BM Micro Cinema: can it take stills too?

Hi folks,

I'm a new user, so forgive me if the answer is obvious to you.
I have done some extensive searching but was unable to find the answer.

Can the Micro Cinema also record still photos, while providing a live image on HDMI-out?
It is able to do that while recording a video? I wouldn't mind a short break in video transmission.
How do I need to set it up for it?

Thanks in advance,
WolferlM

Since it records in cDNG, you can just pull stills from the video clips. At the usual 24fps 1/48th of a second shutter isn't great at preventing motion blur in fast motion, so you might want to raise the shutter speed. You don't need to change anything else in order to pull stills from that footage if you're recording in raw.

Hi Rakesh,

Since it records in cDNG, you can just pull stills from the video clips...

Thanks for your suggestion.
I am aware of this possibiliy, but I can't use this because of 2 reasons.
i) The stills are needed for documentary use, scanning the entire video to pull some frames is not really feasible.
ii) Quality of a frame pulled out of a video is not good enough.

I am wondering...does this nice Micro Cinema camera really not offer real still shots? Hard to believe...

Cheers,
WolferlM

Well it’s purpose built as a cinema camera.
Not a mirrorless still camera able to shoot film.

But if you do need some high resolution photos nothing beats a high res still camera shooting raw.

Hi Rakesh,
ii) Quality of a frame pulled out of a video is not good enough.

Quality is good and more than enough. Here are some stills from BMMCC. Most of these examples captured with OLPF filter. For static product shoots i usually capture 10-15 frames sequence instead of single frame. This allow to use temporal noise reduction and produce even more cleaner and crisper image. It is limited to 1920x1080, but in reality it is enough for any web delivery and even for small sized prints.

Hi Rakesh,

Since it records in cDNG, you can just pull stills from the video clips...

Thanks for your suggestion.
I am aware of this possibiliy, but I can't use this because of 2 reasons.
i) The stills are needed for documentary use, scanning the entire video to pull some frames is not really feasible.
ii) Quality of a frame pulled out of a video is not good enough.

I am wondering...does this nice Micro Cinema camera really not offer real still shots? Hard to believe...

The bottom line is that if you want high quality, raw still photo captures, you have to use a dedicated stills camera or a hybrid stills/video camera.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Unfortunately, I cannot use the "10 frame method" to get a decent image from video frames, because the camera is moving constantly.
Even if the camera is fixed, I still have no means to find the correct frame which match the wanted image.

Thanks again, and have a nice weekend,
WolferlM

Thanks for your suggestion.
I am aware of this possibiliy, but I can't use this because of 2 reasons.
i) The stills are needed for documentary use, scanning the entire video to pull some frames is not really feasible.
Well, you're going to be scanning the whole thing in order to edit it, so I don't see how that could be true.

ii) Quality of a frame pulled out of a video is not good enough.

You missed the part about each frame being a DNG, apparently. Their resolution isn't any higher than the resolution of the video footage, but each frame is still a 12-bit DNG...

I am wondering...does this nice Micro Cinema camera really not offer real still shots? Hard to believe...

Hard to believe that a dedicated cinema camera doesn't have a stills mode?