OR:
How does this tiny camera really hold up?
OR:
Should I spend my hard-earned money on this over a DSLR?
So I've been super busy lately, but finally had a chance to sit down and write out some thoughts on the Blackmagic Pocket that I shot a little music video on a few weeks ago. Many here already have one, but many are still considering the purchase.
The first thing I noticed when I picked up the camera was just how small it was. I knew it wasn't going to be very big, but I was still a little taken aback by the fact that it really is tiny. It certainly does live up to it's namesake and fit in your pocket (at least, without a lens on).
It looks and feels like a compact point-and-shoot, but the screen is a fair amount larger than most point-and-shoot cameras I've used in the past, which is most definitely a good thing.
The screen is also uncluttered, exactly the same as it's older brother, the BMCC. The menu, however, is a tad more clunky to use. The menu is also a carbon copy of the BMCC menu - but the BMCC menu is designed for a touchscreen. The arrow buttons on the BMPC feel cheap, and they take a decent push. The fact that you have to select left to turn something on and off, even though an option might be a check box and common sense would dictate you should be able to use the 'OK' button just makes it feel a little cheap (but then, it is a cheap camera).
The camera is super light. In comparison, the BMCC feels like a brick. The BMPC doesn't feel much heavier than my iPhone 4S.
Until you put a lens on. Because the body is so light, any lens (even the Panasonic 12- 35mm, which isn't very big at all) makes it incredibly front heavy. This means it's incredibly difficult to use handheld without some sort of rig (or at least be able to pull focus at the same time).
Because of it's size, however, it's a great camera for times when you need to guerilla a location or be inconspicuous. We shot in a large cathedral - my 'rig' was simply a C-Stand spigot that I used for stability. We didn't draw any more attention than any of the tourists taking photos on their point and shoot's - which is not something I could say for any other camera, including even a sparsely rigged out DSLR.
Because there are mounting pins on the top and bottom (like the BMCC), this opens up a lot of opportunity for some easy, awesome shots. You could quite easily screw a spigot into the camera, and mount it on a C-stand for an instant top-down or high shot, or use the C-stand as a poor man's jib. There are so many places, and cool shots I can think of that I could simply not get away with using any other camera, or I'd at least need some decent safety lines and security, and expensive hardware.
Unfortunately, the Blackmagic firmware just doesn't offer a lot of information or capability. I could only get one SD card to work (a 64GB thankfully), but of course you can't format cards in the camera itself. I'm not so fussed with not being able to delete files, but without being able to format the card, you should at least be able to delete files. This means having a laptop on set, but given the smaller file sizes of ProRes, and the fact that it's only an SD card, it's a lot easier to wrangle on set than it is with the BMCC. We shot ProRes in 'Film' gamma. I kinda hate the colours in 'Video' mode, I'm not sure if it's simply a strange LUT or what's going on, but it can look pretty ugly. It doesn't happen all the time (perhaps another quirks) but when it does it just looks strange. Even putting the Blackmagic Film to Video LUT on in Resolve looks average. Grading from scratch yields much nicer results.
As well, whilst there's the option to show two different levels of Zebra, that's all you get in terms of exposure tools. Personally, I find that a little underwhelming, and I wonder how difficult it really would be to add a false colour check or even a histogram.
Thankfully, we've got interchangeable batteries with the Pocket, without the need for a third-party adapter, which is awesome. Unfortunately, however, the camera chews through the batteries. I'm somewhat used to this, and we usually have charging stations set up for RED, Alexa etc. shoots - but for those coming from DSLRs which have quite good battery life, this might be a bit of a shock. We were shooting all exteriors, but we had a generator for lighting, so we were able to use it to charge batteries.
We had four batteries - you wouldn't get a whole day's worth of shooting out of four fully charged batteries, in fact if I had to shoot a full 10hr day of run'n'gun and no ability to charge, I'd want probably double (8ish+).
I was constantly turning the camera off, and only turning it on when I needed to frame up or when I knew we were about to roll. Frustratingly, the power button can be a little finicky, and whilst it responded appropriately 80% of the time, there was a good 20% of the time where I attempted to turn it off (and thought I had) only to realise it was actually on. Similarly, the Play button can be finicky. Most of the time it worked fine, but there were times when it simply didn't do anything, and a reboot was required to get it to work (though at least a reboot can happen in seconds).
Even more frustratingly, turning the camera off resets the aperture if you're working with a still lens with electronic aperture. When you turn the camera back on, the aperture sets to the optimum for what the camera is pointed at when it turns on (similar to pressing the 'iris' button). Sometimes this isn't much of an issue (especially when shooting night), but it can be irksome to have to reset the camera to your desired shooting stop. A manual lens would not exhibit this issue. The auto focus is also incredibly hit and miss, and is worse than even a mediocre DSLR auto focus. I'd press the 'Focus' button and it would attempt to find focus, get really close and then throw it way off, as if throwing a tantrum because it can't figure out where the point of focus is. Every now and then it would get it right, but I found it was mostly useless, as even when it did get it right, it took an incredible amount of time to do so. It didn't seem to change it's behaviour based on the lighting conditions or the complexity of things in the frame - I gave it easy, well lit frames to focus on and it couldn't do it, but then similar frames it worked just fine with. I did find the less light you give it, the more likely it is to 'spazz out' and not have any idea what you want to focus on.
It's easier and quicker to wrangle focus yourself, though as I mentioned above you may have a hard time of it without some sort of rig (or tripod).
Oddly, you can't bring up Focus Peaking, which (from the reading I've done) seems like it was a feature of an earlier firmware. Would be nice to have an option in the menu to be able to change what the Focus button does (between auto focus and focus peaking) because 9/10 times Focus Peaking is going to be more useful than the awful job of auto-focussing it does (or any auto-focus, really).[highlight]Update: See below; Focus Peaking and Expanded Focus available, just with weird button pushes
.[/highlight]This camera's strong point is the images you get out of it. It's no Alexa, or even a RED, but I much prefer the image to anything you can get out of a DSLR. It certainly has an essence of DSLR footage, but I'd rather shoot on this than any DSLR if image quality was the first thing I was worried about (and as a DP, it always is
). You can push it around a lot more in post, and IMO it just simply looks better. I didn't get a chance to run some proper tests, but the 13-stop dynamic range figure seems a little unrealistic. There's certainly more dynamic range than a DSLR (which generally have maybe 4-6 useable stops), but 13 may be a bit of a stretch if we're talking about usable stops. Having said that, I haven't done a proper test of the BMPC's dynamic range, so I can't really say for certain, but there were a few times where I had clipped highlights and I felt for sure that an Alexa would have picked them up easily (and then some). It certainly seemed to have a useable dynamic range sitting somewhere between a DSLR and RED Scarlet (I tend to rate the RED Scarlet/Epic at ~12 stops of DR). Of course, even a Scarlet is ~10x the price of a BMPC, and IMO any improvement on the dynamic range of a DSLR is worth paying for.The highlight clipping certainly looks 'video-ey' but it still looks better than any time you have a DSLR clip; mostly because of the extra dynamic range afforded in the rest of the image.
The cameras small(ish) sensor means it's not an incredible low-light performer, but it makes up for it with a native 800 ISO rating. If I'm shooting DSLR, I'm wary of pushing past 640 ISO because of the noise, but the BMPC is a strong performer at 800. Shooting at 400 ISO doesn't really provide much difference in terms of noise, but pushing up to 1600 ISO certainly does introduce more noise, though I wasn't too unhappy with it. I'd certainly be okay with shooting at 1600 ISO on the BMPC if I had to - I'd never shoot at 1600 ISO on a DSLR. I wasn't able to do side-by-side comparisons between a DSLR and the BMPC.
I didn't get a chance to use S16 lenses on it, but this is where I think the camera will really shine. The thing I was mostly unhappy about with the image was the performance of the cheap still lens that was on it, so with some nice glass on it, I think it'll be great.
I'd love to shoot with Superspeeds on it. Shooting somewhere between f/1.4 and f/2.0 at 800 or 1600 ISO would be great for those who want to shoot low light, and it would allow you and your Focus Puller a bit more depth of field than the razor-thin DOF you get on a 5D or similar.
Overall, I quite like the images out of the Pocket. I'd be unlikely to use it as an A-cam on any but the smallest of budgets that simply can't afford anything else, but I'd happily use it as a 2nd, 3rd or 4th cam for coverage, pickups or for rigging in some really awesome place that no other camera (other than a GoPro) could get to.
At the price that it is, you can't really go wrong.
The footage we shot is currently going through the post process, if I get a bit more time I might be able to post up some stills (graded vs ungraded) and perhaps some footage.
Last edited:
. One minor nit - you can get to focus peaking on the 
