After I saw this "blooming" thing (or whatever someone may call it) in various clips, thoughts on cancelling my pre-order started to visit me pretty often...

As far as I know, BM's team still hasn't fixed "the black spot" issue with BMCC... How much time will it take to fix the same issue and the "blooming" thing with BMPCC :-)?

I've always thought that having a great ("Hollywood's standard") dynamic range along with a correct exposure in your camera is some sort of a guarantee that "you won't see blownout highlights/black spots" in the night (as we see with the professional cams - ARRI etc.)... Looks like I was wrong I could do it for $1000 :-)

Despite the ability "to see deeper through the night", a real great dynamic range helps you "harness the excessive light".

Actually I can't blame BM for that >-) What else could we expect for $1000!?

@jrd as has been pointed out elsewhere, overexposed white blobs are not blooming. The examples in this link are overexposure, not blooming, which had distinct edges with no halos.

I just saw the same orbs on an episode of House of Cards which is shot with the Red Epic.

@Sph1nxster

Your GH3 doesn't do ProRes, RAW, have 13 stops of latitude...

I don't know if it's the same.. but the thing with the black dots happens as well with Alexa. I remember having them in every single take where the sun (also light equipment) was in frame. They call it "sensor overload". Take a look at this: http://www.arridigital.com/forum/index.php?topic=2413.0

@Flaaandeeers The white blooming is very bad on their tests. A least BMD replied in the comments... "Tony Rivera, Blackmagic Design: We did realize this is an issue and take questions seriously synthesis. We are addressing this and wants to give you folks an update When we have more information."

EDIT: it seems that answer was given somewhere else, maybe at BM forum...

@laaldeapro So, on the Arri it looks like the "Black Hole Sun" comes from a 6-7 stop overexposure. I'm guessing it's probably similar for the BMPCC (can anyone test this?). Luckily this is an easy enough fix - and VERY common in other pro level digital cine cams.

@Flaaandeeers Thanks for that link, these look like good examples of the white orb. Interestingly, as stated by Fuji in regards to their White Orbs fiasco, higher ISO's appear to suffer less from this phenomenon (more tests?!?). Their firmware fix automatically adjusted ISO when this problem was detected. For BMPCC, we'll have to do it manually (if that soution even works on this camera).

@rlima Judging by Fuji's early firmware 'fix' (auto adjusting the ISO), I'm going to hazard a guess: no. But one can always wish and dream.

Fuji eventually did replace the cameras that suffered from this issue, since the firmware 'fix' didn't actually fix the problem, it just helped to disguise it a little better.

In many situations (certainly not all) this can be shot around - as it's been noted, a lot of the BMPCC footage floating around right now has too much headroom in the shadows. So, in some cases underexposing (when possible) should help to mitigate damage, but of course at the expense of more shadow noise as you push them up. I'd expect a statement from BM this week (as it appears to be on their radar now).

Out of curiosity. Does Philip Bloom review mention sensor blooming? It's strange he didn't notice it...

@LongJohnSilver I wouldn't say he didn't notice it just because he didn't post a frame on Twitter, which he did earlier on with the black spot. The second part of his review is all about actually using the camera, so it could be he mentions it in that one.

So based on the criticism presented thus far (blooming, black spots, extremely short battery life, limited recording times, etc) is the general consensus to have faith or.... pass up the BMPCC and wait for something better?

@LongJohnSilver Philip is a better business man than a DP. His massive ego and the ability to BS everyone has brought him a long way in life. In my opinion nothing he has done is ground breaking in anyway. He just somehow gets to be one of the first to play with new toys, so we all pay attention. He doesn't have the eye a lot of DP's have, so it doesn't surprise me if he didn't see it.

@WarrantyVoided The way Philip tweets about nearly everything including if he has to go to the bathroom, I would think if he noticed it, he would have tweeted about it. I bet he is recutting his "Part 2" to include it now, like he saw it the whole time.

@No_Surrender Most likely true (on both accounts).