I dig you guys' attitude about shooting ProRes in the interim. Enough willpower and gusto you can pick it up. Maybe some of you will actually become colorists. =D

@rsquires Re exaggerated RAW problems: Ditto!!

I have spent sometimes days on end putting together 27-second TV commercials using as little as 100 ft of film. If you do shoots like this you get the talent and crew to a location, make up and hair done, car polished, you wait for the sunset to get just right...

And then do you decide to shoot just ProRes when you have the RAW option? For maybe 5 minutes' rushes?

I've worked on feature narratives where we get just one scene done in a day.

We don't all keep a camera rolling throughout a car race or wedding. Isn't the choice - as to whether or not we have the storage space or are prepared to commit to a RAW work flow - surely a personal matter, largely determined by arithmetic? The BMC is good enough to use as an A-camera, for some, cheap enough to use as a crash camera!

Also, the price of terabytes and CPU cycles are not set to go up anytime soon; rather down over time. Black Magic are looking to the future.

FairChild is company who makes ccd an cmos sensors for army and NASA... they made sensor for Hubble Space telescope and Cassini ... they use something what they call sensor thermoelectric cooling... and BMD guys mention that their sensor are refrigerated...

yes but for that price tag its revolutionary..... i used that as a proof that BMD maybe use FairChild sensor...

Here is a "raw" still from Brawley's shoot with the Make-up Girl. (Really just an 8 bit jpg)

Yes, the most important thing of the BMD cam is it finally moves the goal posts of 2k down to where they should be, price wise. The GH1/GH2 has already moved the goal posts in terms of price vs performance, but only we know about it or only we acknowledge it. All the other big camera makers either don't see it or are deliberately ignoring it.

You can't ignore Black Magic. It's still not as good as it could be, but finally something with better than Hacked GH2 performance for way less than $10k. And if that's not good enough....wait a bit, the KineRaw-S8 is coming out. It can use any lens from Super8m on up. It can do 4:3 HD anamorphic ratios and it could potentially cost under $2k....potentially. The biggest problem with the KineRaw is the S35 is first out, then possibly the S16, then finally the S8....could be a year before the S8 comes out. But it will be a year before I could afford the BMD, so I can wait for this:

Other methods to work with HFS discs

HFS+ for Windows® 9.0
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Paragon HFS+ for Windows is the only solution that provides full read-write access to HFS+/HFSX partitions on any type of disks (APM, GPT, MBR) under most of Windows versions! Access Mac-formatted partitions in Windows systems with the fastest and most stable HFS driver on the market.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/ , cost $20

JHFSPlus

Quite weird Java thing (and read only). But free.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jhfsplus/

TransMac

Commercial toold supporting all operations, including formatting.

http://www.asy.com/scrtm.htm

HFS Explorer

HFS Explorer is a Windows file browser that allows you to access your Mac hard disks and disk partitions through a program window. HFS Explorer can't mount Mac drives in Windows Explorer or do anything particularly fancy, but it works great if you just need an easy way to read and write to your Mac drives in Windows. Most importantly, HFS Explorer is free. It hasn't been updated since 2008, but the HFS+ format hasn't really changed since then, so compatibility isn't an issue

http://www.catacombae.org/hfsx.html

The BMD is definitely an exciting camera, and my guess is BM are using this smaller sensor camera as a test for larger sensor, more full featured cameras. They also wanted to come in under the 5D MKIII, and the S35 and/or full frame versions (when they do surface) won't be that cheap, but hopefully under $5-6k.

The crop factor and the battery options are the main reasons holding me back from getting this. If you're starting from scratch and add in battery power, SSDs, and an SDI converter, you're looking at over 4k and maybe around 5k. You have to also figure in the computer requirements for Resolve, which can be steep if you want good performance. Thunderbolt is only an option for a small amount of users, right now, if you're thinking of using Ultrascope. So upgrading to a serious rig for this camera could be closer to 10k. Of course, if you happen to already have that stuff laying around, this camera is a steal.

I'm also waiting to see what Panasonic and Sony might have in the Fall. The reality is in the next 1-3 years there will be several cameras, definitely under 10k and some under 4-6k, that will shoot RAW with a large sensor, to SSDs or maybe XQD cards. It's not long now. Once RAW video becomes a consumer standard, like RAW stills, it won't be long before a lot of cameras are doing this. Very cool times.

Just thinking about this VK! Compressed RAW the way to go! (Even RED is doing it)

@vladnik

cineform is best bet for compressed RAW...

I highly doubt it.
It uses almost same approach as RED, with simple intraframe wavelet compression. My undestanding is that they can't use any H.264 like approach due to patents. But it is not the case with big companies, who can use and change anything.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Around 2-3 years from now, I think there will be cameras with different RAW formats (compressed and uncompressed, 12 and 14-bit), compressed 10-bit formats (like ProRes), and web delivery formats like h.264, built in. The user will have a choice, in menu, much like they do with stills. This will allow the cameras to scale to any user's needs. But the technology is certainly there to make a sub $5k camera with S35, RAW, 1-60 (120?)FPS, decent audio, good build / screen, high dynamic range, in a small form factor. The only limit has been data bandwidth and CPU power. But now we have SSDs (QXD?) with high bandwidth transfer interfaces, and tons of CPU power... all on the cheap.

The only real reason we don't have more cameras like the BMD is because most companies are still stuck on the idea that pro video cameras have to cost thousands... well because they shoot video and have tons of buttons, right? Times are changing and it's not long now, before professional video standards move down to the consumer.

Canon was accidentally a pioneer in this with the MKII (large sensor, shallow dof), but now they've missed the boat and BMD is doing what Canon should have done (RAW). The 1Dc and C300-500 are stuck in traditional markets. I mean, what productions in Hollywood can't afford to rent a decent camera? If you have the budget to rent a C300 or 1Dc, you probably could shoot Epic or Alexa too. So unless the really small form factor is something you need, why wouldn't you shoot Alexa? To me under $5k is the sweet spot for 'everyone else'. Once you start going over $8k it makes less sense to use these 'low' high-end cameras and just use the best, like Alexa.

Oh well, looking forward to the next few years. A time when even your grandma will be able to have a RAW workflow, seriously.

Idea of my proposition is that it requires only slight change of existing H.264 blocks inside LSI and triple them. Such RAW approach coupled with CABAC, B frames, long GOP can allow you to have full RAW with very low bitrates. This also allow natively drop to 4:2:0 if you need it.