Is the BMPCC series a good choice for sports videography?

One of the potential uses I was hoping to get out of the BMPCC camera is live recording of sports events, however, the lack of proper auto-focus support leaves me wary as to whether to trust it with a telephoto lens and constant zoom changes. Is it an appropriate camera for this?

What zoom are you considering and what is the closest you expect to be to your subjects? Indoor sports or outdoors (that affects your likely iris and therefore depth of field. Will your camera be supported on a tripod?

I’ve recorded lots of rugby outdoors from the sidelines and the action gets way too close and too fast to carefully focus but I’ve use primes in the 25mm to 50mm range and spin the focus ring hoping for the best. A manually focused telephoto is impossible to use well consistently when people are running across the camera frame only a 2-3 meters away.

When I’d use the Fujinon 20x7.8BRM zoom well that’s much more feasible with superior results since you have the very wide end of the lens effectively doing most of the focusing for you with the large depth of field. And the telephoto to pull in action the length of the field.

I mean, the answer is kind of in its name: Cinema Camera. Yes, you can use it to shoot sports but you can technically also use a GoPro to film movies. Not that you would.

Is it an appropriate camera for this?

No for the reason you already know, but you could.

Which BMPCC do you have? If it is the 6K, 6K G2, or 6K pro, you can use this cheap combo and shoot at a deep focal length like f/22 or smaller in a bright day outdoors so you won’t have much focus issue.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _6_is.html
AND
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265237144592?e ... BMxMD4jOZh

This will not work on a BMPCC OG or 4K even with a metabone speed booster.

You can in theory use what ever camera and lens but the ideal would be using ENG style parfocal lens with servo zoom.

You can in theory use what ever camera and lens but the ideal would be using ENG style parfocal lens with servo zoom.

This.