Just Curious! How good is Blackmagic 4K production camera for professional photo....

[Katie. A]

Is BMD 4k production camera (ef mount) good enough for professional photography work? Example wedding/fashion photography.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

No.

Currently only Red's DSMC concept comes close due to its picture quality, but it lacks flash support.

If you need a capable professional stills camera designed for these purposes which also has a nice video, without jello and pixel mess, that would be Nikon D750.

 

[Paul Russell]

BMPCC can't compare to a pro level Canon or Nikon SLR.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

It's going to be basic, but there must be something professional out there that the BM beats in range. They have shown the BM beating a Canon 5d Mark 3 in dynamic range against the 3's native 8 bit (but Magic lantern gives the 3 raw I think). However, if you want to take lots of shots by shooting mode, and pick out the best one to use, like in sports journalism, then it might be a good go. All they need is a continuous record and a button to stamp any place in the footage that is important (or dump so many seconds before and during the button push to flash) This might be a good use for the BM cameras, even in sports training.

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

No.

Currently only Red's DSMC concept comes close due to its picture quality, but it lacks flash support.

If you need a capable professional stills camera designed for these purposes which also has a nice video, without jello and pixel mess, that would be Nikon D750.

Bullshit bm4k is sharper than red @ 5k.
but even a lowly Canon rebel will outperform either of them.

 

[Andrey B]

Why not to visit bmcuser.com and ask there?

 

[Andrew Allsbury]

I own and love both cameras, Epic and BMPC. However I would use neither for a dedicated photo project unless it was an extremely tight budget on a very specialized project. (Action Sports)

 

[Nick Morrison]

Bullshit bm4k is sharper than red @ 5k.
but even a lowly Canon rebel will outperform either of them.

To clarify, that's only because the Black Magic has NO OLPF. There are pro's and con's for that. Dragon 6K I have to imagine will be sharper regardless. And in this new era of swappable OLPF's, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone designs/makes avail a "clear" OLPF that is essentially delivers a "NO OLPF" look...at Dragon 6K.

It bares repeating though... there's a reason almost every major cinema camera HAS an OLPF: Alexa, RED, Sony F65, Sony 55/5, Canon C500, C300.

W/out an OLPF picture is sharper yes - but at the expense of numerous digital artifacts, that are often difficult to control/remove.

However, technology is a tool, and horses for courses. Everyone should feel free to use the tool that works best for the job. And I have certainly seen NO OLPF footage (even on RED) that was stunning.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Bullshit bm4k is sharper than red @ 5k.
but even a lowly Canon rebel will outperform either of them.

Sharpness and acuity are sometimes perceived as the same picture defining parameter.
Wrongly.

Starting from 5K DSMC the advantage lies in 50% higher spacial sampling compared to 4K imager, putting it in the same league resolution wise as Nikon D3 and Canon 1Ds.

Higher resolution with smoother OLPF offers more natural image appearance compared to 4K with sharper OLPF or lack of it.

 

[Neil Dearman]

used one has issues with highlights (especially with concert lighting) the work flow in raw is what kills me. RED is way better for sure!!!

 

[Björn Benckert]

Kind o depends on who's wedding you are shooting.. To me if would be a no brainer to shoot a nice wedding film with such camera. Not to many demand 4k for their wedding film so the video will look more than fine 4k stills from the BMCC looks really nice. They possibly do not match a good SLR camera but I would sport some cool lenses and filters and shoot short depth of field and I think any newly weds would be more than happy. People here saying itäs not good enough... common it's a it's not the next Christopher nolan release and the the stills will be more then enough for web use and can produce pretty decent stills aswell due to the none olpf. The video file will go where? Most likely to a DVD or to vimeo...

But bringing a complementary still camera for the big print shots is not a bad idea. I would try to get a hold of a medium format still camera then, as all the others are a bit boring and has not much but sharpness to add compared to the BMCC.

 

[Katie. A]

Bjorn -still camera like Canon 5d mark iii or Nikon d 8100?

 

[Björn Benckert]

Bjorn -still camera like Canon 5d mark iii or Nikon d 8100?

No big difference I would say, what ever you can get your hands on. I would try to get something like a phase one: http://www.phaseone.com/FooterMenu/Rental-Locator.aspx

Or even a large format camera possibly even an analog one... I mean snapping away with a common slr camera does not really feel like a "once in a lifetime" kind of thing to do.
And then of course covering the large old camera event it with the filming camera. Thats what I would do

Edit: Or more likely, I would get overly drunk and leave early

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Why not to visit bmcuser.com and ask there?

If you think people unhelpfully dump on you and attack you when you first post a thread here, wait until you see the circus of anti social, nutty armatures over there.

The camera is low end, and difficult merely because Black Magic could have done more, but it is still worth comprehensively testing to see if it could be a low end wedding package, but if you do filming as well, you are doing two jobs that ideally might be better with four people to get best results with least stress (assistants/sound recordist and two camera people). So something has to give at times during filming, for example to preference a still shot moment over a video, breaking the video flow etc, and if you get the video wrong they might want to done, but get the drills wrong and they get livid. So on a small crew you can only offer what you can do for a price. I was originally considering getting a Red to do weddings (hint, photography is a lot more profit for the work you do and a lot more respect and less hassle, but maybe I'm naively biased, but be good at it).

The fact that people say that working in RAW instead of you should only work in RAW is because of the good results you get in automatic color correction (and exposure to an 8 bit extent) on a DSLR. BM's prores color modes look weak to be, very week if you want an option that doesn't require correcting frames, and very very week for this use. If they can software update for full auto color and exposure modes and add some adjustable settings (I forget if they have full auto modes for everything yet) for wedding, sports, outdoor, glary, indoor, dark etc, and stamp each RAW frame with a preferential adjustment settings, a simple program or player could render it all automatically while maintaining the raw frame if finer adjustments are really needed, saving heaps of time without Davinci. But it seems, as with most of these things in digital cinema, I. the only one really think thus way for now. However, if pocket cameras can do this, Davinci should be able to automatically do it too, saving some time, so it might not be as bad as handling Red raw frames for people here. Give it a test Katie, see how you like it and what the results are and then you have a cheap low end wedding cinema package.

I can tell you one thing though, test out the latest Panasonic lumix GH4 with firmware updates, I think they were talking about supporting, raw stills, at what resolution I don't know, and forget if raw footage or burst frames was mentioned. The sister site dvxuser might have some info, or check the news at www.43rumors.com. It is an old Canon beating picture with their top lens, but up very close I would prefer a 35mm. There are apparently some nice 70mm 4/3rds portraiture lens.