Cinematography : your thoughts on the Black Magic Cinema Pocket Camera by George A. Climer

I actually like the BMPCC a lot. Love the images it makes, the RAW record system codec particularly, and all at a price point that is quite astounding. The color reproduction is really good. The latitude is very useful and greater than a number of fanboi fawning BS cameras because it stays quite clean and doesn’t turn the bottom 3 stops into noisy junk. For TV delivery, which currently is usually 1080 10 bit 4:2:2, this can play nicely. The list of things I dislike is really long, but that is from knowing how I like things to work and using tools that allow me to work as I want not as the manufacturers want. I’ll only touch on a few. The basic ergonomics of a still camera for motion picture shoots simply does’t work in a professional setting. Where is the eyepiece? You know the thing that blocks out all other light and allows the operator to concentrate on the image at hand. The useless screen at the back of the camera simply is not good enough, bright enough or sharp enough and with reflections and viewing angles to say nothing of the shocking exclusion of a centre cross-hair marker is frankly grounds for thinking of kicking the designer in the crotch. You cannot do actual work with the camera as it is. Make an eyepiece as part of the camera package. not a large unusable screen. Next is the Super 16 sensor. Not counting the new Veydra lenses when were the last new S16 lenses designed, 30-40 years ago? When were that last new ones made, 15 years ago? At its heyday, how many S16 cameras were there? Maybe a few thousand. Now how many lenses are there that work for the sensor size? The point is there are few lens choices for the sensor size. Yes I know the mount is a M4/3 which is another part of the problem. Still camera lenses that wobble with focus pulls, it they are allowed at all, is awful. And the lenses viewing angles are all much tighter because of the small sensor in the large mount there is a 3x crop factor thus you cannot get good wide lenses. The lack of lenses is an immense downfall for this camera that could easily have been avoided if it had been designed to be used with ⅔” lenses which are plentiful and some with great optics. BlackMagic should be making a B4 mount with correcting optics for this camera. Lastly is what I believe to be a complete lack of an OLPF. Moire and aliasing do not go away if you just ignore them, clap your hands and spit over your left shoulder. I know this must have been a price point decision but c’mon, without it there are real image issues because of this. I’m guessing this is the situation because it shows up in the images. As I said, I like the camera and the pictures a lot, but it could have been so much better with different decisions. I think it is workable in some setups and can be made to do a lot. The images and recording are well worth the trouble. It is a much better camera for TV than some trendy cameras, but the lens situation and the amateurish ergonomics will keep it from being taken seriously by any pro beyond an insert camera. Too bad.