Savannah Miller wrote:I'm not sure if I remember correctly but wasn't the original BMCC a EF mount only camera before it was MFT?
Yes.
BMD were very nervous about how their camera would be received. You also have to remember how much of a secret it was. It wasn't like they'd been doing focus groups and market research. This was a toe in the water to see if they could do something. I had a special disguise that was made for the prototype body I had that covered the camera so you couldn't really tell what it was.
BMD did a great job of surprising everyone. No one saw it coming.
Conceptually they saw that the 5D was very popular with film makers and they wanted to one up the crappy 8 bit 264 Codec that everyone was struggling with.
MFT was added as a quick fix to those wanting to adapt other lenses and PL mount but this was only added just in time for IBC in September.
Savannah Miller wrote: It was an odd choice but EF being more popular back then, that's probably why the did it. So once they added an MFT mount, they probably didn't change the sensor glass. Since it didn't cause huge problems they likely reused the sensor glass for the BMPCC as it's a smaller cut of the same sensor.
This new camera is a 100% dedicated micro 4/3 camera so they might go with thicker glass.
I really don't understand the talk of the sensor glass thickness.
No other MFT maker has the same thickness sensor stack / glass, some may some may not have OLPF's too. Does it affect pictures from native optics to do so ?
The ONLY ones complaining about the sensor glass thickness is the guy that designs speedboosters.
Has anyone ever seen a thread about MFT mount lenses not working optically on a Blackmagic camera ? Aside from the early days of the FFD issue (nothing to do with cover glass) I'm going to save you some searching and say that no one ever found cause to complain about the problems of the BMD sensor glass thickness until Speedbooster's came along.
Maybe there is a difference. But if there is, no one's ever spotted in usage yet !
The whole point of the speedbooster is to add an extra optical element to the original lens design.
You don't get something for nothing here by the way. Lot's of issues can happen with speedboosters, like not being flat across the field (focus) and significant degradation at the edges of the image.
A different sensor glass thickness means they can't recycle their existing optomised optical formula and have to make a custom version to suit Blackmagic cameras.
As I understand, the thinner cover glass means that speedbooster lenses that are faster than T2.8 have more issues at the edges. They can adjust for that difference, they just don't want to have to make a new optical design with the associated costs of doing so.
Brian posts here occasionally and he may care to step forward and explain it, but I believes it's a pretty big gross misrepresentation to infer the 'non standard" cover glass as being a giant issue.
Can anyone point out issues to do with the thin cover glass on their native MFT mount lenses ?
JB
(And by the way, MFT sensor glass is much thicker generally than those used on larger format cameras like a 5D. BMD's glass thickness is closer to that of larger format stills cameras.)