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Is This Real or Even Possibly Close???

Rick Augustus

Rick Augustus

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Just got a BMPCC, neat little camera, have done some pretty cool things with it, nothing too extensive tho. I'm still looking forward to owning an EPIC-X, however I was searching for BMPCC comparisons and I found this BMPCC vs. EPIC comparison and I have to say, I'm a little curious as to whether this is REAL footage from the BMPCC up against the EPIC.

Please help me understand how this could even be remotely possible...

https://vimeo.com/75646236
 
why are you so impressed?

This shows the same flaw as the bmcc, it needs a ton of light and is only usable in very bright light conditions (imo).
I have been saying this for the bmcc since I have worked with it : the dr claim is a lie.
Unless it is overexposed you will not get decent image quality, only the correctly exposed and over exposed steps of dr are usable.

Look at that footage again, it is exposed correctly but even so: focus on the parts that are in the shadows, there is heavy noise + weird artefacting going on in the bmpcc version.
Just as for the bmcc; the image deteriorates very quickly and very noticeably in the areas that are not very brightly lit.
 
Karim_Nassar said:
why are you so impressed?

This shows the same flaw as the bmcc, it needs a ton of light and is only usable in very bright light conditions (imo).
I have been saying this for the bmcc since I have worked with it : the dr claim is a lie.
Unless it is overexposed you will not get decent image quality, only the correctly exposed and over exposed steps of dr are usable.

Look at that footage again, it is exposed correctly but even so: focus on the parts that are in the shadows, there is heavy noise + weird artefacting going on in the bmpcc version.
Just as for the bmcc; the image deteriorates very quickly and very noticeably in the areas that are not very brightly lit.
Click to expand...

I'm impressed with the fact that beyond having to "focus on the parts in the shadows" there seem to be a pretty darned good image coming from this camera. Don't get me wrong I am a big RED "fan", however I do see ability in the images that this camera crates. I'm fairly new to working with RAW so I may be missing something but, isn't correct exposure a good thing?
 
Rick Augustus said:
isn't correct exposure a good thing?
Click to expand...

It is a good thing and you don't have it on the blackmagic cameras.
In raw mode, on the black magic cameras, you have to over expose your image until you see zebras.
This technique only will give you the best image quality out of these cameras.

If you expose correctly, with the rgb parade provided by an external monitor, you will end up with an image that is noisy and not so good.

Try for yourself, expose once correctly using the rgb parade, then same shot over expose until you begin to see zebras, compare the footage in post.

Black magic officially calls this "ettr" as in expose to the right, which is common practice to reduce noise when shooting with digital cameras.
Truth be told on their cameras there is an issue and it looks more like overexposing to me, to the point the monitor feedback is very washed out and hard to read.

This is the biggest issue to me of the blackmagic cameras as of today.

I have been told by friends that this does not occur when shooting prores though.

I was very interested in this pocket camera because of the form factor and specs ( and speedbooster is amazing) as well but it is very flawed imo.

But at this form factor and price I completely understand how it can be the best option depending on the shots requirements.
 
Two things I immediately notice - 1) purple lens flares on the BM, and 2) gritty, unrealistic tree detail.

And because of the gritty unrealistic detail (probably from inadequate optical low pass filtering and/or poor demosaic) there's an excess of compression artifacts surrounding the leaves on the trees. This will cause issues for any compression done in camera and also for any web based delivery of the image.

This is why doing digital cinema well is hard - you've got to get a whole lot of details right, and that's tricky.....

Graeme
 
These comparisons are silly. If you are going to shoot every film with your camera stalk still on a tripod with static focus and subject not moving in ideal lighting conditions then there are a lot of cameras out there that will give you satisfactory results for 98% of viewers. If you need a camera system that can handle a wide variety of situations quickly and easily then you need a more robust system. Most if not all cameras on the market are much better than the ones used on Vinterberg's Festen. BMPCC and Epic are in two different markets. If anything, Red and the other manufacturers have pushed camera technology far enough that your choice of camera is virtually irrelevant. They all look good. Pick a system that works for you. For what you get, Red's price point still works best for me.
 
Couple comments:

First it says it was posted on Vimeo 3 months ago which is before the raw was enabled on the bmpcc

2) I see purple flare on the epic also, near the spot where the grass meets the mountain range :30

3) if I understand correctly ETTR isn't necessarily about reducing noise it is about putting more of your image in the area where you have the most bits available

4) it is a $900 camera and the bmcc is $1900 with a true $900 worth of professional software that in the recent past sold for tens of thousands. Not perfect, but neither is my epic. All in all it is a phenomenal bang for the buck.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
And because of the gritty unrealistic detail (probably from inadequate optical low pass filtering and/or poor demosaic) there's an excess of compression artifacts surrounding the leaves on the trees. This will cause issues for any compression done in camera and also for any web based delivery of the image.
Click to expand...

I shoot a lot with both, RED and Blackmagic cameras.
And yes, BM is always sharper, especially on the BMCC, when recording uncompressed (no compression artifacts).
Simple reason for this: No OLPF at all. So no wonder it is sharper, but you have to pay with more moire/aliasing issues for this. That's why everybody in the BM camp is eagerly waiting for Mosaic, to finally release their OLPF for the BM.

Regarding the image from the Pocket, when you record raw, it's also sharper, but not as much as the BMCC.
If you use ProRes - not so much anymore - as always, compression doesn't come for free.
The artifacts you see in that clip, looks more like poor H264 compression and even poorer Vimeo compression on top of it to me.
 
Under the right conditions an iPhone will look comparable to the Epic. But that's the rub, we don't always shoot with ideal situations. The Epic has less artifacting, more resolution, more colour fidelity, more dynamic range. It's way more forgiving when you hitting the ceiling on exposures. I'm not knocking the BMPC, but this video only proves that it's easy to make your case with any camera.
 
X vs. Y threads are so, I dunno?

I want to say boring, but it's not quite boring. I want to say dumb, but not quite dumb. It's more like, they only lead to inflammatory discussion and I have yet to see one end well or end up proving anything one way or another.

Just my .00000001 cent on bafflegab. And here I am contributing to it.

Battistella
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
What Graeme said... I tend to trust... Why? I guess because He is the brain behind the brain of our Dragon... ;)


PS: Love your new signature Graeme... ;)
Click to expand...

Don't forget the other brains including our wonderful sensor team. I just try to make the best of what they do, and Dragon sensor is pretty darn special. I'm privileged to talk to the members of the sensor team and learn from them.

Graeme
 
Michael Hastings said:
Couple comments:

3) if I understand correctly ETTR isn't necessarily about reducing noise it is about putting more of your image in the area where you have the most bits available
Click to expand...

Nope. It's got nothing to do with bits or code values at all actually. It's all about noise. It just happens that read noise correlates with code values.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Nope. It's got nothing to do with bits or code values at all actually. It's all about noise. It just happens that read noise correlates with code values.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Could u explain this more thoroughly

I haven't read much about the subject lately but when I did a few years back when it was discussed for dslrs (before r1/epic) it was about shifting more image info into the range where there were more bits

I.e 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 - the right being the 2048 4096 vs the left being 2 4

and therefore more capability to capture subtleties in a scene.

Seems you are directly contradicting this and I would like to know what I have misunderstood?

I guess ETTR would mean less data for the truly dark areas so less "clean" noise? But should that be the primary concern?

Is the read noise correlation specific to red sensors or all sensors? And what does that mean?
 
I thought everything RED was just metadata and the sensor data is always linear- RAW -you know...
 
The highlight and shadow portions of the Pocket camera are not in the same league. The middle, is about equal, but so is a HVX200 in that middle 3 stops....
 
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