As this year continues to fly by – in my case literally, as I’ve flown nearly 140,000 (yikes!) miles since January – I thought I would post my updated director’s reel before 2013 came along.

A big thanks goes to all of the people who helped me produce the work that you see here, both in front and of course behind the camera.  

By far the best part of filmmaking for me is getting to know and collaborate with wonderfully talented people both on and off the set of any production.

In this particular case, I’d especially like to thank the extremely talented duo of Ben Nussbaum for editing this piece for me (who previously edited Nocturne) and to Andrew Francis for his grade (Andrew also graded Mobius.)    

And for those who would like to see more of my motion and still photography work you can always go to my website.

If you’re curious as to how I racked up those miles…  Well this year took me to Japan, Singapore, Thaliand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Canada, The United Kingdon, France, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.   

A Week With The BMC from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the 1080p Version of Jon’s cut on Vimeo.

It goes without saying that whenever you ask someone for their opinion, you should know who they are, and where they are coming from when you consider their response.  This applies to still portfolio and film reviews, as well as gear advice.  A photojournalist should probably never ask a commercial photographer for gear advice, just as a documentary filmmaker should avoid asking a tentpole film director for advice on how to shoot a doc on the cheap…  These aren’t golden rules of course – and I am a firm believer that all rules are meant to be broken.  But this "rule" ultimately applies to ALL camera reviews as well.

Which brings us back to the Black Magic Cinema Camera and this, a follow up post.  A little over a week ago I published my first impression of the BMCC – an article that stirred up a tremendous amount of interest, traffic, and comments.  

I still stand by that post and my initial impressions.  I think this camera produces one of the most beautiful raw images out there – one of the top 5-6 sensors in the world perhaps – which I think is a HUGE compliment that many missed.  

I love the elegant simplicity of the design.  Yet in practical terms I still think people will have to put a bit of money into accessorizing a camera for even basic handheld use, and of course they will have to buy all of the bells and whistles we all do with ANY cinema camera (rods, baseplate, handles, batteries etc etc.) for production use (people seem to have missed the distinction between those two uses that I was trying to make:  with a few minor tweaks, this camera could have been used out of the box by some, for specific uses.)

The choice of the relatively small sensor was also something that I wasn’t thrilled about – mostly because of the lack of EF-mount lenses available (something a lot of people missed, or misunderstood.)  Some said that 16mm/Super 16mm had been around for awhile and that I like so many had fallen in love with the Vista-Vision-sized 5D MKII sensor – and I had to remind them in the post’s comments section that it was the lack of available lenses with an EF mount that made the sensor size an issue for me.  Then,  Black Magic Design announced that a passive micro four thirds mount would be available by December,  a little over a week after I and a few others published our reviews.

That of course changes things…  It opens up the BMCC to use Canon, Nikon, PL, and M series lenses and more – with a variety of adapters.    

In an age where a new camera seems to come out every month (it used to be ever few months, before that every year, and before that every 3-5 years!) I have to chuckle on how quickly the announcement came from Black Magic – even before the initial EF mount version had been made available to the public!   These are interesting times – and good ones:  for filmmakers.  For manufacturers: scary.  Unless you are in the business of making camera accessories of course..

In the end – I have to confirm what many of you have stated:  I have the chance to work with the RED Epic, the Canon C300, the Arri Alexa and just about the majority of current cameras out there.  Therefore I have a bit of a different opinion of the BMCC camera that some others will – and I think that should be expected. And that was the point I was trying to make in the first sentence of this post.    

There is one point that I will admit that I failed to emphasize enough in the initial blog post:  you will find no other camera in this price range ($3,000) that produces an image that looks anywhere like this one – especially when it comes to dynamic range and sharpness.

Another thing that I could NOT ignore was how excited my colleague Jon Carr was when the review camera was set to be delivered.  Even though he has access to my RED Epic package at the office, and Canon packages – he was truly excited about owning the BMCC camera.  Therefore I promised to let him borrow the camera after I had a chance to spend a week with it.  And I think that he more than confirmed what I have been seeing with my own eyes during my own tests:  the BMCC’s digital sensor and RAW image is simply stellar.  

And for that reason – I asked him to write a guest post on the blog and here it is :

 (p.s. if you’d like to see more guest blog posts from Jon or other people on the blog’s team, do let us know in the comments section – he has already been a key player in the making of many of the videos in the  behind many of the tutorials and BTS series we’ve done on the blog.)

From Jon Carr:

I have worked with Vincent Laforet for the past year and a half. Over that time I have been involved in many projects including co-writing and co-producing Möbius as well as producing and editing MotoArt.

I wouldn’t consider myself a DP. I work in the world of postproduction as an editor, visual effects artist, and producer. I shot this video to determine a viable postproduction workflow to handle the raw CinemaDNG files produced by the Blackmagic camera and thought it would be a good idea to share what I discovered for those interested in learning more about the camera.

Blackmagic was kind enough to send Vincent a camera, and after his initial review he let me take it out for a spin.

I think Vincent was very accurate and thorough in his review. I believe the BMC is going to dramatically impact the camera industry. We now have an affordable option that allows the masses to shoot RAW video and competing camera manufacturers will be forced to respond.

Much has been made of the small sensor, internal battery, and unique design but my focus will be on post. The one thing I will say is kudos to Blackmagic for providing a solution to those looking to shoot wide angle with their IBC announcement of the BMC MFT (Micro Four Thirds).  I love the innovation considering their initial camera is in the infancy stage of the launch.

So why shoot RAW? Let’s talk about stills and utilizing a program like Adobe Lightroom. I have taken photos shot on the lowest resolution cameras and made them look fantastic in Lightroom. The challenge is you can only go so far with a compressed image. The real power of a program like Lightroom happens when you snap a RAW photograph with your DSLR. You have the ability to push these RAW photos in vastly different directions based on your creative needs. Lightroom is using the RAW data to give you more control to change things like white balance and exposure. You can push exposure up to see details within shadows. You can pull exposure down to see clouds in an overexposed sky. The image has a lot of flex and won’t break as easily with harsh color distortions and gradations that you often get when pushing a compressed image like a JPEG. The exciting thing is we can now do this at an affordable level with video.

My first option for processing the RAW video files was to use Da Vinci Resolve (which is conveniently bundled with the camera). Resolve is currently the only way to handle these RAW files natively so think of it as Lightroom on steroids. You can’t drop a BMC CinemaDNG clip into Adobe Premiere and start editing. It needs to be converted to a friendlier editing codec like ProRes or DNxHD. This is where Resolve comes in. To put things in perspective, when Vincent first got his Epic, I edited the short highlight reel #308. This was very early in the product cycle of the Epic and people were just figuring things out. It took us nearly six days to export the 45-second clip as we struggled to work natively with the R3D files. Just over a year later I was able to cut MotoArt with 5K R3D’s within Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 with ease. Technology and workflows evolve and things will get better.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Just a little over two weeks after this camera (The BMCC "EF") was given to under a dozen reviewers, and a little a little over a week after this review was published,  Black Magic Design has announced an MFT version of this camera.   That camera will sport a Passive Micro Four Thirds mount that can be adapted to use with PL Lenses.  That  BMC "MFT" camera with the new mount will be available in December according to Black Magic.  This new mount means that a much larger series of lenses will now work with this camera and in effect changes my opinion on the lens limitations of this camera.   You should note both mounts are passive, meaning that there will be no iris control, or image stabilization.   You will however be able to use adaptors for PL, M, Nikon, Canon – just make sure each lens will fully cover the uncommon (more square) size of this sensor.  The "MFT" version of this camera will likely make a lot more sense for most users than the "EF" in my opinion.

 We’re in an age of a preponderance of choice.   And while having the privilege of making choices is a luxury – it can also at times be a bit overwhelming. 

The search for the “perfect camera” is a fruitless one.   It always has been and becomes more so with each new offering – especially as each of the new candidates continue to close in on becoming the “perfect” filmmaker’s tool.

The “perfect camera” is the one that will allow you to most effectively translate your vision onto the screen.   And for each of those ideas,  for each of the shooting challenges, for every budget (or lack thereof) exists the (near) perfect camera.

The key for me, is finding a tool that is ready to use now, one that I can use “as is” and that requires the least amount of tinkering and accessorizing before it can be put to use on a project.  This likely has to do in part with the endless tinkering I had to do with the Canon 5D MKII as I worked with a multitude of companies over the past 4 years to make HDSRLs production-worthy with a multitude of (unfortunately) necessary accessories.

Many of us love to innovate, to push the boundaries, and to discover new solutions to make a tool excel beyond its initial potential.   Yet, truth be told,  most of us would benefit from focusing more on how best to tell our stories, or on making the story stronger – that tends to pay off more richly in the long run that spending time on accessorizing our uber camera. 

To that point, I’m not sure that the Black Magic Cinema Camera will fit the bill "out of the box" for a lot of users out there looking for a production ready camera.

  The lack of certain key features and some of the choices Black Magic made – notably the size of the sensor (15.81mm x 8.8mm producing a 13 stop range 2.5K 12-bit RAW,  2432X1366 pixel CinemaDNG filesmake it difficult to put into immediate production use without a bit of accessory love.   And to be very clear: this camera WILL work on productions once properly outfitted (no question.)  If we could do it with HDSLRs we can certainly do it with this camera.   I do however believe this camera could ALSO have been a great handheld camera (with only a lens, and variable ND) were the ergonomics slightly more refined in that direction (without sacrificing anything or standing in the way of this camera being fully rigged up.)  In all fairness – this camera seems to have been designed to be used with a full support rig and standard filmmaking accessories.  A part of me can’t help but see the potential of what a few small changes could have done to make this camera do both well.  CLICK ON IMAGE TO LEFT FOR SENSOR SIZE COMPARISON AND HIGH RESOLUTION EXAMPLE

That being said: this is exactly what I would say about most HDSLRs and even many digital cinema cameras… most seem to need quite a bit of accessories to work on full fledged-productions.  Put my hat in the ring for someone looking for a camera that can be ready to use at all times, AND fully rigable for larger shoots.

The Good: I think that this camera produces one of the most beautiful images in the cinema/video market.   An image (Recorded either in RAW Adobe CinemaDNG format at 2.5K, or Apple’s ProRes 422 & DNXxHD 1080p) with very good detail (relative to other 1080p camera of course – not 4K+ as is to be expected.)    In some ways less is more, for example Arri’s Alexa camera actually incorporates a 1/4 soft filter in front of its sensor to soften detail, and this camera’s sensor also gives a very filmic look and noise structure that many simply won’t be able to resist – and that is especially true at this price point of just under $3,000.  The lack of resolution (Relative to 4K+ cameras) in many ways oddly makes it look more like motion picture film.   The blacks seem to fall apart in a very organic way.

So where does the Black Magic Digital Cinema camera (or BMCC) fit in the marketplace?

Well I have two words that I came to when thinking of the BMCC – “Beautiful, and Befuddling.”

CLICK ON IMAGE TO LEFT FOR  A HIGH RESOLUTION EXAMPLE OF THE DYNAMIC RANGE OF THIS CAMERA

From the moment this camera was announced at NAB this spring, I was befuddled by the form factor, and the choice of sensor size – a slightly smaller than micro 4/3rd size sensor when Super 35mm and greater have been all the rage since the Canon 5D MKII.   Yet I was also quite intrigued to see what this new RAW format looked like.   I was skeptical based on what I saw then – and I have since been very pleasantly surprised.

When put side by side with the Canon EOS 1DX (shooting still frames in the RAW CR2) the camera performs almost identically in terms of dynamic range, which is incredibly impressive   This cannot be said for the high ISO performance though (few if any can match Canon there.)  

I have included a comparison of the two cameras with the same Zeiss ZE 18mm 3.5 lens above – and that should demonstrate the relative crop factor between the two cameras on the same lens.   It’s significant of course and likely my single biggest reservation about this camera.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO LEFT FOR COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO CAMERAS IN A HIGH RESOLUTION EXAMPLE

You will also notice several examples that show what I would call “difficult” lighting situations in terms of dynamic range.   I haven’t had a chance to play too much with mixed available light yet.

With each example, I have included  what the RAW DNG file looks like in Adobe Photoshop CS6’s Adobe Camera RAW, a “Toned” version, a detail of the highlight detail, and shadow detail – to show just how much information is hiding in those DNG files.   

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