Major Glitches with Pocket 4K

Hey there,

Curious if anyone has run into a similar issue. I've had this happen twice now, and it's a bit concerning.

The screen will randomly begin acting erratically, as if it's being touched randomly in different places. It'll zoom in and out, move the zoom region all around the screen, switch from timecode to recording time, etc. The screen is totally unresponsive while this is happening. If you press record, it stops recording. Even turning the camera off doesn't work—the image disappears, but the backlight stays lit. I have to pull the battery to get it to reset.

Both times this has happened I was using it in a warm (80F)/humid outdoor environment shortly after removing it from an air conditioned vehicle or building. I haven't had this issue crop up while shooting indoors, or outdoors during dry, temperate conditions. And once it acclimates, it seems to operate correctly. But this obviously isn't normal operation.

Anybody else have this issue?

Thanks,
Michael

Yes, I had this issue. I sent it to Blackmagic and they were able to reproduce this issue and did a firmware flash (different from user firmware update).

That fixed it for a while but now after a few days the problem is back. Hoping to get a replacement camera as I have other issues as well. SSD, SD and CFast cards are not recognised or they dismount randomly.

I have one from the first batches produced in September/October 2018. Occasionally I have that erratic behavior which can be fixed by switching the camera off and on. Sometimes it happend out in the cold (below zero degree Celsius), sometimes on a hot day, sometimes inside, sometimes outside. I had several hours long shootings with zero incidents and shootings where it happend twice in an hour.
I am not sure how to reproduce that behavior as it happens so seldom. Most of the time it is when in handheld mode or after fiddling with the lens - so it might be related to the lens mount

I'm having the same issue but it never happens during the acutal shooting. I had it when I was changing settings in the menu and one time when I was in the menu doing nothing but moved the lens a little bit. So I'm guessing it's either a lens mount connection issue or just a shortage in the buttons. Still thinking if I want to send this to Blackmagic.

If it's a lens mount issue it might be good to state what lens or adaptor was in use at the time of failure. I've had a wiggly metabones change iso, wb and aputure before on the old micro, would happen if the lens pins rubbed against each other.

It happend to me always with native MFT lenses like the Panasonic 12-35 f2.8 II and Olympus 12-100 f4.0.

@ Ray
I am not 100% but I think it always happend while powered by an internal genuine Canon battery or third party battery. I don't recall it happening while on V-Mount power. So that might be something to consider.

I had the same reported to me from people using my BMPCC 4K (purchased 2018-10-24) twice now.
First time
* cold, outdoor
* switching a battery helped
Second time
* indoor, warm
* cleaning screen
* switching power supply (original and 3rd party batteries and V-Mount)
* switching native MFT lenses vs Speed Booster
* switching on and off
aparently nothing was helping.

Myself I could not reproduct the issue yet.

Support ticket [Support #TDY-988-76178]

I had this issue using manual focus lenses on battery power on a BMPCC 4K that I had received in November 2018. I then used another one from around April 2019 (firmware 6.1), that never did it. Later they changed the vendor that supplies the screen. That one was incapable of using firmware 6.1 or earlier, so they cannot have 12 bit raw Cinema DNG. They use BRAW instead.

This “sounds” like a hardware issue. As in the touch screen fails, or develops an intermittent fault...

Would be a send back to BMD scenario....

JB

Hello guys !

I'm quite disheartened. The other day, I had a two day shoot for a japanese sake web commercial that I planned to shoot with my (beloved ?) BMPCC4K. The day before the shoot I tested all my camera gear of course. Everything in working order.

As I barely arrived at the shooting location the first morning, my assistant and I rigged my BMPCC4K and turned it on. A few seconds after that, the touch screen started to act on its own, completely crazy, just like there were ghost fingers touching all over the place. Or actually always at the same places causing zoom in the picture and formating menu poping as well. And then the iso also went bonkers.

I tried to power off the camera, to plug it to external power, to remove the card, the battery, everything. Nothing worked. What an adrenaline rush when you're supposed to shoot in the next minutes or so. Luckily my assistant had his own camera with him (just in case, wasn't suppose to have one). We shot with it the first morning. I went to my place during lunch break to get another camera of mine and finished the commercial with my A7S III... (I also tried to update to the latest firmware the P4K and it kept acting crazy in the same manner)

Anyway, my camera is having the exact same problem depicted in the messages above. I haven't used it much since I bought it. I think I got one of the first, if not the first camera in France, 3 years ago. The camera is in pristine condition. I only experienced a few bugs with it, one being the touch screen not responding well when the camera was on for a certain amount of time. But I just had to reboot the camera and everything was fine.

The thing is, my camera is no longer under warranty (two years in Europe). I know Blackmagic changed the touch screen on their following production batch for the P4K. My camera is useless now without the touch screen. It doesn't come from wear or misuse. Again, it's in perfect shape. I shot very few jobs with it. I know we have a thing here that extends the warranty when there's what we call a "vice caché" like a hidden defect. Before entering any tedious process (about the vice caché), I just wanted to get maybe a blackmagic employee feedback here. Or maybe a user who managed to fix this very issue. I clearly got a lemon, as a camera is not supposed to stop working all of a sudden with not even 50 hours of usage.

Thanks in advance for your insights !

You'll never get any response of Blackmagic in this forum.
Email their support.

Hi there,
I don't know if this is related or not, but my screen started to delaminate heavily and within a very short time (I guess within a week) even without usage. After a certain degree of delamination the screen stopped working in certain areas. I contacted the support center on Monday and they were very friendly and helpful. Right now the camera is on the plane back to blackmagic. We will see what happens.