If you're one of the three people who currently have a Blackmagic Cinema Camera, you're in luck, because the company has just released the first firmware update which adds a few essential features to the EF mount version of the camera (since the MFT camera hasn't been released yet). In addition to the updates mentioned above, additional shutter angle options were added for a more precise control with shutter speed. Michael Beck, who happens to be one of those three people with a camera, has been testing it quite a bit. In the video below, he shows us what the new image stabilization can do with your BMCC footage, and he also takes a look at his anamorphic lens setup with the camera.
This is his anamorphic setup with the first video:
The lens is a 1.3x (I think) Runco branded Rainier conversion lens made to sit in front of a Runco Home theater projector. I have my BMC with my Tamron 17-5mm 2.8 @ 24mm stopped down to around 4 (not sure because of the BMC's lack of f-stop indicator).
His night setup:
Some more anamorphic testing. Some night shots this time. 800 ISO. Lens was stopped down to about 3.5 (I think). Shot in ProRes quickly graded with Colorista.
It will be interesting to see the anamorphic setups that people come up with, though if you want the correct 2.35 aspect ratio, you'll have to use a 1.3x squeeze lens, or you'll have to blow up the footage a significant amount to fill back to a standard aspect ratio (since the larger the squeeze, the less vertical height there will be when it's corrected).
You can find the new firmware version from the link below at the Blackmagic Support site. The DNxHD file format will be helpful for those Avid users out there who would like to deal natively with the files coming straight from the camera. Ideally at some point Blackmagic would also include all shutter angles possible (since this is a digital camera and minor increments should be easy to implement), but for now we at least have more to choose from. We'll be seeing a lot of firmware updates from the company, and it's likely anything that can be done in software will probably be updated -- from the missing audio meters to the inability to reformat on the camera itself.
Does the power of the image stabilization sway anyone who changed their order from the EF to the MFT mount Cinema Camera?
Links:
