The Ikonoskop A-Cam is a 12bit uncompressed raw digital cinema camera that shoots in Cinema DNG format, much like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

In many ways though this is a different animal.

The Ikonoskop addresses some of what the Blackmagic Cinema Camera lacks in that it features a global shutter (it uses a CCD sensor rather than CMOS) and uses interchangeable Sony batteries (NP-F770, the same ones the FS100 uses). The only other digital cinema camera currently to feature a global shutter is the Sony F55 (likely over $25,000 when it hits the market). The Ikonoskop is 7700 Euros.

From out of Sweden, I liked the fact the Ikonoskop is designed by filmmakers. You can tell.

The footage to come out of this camera so far has been incredibly impressive. ‘Gus’ for example looks stunning.

Along with Rob of Slashcam (a big thanks to Ludwig Reuter of HD Video Shop / MJIT Berlin for providing the camera and rig) we shot with both the Blackmagic and the Ikonoskop in Berlin side by side. What is the image like? For suspense I am saving this for part 2.

I plan to make the Cinema DNG files available this time so you can see the actual raw images. I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera Shootout H.264 compression, it really does not show the camera’s full potential when you compress it and upload it to Vimeo. Even though it is graded and the full 2.5K resolution, the character of the colour and grain texture changes when you compress it, however lightly.

Above – the Ikonoskop (foreground) and Rob from Slashcam.de with Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Digital 16mm

The Ikonoskop is a 16mm camera – a considerably smaller sensor size than the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Classics have been shot on 16mm, but shallow depth of field has become a make or break issue – seemingly to be considered ahead of everything else even overall image quality. To these people I say please look at the Sony NEX VG-900 and tell me that sensor size is still the most important aspect of a cinematic image! No depth of field control in the early days of small chip camcorders was not really the biggest issue – it was the overly digital looking image and the lack of interchangeable lens mount.

Also it is very important to have a range of cameras – 16mm, S16mm and S35mm have existed concurrently for decades because filmmakers pick the asthetic that bests suits them and the film. It is the same with digital.

Regardless you can get a shallow depth of field if needed with the Ikonoskop. One way is to use a longer lens and be further away from the subject, or closer to the subject and use a faster aperture such as T2.

So what is the Ikonoskop like to shoot with?

As helpfully pointed out to me the day before by Ryan De Franco (thanks!) the trick with Ikonoskop was to expose for the highlights.

It helps to think of it as if all the dynamic range is allocated from the highlights downwards rather than distributed in equal directions from the middle. If you try to match the exposure of a DSLR or even the Blackmagic Cinema Camera you will get blown highlights and shadows will clip to grey or just crush. It is critical to handle the Ikonoskop like an Ikonoskop and not like the others.

Unfortunately the Marshall monitor we had on us couldn’t really give us a flat film image, rather showing the Rec 709 video range. So our exposure was rather dark and the full extent of the dynamic range not visible. Rob and I only had a few hours today for this shoot and it was our first day with the camera, so I am sure there are ways to get that full Ikonoskop range on the HD-SDI monitor rather than the standard broadcast video range.

Despite this there was still something about the colour reproduction which was outstanding. Less muddy than that from a CMOS sensor. I’m told the colour gamut of this camera is close to film and that CCD sensors filter colour differently to CMOS. Pretty much all my read-ups on different sensor technologies backs this up as does my experience with CCD based stills cameras. The Pentax 645 medium format camera for instance uses a CCD for exactly this reason.

The camera features a built in EVF and like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera the menu controls are rather sparse. No faffing about, just set the shutter to 180 degrees and concentrate on the shoot. The aperture and focus on the lens, the rest in post. What more do filmmakers need?

Batteries

Unfortunately battery run time on the Sony NP-F770 was just 1 hour per charge. Usually these last 5x longer on my FS100. These are commonly available interchangeable batteries but I much prefer the external Switronix PB70 battery on my Blackmagic Cinema Camera. I had that running for 3 hours solid and it was only half empty, and the internal battery adds another hour to the total tally for the Blackmagic. This is an unfair comparison because the Switronix power base is much larger and higher capacity than the Sony NP-F770. Raw cameras are very hungry on power. I’d buy an external battery brick for the Ikonoskop as I don’t consider it very practical to have to charge 10 rather pricey NP-F770’s for a days shoot on location. There is an external power jack on the camera (2-15v). To be honest I am not sure what external batteries exactly work with the Ikonoskop. I have asked the guys and I’m sure there are some solutions.

Lenses

The amount of cinema c-mount and 16mm PL glass you can put on the Ikonoskop is staggering – and they are all designed for that specific sensor size rather than for S35mm or full frame.

A lot of these come from an era where optics were designed by hand rather than by computers. There’s tons of life in this 16mm glass. Lenses like the Kern Switar 26mm F1.1 are the opposite of clinical. For today’s shoot we had the Zeiss 9.5mm T1.3 (which covers 2K on a Red and is regularly used in Hollywood) and a 50mm Zeiss CP.2.

With the Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF mount version you’re shooting through the middle of glass designed for 35mm and so the character of the image changes. With the Ikonoskop you’re using the whole image circle of the lens. In some ways it looks less like a crop sensor camera compared to the Blackmagic EF version and more like full frame because you see the edges of the lens – the slight vignette wide open, the radial bokeh, all the character is there.

9.5mm is not quite a wide angle on the Ikonoskop, roughly equivalent in field of view to 18mm on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera or 40mm on the 5D Mark III / FF.

Extreme wide angle shots might be tricky on digital 16mm. But I don’t usually go wider than a standard establishing shot (24 or 28 equiv.) anyway so it doesn’t bother me personally.

Handling

The built in EVF is on the left side of the camera and it is most obvious at first place your right eye to it. I’m used to using my left eye in a viewfinder and when the EVF is angled flat downwards along the side of the Ikonoskop you can’t do this. The trick is to angle the viewfinder up – so it is pointing at the sky and look down into it. This way there’s no camera body to get in the way and you can use either eye. This is traditionally how optical viewfinders have worked on motion picture film cameras. If you look at Tarkovsky or Kubrick at work they often shot the same way.

It is extremely small for a raw camera, tiny compared to a Scarlet and it weighs approx. 1.6kg. We had it on a big heavy rig (as you can see in the photos) but the camera itself is not large at all. I’m not sure if there was even a fan – I couldn’t hear one anyway.

I must say I preferred the large touch screen control system on the Blackmagic and the exposure on that camera, with the flat film gamma display. On those rare occasions you need to change the shutter angle or something else in the menus (like frame rate) the Blackmagic is very intuitive. The navigation key is very small on the Ikonoskop as is the EVF and side-LCD for reading the menu text. The side-OLED panel is not meant to be used for monitoring like the built in monitor on the Blackmagic – it is really an info panel with a very low res reference image.

One downside to the touch panel I now find on the Blackmagic is that I keep accidentally bringing up the meta data screen with a single touch of the screen. I am used to double tapping the screen for the focus magnification and more often than not I get the meta data screen instead which is slightly annoying. I hope they put an option for it in the menus instead or an option to toggle the tap on or off as I hardly ever use it as a digital slate.

The controls and handling grew on me as the day went on, just for the sheer simplicity of the Ikonoskop menus and the lack of any real need to keep diving into them. On a DSLR you are constantly going into the menus – ISO, codec, picture profiles, white balance, histogram, mic adjustments, display settings… The list is endless! The Ikonoskop has a histogram. You pull a lever to the left. On my Sony FS100 it takes 32 button presses and a cup of tea!

I did not see how to turn on any overlays via the 10bit HD-SDI output for monitoring, so the record indicator and timecode is on the small LCD and in the EVF. When using an HD-SDI monitor it would be nice to have this information on there as I’m not looking at the camera’s LCD. There’s also a record indicator in the form of a red light on top of the record button which is hard to see in day light. I found the quality of the built in EVF to be OK and quite usable but the resolution of the video feed isn’t perfect and I prefer the OLED EVF on the GH3.

Media is proprietary and not as affordable as SSDs are for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. The media reader is also bespoke and is a lovely solid piece of kit but you cannot put the media in standard E-SATA docks. The media reader can however be linked to a Matrox Thunderbolt adapter for the benefits of that connection. I have yet to get the Ikonoskop or my Blackmagic Cinema Camera working via Thunderbolt with my Mac. Not sure what is going on there!

There’s also now a black and white version of the Ikonoskop – the A-Cam dll Panchromatic. This does much the same as the Epic Monochrome and Leica M monochrome – it gives a nicer black and white image, but only that. I love the black and white format as do many filmmakers but if you’re on a budget you have to be a really purist black & white shooter to consider it over the more versatile colour model.

Summing up day 1

Whilst the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is 2.5K in raw, the Ikonoskop shoots in 1080p but there’s no ProRes option. The only real downside we had on the shoot was that it chewed through the two Sony batteries we had in no time.

All in all I felt the Ikonoskop was a powerful 16mm film replacement for purist filmmakers. I don’t think it has has quite the consumer or mass market appeal of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera but it has the all important cinema DNA and rare qualities at the price point like global shutter. It is a versatile camera. On one hand a soulful narrative filmmaking camera, but on the other hand a good action sequence camera because focus is far easier on 16mm for fast action and the global shutter eliminates jello and skew altogether. Like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera it is also a far better choice for green-screen and keying FX work than a compressed 8bit cinema camera or a DSLR.

Of course for me the most important thing about these raw cameras is the image quality – the end result – the art.

I feel a lot of the focus at the moment is with fitting these raw shooting beauties into a production environment and issues around hard drive costs for archiving terabytes of raw footage. I wish they would consider for a moment the artistic side of what a raw image means and what a HUGE step up it is in terms of moving away from the video look. This is what I am most interested in, even if it means shooting ProRes for some projects – it is still more cinematic than an FS100 or C300.

The Ikonoskop belongs in the purist filmmaking world. I can see directors like Darren Aronofsky using it. I can see it being embraced by art-house filmmakers. For those artists whose bread & butter living is based around business, clients and fast turn-arounds the Canon C300 is the industry tool more suited for that. Like a Toyota is good as a company car. Practical and reliable. For feature film makers and art-house directors who care about the film look, the Ikonoskop is the better choice.

The post Ikonoskop A-Cam dll vs Blackmagic Cinema Camera – first impressions appeared first on EOSHD.

I’m really impressed by this new Digital Bolex blog post detailing what they have been spending all this extra time on. The project has had a massive yet very sensible improvement on the original specs of the camera.

First the body has gone from heavy steel to light carbonised aluminium and become weather sealed so intrepid 16mm explorers can ‘take it into a jungle and get wet’. Sounds like fun.

Add to this the fact that it is now good for 4 hours on the internal battery instead of 2, and that virtually removes the need for an external battery solution like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera requires. Good for cutting down bulk and very good considering it records raw. Raw is a hungry beast.

Another very cool feature is a removable OLPF. If you feel moire is an issue you have that in the camera by default, if you feel it softens the image and you’re better off without one you just slide it out and replace it with clear glass (provided by Digital Bolex).

The data ports have gone from USB 2.0 to 3.0 which is a big improvement. Super fast data transfer direct from the camera.

Also on the connectivity side the camera now has HDMI as well as HD-SDI (better than the Blackmagic Cinema Camera which only has HD-SDI) and the camera now has an additional 4th XLR jack. Yes 4! Talking of audio there’s now some neat analogue audio gain knobs on the camera and an analogue processing stage for better audio as well as 24 bit 96khz processing. Audio looks to be a real strong point of this camera for $3000.

One surprising new feature is a 12v output – yes output not input! – on the camera itself so you can power your monitor or EVF from the camera’s own battery rather than adding one to the monitor unit itself. Very cool idea.

That is an abbreviated list so check out the full one at the Digital Bolex blog for more improvements. It seems the project is turning out to be a success behind the scenes but real artists ship! Let’s hope they can do it in volume and without any Blackmagic style manufacturing issues. Best of luck to the team from EOSHD.

The post Digital Bolex D16 cinema camera gets huge upgrade appeared first on EOSHD.

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Read more in the first part of this article

Back in November I tested the Ikonoskop A-cam dll with Rob of Slashcam.de and Ludwig Reuter of HD Video Shop here in Berlin.

We spent a few hours comparing it to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera – here’s how it turned out.

This was a ‘quick and dirty’ test on the most part as we only had a short run-time on the Ikonoskop (1-2 hours).

The sample footage was put together in DaVinci Resolve but first I had to fix a heavy magenta cast to the blacks on the Ikonoskop footage. I’ve heard various explanations for it. One theory is that it was Resolve itself with version 9 that introduced the problem. A custom LUT is a workaround and that’s what I used to solve it. Here’s the LUT and some instructions.

However with an ND9 filter (which we used on the test) this introduces infrared contamination. This is the other theory – but to what extent the problem is Resolve and to what extent the ND I really am not sure. The end result was like tip toeing on a rope between shadows either too green or too magenta. I feel certainly there’s some kind of issue with Resolve and Ikonoskop footage.

This was a shame because the Ikonoskop actually delivers extremely good colour and a cinematic image and maybe I am not seeing the best from it.

The 12bit raw Cinema DNG for some reason did not utilise the full 1080p frame in Resolve – as you can see in the sample shots it has a black border. I really have no idea what is going on there!

I feel the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is easier to just get on and shoot with without any special tricks and easier to handle in post – at least in my limited experience of the Ikonoskop. Certainly out the box the BMCC is more ready. But maybe the Ikonoskop – to my eye at least – looks more cinematic? You can judge the test footage and draw your own conclusions!

The Blackmagic has the advantage of 2.5K resolution, a much larger sensor than 16mm and lower price point. The Ikonoskop has the advantage of a CCD sensor – so global shutter with no skew, less moire and a form factor better suited for shoulder mounting.

The internal viewfinder, though rather small, it’s useful to have integrated with the camera and not on a spidery arm.

The camera runs on Sony FS100 batteries but goes through these in 1 hour so like with the Blackmagic I recommend a much larger external v-lock battery.

The Ikonoskop demo unit rig (above) was rigged in LanParte kit – carbon rails, top handle, matte box, follow focus, etc.

I was so impressed by the quality of LanParte’s gear that I now own the same matte box, follow focus and carbon rails (supplied by Equiprent in Europe).

Here’s the FS100 and SLR Magic 35mm T0.95 rigged up with the LanParte rods, matte box and follow focus. The side handle is actually the top handle from my Wooden Camera BMCC cage.

LanParte’s gear represents a significant leap in the quality of digital cinema rigging designed and manufactured in China – to the point where LanParte are knocking on Zacuto’s door.

Their kit isn’t as cheap as the more generic Chinese / eBay based kit because they’re aiming for the higher end of the market, but they are still very competitive on pricing compared to the Americans.

Enjoy the test footage. I’ll leave you with some more photos from the shoot itself, and expect my Blackmagic Cinema Camera ReWo cage review very soon…

The post Ikonoskop A-cam dll versus Blackmagic Cinema Camera appeared first on EOSHD.

There’s a new modular raw cinema camera. This one isn’t built by a camera company, or even a team. Created over the last 6 months in Flensburg in Northern Germany single-handedly by Roald Christessen, the camera features a global shutter and raw video.

Here’s an exclusive Q&A with Roald and more about the camera technology…

Roald has been working on the camera since January 2013 and on the transcoding and grading software for just over a year. He’s been keeping me up-to-date with the progress of both over the months since he started.

The camera has a global shutter CCD sensor, which is the same Trusense (ex-Kodak) sensor used in the Ikonoskop. It gives a lovely cinematic image and very filmic colour with no rolling shutter skew. To see what I mean read my two-part shoot with the Ikonoskop here and watch the shootout footage vs the Blackmagic Cinema Camera below.

The 16mm camera unit and minimal recording system based on a MacBook Pro will cost 3800 euros.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s some sample material recorded by Roald with his camera -

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Here’s his Cinema DNG grading tool in action (note this is a very early pre-release version) – 

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Q & A with Roald Christessen

EOSHD: Does the camera yet have a name?

Roald: The camera is provisionally named GRAIN M1 – “M stands for the modularity and the 1 for model one of the camera.” (Note this may be subject to change)

EOSHD: What is advantage of the CPU in full package, specifically, apart from removing need for laptop?

Roald: The CPU will be a module in the camera and it can be upgraded or switched. The camera will be easy to configure with a keyboard and mouse connected. [With the CPU] you can apply looks and LUTs on the set. It can render ProRes files, when camera is idle. Flexible guide lines, overlays, scopes etc. will help to get the right image. It can show images from existing clips in the running viewfinder, so that the operator can get the same exposure / colours… Clips can be deleted or trimmed, so unnecessary frames can be deleted from the clip to save space on the SSD. New functions will be easy to implement. The complete transcoding / grading software is planned to run in the camera.

EOSHD: How is audio handled?

Roald: Audio is recorded in 44.1, 48 or 96 KHz, 16 or 24 bit, mono or stereo. The complete system will integrate an audio interface of good quality and will have 2 XLR connections with 48 V phantom power.

EOSHD: What is the native ISO?

Roald: I have estimated the color version to ISO 200.

EOSHD: How long were you working on the camera and software for?

Roald: The Cinema DNG transcoding/grading software was started in March 2012. The camera module project was started in January 2013.

EOSHD: Does it record to DNG directly or is there a transcoding step from raw to DNG afterwards?

Roald: Cinema DNG files are written directly to SSD with an external AIFF audio file and a textfile containing extra informations about the clip. There will be one internal SSD and a slot for an extra SSD.

EOSHD: Is monitoring via HD-SDI on the camera?

Roald: The camera has a HDMI output for monitoring. I will try to build in an HD-SDI, but i cannot guarantee it for the first version.

Here are some of the key specs for the camera –

• Truesense KAI-02150 sensor
• 1920 x 800 resolution
• A kit available with Fujinon 12.5 – 75mm F1.2 lens
• Custom software for Cinema DNG recording and grading

The complete system includes the sensor module, a CPU, electronic viewfinder, audio inputs, body, battery and recording / transcoding / grading software will be under 7000 euros + tax (without lens). That’s quite a lot of extras on top of the camera, but still under the price of the minimal Ikonoskop body.

A great achievement and I can’t wait to see how it pans out.

Best of luck to Roald!

The post An incredible achievement – Roald Christessen builds his own raw cinema camera and grading software appeared first on EOSHD.

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Aside from Blackmagic there’s only one other company endeavouring to give us affordable cinema cameras at the moment and that’s Kinefinity. The MINI is a smaller cut down version of their S35, shooting 2K uncompressed raw to SSD from a Super 35mm sensor. It has an option for 4K to an external record (Q1 2014) and it’s a powerful piece of kit, though I have some reservations about usability.

Is the KineRAW MINI the early stages of a new Arri? A Chinese cinema camera industry?

There’s two ways to design a camera. The minimalist approach and the feature rich approach.

You can take features away and focus on making the ones you do have work fluidly. You can pack features in but there’s a compromise in terms of crowding out the camera with complexity.

Let’s get my reservations out straight away about this camera. For me (in my opinion) it just has too much going on, and too slowly. There’s amazing complexity and a feature list longer than a Blackmagic waiting list but the basic fundamental stuff like being able to get smooth monitoring above 20fps and having a record button that works when you want it to, was sadly missing from my test camera.

The good news is that Kinefinity have been unbelievably responsive in listening to feedback, refining hardware and developing firmware updates. It’s a natural process for a new camera and I’ve never seen a higher work ethic. One bug I reported was fixed and added to a firmware update in 24 hours. I had gone to sleep after sending the email, woke up and it was fixed and waiting to be downloaded. No other camera company is as nimble and politics free as Kinefinity.

Many Blackmagic users have bemoaned the lack of basic features like audio meters, which still aren’t in any firmware updates. But I actually think the minimalist zen-like approach of Blackmagic has benefits. If you are developing something as complex as a cinema camera and have a small team with smaller budget than the bigger players, it’s better to focus on a few very core features and refine those, than stretch yourself too thin. The danger with the KineRAW MINI is that there’s going to be a huge support overhead due to the sheer number of features it packs in. Let’s look at some of these now –

• Built in LUT support for applying user LUT to monitor and Cinema DNG metadata, during a shoot.
• Wifi control.
• Exposure Index control, which shifts dynamic range to shadows or highlights depending on which you’re truing to prioritise (shadows in low light for example).
• Sync port for multi-camera 3D rigs
• 4K port (optional) for recording 4K Cinema DNG or CineForm on the KineDECK external recorder
• Swappable lens mount, with upcoming locking EF mount (active)
• Reduced rolling shutter mode
• Super 16mm crop mode
• Overcrank and under crank conform at any frame rate (max 100fps) with crop of the sensor
• Full sensor readout at 100fps at 720p
• 2K crop of sensor at 48p and 50p
• Waveform, Zebra, Histogram
• Punch in focus assist, peaking
• Built in SSD management
• Audio recording
• 2 HDMI ports
• Offline CineForm encoding with KineSTATION (transcodes to CineForm raw from Cinema DNG during data transfer from camera to PC)

That’s not a comprehensive list either. Impressive. But is it just too much to think about during a shoot?

Above: the KineRAW MINI is the first cinema camera to run on an open source Linux OS, which will be of huge interest to the open source community. Go Linux!

Vs 5D Mark III

These cameras deliver a very similar image in good light but the 5D Mark III has the advantage of better low light performance from a larger full frame sensor, whilst the KineRAW MINI has the advantage of an extra stop and a half of dynamic range. With the Exposure Index feature, the KineRAW MINI can deliver 13 usable stops of dynamic range. In the normal ISO mode it can give you 11.5 stops, the same as the 5D Mark III’s sensor is rated (for full resolution raw stills). Even in the 11.5 stop ISO mode my tests showed the KineRAW MINI had about 1 stop more headroom in the highlights than the 5D Mark III raw output with Magic Lantern. The 5D Mark III didn’t have as much latitude and clipped the highlights earlier.

However in terms of low light performance I struggled to get usable ISO 1600 from the KineRAW MINI despite it being able to go to a maximum of 25,600. The 5D Mark III delivered a much cleaner image at ISO 1600 and 3200.

The 5D Mark III also seems to do a cleaner downsample of the high resolution sensor to 1080p, with slightly less aliasing than the KineRAW MINI in 1080p. Though the difference is very small and you’re not likely to notice much aliasing and moire in the real world with either camera.

The KineRAW MINI’s image overall, is not quite as sharp as the BMCC at 2.5K or as clean as the 5D Mark III in terms of noise, and then we come to colour…

At warmer white balances I struggled to grade the footage to my liking, it would always have a slightly greenish yellow cast. It therefore takes more expertise to grade that out.

I found colour would desaturate more in low light than the 5D Mark III and by default the colour saturation is extremely low, so again you have to take this into account when grading the footage.

Progress report

I’ve been involved in giving feedback to Kinefinity on the camera and European dealer HDVideoShop have worked hard on collating feedback from multiple tests.

There’s a page at the European Kinefinity website listing current and future hardware and firmware updates; the highlights of which are at time of writing…

• Reworked REC button: included in all units ordered after 01.11.2013
• Reworked Lock-Type Active EF-Mount: included in all units ordered after 20.10.2013
• Timecode was free running only, now with record-running feature (firmware 6057)
• Rolling shutter fix: included in latest firmware update
• Overcrank / Undercrank features added at various frame rates and resolutions (firmware 6054)
• 48fps at 2k in Super 16 crop mode included in latest firmware update
• Sleep mode for camera: Q4 2013 (faster boot times)
• KineSTATION for Mac: This November! (PC version already out)

Let’s touch on these one by one.

The original record button had too much travel meaning it felt spongy, and it didn’t always activate recording when you thought you’d pressed it all the way in. To their credit Kinefinity have now addressed this crucial part of the camera. The cheapest EF mount option for the camera had a rather loose fit to almost all EF lenses. The locking type mount addresses this and then some, I’m told it’s similar to the way RED’s locking EF mount works for Scarlet. Timecode used to just run freely, not you can set it to run-record. Rolling shutter is about at the BMCC 2.5K level in 2K on the MINI but now with a trade off in image quality you can enable a faster sensor scan which reduces rolling shutter. Kinefinity call this a sports shooting mode. It could come in handy but it came just a bit too late for me to properly test it and see how much image quality is lost with that faster sensor scan.

A ‘sleep mode’ similar to suspending a Macbook or PC is promised which allows you to preserve battery life between shots on location. Otherwise you have to ride out the 45 second boot time every time you turn on the camera. That isn’t unusual for a cinema camera but DSLR users might find it off-putting.

4K and pricing

The MINI would have benefited by getting here before Magic Lantern raw and before Blackmagic’s cameras became relatively commonplace but it has a secret weapon, which will appeal especially to pros.

It’s the only camera for the price that will do 4K from a Super 35mm sensor with 13 stops. The MINI’s sensor has a higher native sensitivity and a wider dynamic range than the Blackmagic Production Camera is expected to achieve. It’s the only camera for the price that has a native PL mount option. In fact the mount is swappable and various ones are available, all 100% locked in connection with the camera body unlike an adapter on a Micro Four Thirds mount.

Once kitted out with raw port, side grip and lens mount the camera comes to around 4000EUR + tax and delivery. A minimum price of 3199 euros for the ‘brain’, 279EUR for the raw port and 199EUR for a non-active EF lens mount brings it closer to the price of a Blackmagic Production Camera and you can add 4K later when you need it.

There might be some extra costs to factor in. Since the camera doesn’t have a built in monitor like a DSLR or BMCC you will need to add in the cost of an HDMI monitor if you don’t already have one. You can run the camera off the neat DSLR style battery grip (a side grip like on the Epic) but it only lasts about 40 minutes on one battery, so a larger power brick is recommended. This grip is optional so you can save by not ordering that and spend the money on a normal V-lock battery instead.

Who’s it for?

I think this is a more appealing camera for pros than enthusiasts. The camera offers a lot but shooters who don’t need 4K, a S35 sized sensor, 100fps slow-mo, PL mount or an extensive feature set will be better off going for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and investing in lenses. Users who need the image quality of raw and are happy to stick with a DSLR form factor will be happier with a 5D Mark III. Something else which may give prosumers pause for thought over the MINI is that the larger Super 35mm sensor is mitigated by how well the BMCC MFT goes with the Metabones Speed Booster – effectively bridging that gap in sensor size and throwing in more low light performance as a bonus.

In terms of the codec again the Blackmagic cameras are more prosumer friendly as they can do ProRes. Lossless 2:1 compression of raw in-camera is also useful though it’s not yet come to the BMCC.

The KineRAW MINI only does uncompressed Cinema DNG raw in-camera and you need to add the KineDECK external recorder to get CineForm compressed raw on the fly.

It’s a complex landscape on which to make a decision, as a camera buyer.

Audio

One thing that is lacking universally on all raw shooting cameras at the moment is audio. The 5D Mark III cannot currently record audio in sync with raw video. The KineRAW MINI has one single mono 2.5mm jack. No stereo input at all and no XLR. The Blackmagic Cinema Camera has a poor internal audio circuit and no way to monitor levels. These are absolutely not the right cameras to use for events, live shooting or where in-camera audio is of importance. They’re designed to be used with external audio systems kept separate to the camera, like a Hollywood film camera.

Even though the KineRAW MINI has a low price for a pro camera, I think the lack of XLR and HD-SDI is a bit of an own goal. Pros all have a mantra – HDMI is wobbly and it sucks. Pros all like robust things, things that lock. They want the mount to lock, they want the audio jack to lock. They want XLR jacks. Instead of HD-SDI Kinefinity have a proprietary port for raw output. At least they have 2x full sized HDMI connections rather than one mini-HDMI port like on a DSLR.

Maybe the price would have crept up with XLR and HD-SDI but I think it would have hit a real sweet spot with pros, willing to pay to get that better connectivity.

Workflow

Of course the KineRAW MINI does not come with a full license for DaVinci Resolve 10 like the BMCC. Is this a problem? I’d say no actually, because the Lite version is now so fully feature packed and unfettered. It handles 4K unlike the old Lite version 9. To my mind the only thing I remember being pulled from the Lite version is support for dual GPUs (SLI) though there may be other concessions they are not major ones. That was a good move by Blackmagic. Users who don’t want to pay for things usually find a way to download it anyway! But controlling the features on offer in an official free version avoid piracy. Blackmagic will see a huge user base increase around Resolve 10.

On a modest CUDA accelerated system with Cinema DNG from the KineRAW MINI you get 40fps render speeds and realtime editing of raw, whilst image quality is now tip top – I highly recommend it over Adobe’s stuff.

The KineRAW MINI is a better fit to narrative filmmakers working at a paced manner, in a controlled environment, with a crew or on a set. Video journalists and documentary shooters will be hampered by the slow control scheme and 45 second boot time. It isn’t a photography style ‘decisive moment’ camera like a DSLR but then you wouldn’t expect that with an Epic or Alexa either!

Responsiveness

This is the biggest area for improvement with the KineRAW MINI. The control scheme and how responsive the settings are.

Cycling through ISOs for example, the display is slow to apply the effect of the ISO as you scroll. It’s one thing having that lag when applying a setting but another to have the lag effect the navigation of the setting.

I’m a sucker for fast operation where the camera gets out of the way and allows me to have a zen like focus on the shoot itself.

These things really matter to me as I like to have a flow going on where I’m not thinking about the scrolling haptic of a menu. The MINI demands your concentration, when the focus should really be on the scene and the shot.

Although the layout of the menus on the KineRAW MINI are pretty much fine, I didn’t enjoy the physical control scheme for navigating it. The joystick just has too much going on. It’s a dial, a button and a joystick. Confusion gives way and you get used to it but it’s still too slow if you’re coming from a DSLR or a minimalist Blackmagic.

Oft criticised by professional videographers for their ergonomics, DSLRs actually do a much better job of having direct controls on dedicated buttons and dials rather than having stuff buried in a menu.

The upshot of this is that it depends on how you’re used to working…

On a cinema camera, shutter speed (for example) is usually set once for the duration of a shoot at 180 degrees and exposure is done via an aperture ring and ND filter.

Likewise ISO would usually be set to a native ISO like 800 and left alone. The cinematographer uses his lights to suit the camera’s sweet spot. Out on the streets though, without a controlled environment, the camera really suffers from not having quicker access to core settings. I’d much rather have a control scheme like a DSLR. It would greatly benefit from a smaller joystick like on the rear of a 5D Mark III under your thumb and two dials – one for aperture and one for exposure.

With a raw camera you really only need to control the exposure for the monitor and do the exposure with the lens and in post.

Regardless it still needs to be quick to control the display during a shoot.

Conclusion

Pros

• Amazingly wide range of features for a version 1.0 camera, at a low price point relative to other pro cameras
• Super 35mm sensor gives very cinematic raw image at native ISO (800)
• Upgrade path to 4K with output port and KineDECK external recorder
• Good sharpness and detail at 2K and 1080p
• 100fps super-slow mo raw
• Interchangeable lens mount
• Optional PL mount
• Very useful Super 16mm crop mode
• Imaginative use of Nikon DSLR battery grip as a power source and side-handle
• Supports built in LUTs, allowing live monitoring with user LUT applied during a shoot
• Works with affordable off the shelf SSD media as well as proprietary KineMag
• Open source operating system and the first ever Linux based cinema camera
• Competitively priced
• No serious moire issues
• Kinefinity responsive to user feedback
• Great support in Europe from HDVideoShop based in Germany

Cons

• Unresponsive and convoluted control scheme
• Record button on first versions is unresponsive (now fixed)
• Grading of footage requires slightly more work and skill to get good results – especially with warm tones which tend to have yellow / green cast by default
• Low light image quality not the best – benefits from staying at ISO 800 and achieving an exposure just right of centre
• 45 seconds to boot compares unfavourably to competing Blackmagic Cinema Camera
• Choppy 20fps frame rate via HDMI makes it hard to judge look of motion during a shoot
• Quite heavy given the small size, and quite large when fully rigged up
• Some aliasing and false colour still visible in 2K and 1080p (increases further in 720p slow-mo mode)
• No programmable function keys
• Main joystick feels imprecise
• Overcrank and undercrank confusingly implemented
• First version of standard EF mount lacking robust connection with lens
• Won’t drive focus on Canon 85mm F1.2L
• Lacking in terms of audio inputs – 1x mono 2.5mm jack! No stereo input
• SSD management menu not present in any of the main menus (instead on direction toggle of joystick)
• Some raw meta data way off in Adobe Camera Raw and Resolve, such as white balance kelvin

Value for money / unique  selling points

The KineRAW Mini offers some unique prospects for the price. For a start, there’s the price itself. As a pro cinema camera, it comes in at the low end even when kitted up. It’s unlikely you’ll need to spend more than $5000 at the outset. Compare that to a $12K Canon 1D C or $15k C300, which don’t offer raw or anything greater than 8bit colour depth, and you have a very competitive deal. The trade off is usability and convenience.

100fps slow-mo is top of my list for the unique features on this camera and although resolution drops to 720p at 100fps and aliasing increases, it’s still a very usable image and you have to spend considerably more ($10k +) to get better raw slow-mo (with the FS700 and Odyssey 7Q).

And compared to the more common 60p, 100 frames makes a huge difference when it comes to how dramatic the slow-mo effect is.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s also unique is that the KineRAW can do 4K raw via a proprietary Kinefinity output port to the forthcoming KineDECK (scheduled for end of 2013 / Q1 2014). Meanwhile another add-on – the KineSTATION – can transcode from uncompressed raw to CineForm automatically as you copy footage from the camera to your PC in realtime. None of these features are currently offered by Blackmagic or Canon.

Wrapping it up

The KineRAW MINI will suit a lot of shooters but it’s not for everyone.

For my work I need a camera even smaller and lighter than the MINI. I need that responsive control and direct access to ISO, shutter speed, etc. I don’t like to rig up monitors, batteries and external recorders and I want the full frame look to my lenses because I’m so heavily invested in the glass.

Although image quality is lovely on the MINI, aside from that very tempting 100fps slow-mo I didn’t find a compelling reason to replace my 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern raw, or Blackmagic cameras with the KineRAW MINI. The image is arguably better on the BMCC and 5D Mark III overall, though aside from low light performance they all play in the same league. 4K is a very interesting prospect for this camera but the price does begin to creep up towards an FS700 which is equally as capable when it comes to 4K and raw to an external recorder.

SSD drives on the KineRAW MINI certainly give it an advantage over the 5D Mark III in terms of storage media, since generic 256GB SDDs are $150 compared to that much for just 64GB of Compact Flash (12 minutes of raw) on the 5D Mark III. The KineRAW MINI records directly to Cinema DNG whilst the 5D Mark III needs a transcode, though it’s a very swift one. This is a small price to pay, since I prefer the ergonomics, image quality, smaller form factor and very good battery efficiency of the 5D Mark III.

If you can live with the downsides and put them into perspective (some may not even matter to you) you’re essentially getting a Red Scarlet style camera for half the price, robust build quality, 4K upgrade path, 3D rig sync port, Super 16mm crop mode, reduced rolling shutter mode, 100fps slow mo, Alexa-like Exposure Index with 13 stop dynamic range, Super 35mm sensor and more features too countless to mention in a mere summary.

All in all an impressive start to a new cinema camera industry in China – with limitless potential!

To order the KineRAW MINI or to see the full specs and pricing info go to Kinefinity.tv here

The post Kinefinity KineRAW MINI review appeared first on EOSHD.

Blackmagic CEO Grant Petty has revealed he approached camera manufacturers in 2011 with the idea of producing a DSLR-style model with high dynamic range and increased video quality but was turned down.

“They don’t care about the product. Their only goal is to extract as much from the business as they can. It’s incredibly short-termist, and greedy”.

I agree 100% entirely with Petty here. In my view, rather than moving the industry forwards with timely technological advancements, Canon, Sony and others are playing a short-term profit taking game. 2013 has been a particularly grey year for Canon, with no new interesting Cinema EOS or DSLR models to be released, the company ended the year with two cynical marketing attempts – a white 100D for the Christmas market and a Asia-only barely improved EOS M2 sequel to their poorly performing mirrorless camera. This in a year when Sony brought the 36MP full frame A7R mirrorless camera to the table and Blackmagic offered a 4K cinema camera for $3995.

In approaching the camera manufacturers in 2011 with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera concept, Petty said he was beaten back.

“They wanted to do their own thing. So we had to do it ourselves.”

“I’m stunned at what is wrong with companies when we acquire them and we can examine them internally. There are so many pressures on businesses just to be bland, never to take a risk.”

“We’ve never taken any outside investment at Blackmagic and we have no debt. As soon as companies do that they are beholden to a new master.”

4K camera shipping soon

Blackmagic themselves have taken a lot of criticism, for delays and short supply of cameras but when you stand back as an observer to look at what they’ve done, I think it’s a monumental achievement.

“What’s healthy is feeling you did something rather than just sat in meetings all day”

“We are not psychotic about making money at all costs or hardcore sales. We are unashamedly geeky. We want to be friendly and be of service.”

In the feature at TVBEurope, Petty describes his company as having a “healthy work ethic”, with only 350 employees, and until recently Petty himself was involved with every aspect of every product even writing his own marketing copy.

“My job is to bind it all together and set the culture. I wish I could do more. I don’t have any grand vision and I’m surprised and delighted when it works. When we announce something that surprises the market at a trade show, it’s often because we ourselves have only made the decision to go for it a couple days earlier.”

And obviously that has implications for the timeliness of their launches sometimes, but it’s still an approach that does more for me as a customer than almost any other company.

Petty continues…

“You get really nervous when you do something creative because you can get it utterly wrong. Sometimes I’ll have an idea and I can’t sleep for weeks, wondering if it will work and if we can get it out the door before someone else does. I constantly feel we are not good enough, that there are so many thing sot fix, and not enough time. But I am overwhelmed and grateful that people like what we do.”

As Blackmagic will discover soon enough (as Apple did under Jobs) – if you genuinely set about to change the world, profit begins to flow naturally as a consequence of that, rather than as a consequence of pure profit-chasing.

Of course not every company thats sets out to innovate and change the way we use technology succeeds.

But if one company deserves to it’s Blackmagic.

The post Grant Petty reveals origins of Blackmagic cameras (concept was offered to major manufacturers) appeared first on EOSHD.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Full information on the AMIRA can be seen at CVP

Looking at the Oscar nominations recently at EOSHD, with not a Red camera in sight, it’s clear Arri are a run-away success in the filmmaking industry. Now Arri are gunning for the Canon C300 and C500 with a camera which could seriously erode the market for Cinema EOS cameras at the high end of the broadcast and single-operator videographer market. The Amira’s pricing starts at 25,980 euros which puts it in the Sony F55 and Canon C500 range.

What’s the secret to Arri’s success?

I’m putting my cards on the table straight away… I love the AMIRA.

It’s as close to being the perfectly designed single-operator camera as I’ve ever seen.

This pricing points at the AMIRA being made in larger quantities than the Alexa and it’s even a realistic owner proposition for professional videographers looking to make a serious investment in gear.

Arri are already popular at the top of the broadcast and professional video market with the Alexa. It’s a popular rental choice and something you’ll find on a lot of TV & corporate shoots, especially in ProRes guise.

The AMIRA speaks loud and clear for what makes Arri such a success. So what IS that recipe exactly?

1. It’s not about the headline specs, but the overall image

Red have always had the headline grabbing specs. 4K, 5K, and multiple new sensors. Arri don’t even have a 4K solution yet.

Are filmmakers at the top of the industry seduced by the headlines or do they evaluate the cameras in-person? It’s the latter of course, as one filmmaker recently explained on the EOSHD forum, the Alexa is way ahead of Red when it comes to the overall package.

Here’s me paraphrasing his opinion of why he’d rather shoot Alexa over Red –

The noise texture is more film-like on the Alexa relative to the Epic and MX sensor (especially when tungsten white balanced) and even Dragon has a more digital looking texture. The Alexa has superior shadows, with the Red MX sensor giving a lot of blue splotchy noise in low light. The Alexa’s 14.5 stop dynamic range is handled superbly while not all of the Red’s 13.5 stop dynamic range is usable. The Alexa has superior mid-range tonality and colour. Red’s compressed raw codec doesn’t handle skin and foliage as well as ArriRAW, lending a more plastic look to these emotionally resonant areas of the subject matter. The Alexa’s colour science matches Kodak 5219 almost exactly and offers smooth creamy skin tones and beautiful green foliage whereas Red’s colour science isn’t as good. The optical low pass filter on Red cameras can be prone to internal reflections and a colour cast over highlights whereas the Alexa has a roll-off like film.

4K will need to be added to the Arri stable sooner or later, but up to this point the Alexa has set the standard, not the Epic.

2. Support and workflow

Arri have a wider support network worldwide and build on a much larger historic presence in the film industry than any other competitor especially Red. ProRes suits TV production and ArriRaw suits cinema production. RedCode just isn’t as well matched to the existing production environment.

3. Design

Exposure, focus, stability. These are the most important aspects of a camera. Why are these so often the last thing you see on the specs sheet? The AMIRA is designed to be shot with from the shoulder. It sits there for stability. It puts the lens in the perfect place to be focused. It has superb ergonomics and exposure aids. Simple, no? The camera isn’t cluttered with buttons and the EVF / LCD is placed in line of sight rather than somewhere weird like on the top or back of the camera.

The Canon C300’s ergonomic design has garnered a lot of praise for being easy to shoot with handheld in a run & gun situation – but I just don’t agree. Compared to Arri and Aaton it just doesn’t have the same shoulder balance or shoulder-optimised ergonomics. A contractor for the BBC had seen cameramen on Top Gear use the Canon C300 in a run & gun documentary situation. Their experience with the camera was almost 100% negative. The C300’s ergonomics have garnered praise only because the competition has been even worse.

In my opinion the AMIRA is massively superior as a rental option over the C300 and C500. Why?

• Alexa-standard image quality
• 200fps slow-mo
• Perfect shoulder balance
• Affordable (and swift) CFast 2.0 workflows
• Ergonomic design optimized for single operator use and extended shoulder-mounted operation
• Doesn’t need a load of bolt-ons and added-on shoulder rig, etc.
• Motorized NDs
• Zebra and false colour tools to aid exposure
• Advanced peaking function to make focussing easy and swift

The C500 needs an external recorder for optimal image quality. It doesn’t have ProRes and the camera it’s based on, the C300 doesn’t have slow-mo either, nor the newer CFast 2.0 support, or perfect shoulder ergonomics and balance. The EVF on the AMIRA is also superior.

While the Red EPIC, Sony F5 and F55 all need rigs, monitors and EVFs bolting on as extras, the AMIRA has a built in 1280 x 1024 OLED eyepiece and a fold-away LCD monitor. The monitor is a live view display like on a DSLR but also provides access to camera functions without the camera having to be removed from the shoulder. A WiFi interface provides remote control.

4. Codec

ProRes has been key to the Alexa. If the Alexa only recorded raw with the external recorder, it would never have taken off like it has done in the broadcast and broader pro-videography market. The AMIRA gives us all flavours of ProRes – LT, 422, 422HQ and 444.

LT is of use to news shooters who need small file sizes and a fast turn-around, even something that can be edited from a laptop on location in 10 minutes. Then you go up the image quality scale all the way to 444 colour sampling. It’s perfect. Then you have the choice of Rec 709 if you don’t have the time to colour-grade the results (again – great for a fast workflow) or Log C when you want to add a LUT or grade the image extensively. The camera also has support for built in LUTs for custom colour grading profiles, with the results coming direct from the card.

Only Blackmagic come close to Arri when it comes to the codec.

Conclusion

Coming from the DSLR world I must admit to being a little envious of what Arri have designed here.

It’s exactly how I’d prefer to use a DSLR. Get rid of the tripods, the rigs, the monitors, the transcoding, raw workflows, poor audio support and form factors designed for stills. Get the camera on the shoulder and shoot, focus, expose. It should be easy. In 2014, the oldest camera company is still the one getting it right! Sony are a great consumer electronics company. They don’t have the filmmaking DNA of Arri which dates back almost 100 years to 1917. Canon are a great photographic company. They’ve made a good start with Cinema EOS but the AMIRA is straight-forwardly superior in almost every way. Blackmagic have made a very welcome splash on price and image quality but their ergonomics and audio are just not there yet. Panasonic – well, you’ll have to wait and see because 2014 is going to be a very big year for them.

Arri are actually a small company compared to Canon, Sony and Panasonic. They have just over 1500 employees and revenue in the million euros rather than billions. It isn’t a matter of throwing money at a problem and seeing it solved. It’s more about intelligent design and knowing exactly the needs of the people you are aiming it at. Arri have a clear aim and a clear understanding of the people they’re selling to. For Arri’s digital users the AMIRA fills a hole which the Alexa left – the big studio camera is not a great run & gun camera. The AMIRA is.

I think it will be a massive success and all others should take note of what the ingredients are here.

• 10bit ProRes in various bitrates and colour sampling modes
• 14.5 stops dynamic range and crisp 2K image
• Designed for the shoulder, with perfect balance
• Beautiful image emulating Kodak Super 35mm film stock
• Large dealer network and excellent support, available in wide range of rental shops

That’s it in a nutshell. I think this should be the template for the aspirations of many other camera builders especially Blackmagic and Panasonic in 2014, who can use the AMIRA as a benchmark.

The post Arri AMIRA priced to compete with Canon C500 – plus, the secret of Arri’s success appeared first on EOSHD.

It’s an open secret that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera was based around a sCMOS sensor from Fairchild Imaging. Now the company has announced it’s successor, the sCMOS 2.0

sCMOS technology have powered Blackmagic’s cameras so far (aside from the 4K Production Camera which is expected to be based around a sensor from Belgian company CMOSIS).

There are currently two sCMOS sensors and the Pocket camera used one, the BMCC the other.

The specs of the sensors were pretty much identical but the larger sensor clocked in at 2.5K. Model numbers are –

• Pocket Cinema Camera = CIS 1910F
• Blackmagic Cinema Camera = CIS 2521F

These sensors were capable of up to 100fps and dynamic range was 13 stops (88db). Of course 100fps was not implemented by Blackmagic as that would take a Red Epic like ASIC to handle and a considerable price bump.

Starting June 2014 Fairchild Imaging are rolling out sensors based on the new pixel design, sCMOS 2.0.

From a basic reading of the specs sheet there doesn’t seem to be any eye-catching improvements. Dynamic range seems identical (87db) as does the maximum frame rate but this is just one sensor and I’m expecting more designs to follow. The shutter remains a rolling one (not global). Here’s the press release from Fairchild Imaging…

The first product that incorporates sCMOS2.0 technology is the SCI2020. It is a large format, ultra-low noise CMOS image sensor intended for applications requiring high quality imaging under extremely challenging light conditions. Utilizing a four transistor (4T), 6.5um pixel architecture, the SCI2020 delivers >80% quantum efficiency and a 25 times reduction in blinking, or higher than mean pixel read noise. The sensor has two ADC channels per column enabling intra-scene high dynamic range of over 90dB and operates at 100fps at full sensor resolution.

 “We are very excited to introduce sCMOS2.0 technologies to the market,” stated Vern Klein, Director of Marketing for Fairchild Imaging. “The SCI2020 significantly improves upon the current industry leading CIS2020. This is our first chip based on sCMOS2.0 technologies that will improve light gathering capabilities as well as deliver advanced noise tail management technologies which are critical to the next generation of scientific cameras. This sensor can output 4.2 megapixel frames at 100 frames per second and still deliver very low read noise and exceptional dynamic range.”

sCMOS sensors utilize efficient light collection and sophisticated low noise circuits to deliver images in low light situations where other imagers cease to be useful. High intra-scene dynamic range, without the need for multiple shots over time, is made possible by an innovative dual digitizer approach combined with deep full well capacity. High frame rates, useful for monitoring dynamic events and performing inter-scene image processing, such as noise reduction and image stabilization, are generated by wide parallel processing and multiple high capacity ADCs.

The new sensor is 2K instead of 1080p (it’s actually square, at 2048 x 2048). Size is 13mm x 13mm.

From the information release so far I’m expecting an HDR mode with hardware support… by my reckoning, “intra-scene dynamic range” sounds similar to the way the Alexa sensor has a dual-gain output. The mention of dual digitizer in the press release would seem to point in that direction, as do twin analogue to digital converters (2x 11bit ADC). Maybe I’m wrong, as I’m not an engineer!

I’m not expecting 100fps slow-mo on the next Blackmagic cameras because this depends so much on the image processor. It’s difficult for Blackmagic to keep the price consumer if they are doing 100fps 10bit ProRes!

Big question is – will Fairchild Imaging go beyond the 2.5K sCMOS v1.0 with the new technology and give the scientific market a larger sized 4K sensor? That would be fantastic for Blackmagic.

Specs of the first new sCMOS 2.0 sensor:

• > 87 db intra-scene dynamic range
• 100fps at full resolution
• < 2e read noise
• 2048 x 2048 resolution
• 13 x 13mm sensor size (for reference GH4 is 17 x 13)
• 6.5 um pixel size
• Rolling shutter
• 22bit ADC (2x 11bit)
• Column level amp gain – High 30x or 10x. Low 2x or 1x.
• Power consumption < 1.5w at 100fps
• Dark current < 25 e-/pixel/sec (25 degrees c)
• Peak QE > 80%
• Full well capacity > 30,000 e-
• Data format 2 x 11bit

Perhaps these new sCMOS 2.0 chips have a feature I’ve missed? Calling all CMOS scientists to tell us what this may be…

The post Successor to Blackmagic Cinema Camera CMOS sensor announced with possible hardware HDR mode appeared first on EOSHD.

The AJA CION is an upcoming digital filmmaking camera priced at $9k, based around the same sensor as the Blackmagic Production Camera.

What this sample video demonstrates is that AJA seem to have applied some magic colour science to their implementation of the sensor.

If you thought the 10bit 4K ProRes of the Blackmagic Production Camera and URSA looked good wait till you see this.

CION is said to be shipping very soon and it could be an interesting option, but before you can say “Ikonoskop” there’s an obvious danger to consider here. The Sony FS7 is more of a workhorse all-rounder which could pound the CION into submission on the market, given they both share the same price point.

The FS7 will shoot 4K XAVC-S at 600Mbit/s in 10bit 4:2:2 which is very close indeed to the 4k ProRes in 10bit 4:4:4 coming off the CION.

Though the CION is not aiming to capture the section of the market that requires low light performance and slow-mo, the CION looks to be an appealing drama / cine camera for 4K 24p production and let’s not forget it has a global shutter.

The packaging of the sensor has resulted in a higher price but also a higher maximum frame rate on the CION compared to the same sensor in the Blackmagic Production Camera. 4K tops out at 60fps in ProRes but an amazing 120fps when outputting 4K raw.

You can download the latest brochure for the AJA CION here whilst detailed product specs and pricing are available at AJA here

The post AJA CION 4K camera footage reveals outstanding colour performance appeared first on EOSHD.

The crowd funding campaign for the AXIOM camera ends in just hours and has been a massive success, surpassing the funding target early.

The open source cinema camera is backed by Magic Lantern, Philip Bloom and other leading lights of the DSLR community. It’s the people’s camera, taking control back into our own hands. What’s interesting is that it also unleashes Magic Lantern’s extraordinary ability for the first time outside the closed platform of a Canon DSLR. They now have hardware they can work directly with the manufacturer with, without any need to reverse engineer a DSLR.

This for me is the future of Magic Lantern. To be their own open source camera designer and manufacturer along with AXIOM.

Go to the Indigogo campaign today to get your camera!

Don’t wait much longer, as early units are significantly discounted. After the end of the funding campaign, retail prices will be offered instead.

Key points

• Top spec option – Super 35mm sensor, 4K raw output, global shutter
• Alternative options – Micro 4/3 and 16mm sensors for 2K but other benefits like 13 stop dynamic range
• External recording via 3x HDMI
• External control via portable device (like smartphone or remote control)
• €1600-2300 euros for early adopters
• Price of retail 4K S35 model rises to €5990 euros after crowd funding campaign so get yours in the next few hours to benefit from the low price
• Linux based OS

I meant to write about AXIOM a lot earlier but a whole host of other work got in the way. I am 100% behind the project, it’s really wonderful. The merging of the computer and cinema camera worlds has the potential to make the big manufacturers look like dinosaurs in terms of software and features.

With AXIOM being an open source platform it’s much more flexible. Anyone can design features into the camera. It’s also unique. Canon or another big manufacturer will in my opinion likely never do an open source cinema camera.

AXIOM is perfect for people who dream of designing their own camera. Let’s face it some of us can design better stuff than what we get already!!

The user has 100% access to the source code of the AXIOM and can program the camera in any way they like.

Shooters on the other hand needs no programming knowledge to go and shoot beautiful 4K raw images with this – and benefit from global shutter of course.

The hardware specs are also extremely impressive, sharing a similar CMOSIS 4K Super 35mm sensor to the AJA CION with global shutter. There’s now also a 16mm version, in addition to the Micro Four Thirds version with Trusense sensor. Great hardware needs great software, and so the project is very much strengthened by the support of Magic Lantern. I think AXIOM and the team behind raw recording on Canon DSLRs are a perfect match.

Sample footage

I’ll be very excited to see what branches of development occur with the AXIOM. It could open it up for all kinds of specialist creative uses. Eventually you’ll be able to select from a wide range of firmwares and configurations.

It is perhaps the most flexible digital cinema camera platform in the world, and it could become a major player in the industry because of that. Nobody has this amount of control to reconfigure or improve an Arri or Canon!

With a usual cinema camera you have one firmware, from one provider and that is it. No raw recording, no peaking? Forget it. It’s unlikely to be added and even if it does come from the manufacturer, you might have to wait months or even years for it…

The AXIOM is not like that. If you need something like peaking, a developer simply codes it over night and there you have it. Download it onto the system like a piece of software and go and shoot.

The initial camera, AXIOM Alpha is a development box for the team and the Beta camera will be the friendly face of that, sold to early adopters and crowd funding campaign backers.

Here’s the basic specs of the hardware for AXIOM Beta, the one you will get if you buy it via the Indiegogo campaign.

You pay a smaller amount up front like 300 to 600 euros and then the camera ships in April 2015, if all goes to plan. Pricing is between 1600-2300 euros for AXIOM Beta depending on what option and configuration you choose. After that the prices more than double for retail so it becomes more like an AJA CION. You have a choice of S35 4K sensor with global shutter, Micro Four Thirds sized sensor with 13 stop dynamic range or 16mm sensor.

• 3x HDMI Full HD (4:4:4) output at up to 60 FPS each
• 4K raw output via experimental HDMI formats
• Capture full resolution, full bitdepth raw still images to MicroSD card
• Remote control of all camera functions from smartphone, tablet, laptop
• Power management and monitoring (e.g. voltage, current, temperature)
• Highly customizable via modular I/O addons (e.g. SDI)
• Accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope e.g. for image stabilization
• Different lens mount options (e.g. passive Nikon F-mount, EF* and M4/3)
• Wide input voltage range (5-40V)
• Very lightweight and compact ~110x60x50mm
• Embedded Linux (e.g. Raspian, ArchLinux)
• LUTs, matrix color conversion, FPN compensation, false color display, overlays, dead pixel compensation
• Using Microzed board (instead of Zedboard used in AXIOM Alpha)* An active EF mount option will be developed later

The camera is a dream for developers but for shooters as well. It will never lack when it comes to features. Hardware wise it is a chameleon too. New sensors and mounts will be sold later and the system is modular like RED. According to Alex at Magic Lantern, the sensor in the AXIOM is very interesting. It has a lot of capabilities not utilised on other cameras that have used it so far, like 1080p at 800fps!

With the AXIOM you will have a variety of ways to connect to the sensor and process images. It’s all programmable and modular. It will be ready to shoot with and you don’t need to be a developer to be involved in using the early cameras, but it will give you the chance to work closely with Magic Lantern and the AXIOM team, in helping to shape the production AXIOM ‘Gamma’ camera (mock-up below)…

Who might be interested in this camera?

Well anyone building their own camera should be on the list for one, for certain.

Anyone interested in shooting beautiful footage from a very affordable 4K S35 sensor, too.

Finally, software developers wanting to build their own branches of firmware and functionality for the AXIOM should buy one before the clock ticks down.

From EOSHD, I wish the best of luck to Sebastian, A1ex and everyone involved in the project!!

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A French rental house tries lenses on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (La Blackmagic Camera passe chez PhotoCineRent) Here I have rounded up all the lenses I have in mind for achieving a wide angle on the 2.3x crop sensor of the Blackmagic camera. What is out? The Canon EF mount rather restricts this choice to [...]

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When Ozzy common sense meets innovation… And a Vocas matte box Why is the Blackmagic Cinema Camera the way it is? It’s a long time since we saw such a creative camera with this much creative depth, rather than an another run of the mill industry tool that merely does a job. Grant Petty, CEO at [...]

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In the last few weeks the already large number of options for filmmakers have been shaken up. Current cameras all seem to fall into different niches.

There are the depth of field specialists – 5D Mark III and D800 with full frame sensors. There are the resolution and raw codec specialists the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera and Red Scarlet. There’s the slow mo specialist the Sony FS700 and my personal favourite all-rounders the GH2 and FS100 which just keep getting better with firmware updates (the FS100 is now a world cam with latest one from Sony).

What happens next will be a fascinating fight. EOSHD rounds up the contenders.

Canon

Should it exist, the C100 is going to have to be cheap. Putting a stripped down C300 out there for $8k isn’t going to work. Putting it between the FS700 and C300 won’t do either, because frankly that isn’t possible – the FS700 is already better specced than the C300 for half the price. It is 4K ready so more future proof, and does 240fps 1080p whilst the C500 will come in at a LOT more – $30,000 in fact. I think the C500 is going to be great for Hollywood and future proof broadcast acquisition in 4K – a viable alternative to the Alexa but there is an awfully big hole under $30,000.

The 4K DSLR is basically a 1D X stills camera and lacks fundamental features like 25p, robust ports like HD-SDI and XLR, or any usability concessions like peaking. A serious mistake in my view and a very very cynical product. It is also said to be disappointing in terms of the image (not true 4K and only a 8bit codec). The 1080p mode is multi-region but said to be no better in image quality than the 5D Mark III or 1D X, which is just crazy! Everyone is in love with full frame and the DSLR form factor for video. Canon should be providing a proper 2K raw DSLR for $6,000 with an electronic ND filter and XLR in a battery grip, scrap the wobbly HDMI port and with a product like this Canon will clean up. There’s simply no excuse not to sacrifice some margin and give us a proper next generation camera, otherwise they risk losing their accidentally won foothold completely.

Blackmagic Design

I have to admit that when news of this camera came out I had a vision of the future as clear as day, and I’ll be very surprised if the BMD Camera does not push virtually everyone else to compete, like the iPhone did in the mobile market. Yes there will be a slew of imitators BUT the great strength of a post production company like Blackmagic is their expertise in software and recorder hardware. Their Cinema Camera raw recorder is fully integrated and proven hardware. DaVinci is highly desirable as a professional post production suite. Their in-camera firmware and touch screen interface is also leaps and bounds ahead of Japanese software design.

Above: 12bit RAW at 2.5K resolution for $3000 – the sensation of NAB 2012

Red

Like Canon, Red seem to be highly focussed on providing for the very high end with industry tools and not so much the lower end. The Scarlet’s ‘brain’ at $10,000 is pretty reasonable. The rest of the kit to get it operational is extremely expensive. I am not paying $3200 for an SSD, I don’t care if it is used by Fincher and Jackson, that price is out of my imagination. Red’s chief competition at the moment is Arri, Sony and Canon. Panasonic have their 4K Vari-Cam coming but until then aren’t in the digital cinema game. Arri have carved up the lions share of both film and TV. Red have a great run with many high profile shoots but their smaller support network causes doubts in the minds of many producers especially in Europe. Sony’s F65 will provide stiff competition at the very top end – though the Epic has the edge on chassis size.

Red like to portray the image of a lone gun-man fighting against the corporate might of Japan. Indeed the big question here is whether Red are corporate enough to fight Arri & Sony in the digital cinema industry or whether they are too much a loose cannon and too small to compete with large multinationals, with their wide support network, trusted brand names, huge engineering resources and strength in depth. Red do well to win high profile shoots like The Hobbit but they need more scope. Lower down, nearly everyone at NAB was in agreement in saying the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera could be a serious blow to Red’s hopes of securing a mass market footing with 3K for $3k. As for 4K – though we don’t know the price of the 4K recording unit yet, the Sony FS700 certainly seems to undercut the Scarlet – as well as offering higher frame rates (without a crop of the sensor).

Sony

The FS700 is the bomb. It covers broad range of customers from FS100 upgraders to potential C300 buyers – so right the way from well off consumers to broadcast television, not only as a 1080p camera but as a future proof 4K ready one that does 240fps super slow mo. The 4K add-on later is a touch of genius by Sony because it gives them the luxury of being more flexible with their market approach. The market is changing so fast, Sony can wait until the others have their 4K offerings out and bend to their pricing strategy; They only have to take into account the manufacturing and development cost of the external recorder, since the camera already has a 4K sensor and 3G-HD-SDI for $8k.

Hopefully the external recorder will be small enough to integrate into the camera like the current SSD unit on the FS100 does.

Above: Photo from Too Much Imagination’s shoot with the FS700

Panasonic

Panasonic’s GH2 is brilliant and the momentum keeps building (the GH3 is due this year). The hack shows what low end hardware is capable of when truly unleashed. That camera’s sensor and image processor could be in a C300 competitor if it had the same build, built in ND filter wheel, better LCD, better audio and sturdier connectivity. That Panasonic can put a consumer camera like this out with such a knockout image for $600 makes you wonder what they are capable of at $8000 when freed from the kind of unimaginative thinking that plagued the AF100. AVC Ultra seems positive but I have a couple of concerns about Panasonic – the under specced AF100 is a problem as is the lack of a replacement any time soon. Also AVC Ultra is not a raw codec. Canon have EOSRAW, Blackmagic have uncompressed raw, Arri and Red have their own codecs. Where’s Panasonic’s?

Above: the current Varicam is small chip CCD. Where is the Super 35mm version or a higher end offering above the already dated AF100?

And the winner is…

JVC! Only joking.

I originally began this article before NAB and one piece of the original text is quite pertinent now…

“At some point this year there will be a gap that one of these manufacturers will literally walk straight into, whether it is Sony with slow-mo on the FS700, Panasonic with their 12bit codec or Canon with a 4K DSLR.”

Well it turned out to be Blackmagic Design who walked into a gap.

We’re not talking about a small gap either, rather a gaping hole.

I’m astonished how unimaginative the big guys have been in their approach to bringing the mass market to the digital cinema market. The people who will buy the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera won’t just be a tiny niche of indie filmmakers – they will be stills photographers, camcorder users, DSLR owners, students, artists, freelancers, journalists, small production studios and even some of the bigger ones, broadcasters, wedding videographers and even Philip Bloom.

That is some broad appeal!

Purely by virtue of silly pricing, Canon’s Cinema EOS stuff doesn’t have the same broad mass market appeal and their stills DSLRs aren’t giving us what we want (a major missed opportunity).

Whilst the Blackmagic camera is great remember however that it is only one product. Although the singular Apple iPhone mopped the floor with manufacturers who had 100’s of different models and variations on the market, filmmaking is more diverse than the world of pocketable Nokias. I think by virtue of pushing so hard on specs and being aggressive on pricing Sony are going to come out top dog. The F65 is more powerful than the Alexa for a similar price – $65k. The FS700 offers just so much for $8k it is mind-blowing. The FS100 for low budget shooters is a much better option than a Canon DSLR. Sony are also being pretty brave with their DSLRs as well – first to put 1080/60p in there – first to do a pro mirrorless camera with the NEX 7 and their sensor in the Nikon D800 is probably the best full frame sensor in the world right now. I can’t wait to see what their full frame A99 is capable of in video mode (remember it is in their new business strategy to push 4K tech to consumers).

So I can see Sony cleaning up in a broad range of areas, Blackmagic cleaning up at the $3000 point, Arri maintaining a good footing in worldwide high end production and everyone else picking up the crumbs from under the king’s table.

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Blackmagic Cinema Camera – meet Canon C300. Pic by BMD tester John Brawley on Twitter

Blackmagic paid a visit to British pro video camera dealer CVP this week. CVP are the people I have my pre-order with and the expected shipping date of the first few units is fast approaching.

Here’s what CVP had to report about the 2.5K raw shooting marvel.

Heavier than a DSLR

The weight of your Blackmagic rig especially when the external power supply is taken into account will be pretty hefty. This is good for stability but I think DSLRs will still be more convenient for certain shoots where weight is a factor. Compared to an Epic, Scarlet or Alexa however the BMD is still much lighter.

“This morning Craig from Blackmagic popped in to the CVP Midlands showroom in order to let us have a quick ‘play’ with a prototype of their Cinema Camera… It’s a fairly chunky unit that weighs in at a hefty 1.8Kg for the body only. At this weight it’s far heavier than an SLR and the lack of any natural handgrip position means that in standard form it’s really suitable for tripod mount use only.  BMD are offering an optional pair of ‘cow horn’ style handgrips which will facilitate comfortable handheld use, however with both hands on the grips any kind of on-shot camera adjustments will be impossible without a focus puller and / or a (yet to be invented) BMD Cinema Camera remote control system!”

It can do low light

Raw (and even ProRes compared to highly compressed DSLR footage) allows you to bring up a hell of a lot of shadow detail. So even with a sensor rated at a native ISO of 400 relative to the native ISO of 800 on a DSLR or FS100, this is not so much of a problem. With gain applied to reach ISO 1600 and a fast aperture lens, I am sure the Blackmagic Cinema Camera will look great in low natural light conditions. Here’s what CVP had to say:

“The Cinema Camera’s native sensitivity is a healthy ISO400 and at f/2.8 it delivered fully exposed images in our fairly dimly lit studio set.  Sensitivity can be increased to ISO800 and 1600 for lower light environments and the increase in noise was minimal.  Adjusting the EF lens’ iris is easy using the |< and >| buttons, however it is stepped, so for precise or in-shot iris adjustment you’ll need a proper manual iris lens.”

Peaking and 5″ 800 x 400 seem very usable

Although the screen resolution is not up there with a Small HD DP-6 and you cannot expect a retina level pixel pitch, the good news is that it is decent to use and you get peaking to assist with manual focus. What about a punch in focus assist? The camera is supplied with a hood for shooting outdoors but you’ll probably need an external EVF for offsetting on a rig and shooting in very bright sunlight. What could be awkward is changing touch screen settings when shoulder mounted. The lack of physical buttons means you cannot twiddle nobs or buttons blindly like you can on a DSLR.

“The camera is equipped with a peaking function for accurate focusing – This is activated by a physical ‘focus’ button and it greatly facilitates accurate determination of the focus point, even with the integrated monitor…  And on the subject of that monitor I was pleasantly surprised with its image quality and also the clarity and ease of operation of the touch screen menu system.  Whilst only a limited number of set up parameters could be changed on the prototype , where adjustments could be made it was a cinch!”

When will it be in stock?

Blackmagic are still saying July but the camera is still in the prototype stage. That is a very short amount of time to ramp up production to satisfy demand, so CVP say that the camera looks like it will be trickled out slowly on a first come first served basis. I’d say the chances of it being ready in the next 2 weeks is 50-50.

“Of course the number 1 question we asked is “When do we get our stock” and the absolute truth of the matter is that Blackmagic are un-reassuringly vague on this point, saying merely that deliveries will start in July BUT at the moment precise dates and delivery quantities can’t be confirmed! From that we presume that initial deliveries may be constrained, so  we may still be fulfilling customer back-orders for some time…

So we apologise in advance to those customers who are understandably eager to get their cameras – When the Cinema Camera was announced on day one of NAB CVP ordered more than enough units to cover all orders to date and we’ve ordered more since, so we, and hence our customers are at the front of the queue for delivery – However it’s clearly going to be a frustrating wait for the vast majority and our best advice is that if you want one of these cameras and haven’t ordered it yet then do so without further delay as orders will be fulfilled in order of placement and we realistically don’t expect to see it in ‘free stock’ for some time!”

I am more excited about the Blackmagic Cinema Camera than I have been about any camera for a long long time. It is great to see a new company challenging the might of Red, Arri, Sony and Canon especially at such an accessible price point (accessible is something quickly forgotten by the film industry and the corporate ‘added value’ strategies going on at Canon, etc.)

I don’t have any concerns at the moment about the image quality of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, I think it will be great. What I am less sure about about is the lack of physical buttons, the lack of a grip, lack of mounting points, the weight and the internal battery. Though the design and form factor breaks the mould for a cinema camera, I’d have liked to have seen a battery compartment and a few more physical buttons just to make on-location shooting a little less of a headache. A run and gun camera this is not! A studio / narrative filmmaking marvel for $3000 it is.

Further reading – CVP hands-on with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

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Above is a lightly graded and non-sharpened 1080p ProRes frame grab provided by John Brawley from his pre-production Blackmagic Cinema Camera (this one is graded by Shian). 2.5K 12bit raw will look even more detailed. Click the image for the full sized file (note, this has been compressed to JPEG format)

For DSLR users thinking of moving up to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera this is an introductory guide to the biggest differences in operation between a DSLR and an actual cinema camera like the Blackmagic.

The important settings you usually have under your finger on a DSLR, like ISO, white balance and picture profile settings become a complete non-issue on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera if shooting in raw. With raw recording you are able to adjust all that stuff afterwards, in post production. This also helps to explain why the form factor is a minimalist ‘picture making box’ like a Red Scarlet. This is good because it simplifies the shoot. You don’t have to worry about incorrect ISO or white balance settings affecting the end result.

Those settings are really there for the ProRes recording mode and for monitoring purposes – but even in the 220Mbit ProRes mode, colour, ISO sensitivity and white balance are far less baked into the final image than they are on a DSLR.

With the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, the other big change to bare bones DSLR shooting is with the way shutter speed and aperture are used.

A lot of people use these on a DSLR to control exposure. On a cinema camera an ND filter in a matte box or a Vari ND is meant to be used for exposure, the aperture to vary the size of the focus plane and the shutter speed to vary the look of motion blur and movement.

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera does not express shutter speeds as we know them on DSLRs like 1/30, 1/50, 1/100, etc.

Rather the traditional motion picture standard of shutter angles is used in the menus. You should not need to keep changing these to keep up with shifts in light and exposure.

On a digital cinema camera shutter angles are essentially the same thing as shutter speeds, just a different language. They are related to how motion picture cameras have traditionally worked in the film world. Usually shutter angles are linked to the film frame rate of 24p and how much light hits the frame as it passes through the gate behind the rotary blade shutter, 24 frames per second. Exposing one frame at 1/24 would expose the whole frame under the open shutter for the whole time it is present, because the film moves at 24 frames per second. So a shutter speed of 1/24 is known as a 360 degrees shutter angle.

Now by halving the exposure time to 1/48 (a faster shutter speed and a narrower shutter angle) results in the shutter being open for half the time one frame is present for at 24fps. This is known as a 180 degrees shutter angle. (It is not about coverage of the frame, rather exposure timing). A 180 degrees shutter angle is preferred as the de-facto setting by cinematographers for a typical scene. The fastest shutter speed and narrowest angle on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is 45 degrees. This is a 1/198 shutter speed, closest to 1/200 on a DSLR. You might want to use this for a fast action sequence, slow mo or fight scene to reduce motion blur.

Here’s the full list of shutter speeds available on the camera and how they translate in 24p to a DSLR equivalent shutter speed.

360 = 1/24
270 = 1/32
180 = 1/48
178.8 = 1/50
144 = 1/60
90 = 1/96
72 = 1/120
45 = 1/198

As you can see, if you are doing to need a shallow DOF composition in day light at F1.4, a shutter of 1/198 with a native ISO of 400 will result in an over exposed image as well as a more staccato look to motion and no motion blur, so that shows you the importance of a good ND. The best value ND of choice is currently the Vari ND by Lightcraft Workshop and I use these on my FS100. With a static locked down shot and not much movement within the that shot you can often get away with a very high shutter speed on a DSLR like 1/1000 but the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a good chance to start embracing the superior 180 degrees shutter angle and NDs because it does give motion a more cinematic feel.

Further reading

John Brawley – A Little Tease

New hands-on with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, this time from Jigsaw24 in the UK

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Above: my first go at grading the Blackmagic Cinema Camera raw output

The above frame is scaled to 660 pixels wide for the blog. Click here to view the full 2400 x 1350 frame in your browser and another full frame here

John Brawley and Blackmagic Design today released the first raw DNG files from the camera.

Here’s my take on how the raw camera stands up.

Click here for the larger version

I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.

Not much has lived up to the cliche ‘game changer’ recently and only having seen snippets of the Blackmagic via compressed Vimeo footage I was beginning to have my doubts.

These CinemaDNG files sweep any doubts into the gutter.

Resolution is superb. Best I have ever seen for the price. Better than the C300 and better than the GH2. At per pixel level from the 2.5K raw, it is sharp no question.

Any doubts that this isn’t a sharp camera now? Wow.

Noise isn’t really noise like we’re used to it on DSLRs. On DSLRs we have those blotchy patches and brightly coloured red speckles, or blueish fizz. That noise is very destructive.

Here on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera it looks like someone brought out the Gorilla Grain plugin. It looks that nice.

I wouldn’t even call it noise. It is closer to real film grain.

The exposure below is a 1:1 crop rated for ISO 1600. As you can see, it has the fine grain of an Olympus OM-D raw still.

Also may I add that is pretty damned clean for ISO 1600. Of course this is raw, so ISO 1600 is not a gain boost applied on the sensor itself but to the raw data after it comes off the sensor. If you set ISO 1600 in-camera the sensor’s native ISO remains the same but the image is lifted like you would lift the exposure of a raw still in Photoshop. With raw you set ISO for monitoring purposes but it isn’t baked into the footage like with a DSLR so effectively you set your real ISO in post.

One thing I did notice with the grain – and you have to look VERY closely at a still frame for this is that certain non-random patterns are over some areas of grain texture. But I honestly don’t think anyone will actually notice this.

The roll off to highlights is far and away the best I have ever seen for $3000 as well.

Pay special attention to the black box below…

The bottom one is what your highlights usually look like on a DSLR, FS100 or even C300. These are sparks – very bright and high contrast.

I was able to soften the highlights and make the roll off incredibly smooth considering how extreme the highlights are in this shot.

In terms of colour, I don’t find anything odd with the camera either. Reds are as saturated or as muted as you want them to be and when you push the saturation in post it doesn’t fall apart, though you can get some plastic ‘fake tan’ skin tones if you push saturation too much with a warmer white balance.

Speaking of which this is actually a great camera for skin tones because of the 12bit raw output. I’ve never seen actors look more life-like and I’ve never had so much flexibility to make them look better. The 5D Mark II had a good go of skin tones. But the Blackmagic takes it to a new level of realism.

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is so close to being an actor’s makeup artist, it is going to be loved by crew and stars alike.

Here’s an example of how I tried to ‘fix’ skin in my first go at grading. You can go for the ultra revealing look, putting contrast and detail into every pour and wrinkle of a face, or you can be much kinder to people and give their skin a smooth Hollywood glow by reducing the contrast, recovering some highlights to remove that plastic look and add a cooler white balance.

First revealing then soft and pale

(Full version is better)

So what is CinemaDNG? Essentially it is just a file format like raw on DSLRs, with each frame stored in a separate file as if using a DSLR burst mode but at 24fps.

The files are 12bit, 2400 x 1350 and can be opened in Photoshop or a professional video orientated grading package like DaVinci Resolve 9 which, amazingly, will ship with the camera.

You can try DaVinci Resolve 9 Beta 3 Lite for free by downloading it here.

Unfortunately playing back and editing CinemaDNG raw even on the highest end Macbook Pro is extremely demanding on your system and with my SSD packing, i7 quad core 8GB MacBook I couldn’t get above 1fps in Premiere CS5.5. Although CinemaDNG is actually an open standard it is created by Adobe themselves and yet their support in Premiere for it is really incredibly ropey! You can download the plugin to allow DNG files to be opened in Premiere CS5.5 from here, but I don’t recommend it because the noise looks really odd, shadows and highlights are crushed and it has a very ‘8bit’ feel, which you cannot grade accurately from.

You will not be editing Blackmagic Cinema Camera raw footage natively in Final Cut Pro, FCP X or Premiere CS5.5 / CS6 just yet.

Instead it is best to do your grading work in Resolve, then export to ProRes and edit in your NLE of choice. Of course you can also skip Resolve altogether and record in ProRes in-camera which is a great feature, and then just do light grading work with the Fast Color Corrector in Premiere. So that faster workflow for tight deadlines is still there if you need it. And if you want the best possible grading experience then raw obviously takes a lot longer.

All in all, John’s DNGs have swept away any doubts I have about this camera being anything other than spectacular. I cannot wait to get my hands on this $3000 piece of raw cinema, in a box.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t forget to head over to John’s site and have a go at grading the raw CinemaDNG frames yourself – it can be done in Photoshop to give you an idea of what the camera is capable of, without any Resolve skills.

Download the DNG file clips from John Brawley

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Click here to view the embedded video.

DOWNLOAD 2.5K BLACKMAGIC H.264 FOOTAGE HERE

(Important: on the Vimeo page for this clip, click download to get the 2.5K 80Mbit clip. Don’t bother watching it full screen from the stream as it is a pale imitation of the full 2.5k file)

I’ve been experimenting today with Blackmagic Cinema Camera workflows.

I use Adobe Premiere as my main NLE. I am not an FX guy so rarely use After Effects. But it comes in very handy here.

Premiere cannot yet edit the CinemaDNG files natively, performance is very limited, it interprets the footage at 1fps, requiring you to fix this for every clip and image quality suffers greatly, possibly because it doesn’t allow you to edit in glorious 12bit.

Here’s the solution that’s working best for me…

In After Effects (AE CS5.5 or CS6) CinemaDNG chooses to play nice. You can grade with the common Photoshop raw controls and drag the clips right in, before rendering them out in a 2.5K lossless format for editing on a timeline in Premiere.

It is fast, easy and maximises the quality of the footage.

Editing 2.5K raw is very demanding, but with this method you won’t need a monster computer. The lossless files don’t use complex compression algorithms.

You can apply grading to the clips in After Effects as soon as you open them or you can choose to grade the lossless clips in Premiere. I did some light grading in the Photoshop style raw colour corrector to bring up the shadows, flatten the image and tweak the white balance before rendering them out from After Effects.

So here’s my workflow in full:

In After Effects

1. Right click the raw file in AE. Choose Create Proxy > Movie to create a clip composition
2. Select the Render Queue tab, the clip will be added to the list
3. Under Render Settings bring up the full diaglog box by clicking Draft Settings, change it to Best Settings in the quality drop down and Full in resolution. Also select the frame rate to match your footage. Close the dialog box and return to the render queue.
4. Select the small arrow next to Output Module and choose Lossless. This gives you the best performance and quality in Premiere especially if you are editing on a laptop
5. Click the filename next to Output To and enter your choice and choose a directory to render the files to
6. Finally click render to export the clips

The resulting Quicktime files will be playable in Quicktime X, VLC Player and 100% editable in Premiere. They will grade very well too. But unlike the ProRes option in-camera you are getting the full 2.5k resolution and believe me 2400 x 1350 makes a huge difference over 1080p!

In Premiere

1. Now simply drag the lossless clips to Premiere where you can smoothly snip and colour correct away just like with DSLR footage.
2. It doesn’t matter what sequence preset you use, when you drag the clip onto a blank timeline for the first time you should be prompted whether you want the sequence settings to match the clip. Select ‘yes’.

You don’t need the CinemaDNG plugin or any workarounds. I am editing on a Macbook Pro 17″ i7 with 8GB RAM and an SSD as the main working drive, and didn’t have any problems.

So how about for export to Vimeo? At the moment Vimeo doesn’t playback higher than 1080p but you can still use it to share the clip or as hosting for the full 2.5K file. Here are the 2.5k export settings I’m using in Premiere for the final 24p master.

1. Set Format – H.264
2. Below under Basic Video Settings before entering the resolution – select profile ‘High’. This refers to the version of H.264 used
3. Select Level as 5.1. This allows the higher resolutions.
4. Now enter the width and height as 2400 x 1350
5. Select frame rate to match your footage
6. Select aspect Square Pixels 1.0
7. Tick ‘Render At Maximum Depth’
8. Under Bitrate Settings select VBR 2 pass
9. I’ve used a target bitrate of 80 Mbit and a maximum of 120 Mbit to keep that fine noise grain and uncompressed look. You may get away with lower if you want dramatically reduced file sizes.
10. Tick ‘Use Maximum Render Quality’
11. Finally, click Export

My export settings for 2.5K H.264 – click the image to enlarge

And that’s it. Goodbye CinemaDNG plugin you aren’t needed here!

Playback

Need a 2.5K display to view it on? Get the Dell U2711 IPS 27″ monitor for around $699 on eBay

Of course, the resulting file plays back no problem in Quicktime or VLC, etc.

Those with the newer Macbook Pro 15″ 2.5K screens will enjoy this.

I’ve had stunning – no – eyeball popping playback on my Dell U2711 screen too. Essentially this is a matte version of Apple’s Cinema Display but without the fancy chassis and Thunderbolt connectivity. Since you will want to free up a Thunderbolt port for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera anyway, the Dell is a good option as it has a Displayport on the back. You will need to use this to get the full resolution from a Mac, as HDMI only goes up to 1080p.

The screen resolution is 2560 x 1440 and the IPS panel size is 27″ so it has no trouble with 2400 x 1350 Blackmagic Cinema Camera material.

As for projectors and TVs unfortunately 2.5K ones are extremely rare if not almost non-existent. The good news is that exporting from a 2.5K workflow maximises the resolution of the camera and it will look like the sharpest 1080p output on earth. When 4K projectors and TVs (Sony has one on the way) become more affordable, 2.5K will also upscale very nicely – especially since it comes from raw – compared to 1080p.

The quality of the 2.5K CinemaDNG from this camera is insane. Hopefully I will be getting my Blackmagic Cinema Camera very soon from CVP in the UK.

I will be doing a full review of it here on the blog to see what kind of step it is up from DSLRs and may be able to set up a comparison with the Alexa and Scarlet  in Berlin. Stay tuned…

HUGE THANKS TO John Brawley, KJ Halverson and James Miller

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Photokina is less than a month away now and it is going to be a busy time. I will be there to get my hands on the new cameras, and I don’t think I can remember a month like this with such exciting products being released.

Sony’s full frame camcorder the VG-900 will have a mirrorless mount, all in a video camera form factor for £2.5k and of course we have the Blackmagic Cinema Camera which soots amazing 12bit raw for the same price. These were mythical cameras only 6 months ago. Raw video for $3000? Full frame video camera with E-mount?

Then we come to the GH3.

The GH3 is going to be more professional this time around according to my source in Asia. It is moving up the line and will be more expensive as a result.

The camera has a high bitrate mode of around 70-80Mbit. Panasonic have decided to put the features we need in the box rather than risk unreliability with a third party hack. This is a very good move.

I believe intra-frame is being considered as an option, I don’t know whether the high bitrate mode (AVCHD spec busting) applies to 1080/60p or just 24p yet.

The camera is larger and heavier, with far better build than previously. It is gunning for the high end Canon DSLRs and filmmakers.

The AF100 is no longer a reason to hold back the GH3 and Panasonic are changing their approach. The sales of the AF100 haven’t lived up to their targets. I am sure we will see Panasonic address the pro market cameras soon with 4K and AVC Ultra.

I will be at Photokina to try out the GH3 on September 18th.

Some other updates now…

Blackmagic Cinema Camera review

The current demo cameras circulating are only pre-production models and I have decided to hold out for my retail model to ship, since I am number 7 in the queue at CVP. So I’m expecting to get my review of this camera done in around 1-2 weeks. After that the plan is to do a raw shootout with a Red Scarlet in Berlin, it will be very interesting to see how similar these vastly differently priced cameras are, and how close to the Scarlet’s 4K the Blackmagic is able to get at 2.5K. It looks pretty detailed to me!

In the mean time Frank Glencairn of G-Log fame, Sebastian Wiegaertner and Philip Bloom’s cat have some hands on photos of the demo unit.

Sony NEX VG-900

This is the other camera I am very excited about. Finally a video optimised full frame (35mm photographic) sensor in a video camera form factor.

Nobody saw this coming. A full frame NEX? Let alone a video camera.

The NEX VG-900 is primarily a video camera like the VG-20 but more high end.

Taking on the 5D Mark III with a more forward facing spec sheet the new A99 SLT camera is exciting in itself but the Alpha mount is not. The mirrorless mount is reason enough to get the VG-900.

Not only is the NEX VG-900 the first ever stand-alone video camera with a mirrorless mount and full frame sensor, it is very cheap for what it is. $3500 / 3000 EUR according to Sony Alpha Rumors, hearing also that there’s a higher end version due with a broadcast quality codec (4-2-2 50Mbit MPEG).

Sony are trying to grab a sizeable part of the video market previously occupied by full frame DSLRs like the 5D and D800. Canon thought the market would be best served by ignoring it and only catering to Hollywood with Cinema EOS cameras upward of $15,000. It is their for Sony’s taking. Almost everybody uses a DSLR to shoot video with or compliment a more expensive camera. It is also a market which has a great cross over with the enthusiast, hobbyist and consumer market so it is potentially massive.

VG-20 rig by G-Next Cinematography

In moving away from the consumer-friendly size advantage of mirrorless, Sony have finally put the great E-mount where it belongs in a high end camera of the future that doesn’t need a mirror. I have a feeling Canon FD lens prices are about to go up a bit!

It is likely the VG-900 will use the same 24MP Exmor HD sensor found in the A99, but we could see some interesting additions like uncompressed HDMI too. Peaking will also be nice to have on a full frame sensor – much needed!

With full frame you get better dynamic range, better low light performance and a smoother roll off in the highlights compared to much smaller crop sensors not just a shallower depth of field and that rich full frame rendering of lenses. Of course a lot of this is lost in translation if the codec isn’t up to scratch. If even 70% of that translates into the video mode on the VG-900 or A99 we are in for a treat.

With the Panasonic GH3, Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Sony VG-900 / A99 filmmakers really are about to be given a huge boost sub $3500.

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I just received a tidbit of info from a reader. Apparently Blackmagic have a third camera we’ve not seen yet on any of the posters at NAB. The show opens shortly.

The source of the info comes from a private Blackmagic Design Facebook page. There, a company employee confirmed in a comment that Blackmagic will announce 3 cameras at the opening of the show.

It could be an announcement of a camera under development, or it could just be that it doesn’t feature as prominently on the NAB banners. The Micro and URSA Mini are on absolutely huge billboards.

If it’s a more minor camera it could be a evolution of the Pocket Cinema Camera to 2.0, or it could even be a new Cinema Camera priced low for enthusiasts.

My guess is the latter, but with Super 35mm sensor and EF mount rather than Micro Four Thirds.

Keep an eye on Vegas time, 9.30am.

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I like the URSA Mini the best but here we have the old Pocket and Studio cameras reincarnated. They are a lot cuter this time.

These cameras are exceptionally innovative and certainly break all the known performance / size ratios. Although they look very similar on the surface they are aimed at very different users. I’ll now delve into how the pair of ‘identical twins’ differ in terms of personality…

Micro Cinema Camera (BMMCC)

• Key specs – 1080p Super 16mm 13-stop camera with internal recording
• Codec – ProRes in various flavours and losslessly compressed Cinema DNG raw at 65Mb/s to SD card like the original Pocket Cinema Camera)
• Frame rates – Up to 60fps in rolling shutter mode, up to 30fps in global shutter mode (24p,25p present of course)
• Not got – no 4K
• What’s it for? Drones and cinematic POV shots.
• What else? PWM and S.bus inputs allow you to use a model airplane remote control to operate the camera wirelessly.
• Price? $995
• EOSHD says: It’s a bit like a successor to the Pocket Cinema Camera minus the LCD. But the design is a lot cooler that’s for sure.

Micro Studio Camera (BMMSC)

• Key specs – Ultra HD (3840×2160) Super 16mm camera with external recording only
• Codec – N/A
• Frame rates – Up to 60fps in 1080p, up to 30fps in Ultra HD
• Not got – there’s no internal recording, you do it via SDI to an external recorder like the Atomos Shogun
• What’s it for? B-cam on set / broadcast TV / studio productions and low budget YouTube programming
• What else? B4 lens control
• Price? $1295
• EOSHD says: low budget web videos shot indoors just went 4K

What have they got in common? They both feature approximately 13mm x 7mm Super 16 sensors (3x crop) behind an active Micro Four Thirds mount. These cameras I think are essentially the previous Blackamgic Pocket and Studio cameras reincarnated with a new ergonomic design concept. They are basically camera-heads with sensors. You will need to add everything else they need such as monitors, EVFs, audio, etc. although they do have support for a decent sized Canon LP-B6 battery. That’s a smart move for the Micro Cinema Camera as the Pocket Cinema Camera had a battery which was far too small and ran out after 30 minutes. In addition the LP-B6, being the same battery used by many EVFs, monitors and Canon DSLRs is very common and easy to get hold of.

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Comment on the forum Some of my favourite images are from cinema cameras and DSLRs from which attention has long since drifted elsewhere! Rest assured some of the older cameras on this list are better than any of the latest and greatest (if not in terms of usability then in terms of having an analogue film-like feel that [...]

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Panasonic now provide a smaller version of the VariCam S35 which is aimed squarely at the high end cinema market. The VariCam LT is Panasonic’s answer to the Alexa Mini and also competes with the Canon C300 Mark II and Sony F55 although at $18k for the body-only is a world away from the Sony FS7 [...]

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The Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera is the not-quite-a-replacement for the Pocket Cinema Camera. Although lacking the ready to shoot straight out of the box form factor of that camera, the new model adds a switchable rolling shutter / global shutter mode as well as high frame rates. 10bit ProRes, 12bit RAW and 13+ stop dynamic [...]

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With a completely new Super 35mm sensor, the Panasonic EVA1 has just been announced at CineGear Expo. The EVA1 is an even more compact version of the Varicam LT digital film camera and sits above the GH5 in the Panasonic range. It has an extremely enticing spec. The 4K is oversampled from an all-new Super 35mm 5.7K sensor, with colour science from the highest-end Varicam range. 2k slow-mo at 240fps, 10bit 4K oversampled from nearly 6K put it ahead of the Canon C200. In a future firmware update, the camera will output 5.7K RAW. It has a number of new technologies ...

Read moreThe wraps are off! Panasonic EVA1 compact cinema camera announced with Super 35 5.7K sensor and Dual Native ISO

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Comment on the EOSHD Forum Fantasies do come true for people willing to work hard over many years but sometimes, a dream can be realised simply by sitting down for a very long time and doing nothing, until the object of your desire becomes a bit old and tatty. Yes, now is your chance to own an Arri Alexa. Maybe it’s time to put aside that A7 III and upgrade? The Alexa has certainly won more Oscars. The skin tones are a bit better too. The Alexa kit offered by CVP is £4800 + VAT (around $6000). This is certainly ...

Read moreYou can now get an Arri Alexa for £4900

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Comment on the forum It’s not often we get a glimpse of what a major manufacturer is considering when designing a new cinema camera. Now a survey by JVC aimed at filmmakers and content creators gives us exactly that. Some of the questions shows JVC is considering EF mount, Micro Four Thirds or PL mount. These are the current most popular lens mounts for filmmakers, thanks to the success of Micro Four Thirds as a relatively open standard, the GH5. That alongside the success of Canon’s Cinema EOS range and abundance of EF lenses means PL mount is no longer ...

Read moreJVC surveys the crowd for new $4000 Cinema Camera

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I really do like the look of the Z-Cam E2. Reading Erik Naso’s very detailed review was an eye-opener. For a modular camera, it’s very forgiving in terms of bare bones shooting. You do need a cage and ideally an external EVF or monitor – but it runs off a small Sony NP camcorder battery and records internally at a very high spec – so you don’t need to add an expensive external recorder and heavy V-lock battery. I’ve been rather impressed by the colour science on this camera as well. It has a certain Digital Bolex mojo to it. ...

Read moreThe $2000 Z-Cam E2 gets upgraded to 4K 160fps with firmware update, RAW codec coming later

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In an understated announcement which was a surprise to almost everyone, Grant Petty CEO of Blackmagic just announced the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K in a YouTube video. Blackmagic have not just put the cat amongst the pigeons with this camera but a proper lion in a field of flamingos. The Pocket 6K is the first 6K RAW and ProRes shooting camera for under $2500. It takes much of the URSA Mini Pro’s core and puts it in a much smaller body. Although it has a Canon EF mount, the body itself is almost identical to the Pocket 4K. Ah ...

Read moreBlackmagic Pocket 6K surprises with Super 35 sensor, anamorphic modes and 5.7K 60p RAW for $2495!

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Comment on the forum / Ask me anything The S1H is the best featured mirrorless camera on the market for filmmakers – just to put it into perspective, let’s start by summarising the entire competition as quickly as we can. Sony do not have an answer at the moment to this camera. There’s Fuji, where the story is more interesting – the X-H1 was a huge step from previous efforts, but only a 1.7x crop image. Going large with the Fuji GFX 100 cannot be considered a realistic prospect for most at $10,000. Moving onto Blackmagic, the best NLE and ...

Read morePanasonic S1H review / hands-on – a true 6K full frame cinema camera

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“VENICE” – it’s a word that captures the very essence of cinematic. Everybody knows of Venice, and knows that Venice is one of the most beautiful, most cinematic places in the world. The face of Italy, which is itself the beautiful face of Europe, whereas London is more like the arsehole. Well done Sony, for your VENICE cinema camera branding.

What next? Sony BERLIN? Sony NEW YORK? Sony Milton Keynes? No, the Sony marketing idiots have decided on the name “BURANO” which sounds like something Vic Reeves used to say at the end of Shooting Stars. “BURANO” is a small island in Venice, and it carries the weight of expectations for the sister camera to VENICE. Your Sony BURRITO can be had for the bargain price of just $25,000.

Allegedly this new camera is A) very small, but not as small as a Sony a1 and B) has the same sensor as a Sony a1 but not the full frame 4K 120p. Instead the BURRITO has to crop to 2x, to achieve those lovely high frame rates.

The BURRITO follows the most recent trend of making cinema cameras smaller, but not too small that you look like an amateur on set.

The BURRITO has a lot of nice things about it, including Sony’s rarely seen unicorn, that FS5 miracle of the electronically variable ND filter, as well as a new 16bit codec that I don’t understand, and the same 10bit 422 520Mbit HEVC codec of the Sony a1. But the main thing that justifies the $25,000 is that it is a pro video camera.

The trick is that other people notice that it is a pro video camera though, and to get this to happen, one of the favourite things filmmakers like to do is to make the smaller camera a lot bigger.

Do you see the logic now? Smaller cameras are in, because filmmakers want to make them bigger.

This way they can add all manner of serious looking appendages to the BURRITO, such as a cinema lens that weighs more than the VENICE II and a matte box that blocks out the entirety of the sun.

The monitor must be on a long metal arm, that resembles a NATO weapon and the battery must be almost as big as the camera itself, because surely electronics only gets more power hungry as they progress, not the other way around. The end result, is some kick ass rig like this:

Which is an absolute nightmare to shoot with. Heavy, unbalanced, overkill piece of shit.

Below we witness an even more unwieldy piece of engineering, in the hands of our able shill from a certain other blog. To mount this new lighter, smaller, more convenient cinema camera on his shoulder, he’s had to do what he’s been doing for the past 10 years unchanged. That’s called progress, I think you’ll agree?

Another thing which has changed so much in recent years is the quality of our EVFs, which are really now quite fantastic on cameras like the Panasonic S1H and Fujifilm GFX 100. Sony however, still resorts to a bog roll over an LCD.

There’s no room for an OLED viewfinder on a cinema camera, because these don’t impress the client. Instead the viewfinder must be an expensively large tube, which renders your field monitor absolutely useless as one, until you go to the bother of entirely disassembling it.

This is what I like to do most when I’m feeling creative and shooting a cinematographic masterpiece… disassemble things.

As you can see from the bearded Sony twit, although the camera is almost invisible now so much overkill has been added to it, it’s very important that it’s small!

This is the trend. The market wants it!

Four legs good, two legs bad!

And all the sheep start chanting BURRITO BURRITO! HAIL TO OUR GREAT SAVIOUR SONY!

And this progress isn’t just limited to cameras, for as you can see in the second shot, Cooke has produced a little tiny cinema lens (SP3) which makes you look like the user of a toy lens in front of a famous car commercial director. As you can see the size of the BURRITO with this Micro Four Cooke attached is once again a total game changer for filmmakers, as it allows the lovely Nino to focus using JUST HIS HAND.

Speaking of lenses, Sony does not call the new locking E-mount on the BURRITO “E-mount” but Alpha Mount, which is probably a better name and probably something Sony should consider for E-mount in general. AlphaMount has a nice ring to it, a locking ring in fact, which is necessary to stop the massive PL mount on the front from wobbling.

Tipping the scales at 2.8kg, the BURRITO is still even heavier than the OG Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K and about the weight of 5 Sony a1 bodies. However the weight reduction is clearly necessary, for that nimble setup now only requires 60 rods under it and a tripod designed to take an IMAX camera.

So bring on these REVOLUTIONARY!!! small cinema cameras. RED KIMODO, Sony BURRITO, all in blocked capitals to make them seem more serious.

The BURRITO does however have some limitations, not related to the all important small form factor which is the biggest advantage ever.

It cannot output a 4K feed with a LUT in most modes, and cannot shoot full frame 4K 120fps even though the same sensor has this capability in the Sony a1. There’s no uncompressed internal RAW recording, you know… like your Canon 5D Mark II has. The X-OCN codec is compressed RAW, and it remains to be seen what RED thinks of that.

X-OCN has been around a long while now, for example it is featured on the external AXS-R7 module for the Sony F5 and F55.

However, a lot of people seem to think it has just dropped for the first time on the tiny island in Venice.

It is interesting to note that X-OCN has a similar spread of data rates as ProRes on the Fuji X-H2, and unlike the VENICE, you don’t need to spend 4 grand each on the recording media (AXS). The BURRITO uses CFexpress B. I do expect to see X-OCN ‘raw’ on Sony’s mirrorless cameras eventually, like a future a7s IV, but they need to fucking get on with it as it has been around since 2016. Something mirrorless cameras have generously given the BURRITO in return for nothing back is IBIS, by the way. Yes, the BURRITO features IBIS, which Sony said was not possible to do with an internal ND filter. This gives me hope that we will be finally getting internal ND filters on our IBIS lumbered mirrorless cameras, and that Sony were simply lying.

It is far more likely for the latter to turn out to be true than the former.

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