So I anxiously headed to the shop this morning, walk in, and there in all it's glory is the BMCC Cinema Camera sitting on the counter. As I approached the counter the guy behind the counter (friend of mine) asked "did you check your messages today?" I hadn't, but was quickly informed that the purchasing agent there had made a mistake, they weren't getting 20 of them they got ONE. One single BMD Cinema Camera. Guy behind the counter was in the process of making 20 phone calls informing people of the mistake. So that was a huge bummer, but I did get to play around with the one they got for about an hour with the Samyang 24mm T/1.5 strapped to it. I'll give you a rundown of my opinions and the opinions of the guys at the shop.
First off, the Samyang 24mm is a stellar lens and was beautifully sharp even wide open, kudos to them for making such great, affordable lenses.
As for the BMCC, here are my initial thoughts:
•It's alot heavier than it looks. It was strapped to a makeshift Redrock Rig that was essentially just a tripod plate and handles, but even the camera itself is heavier than you would expect.
•Touch screen interface is cool, but options are limited. There were only maybe 4 white balance settings (I saw 3200K, 4500K, and 5500K, but not anything inbetween. Same with the ASA settings, all it has is 200, 400, 800, and 1600.
•SSD's have to be formatted by a computer, they won't work if you just stick them straight in. (They were pretty annoyed by that).
•Image quality is excellent from what I could tell, when you change the preview setting to "Cinema" you can see what the final image will look like and it looks like an excellent base for color grading. If you set it to "video" it bumps up the contrast and saturation to make monitoring easier.
•Man that sensor looks tiny after looking at 5D sensors. It felt very strange having a 24mm lens on a camera and seeing the FOV look that tight.
Anyways, after playing with it I kind of have mixed feelings, it does some things great but at the same time the menus seem a bit oversimplified, I'd like more manual control. Of course no camera is perfect nowadays, but I really question basing this around an EF mount. I wonder if it would be worth looking into the MFT version, since those lenses are built around a 2x crop to start with. Then again that would mean buying a whole new collection of lenses, so it's a tough call.
On the plus side my GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition did come in, so that softened the blow a bit, and so far that thing is amazing and I highly recommend it.
