5D3 vs. BMC

[HurtinMinorKey]

It's all about using raw to manipulate the the exposure curve. You can get the same end result with an 8 bit camera, but the set lighting has to be perfect. 

[Policar]

It's all about using raw to manipulate the the exposure curve. You can get the same end result with an 8 bit camera, but the set lighting has to be perfect.

Simply untrue. First of all, everything isn't on a set. This argument holds no weight for location photography, particularly exteriors.

Secondly, on any set in which practical light sources play a significant factor, they will blow out to a greater or lesser extent on cameras with more or less DR. But you want your subjects lit so they are not underexposed. It's a tricky balance. And your light will be shaped differently if you use lights off-frame (not always a possibility, either) to fix your exposure so you can't just do that.

There are reasons that "digital cinema" came to prominence much later than dSLRs did and why only the Alexa (with dual gain paths) has really proved a viable replacement. Highlight headroom is crucial with motion picture film, much more so than with still cameras (for which you can use strobes and dodge and burn or shoot multiple exposures more easily or just wait for the right light, whereas films must be shot fast).

Yours is a bold statement to make. Either somewhat ignorant or extremely hubristic, imo.

That said, the 5D has enough DR for most work. Just because it's only very good for very cheap doesn't mean everyone's entitled to great for just a little more. The BMCC might be great with DR, but sensor size, usability in post and on set, etc. is terrible from the perspective of anyone except the hobbiest who shoots test charts or the small production company that runs a very small, tight ship and only really does one style of work (studio short form).

The Alexa blows them all away and you can shoot on it as you would shoot on film and it's an affordable rental. So thankfully there's that.

[HurtinMinorKey]

^You didn't really respond to my point. Here's an example: with the the BMC you can underexpose in bright sunlight and then bring out the detail in the shadows, thanks to raw. On the 5D3, if you don't want to blow out the highlights, you are stuck with unusable shadow detail. So it's not just about the total DR of the sensor, but what your codec allows you to do with the DR in post.

My point was that using RAW can compensate for bad lighting situations in a way that 8-bit cameras can't. Do you disagree, or was there just a misunderstanding?

Another way of stating my point is, you can't boil down a full 12-stops (in the case of the 5d3) of usable detail in an 8 bit codec.

[Policar]

Another way of stating my point is, you can't boil down a full 12-stops (in the case of the 5d3) of usable detail in an 8 bit codec.

That's true, and the 5D's capture codec is quite bad even relative to prores. A superior 8 bit codec could do pretty well, but the 5D's does not do great.

I'm just saying all the lighting in the world can't truly compensate for superior DR, particularly in exteriors or when practicals are used.

[HurtinMinorKey]

I'm just saying all the lighting in the world can't truly compensate for superior DR, particularly in exteriors or when practicals are used.

As a practical matter, I agree. But as a matter of theory i wonder, if someone could have complete control over the light, couldn't they bake the same "cake" as you would get from doing a film to digital transfer?  Film has 15 stops DR, but even that get's compressed to 8 bit color when being viewed digitally.

So logically there must be some 8-bit input(5D3 with perfect lighting) that creates the same digital projection as film.  It's all about creating the perception of DR. Which film does naturally.

[Axilrod]

The Alexa blows them all away and you can shoot on it as you would shoot on film and it's an affordable rental. So thankfully there's that.

Since when is $1500/day an "affordable rental?"

[HurtinMinorKey]

I'm just saying all the lighting in the world can't truly compensate for superior DR, particularly in exteriors or when practicals are used.

As a practical matter, I agree. But as a matter of theory i wonder, if someone could have complete control over the light, couldn't they bake the same "cake" as you would get from doing a film to digital transfer?  Film has 15 stops DR, but even that get's compressed to 8 bit color when being viewed digitally.

So logically there must be some 8-bit input(5D3 with perfect lighting) that creates the same digital projection(projection as in mathematical projection) as film.  It's all about creating the perception of DR. Which film does naturally. 

[asmundma]

Thanks JasonATL for correcting my fast and somewhat incorrect reply. I tested Resove on a MAcBook Pro 2011 with i7 with Tumderbolt drive. Seems as Windows is better with a grafic card for this app, may the newes macs will be better.
Of cource you "can" handeld BMCC, but i think most people would agree that a c100, c300 is better. If you follow P. Blooms South Africa tour, you got the same message.
And you need a pretty wide lense with that crop facor to shoot wide. ( yea i know there are some alternatives)
I may buy such a camra, but it somewhat dangerous only to look at dynamic range, etc.
Agree that Canon needs to open up for high quality video.  The "best" camra for me would be the 1D C, but man, it costs a fourtune.

It might be that you don't have an Nvidia GPU. I haven't researched it, but it appears from what I read in the review Resolve uses CUDA, which is Nvidia specific, although OpenCL is quite similar and can theoretically run across ATI or Nvidia without much trouble, there may be certain reasons why they don't/can't easily use OpenCL rather than CUDA. That likely is a big reason why you didn't have good performance on your Macbook.

Besides, it's a laptop. You're expecting amazing performance out of a laptop? And remember, just because it's a Thunderbolt drive, doesn't mean it's fast. It could still be a bog standard 7200 RPM mechanical disk there. If it was a quality SSD, that's different of course, but otherwise it wouldn't necessarily be all that much faster than the one in the Macbook.

I also think the point is that what you get for the price is fantastic, and at least arguably on par with some of the much more expensive options such as the 1DC/Red/C100/C300. Those are at least 3-4 times expensive, BEFORE you start adding in lenses, rig, recording media, etc. For the young film maker without a decent budget (even for rentals), the BMCC is much more affordable. I think that's one of the reasons the 5d2 was so amazing back in the day is because you could get a pretty good quality for, relatively, quite inexpensive with relatively inexpensive lenses. And Canon has, since then, mostly fallen by the wayside due to their attempt to push the video DSLR up into the more expensive higher margin area. Which is exactly the opposite of what the 5d2 was, and is why they are losing a lot of mindshare from what I've been hearing (I'm out here in LA, have a few friends in the industry). BMCC seems to be around the same price point, compatible with the same lenses (depending on the version you get of course), and gives you a ton more than anything Canon, and possibly most other cinema camera manufacturers, give you at a similar price point.

Hi
Ok, the tunderbolt drive has two disks 7200rpm, i am using a RAID setup so it@s able to store on both. So the disk controller shares the load, it´s very fast and for FCPX is now problem at all, excellent performance
There is a GPU and its detected by DaVinci Resolve (ATI 6750M). The is also a CUDA driver in the system panel, not sure if this is effective as its ATI card.
However video play back is very sluggish and normally it can not play 24fps in Resolve, even before you start to add colour correction in the nodes.  The cpu is 2,3 (i7) GHz and 8G of memory.
Can anybody shade some light what would be necessary on a MAC, or explain why this is crapy.

EDIT :  I just upgraded the CUDA driver and performance inceased a lot, so that seems the main reason.

[Policar]

I'm just saying all the lighting in the world can't truly compensate for superior DR, particularly in exteriors or when practicals are used.

As a practical matter, I agree. But as a matter of theory i wonder, if someone could have complete control over the light, couldn't they bake the same "cake" as you would get from doing a film to digital transfer?  Film has 15 stops DR, but even that get's compressed to 8 bit color when being viewed digitally.

So logically there must be some 8-bit input(5D3 with perfect lighting) that creates the same digital projection as film.  It's all about creating the perception of DR. Which film does naturally.

It's not possible to control light like that. When the light source (a practical, a window, even a white tabletop that bounces light and also receives it) is in frame there's a set ratio between the source's brightness and the light it projects on a given subject at a given distance. Change the source's brightness and you change how much it lights the subject. Let's simplify this and say it's a one-light set up. If the ratio between the source that's in frame and the object it hits is higher than the DR of the sensor, you can't capture the subject and the source without under or overexposing one to the point you lose detail.

If you're in a studio you can compensate with off-camera lights, reflectors, etc. but those will change the shape of the light, not just the ratio.

So you can light (very carefully) to simulate high DR and might even get very good results. But you'll never get the same shape to the light, no matter how you light and manipulate in post.

Tree of Life could not have been shot on digital. Except maybe the Alexa. High DR lets you light with fewer sources, less fill, etc. and provides a better look not just in terms of roll-off but in terms of shape. That said dSLR have gobs of DR relative to video a few years back and most good DPs could shoot footage that looks as good as their Alexa or Red footage except for sharpness (and the Alexa rolls of highlights better than either).

[Drizzt321]

Thanks JasonATL for correcting my fast and somewhat incorrect reply. I tested Resove on a MAcBook Pro 2011 with i7 with Tumderbolt drive. Seems as Windows is better with a grafic card for this app, may the newes macs will be better.
Of cource you "can" handeld BMCC, but i think most people would agree that a c100, c300 is better. If you follow P. Blooms South Africa tour, you got the same message.
And you need a pretty wide lense with that crop facor to shoot wide. ( yea i know there are some alternatives)
I may buy such a camra, but it somewhat dangerous only to look at dynamic range, etc.
Agree that Canon needs to open up for high quality video.  The "best" camra for me would be the 1D C, but man, it costs a fourtune.

It might be that you don't have an Nvidia GPU. I haven't researched it, but it appears from what I read in the review Resolve uses CUDA, which is Nvidia specific, although OpenCL is quite similar and can theoretically run across ATI or Nvidia without much trouble, there may be certain reasons why they don't/can't easily use OpenCL rather than CUDA. That likely is a big reason why you didn't have good performance on your Macbook.

Besides, it's a laptop. You're expecting amazing performance out of a laptop? And remember, just because it's a Thunderbolt drive, doesn't mean it's fast. It could still be a bog standard 7200 RPM mechanical disk there. If it was a quality SSD, that's different of course, but otherwise it wouldn't necessarily be all that much faster than the one in the Macbook.

I also think the point is that what you get for the price is fantastic, and at least arguably on par with some of the much more expensive options such as the 1DC/Red/C100/C300. Those are at least 3-4 times expensive, BEFORE you start adding in lenses, rig, recording media, etc. For the young film maker without a decent budget (even for rentals), the BMCC is much more affordable. I think that's one of the reasons the 5d2 was so amazing back in the day is because you could get a pretty good quality for, relatively, quite inexpensive with relatively inexpensive lenses. And Canon has, since then, mostly fallen by the wayside due to their attempt to push the video DSLR up into the more expensive higher margin area. Which is exactly the opposite of what the 5d2 was, and is why they are losing a lot of mindshare from what I've been hearing (I'm out here in LA, have a few friends in the industry). BMCC seems to be around the same price point, compatible with the same lenses (depending on the version you get of course), and gives you a ton more than anything Canon, and possibly most other cinema camera manufacturers, give you at a similar price point.

Hi
Ok, the tunderbolt drive has two disks 7200rpm, i am using a RAID setup so it@s able to store on both. So the disk controller shares the load, it´s very fast and for FCPX is now problem at all, excellent performance
There is a GPU and its detected by DaVinci Resolve (ATI 6750M). The is also a CUDA driver in the system panel, not sure if this is effective as its ATI card.
However video play back is very sluggish and normally it can not play 24fps in Resolve, even before you start to add colour correction in the nodes.  The cpu is 2,3 (i7) GHz and 8G of memory.
Can anybody shade some light what would be necessary on a MAC, or explain why this is crapy.

EDIT :  I just upgraded the CUDA driver and performance inceased a lot, so that seems the main reason.

Yea, drivers can really make a big difference sometimes.

Beyond that, it's 2 disks in RAID0? That will give you some speedup, but I hope you have that data backed up properly elsewhere. If one of those disks dies, you lose everything on that array. You can probably get all the sequential read/write speed you need out of most modern mechanical disks, but I image you'd be doing a good amount of random reads, which RAID0 would help some, but really a good SSD will give you much better performance. Leaving aside any number crunching, which it sounds like was the problem, which is entirely up to the CPU/GPU.

[HurtinMinorKey]

BMC with a $40 lens and anamorphic adapter.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera ♥ Anamorphic on Vimeo

Look at the highlight detail on the lights. Say hello to the power of RAW.