Posting this on behalf of a friend who joined 3 days ago but is awaiting approval. He is on his 2nd camera and is anxious to get the noise issue resolved:
These are my findings considering the “censor streaking/blooming” issue of the Bmcc6K FF.
The first camera I received had very noticable streaking/ “banding” (its not actual banding) in low light situations at ISO 200-1000, and less noticable from 1250 and up, but still there, even with a lut I could see it flickering in the deep shadows. Yes I was pushing the sensor, a lot of purple in false color, but with the pocket 4K (and other cams) this never resulted in this type of streaking. The images from the Bmcc6K were basically unusable.
A link to some quick shots I did to test:
https://vimeo.com/881413582/44ea5776ae?share=copyFirst LOG, then with lut but lifted exposure a little bit to make it clear after compression. Note: Even without lifting I could see the flickering bands with the lut applied.
I returned this first camera since I was convinced it was a faulty sensor (since pocket 4k was fine). The new camera arrived today, but unfortunately it suffers from the same issue, although the second ISO stage (1250-up) is a little bit cleaner, and made it barely usable. So there is that.
To summarise:
- heavy streaks or flickering bands in image when underexposed.
- It was most affected by light hitting the lens from the side or off center.
- Blocking this light affected the streaks (disappear).
- Lens cap on or complete dark results in no streaks. Slight FPN but not an issue.
- MOD focus also softened the streaks a little bit.
I do think it’s strange that some people seem to imply that this is normal en users just shouldn’t underexpose the sensor (even when they’re not underexposing heavily). I think this is a bad excuse and ignores the fact that there is in fact an issue with the sensor. I’ve shot many things with many cameras, and never have I seen something as “extreme” as this while underexposing an image. And you should be able to underexpose parts, or even most of the frame without it ruining the image.
Besides this issue, I think the image is really nice. But what I want to know, is if this issue can be fixed or mitigated by a future firmware update. This will be a deciding factor for me to keeping the cam or not.
If anyone can offer an answer to this, or speculate the options, it would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Stefan van Diest
stefanvandiest.com