Testing my brand new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

Finally!!! I now have a good camera to compliment my aerial GoPro vids! This is my first shoot ever with something other than a GoPro or iPhone (edit: actually I did have an HV30 a few years ago too). Anyway this is my very first interchangeable lens camera. I never bothered with a DSLR and skipped directly to these 13 stops of goodness. This camera is super stealthy and produces crazy good images.

I went incognito to the local fair with the small Blackmagic. All shots were handheld with the Lumix 12-35mm/f2.8. Some minor color grading was done with the FCPX color board. Now I really need to book more gigs to pay for this camera and lens!

password for the video is: lulo

vimeo.com/78789323

Impressive camera. Looks like you put it thru its paces on some of those low light shots & difficult lighting situations, like mother & child on the ride passing in front of the large white lit panel. For the most part its capabilities really shone. For me, the weakest section was probably the darkest, the shots of the youngest child watching the ride. Still the detail, sharpness, depth of field & cinematic feel really sold me on the camera. Would love to see you film some more, maybe on a bright sunny day with some brighter colors, sky & nature, skin tones, etc. We've heard a lot about the camera, I know it created quite a buzz, across the web, now looking forward to more projects being shot on it. Don't know much about your lens but it appears to have worked well here, though I can't help but wonder what that darker shot would have looked like with a faster prime. All in all, some gorgeous footage & a beautiful family, thanks for sharing, Jorge.

Thanks for watching J. Matthew. Doesn’t it shoot amazing? I feel like I’m watching Superbad or something when suddenly…oh, there goes my family! I would have loved to try a faster lens too but that is the single lense I will own for a very long time. I will be getting a variable ND filter in the mail this week so I can use the wide aperture in sunlight. I’ll be sure to link future videos here. It’s funny how most stuff I read about the “unsaturated colors” of shooting in log mode turned out to be somewhat off. I say this because all the LUT plugin demos I’ve tested to take the footage from Log mode to video mode makes the image look horrible in my eyes! This is especially true for night footage. While true that the ungraded image benefits a lot from manual grading (you can just pull pull and pull*), if forced to choose between ungraded and a “LUT Corrected” image, I will choose the ungraded shot almost every single time. I know the intent of those plugins is to provide a starting point for grading, but I’ve found them to be so far off from my tastes, that it takes me a lot longer to grade the “LUT corrected” footage, than starting with ungraded footage. The one time I found the LUT useful was on an outside shot I downloaded from the internet before the camera was widely available.

And now with raw! I just learned that the firmware update that allow the Pocket to record raw was released today. I can’t wait to test it out. My SD cards are 45MB/s so they are half the speed of the raw –certified card, but I’m hoping I can maybe shoot 6-second shots with it. My only interest in raw is to get more latitude for quick indoor shots with windows, but I think I’ll be disappointed. I think the promo pictures of the woman inside the house in the Blackmagic Pocket website are bouncing off light with reflectors. I’ll likely be downloading the update tonight when I get home. Thanks again for watching.

*It’s crazy how much I could pull on the exposure. Those shots where my older son is buying tickets and the one where he is pulling on the exploding thingy were A LOT darker. On the tickets shot basically I stopped just because it went extremely bright on the metal counter. And the thing is, I did get a little grain, but the grain is so small you can only see it by starring close, and it is beautiful grain, it looks like film. I don’t think any of this is noticeable on Vimeo.

The ticket buying scene was one of my favorites. The little fingers asking for two, was delightful. It's difficult to really get a feel for your camera & lens pairing from just the one shoot, that's why I thought some daylight scenes would make a nice contrast. Speaking of contrast, & color grading in general. Much of what appeals to the artist is subjective, there may be a certain look you like, it may fall outside the general settings of the LUT presets, so you tweak it to taste. For me, in the slightly darker scenes like the younger child 3/4 back of head shot, the darkness was casting too much brown instead of the crushed black look so typical with film. Some might like that look but since you mention grain, I think you like the filmic type appearance too.

If a metal counter is getting too hot, you can mask it so it grades differently from the rest of the scene, but if I remember correctly, the lad's hands cross over the line at some point. So you might have to keyframe something.

Can't do a review as good as Matthew, but I'll give it a try.

The cinematic feel was very good. Can't be just the camera, or is it? How about color grading? I really liked it! What kind of color grading did you do?

It's clearly that you have shot handheld, but even so the shaking is not troublesome at all. It probably helps the cinematic feel. So you have a steady hand! Your composition is good and you're mixing your clips very good. Also liked the clips with the kid buying tickets and I liked the way you put in the clip of the carrousel in between tickets buying.

When shooting outside it's very much possible to shoot with short shutter speed to be able to shoot with wider aperture. I like the effect the short shutter speed is giving me. Not using my ND filter as much as before.

Thanks for the review. Well the Panasonic 13-35m/f2.8 does have image stabilization, that is why it looks so stable. The color grading was very subtle. Actually, in the end most of the clips were not graded at all. Now for daylight shooting that is a different matter. Most of the timeI find myself cranking the global saturation to the maximum on the FCPX color board. Thanks for the tip about shooting at quicker shutter speed in daylight, I will definitely look into that. Makes sense, though I will lose the cinematic motion blur for sure.

Ahh, didn't know it had IS.

So you cranked the global saturation all the way in most of the clips in the film above? If so, I couldn't tell

Well, this cinematic motion blur. I'm not sure it's necessary all the time.
Take a look at this one:
vimeo.com/73117564
He often uses short shutter.

Sorry for taking so long to reply. Yes, the IS helps a great deal. That video you linked was excellent! I'll be looking at the short shutter for sure now. Thanks for sharing!