Hey guys, just thought I'd share my recent customer service experience with BMD:

My BMPCC that I've had for about a month (huge thanks to @vicharris for helping to hook me up) had an extraordinary amount of stuck and dead pixels. I'm talking hundreds of them. Even visible in properly exposed daylight shooting at 800 ASA. I submitted a ticket on the BMD website, had a couple back and forth emails, sent them some demo footage showing the issue and Julian at BMD called me directly. We spoke on the phone briefly and he agreed that there was something wrong with the sensor and he expedited the RMA procedure for me. Now, about a week or so after submitting my RMA I have a new camera in hand that works perfectly (it actually arrived 2 days earlier than I expected).

As an early adopter of this camera, I was ready for a couple of bumps. If you want smooth and easy, wait for Generation 3 of a product. If you want to be on the leading edge, adopt early but remember that you are a essentially a tester!

I knew what I was getting into, so I am extremely impressed with BMD and how they handled this customer service issue. I'm a very happy customer now and I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with BMD for a while to come.

Now it's time to play with RAW!

I can confirm that something changed with the HDMI output with this latest firmware (1.5). I have the Aputure V-Converter A810 and with the BMPCC firmware version 1.42 it only worked in 29.98p and 30p when hooked up to my consumer TV. Now with the firmware 1.5 it works at 23.97p and 24p as well. The Aputure V-Converer A810 does a resolution conversion from 1080 going in to 720 coming out, so it now converts 23.97p and 24p correctly where as with FW 1.42 it did not. Something has changed. I recommend trying some TVs, monitors, and EVFs that didn't work before, maybe they do now. Also it might be a good idea to double check your stuff that has worked in the past just to be sure it still works now.

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@markr041 no worries mate, i'll readily admit i'm a film noob. always looking for opportunities to get better with the camera so i appreciate the comments. any suggestions on how i could grade the footage better? i'm just starting out with the camera and davinci resolve so it's definitely a considerable learning curve. nevertheless, i'm not about to give up :)

@guosh Try looking into some different LUTs - you could try using the Arri LUT in Resolve instead of the Blackmagic LUT, but you should download and try out Hooks LUT or the Kodak and Fuji LUTs. Don't just rely on them for the whole grade, but use them as a jumping off point for your grades. Also, don't dismiss the auto correct button (little A in a circle at the bottom left of the color wheels), again, don't rely on it, but it has surprised me a few times and saved me the lions share of work in balancing (just tweak from there). Oh, and watch Resolve tutorials. As many as you can.

@guosh Just keep at it, every time you load up Resolve you're one step ahead of the last time you closed it.

LUTs will always affect the color, some more than others. LUT stands for Look Up Table, which is like a reference chart for color. Imagine, if you will, a color printer. Let's say you print an image of a red square, it will print with the red ink that is in the red cartridge, but if you take that red cartridge out of the printer and replace it with a different tone of red ink, and you print the exact same image of the red square again, the new print will look different from the first print as it is using the new red ink that you swapped in. This is basically what a LUT does, it doesn't change the original image, it just changes the references for how the colors appear. If that makes any sense.

If you don't apply the LUT before doing your balancing, you won't have a clear view of what your image will actually look like, and it will make grading much more time consuming and difficult as you'll have to go back to basic corrections after applying the LUT, so get the LUT loaded into the LUT node right away!

Usually, when I load a new clip, if I'm not using a basic setup from a grab made earlier, I hit alt S a few times until I have a few serial nodes, then I add my LUT to the node second from the end, THEN start my grading on the first node.

If you apply corrections in a LUT ordered after the LUT node, you will be, in a sense, modifying the LUT, which in some cases is wanted, in others, not so much. The reason I leave a node after the LUT node is to apply sharpening (which is necessary on the BMPCC in ProRes), and perhaps a little final image tweaking. There is really no right or wrong here, just do whatever you need to get you to the image you want!

This suggest workflow is for ProRes in film mode, in video mode LUTs can be a little strong, you can try keying the opacity of the LUT node down to taste. And RAW is a different animal entirely! I hope some of that helps!

@Brian202020 Definitely something fixed there, I can now use the Zeiss Cinemizer at 25 or 30 fps too, which didn't work before. I hope my Seetec will work as well, it's currently with a friend who was considering for his Canon while it didn't work with my BMPCC.

I'm looking for a battery solution. What do you think about this option?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Magic-Design-Pocket-Cinema-Camera-External-Battery-Nikon-EN-EL20-BMPCC-/171168652657?pt=UK_Video_Broadcasting_Equipment&hash=item27da725d71

I wonder whether Resolve 10 has bugs processing the BMPC's DNG footage. Even if "film" log has been activated for the raw footage, the video by default is way oversatured in Resolve, with no LUT applied. No such problems exist when opening the DNG sequences with Adobe Camera Raw in After Effects.

Anyone knowing a good workaround for Resolve?

@cantsin ....Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but the BMPCC RAW is not recorded in film log. Film log requires processing, RAW is the absence of such (and high compression rates). Shooting RAW is the same as shooting in video mode in terms of color/gamma, just with less compression in camera. I've come to this conclusion because when I add a LUT to raw, it gets this oversaturated blown out look on the highs, and also RAW doesn't have that flat look film mode does. So in Resolve you would CC RAW like you would Video prores instead of film prores. No?

EDIT=I just tried Flanders (not going to spell it out) suggestion and it looks awesome. I'm lost.

@_gl Thanks for the reply! I had one of those for my GH2 as well. But it died after I had used it a couple of times. Maybe it was just bad luck, it was great while it was working. Maybe I'll consider it again.

RAW is like seeing the middle exposure part (viewable range) of the clip with unseen "handles" of exposure on each end that can be pulled into the viewable range if wanted. Video ProRes mode has no exposure "handles" at all, thus limiting the dynamic range. Film ProRes mode also has no exposure "handles", but unlike Video mode, the entire sensor dynamic range is compressed into the viewable range.

I hope that makes sence to people, and makes it easier to understand.

@vicharris

They can start at

• http://www.personal-view.com/faqs/camera-usage/color-correction-faq
• http://www.personal-view.com/faqs/blackmagic-cinema-camera/davinci-resolve-faq