So if you've been following, I mentioned I had planned a trip this weekend to shoot some BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera video samples with a small crew. The guys who will be making this long journey and traveling up to the mountains with me are the production crew for GearAddix. I passed over the BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera over so that they can get familiar with it before our trip, and they've found that the Sony SDHC UHS-1 media cards will work fine for ProRes video recording.
I think a safe bet is if your card can sustain a minumum of 30MB/s write speeds, it should work fine to record ProRes. If you want to test your cards, you can download the FREE BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app for your computer (here).
Here's a few screen grabs testing Transcend SDXC, Patriot EP Pro, and the Sony SDHC UHS-1. Click any of the images for an exploded view of the speed ratings.
 Transcend SDXC Class 10 |
 Patriot EP Pro SDXC |
 Sony SDHC UHS-1 |
Well good to know that is one other option for a speedy and more affordable SDHC media card for the BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera. [Thanks GearAddix] You can find the Sony SDHC UHS-1 media cards in over on Amazon (click here).
Sony SDHC Class 10 UHS-1
The team has also uploaded an unedited 10 second ProRes sample from the camera (240MB). If you decide to try it out, I suggest pushing the color saturation, shadows, mids, highs and overall exposure values. I did my own quick version pushing saturation and adding contrast here: https://vimeo.com/72468406
You can find the download link at the GearAddix.com website.
Download ProRes Sample Video from BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera
Jeremy Pommier
Hello Emm,
I purchased my Sony cards from Amazon.
Emm
Post author@Jeremy Pommier - Did you pick up your cards from an authorized reseller? SD and CF media are very easy to counterfeit and they sell tons of these cards on sites like eBay. I would only buy media cards from a trusted source. The card that Transcend sent over did not have any issues over several hours of shooting.
Jeremy Pommier
I bought a couple of these cards before heading out to shoot in Hawaii. These cards dropped frames almost everytime I rolled on something. It tended to drop frames in the first couple of seconds of a recording or if I zoomed in on something. I DO NOT advise using these cards.
Lucas Kao
I had the same issue with dropped frame in every shot too. The card is formatted to ExFat every time before a shoot.
I would suggest CheesyCam to amend its suggestion, as alot of the clips become useless.
carlos
I just got some of those cards for my pocket.. and they are dropping frames like crazy... anybody experiencing the same?
Emm
Post author@Frank - It would be a good test with a different card reader to see if the card reader itself is your bottleneck. At least you will know for sure that no matter how fast a card you buy, your reader may be holding you back. Look for a good USB 3.0 reader (if you have USB 3.0 ports).
Emm
Post author@Christian - Hard to say without trying, but the Sandisk will be the safer bet for RAW video capture. I'm sure it will be handy to have the Sony stuff around for projects that don't require RAW, and as nice as it sounds, many people try to stay away from RAW whenever possible.
Christian
@emm - Thanks for taking time and testing the cam. Any thoughts on how well the Sony SDHC card work with RAW when its released? It would be a bummer to invest in the Sony cards, only to find out the SanDisk SDXC is the only card to handle shooting RAW.
Frank
@ Emm - I'm just using the iMac sd card slot , should I use a card reader instead ?
Emm
Post author@frank - What card reader are you using? Maybe there's a bottle neck on the card reader you have.
frank
@emm - yes its the exact same card... the uhs-1 94mb/s 32gb and im getting like 12mb/s write and 18mb/s read... its very frustrating haha
Emm
Post author@frank - Does the packaging look the same with 95MB/s read?
frank
I bought the sony uhs-1 after seeing the speed test... i put it in my computer and did a test... i got nothing close to what they said it got... wonder if im testing wrong... or if its not as fast as they said.
AMM
Any thoughts on IQ so far? The one I messed with had a Lumix 7-14 f4 slapped on it and image was not very sexy. Thanks for getting a jump on this for us all to check out.
Emm
Post author@AMM - I'm doing a big shoot this weekend, so plenty of footage afterwards. I'm still trying to get bits and pieces for this shoot. Limited battery is one issue, and limited storage another. I'm really just trying to figure out what it takes to make this camera useable in moderate project.
AMM
I got to play with it a bit at the Directors Guild in LA a few weeks ago and was not at all impressed so I'm not surprised at what you're about to post. Of course it was only monitoring & not able to record and was running hot as hell. When's your post going up?
Emm
Post author@anon - You're probably not going to be happy about what I am going to post up next...
anon
emm, I love you and oliva, but this cam is dying fast, you better revive it with your clips from this weekend. hdog clips are a joke. the moire is the only reason I gave this cam hope and it is quickly becoming a fantasy.
Emm
Post author@HDog - Pretty neat changing the color of Keiko's shirt.
Emm
Post author@vladbox - I can understand your statement. I guess that's how they can bring the price down. If SmallHD makes a great LCD screen, why invest so much in the camera LCD. If Nikon makes a rechargeable battery, thats one less thing BMD has to make. If Juicedlink has a good preamp or Zoom is an audio recorder, it's cheaper not to implement in camera.
HDog
Here's my contribution.
vladbox
I am starting NOT to like this camera, no formatting, special requirements on SD Cards, etc. I buy equipment because it represents a working asset, I can play with the camera for a week but then after, it goes to make money, and this camera seems risky, even for a small business shoot. BM basically is saying that "we have a sensor, with a recording button you deal with the rest" A GX7 or another GH3 maybe on the horizon.
Aaron Weber
I think it's safe to say the cheaper sandisk extreme cards 45 mb/s and the newly announced 80 mb/s should work easy for prores. The 45s are pretty cheap now. The 128 gb can be found for $125. I'd hold off to see the requirements for raw though..
anon
wow, without any grading you can already see moire on the dude's shirt under his arms. disappointing.
Aron J Anderson
Wow looks good on my IPad mini.
Emm
Post author@marshall - I believe it was shot in film mode. Here's my color added to the clip.
BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera ProRes Test Color Grade from emmagination on Vimeo.
Aron J Anderson
Do you think a Varavon multi finder will work on BMCPC That way it will give you more room for lenses due to the viewfinder plate attached to the camera.
marshall
Hmnnnn......it would have been nice if they had recorded the clip in film mode, so it wouldve been flat. Not a lot of point in telling people to download the clip and grade it if it isn't flat.
Joseph
Nice. Thanks for posting the footage.