going to need good stage lighting at that distance. The further back camera is, the less light will be reaching the camera.

A good fast 10mm lens would be the SLR Magic Hyperprime which has a working fast f/stop,of around f/1.4 to f/2, which will help, the slowest lens I would consider would be a f/2.8. If yiumcan afford it, an excellent fast wide that you can shoot wide open at f/1.4, is the new Panasonic Leica 12mm f/1.4 MFT lens, that wil work well I. Both manual and auto-exposure mode.

You do understand, you will need an external recorder, or connect the camera to a computer with a BM h.264 Pro Recorder, or something similar. The BM Micro Studio camera has a native ISO of inky 100/200.
a better camera choice might be the Micro Cinema camera, that can record internally toma SD card using ProRes 422 or LTE, and has a native ISO of 800, somit will work better in typical stage lighting situations, or typical ambient school classroom lighting.
Cheers

A better camera choice mi

Thanks for the reply. That Leica lens is nice, but might be a bit pricy for my budget. I already have a BM ATEM TV studio and portable recorder.
I would like to incorporate this static wide cam into our full production camera setup in the future, but still be able to do recordings. The plan was to place the camera up on a mess rail that will be unreachable to get cards in an out, hence why I was looking at the BM cam I mentioned.
I will narrow it down to a few 10 or 12 mm MFT's and choose from there.
Thanks again for the conversions...

OK, using a ATEM in a multi-cam setup, the Micro Studio is good. You are going to need to use external 12VDC to power the camera, and this can be used to turn the camera on/off remotely by using the main adapter. You should locate the mains (AC) power adapter close to the camera, and run a longer power caple to the adapter. When you connect power. The camera will turn on. Using the SDI return will allow you to control the camera settings via CCU (which you already know).

The Olympus 12mm f/2.0 is another excellent choice for a 12mm lens, and is the one I have and use on my Micro cameras.
Good luck

Denny have you any experience with the Olympus 40-150 F2.8? I just am not able to get it to focus remotely from the ATEM. It's a beautiful $1500 lens but is pretty useless to me without remote focus.

Any ideas?

Cheers
David

Sorry, no. I have found the earlier Panasonic Leica Four Thirds zoom with the MFT adapter does not focus with remote either. I am however considering the new Panny Leica 12-60 zoom f/2.8-4 zoom, which has a stepless iris control and would be good for video. The Panasonic f/2.8 zooms remote focus, from other test results I have read, but again, no,personal experience with them. Is the lens firmware up to sate? This was an issue with the Panny 12-35 f/2.8 zoom on BM MFT cameras. But, you need a
Olympus or Panasonic MFT camera bodybto check or update it.

However, the Panny Leica MFT primes remote focus just fine. I have the Oly 12mm, will test that today and see how it works with remote focus.
Cheers

OK, I just checked the Oly 12mm lens. It will remote focus only when the lens is in "Auto-Focus" mode, with the manual focus clutch ring pushed towards the front of the lens, hiding the focus distance scale. When the ring is pulled back to reveal the distance scale, it is in manual focus only.

The Olympus 40-150 F2.8 zoom focus works the same way, as do al, of the Oly Pro Zooms and Primes.
You need to have the focus clutch ring forward (hiding the focus distance scale), then remote focus should work.
Cheers

Thanks for the info Denny - The Mrs has just gone out with her camera and "borrowed" the lens so I'll try it as soon as she returns. Appreciate your help.

Just as a by-word I bought the panny 45-175 power zoom and instantly returned it - it was horrible - great to have the zoom but trying to focus with it was almost impossible.

Also just got the panny 45mm F1.8 - it's beautiful small(tiny) lens and worth a look at.

Waiting today for delivery of the panny 12-42mm power zoom and will see how that works out.

I've just taken delivery of another 4 micro studio 4K cameras and I'm using them with remote heads very successfully on my 1 man production jobs.

David, the best power zoom available for the Micro Studio (and Cinema) cameras is the Oly 12-50 EZ, f/3.5/6.3, when you have enough light. It is optically better than all,of thenPanny PZ zooms, which were really designed for a Panny consumer MFT still camera, not for pro video work. That said, some of the Panny PZ zooms do work fairly well for some situations.
Cheers

Thanks Denny
Yes you are right about the Oly 40-150 - it's very subtle - perhaps I should have read the manual? Really appreciate your knowledge on that.

The panny 12-42mm power zoom turned up yesterday and is much better then the 45-175PZ as you say you need a lot of light - fortunately most of my use-cases have lots of light.

I will put the Oly 12-50mm on the shopping list, get one and compare with the others.

Not having much luck this week - as well as returning the 45-175mm I also had to return a faulty Hyperdeck Mini and just testing one of the new micro studio cameras and found its SDI out isn't working, need both for a job this coming week at the Welch Open Professional Pool championships so lots to organise on Monday!

David, you are welcome. You may have jumped the gun on returning the Mini Deck, did you see Tony's response in your other thread about this? Also, try another SDI cable on that camera, it may be the cable and not the camera. I use the Canare LC series DIN to BNC cables from B&H, they are small, flexible, and works great.

Good luck with your projects.

HI Denny

I'm not confident that this was the problem with my unit I tried lots of cables - even rang BMD support and they walked through everything with me, anyway I will find out tomorrow when it is returned - may need to "eat my hat" - we'll see.

Well, that sound like a good approach David, if BM Support couldn't even help, then RMA it is!
Hope,yiumgetma working Recorder back quickly.
Cheers