8.13.2013

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Review and Comparisons

Having owned the EF-mount version of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, I think I'm finally ready to formulate some opinions and speak as to its virtues and drawbacks as compared to its competitors.  It is a solid piece of hardware capable of some great images, but is it flawless and would I recommend it against competing "cinema" cameras?

I'll knock out some cameras right off the bat.  The Panasonic GH2 and GH3 are great cameras.  If your budget is under $1000 one of these may be your best solution.  I find them to be a poor choice mainly because of their MFT mount.  If you plan on building a collection of good primes, EF is just about as future-proof as it gets right now.  If you plan on buying a SpeedBooster to go with a GH-series camera, you've almost sunk as much cash as getting a BMCC, which provides a significant improvement in image quality.  Unless size and weight is the major factor in your purchase just get a BMCC as it provides a significant increase in image quality.  Otherwise go for the Blackmagic Pocket Camera.

As for the Pocket Camera instead of the BMCC, it once again comes down to whether size and weight is a significant factor in the decision process.  Based on the MFT mount and 3X crop factor, I believe the BMCC is still a better value and is more future-proof with regards to building a set of good glass.

Don't get me wrong the GH2, GH3, and even the Pocket Cinema Camera are great pieces of hardware, but I feel that the closest competition to the BMCC, without regard to price, is the Canon C100.  Even though I've yet to use a C100, I've done some extensive research on this camera (see my older post on the BMCC vs. C100 from before I had received my BMCC) and have played with some of the footage straight out of the camera.  Thus, in my review of the BMCC, I'll be primarily looking at the differences offered by the Canon C100.  On with the review of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF-Mount version.

Ergonomics/Build

The BMCC is a solid camera, being mostly metal, and looks and feels like a high quality device.  It's a bit heavier than it looks and the weight distribution feels odd when holding it, especially with a lens attached.  The boxy nature of the BMCC makes hand holding it impossible.  Grab a brick and tape a Canon EF lens to it...that's what the BMCC feels like.  The BMCC is unusable with a tripod or some type of rig.  The C100 is about the same weight, but has a much better ergonomic design with a grip.  I've seen some professional handheld footage from the C100 (and larger C300) that looks good.

Advantage: C100

Screen

The BMCC's 5" screen is quite nice compared to the C100's 3.5", slightly lower resolution screen.  The  C100's screen does, unlike the BMCC, rotate and the C100 also has a viewfinder, which has met much criticism from users.

Advantage: BMCC

Battery

The BMCC's battery situation is quite ridiculous in that it's not interchangeable and is rated for only 90 minutes of recording.  In my experiences, it's likely closer to 60 minutes.  Seeing that the BMCC is still mostly a "prosumer" camera, I find this one of the camera's most annoying "features."  Unless you never plan to shoot outside or always want to be tethered to a wall outlet, a $300 external power supply, adding another 2 pounds the camera, is an absolute necessity.

The C100 has interchangeable batteries and reviews have praised its battery life, with a single battery lasting 4-5 hours.  For outdoor shooting, this makes the C100 a couple pounds lighter.

Advantage: C100

Storage

The BMCC uses solid state hard drives. The C100 uses SD cards.  Having the huge storage capacity of  an SSD is nice, but RAW does eat up that space very quickly and an SSD weighs significantly more than an SD card.  SD cards are a bit cheaper and much more portable.

Note: The BMCC has a short list of compatible SSDs relative to the vast array on the market, and even out of those listed compatible, many of those have been reported to drop frames when recording.

Advantage: Tie

Sensor Size

The BMCC has a sensor a bit smaller than Micro Four-Thirds, yielding a crop factor  of 2.3X compared to full-frame.  This large crop factor makes wide angle shots difficult, with even a 24 mm lens producing a field of view similar to 55mm on a full-frame.  The C100 is a Super 35 sensor with more manageable crop factor of 1.5X, making that same 24mm lens equivalent to 36 mm.

The BMCC's small sensor also makes shallow DOF difficult.  I'm not one for razor-thin DOF and I'm not say the BMCC is incapable of a desirable DOF, but it makes obtaining a nice, cinematic-looking DOF a challenge in many situations.

Advantage: C100

Lens Choices

While both cameras accept EF and EF-S lenses, the BMCC, with it's larger crop factor, makes these lenses appear 50% longer than the C100 and, as discussed previously, decreases the DOF for a similarly framed shot at the same aperture.

If Blackmagic were to release a cinema camera with an active MFT mount, the Metabones SpeedBooster, could remedy this problem somewhat.  Until then:

Advantage: C100

ND Filters

The BMCC does not have built-in ND filters and with a native ISO of 800, they are absolutely necessary.  A good variable ND filter, like the Schneider VariND, will set you back about $400.  The C100 has built-in 2, 4, and 6-stop ND filters.

Advantage: C100

Sound

The BMCC has no audio meters, making setting levels difficult.  The C100 isn't world's better, but it does have a rudimentary audio meter.  When also considering that the BMCC does not supply phantom power to XLR microphones, and reported issues with audio levels under the current firmware an external audio recorder becomes nearly a necessity.  The C100, while still not as good as an external solution, allows for a much wider selection of XLR mics and is more suitable for "run and gun" style shooting.

Advantage: C100

Image Quality: Sharpness

Both are cameras are quite sharp, but I find the C100, with a 4K sensor downscaling to 1080p, to have an edge over the BMCC recording RAW 2.5K.  The C100 is the clear winner versus the BMCC using Prores.

Note: Blackmagic claims that the next firmware update will increase sharpness when recording Prores.

Advantage: C100

Image Quality: Noise

In many instances the BMCC does not handle noise well.  Even with proper lighting noise is sometimes visible even on the faces of the subjects.  The image gets a bit cleaner if using ISO 400 or 200, although at ISO 200 the dynamic range is decreased and the image does not grade as well.

The C100 is ridiculously resistant to noise.  Even at high ISO's like 10,000 the image is quite useable.  At the native ISO of 850 the C100 easily bests the BMCC.

Advantage: C100

Image Quality:  Color

Here's where the BMCC can shine.  It's crazy what you can do with RAW and still maintain a great image.  Adjusting exposure and white balance with RAW in post is a breeze.  In the hands of an experienced colorist, I'm sure the BMCC would completely blow the C100 out of the water.  That being said, for an amateur it is difficult to really unleash the full potential of RAW.  It takes me about 10 times as long to get a proper looking image out of a BMCC RAW file in DaVinci Resolve as compared to the C100.  I've been much more pleased with my grades of C100 AVCHD footage using Final Cut Pro X than most of my BMCC RAW footage in Resolve.  For me the C100 produces a comparable image with much, much less hassle, but the BMCC is much, much more capable of producing the exact look you're going for.

Advantage: BMCC

Image Quality:  Depth of Field

As discussed before, the C100 is much more capable of producing a cinematic-looking DOF.  The BMCC can as well, but more compromises are necessary to achieve this.

Advantage: C100

Image Quality: Dynamic Range

The BMCC is the clearcut winner here, but not by a landslide compared to Canon C-log.

Advantage: BMCC

Other Considerations:  Software

The BMCC comes with the full DaVinci Resolve.  Again, for an amateur, I can get nearly everything I need out of of Final Cut Pro X and the free DaVinci Resolve Lite.

Advantage: BMCC

Other Considerations:  Computing Power

RAW footage is a beast and requires some pretty hefty computing power.  My 2.5 year old 2.2 GHz Quad-Core MacBook Pro with SSD drive and 16GB of RAM struggles greatly with 2.5K footage in Resolve.  My new 3.4 GHz Quad-Core iMac with 8GB of RAM handles it pretty well, but still not excellent, and is sluggish at times especially with multiple nodes.  As for the C100 AVCHD, the MacBook Pro has no problems and the iMac eats it for breakfast.

If you don't have a fairly high-end desktop, prepare to drop somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 if you want to have even halfway decent performance with 2.5K RAW in Resolve.

Advantage: C100

Other Considerations:  Storage and Backup

Let's say you're working on a small project and you have 2 hours of footage.  The BMCC RAW footage would be about 1 TB.  After using Resolve, you'll need to convert to Prores in order to use your NLE of choice.  The Prores 422 HQ files will set you back another 200 GB, for a total of 1.2 TB. With the C100 that same 2 hours of footage would occupy a mere 24 GB of disk space.  Extracting the AVCHD stream using Clipwrap makes transcoding to Prores fairly unnecessary, meaning you can get away with using only 2% as much disk space for the project.

As for archiving the data, you'll need 41X as much space to keep the RAW files or over 8X as much space to keep the Prores versus the original out-of-camera AVCHD of the C100.  Otherwise you'd be forced to go with something more compressed and lose most of the advantages of the BMCC over the C100 if you needed to use the footage again in the future.  

That amount of data from every project would quickly require you to amass a large collection of big hard drives or a good storage array such as a Drobo 5D.

Advantage: C100

Other Considerations: Run and Gun

Let's face it, the BMCC could never really be a "run and gun" camera, especially with its need for an external power solution and a rig.  The C100 is much more suited for this and is much less conspicuous if you need to shoot in a area without drawing much attention to yourself (see 13:59 Behind the Scenes, which talks about shooting a short on public transportation without a permit using the C300).

When buying a cinema camera, "run and gun" isn't a primary concern, but the added ability is an excellent bonus, almost like getting two cameras in one.

Advantage: C100

Price

The BMCC looks to be a killer value compared to the C100 at only $1995 versus $5500.  Since buying the BMCC, though, I feel it has been a money pit just to get it working.  Right off the bat, the BMCC essentially requires an SSD, external battery solution, ND filters or variable ND filter, and at least a cheap shoulder rig, bringing the base cost to about $3200.  It's still about a $2000 savings over the C100, but there are still tons of compromises.  If you don't have a hefty desktop computer, the cost of ownership is now about even.  Want a field of view wider than 50mm?  Now you'll need an ultra-wide lens (many of which do not accept ND filters due to design, thus now requiring a matte box and ND).  Want to keep RAW or Prores footage?  You'll need a bunch of big hard drives or a storage array.

The C100 is more expensive, but is more or less ready to shoot out of the box compared to the BMCC and your current computer and storage should be sufficient.

Advantage: Tie

The Verdict

The BMCC is designed foremost for color grading and dynamic range. All else on the camera seems to be an afterthought.  If these features are high above anything else on your list of priorities, the BMCC is an excellent camera.  Otherwise, if you want something more well-rounded, the C100 or another camera is a much better fit.  Although all of the above categories should not necessarily be weighted equally, in the comparison the C100 comes out ahead of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 12-4.

No comments:

Post a Comment