BMPCC 4K

[andy kh]

micro four third a big no for me.i am a owner of both 5d mark iii and bmpcc(not 4k) micro four third very bad in low light and too much crop factor.  i test my camera only once and never touch it again for the last couple of years.i choose to use my 650D instead of bmpcc for a short film some years back

5D III a professional stil camera, its a full frame much better in low light, better battery life

[adrjork]

micro four third a big no for me.i am a owner of both 5d mark iii and bmpcc(not 4k) micro four third very bad in low light [...] 5D III [...] its a full frame much better in low light, better battery life

Thanks Andy for your reply. That's fundamental for me: if BMPCC4K can't beat 5D3 in low-light/noise (in spite of BM native 400+3200 ISO) or at least equivalent, then I remain with 5D3!

[jpegmasterjesse]

Just shot a shirt film on bmpcc4k - amazed by the low light. i thought the crop would be a deal breaker but with a relatively cheap booster we really didn't lose significant sharpness. Battery life is kind of a bummer but there are some good workarounds available.

[andy kh]

Just shot a shirt film on bmpcc4k - amazed by the low light. i thought the crop would be a deal breaker but with a relatively cheap booster we really didn't lose significant sharpness. Battery life is kind of a bummer but there are some good workarounds available.

my 550D and 650D were amazed in lowllght until i bought a 70D. my 70D was amazed until i bought a 5D mark III. your BMPCC 4k wil not be amazed once you compare with a 5D mark III

[jpegmasterjesse]

I don't know if I'd be so sure. I've shot on the 5D3 before and as I recall it got pretty noisy at 1600 and fell apart at 3200. The BMPCC is clean at very high ISOs. I'd have to see a shoot-off to know for sure though.

[adrjork]

I've shot on the 5D3 before and as I recall it got pretty noisy at 1600 and fell apart at 3200. The BMPCC is clean at very high ISOs.

That's exactly my point: I'm sure that 5D3's FF sensor captures more light than a mFT sensor, that's obvious, BUT 5D3' sensor is less noisy only at low ISO (ideally 100, max 800), while BMPCC4K has native 400+3200 ISO that should mean that even if I need to push up the ISO to capture the same amount of light of 5D3, I should anyway obtain a less noisy image than 5D3. For example: let say that to obtain two images with the same amount of light, 5D3 is set at 1600 ISO, while BMPCC4K is set at 3200 ISO or even more, and the result should theoretically be that BMPCC4K captures less noise.

Could it be?

[Deadcode]

That's exactly my point: I'm sure that 5D3's FF sensor captures more light than a mFT sensor, that's obvious, BUT 5D3' sensor is less noisy only at low ISO (ideally 100, max 800), while BMPCC4K has native 400+3200 ISO that should mean that even if I need to push up the ISO to capture the same amount of light of 5D3, I should anyway obtain a less noisy image than 5D3. For example: let say that to obtain two images with the same amount of light, 5D3 is set at 1600 ISO, while BMPCC4K is set at 3200 ISO or even more, and the result should theoretically be that BMPCC4K captures less noise.

Could it be?

No. Both image will be equally bright with the same lens at same aperture with the same ISO with the same shutter speed. And dont forget, you can put a speedbooster to the BMPCC4K. In almost any technical way to BMPCC4K is superior. It's just much more fun to shoot with the 5D and there are a lot of pain in the a** dealing with the BMPCC4K shortcomings.

Theoretically yes, FF will capture 4 times more light than mFT sensor. But a 21Mp fullframe sensor from 2012  with pixel bining for video is no match to m43 sensor from 2018. For video of course.

Choose BMPCC4K for work, rig it up till 4000 usd price range, and you will have a mini-Alexa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCT9k81vp-g
Or choose 5DIII for fun shooting experience + stills

[squig]

my 550D and 650D were amazed in lowllght until i bought a 70D. my 70D was amazed until i bought a 5D mark III. your BMPCC 4k wil not be amazed once you compare with a 5D mark III

Says the guy who hasn't thoroughly tested one. I own both. With a speed booster, the BMPCC 4K is just as capable as the 5D in low light, if not more so, with no fixed pattern noise and more dynamic range.

[squig]

Innocent question here: Are there any other ways in which the BMPCC4K is superior in video quality to 5D3 w/ Magic Lantern?

Apart from the differences in dynamic range, the 5D3 has a full-frame sensor, better low-light capabilities (maybe?), can record in 14-bit lossless, can also achieve 4K through crop_rec, as well as achieve dual ISO through the dual_iso.mo.

Software reliability aside, I too have been debating with myself on whether or not to invest my money in a 5D3 as opposed to a BMPCC4K from a purely video quality standpoint.

Check my previous post on low light. Crop mode comes with a huge rolling shutter penalty, and dual ISO introduces aliasing and takes a lot of time to post-process. The 5D3 does upscale to 4K nicely. I use a 1/8 black promist filter with the P4K to take the digital edge off.

[adrjork]

With a speed booster, the BMPCC 4K is just as capable as the 5D in low light.

Q: shallow DoF. I use 5D3 mainly with f/1.4 primes to obtain a good shallow DoF (I usually don't use wide lenses, so in my case, I'd use Speedbooster only for increasing the "speed").
Now, let say we have two scenario: 1. BMPCC4K + SpeedBooster + f/1.4 EF lens, 2. BMPCC4K + f/0.95 mFT lens. Which of these two options can go closer to the percentage of in-focus/out-of-focus of 5D3 + f/1.4 EF lens? Are the two options equally close?

[Deadcode]

Q: shallow DoF. I use 5D3 mainly with f/1.4 primes to obtain a good shallow DoF (I usually don't use wide lenses, so in my case, I'd use Speedbooster only for increasing the "speed").
Now, let say we have two scenario: 1. BMPCC4K + SpeedBooster + f/1.4 EF lens, 2. BMPCC4K + f/0.95 mFT lens. Which of these two options can go closer to the percentage of in-focus/out-of-focus of 5D3 + f/1.4 EF lens? Are the two options equally close?

BMPCC4K with 0.64x speedbooster can give you 1.19x crop over fullframe. Which means a 50mm F1.4 will look like a 60mm F1.7 with T0.95 brightness. So the answer is: yes, the look will be pretty close. As a sony user i can't imagine how hard can be to film a moving subject without AF @ wide open, but that's not my problem

[squig]

Q: shallow DoF. I use 5D3 mainly with f/1.4 primes to obtain a good shallow DoF (I usually don't use wide lenses, so in my case, I'd use Speedbooster only for increasing the "speed").
Now, let say we have two scenario: 1. BMPCC4K + SpeedBooster + f/1.4 EF lens, 2. BMPCC4K + f/0.95 mFT lens. Which of these two options can go closer to the percentage of in-focus/out-of-focus of 5D3 + f/1.4 EF lens? Are the two options equally close?

It depends which speed booster you're using, I have a 0.71x Viltrox which is a 1.35x crop DCI (1.44x UHD). With a 0.64x speed booster it's a 1.22x crop DCI. https://www.metabones.com/article/of/SpeedBooster_for_BMPCC_4K I almost never shoot any shallower than f/2.8. I haven't done the math, but with either speed booster an f/1.2 lens would be close, I'd go with a de-clicked f/0.95 lens to be exact.

[adrjork]

Thanks Squig and Deadcode for your replies.

After a while I decide to keep my 5D3s instead of switching to BMPCC4K. I'll share my thoughts here, hoping it could be useful for someone else in my same conditions (and to clarify myself too).
Giving that low-light and noise performances are roughly equivalent on both cameras, for my way of working (and for the fact that I'm a generic artist, not a specific pro) I see 3 PROs and 3 CONs in switching from 5D3 to BMPCC4K:

PROs:

1. Weight and size: BMPCC4K is smaller and lighter than 5D3, its 5" screen can (often) replace an external monitor, and very-fast mFT lenses (that give same speed performance than SpeedBooster+FF-lenses) are compact and light as well. That means having at least 1 Kg less in your hands, and 2-to-3 Kg less in your bag (and this is not secondary for who has a good arthrosis

2. B-RAW: honestly MLV/CDNG workflow is a little nightmare: time consuming, storage consuming (with the price of my second RAID I could buy a complete set based on BMPCC4K!) B-RAW means having a quality-effective 3:1 file that requires 1/3 of the storage, can be directly drag into Davinci and is fast;

3. Dynamic Range: obviously improved over the 5D3 (never been a DR champion in comparison with other DSLRs)

CONs:

1. Selling 2 cameras to buy only one: in order to take the complete advantages of mFT set compactness and lightness – so, to buy BMPCC4K + mFT lens-set – I should sell both my two 5D3s and all my FF lenses. That means working with one single camera instead of two! And I must say that working with 2 cameras is a great thing in various situations;

2. 5D3 is a very good still camera: that means huge timelapse quality! And as I wrote above, being a generic artist means that my working "paradigm" depends on each different project and can strongly change from time to time. So having a camera that can also take good stills is a big advantage;

3. MagicLantern controls: it's not secondary that ML gives you a bunch of very detailed controls (and functions: see crop mode...) that lack on BMPCC4K. Obviously you can do the job anyway, but things like the spirit level or the customizable cropmarks helped my work really a lot. In order to minimize this lacks on BMPCC4K, I could buy a full featured external monitor, but it starts to go in the opposite direction than "cutting ballast"...

FINAL THOUGHTS:

All 3 PROs represent improvements, that means BMPCC4K and 5D3 do the same things but BMPCC4K can do them a bit better/easy.
Instead all 3 CONs are lacks! That means 5D3 can do things that BMPCC4K can't do! THIS is the answer. That's why I remain with my 5D3s.

Eventually, I could opt for a compromise: selling only one 5D3 (and adding 1K€ more...) in order to buy the BMPCC4K body-only (no mFT lenses) + SpeedBooster. In this way I could keep one 5D3 + one BMPCC4K and sharing le FF lenses between the two. But I remember that I bought my second 5D3 (with many sacrifices) just because it was discontinued, and once my first camera broke down, I would have lost the best/only camera for ML. So, again, for the moment I'll keep my 5D3s

[Camoncamera]

Says the guy who hasn't thoroughly tested one. I own both. With a speed booster, the BMPCC 4K is just as capable as the 5D in low light, if not more so, with no fixed pattern noise and more dynamic range.

Are you saying the 5DIII has fixed pattern noise or that the BMPCC 4K doesn't like many other BMD cameras?

[Camoncamera]

Right now only reason to get 5D3 only if you're going for photo as well. For video BMPCC4K is superior to 5D, only the problem you may have with BM - bad battery life. Keep in mind, if you will get 5D3 it will used, you never know when you will have too many hot pixels with it. Also, you're getting full version of Resolve with BM.

But an used 5D II is also cheaper than a BMPCC4K? Besides I still think 5D RAW looks better than Blackmagic. The only problem is that 5D RAW in 4K seems to be a gimmick at best and not really usable?