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    BMCC with ENG Lens

    Posted by Tim Maddoux on June 24, 2014 at 8:21 pm

    Below is a description from our DP of a couple of issues we have run into using our BMCC under stage lighting. We are hopeful some of you may help shed some light on the issues that will lead us to a solution.
    Thanks in advance for your time.
    ——–

    A few months ago we decided to switch from our BMCC EF cameras and move to the MFT mount, primarily as a result of finding the article by Marco Solorio (from his One River Media article) https://www.onerivermedia.com/blog/?p=984 and use his recommended BMCC/Fujinon ENG rig. We have been incredibly pleased with the ability to use the ENG lens with servo zoom on the BMCC, but have run into a couple of issues that we’re trying to work through.

    We have a big concert shoot coming up and decided to test our ENG (HA7.6x18BERM) lens against a rented Fujinon Cabrio 85-300mm on our “Solorio” rig to see if the difference would be significant or not. Obviously, we weren’t expecting the same image from our used $4,200 ENG lens that we would get from the $42,000 rented Cabrio, but we were surprisingly impressed with how well the ENG compared.

    Having said that, we did notice a couple of concerns that we’re trying to figure out and would appreciate input from anyone that may have a solution.

    First, on the footage from the BMCC with the Cabrio we noticed some light movement (horizontal banding) which appears to get worse when the lens is opened up more, toward the end of the clip. We don’t have the Cabrio now, but are wondering if the banding is an issue with the camera or the lens. We will be trying the same camera with our ENG lens later this week to see if we come up with anything. Has anyone seen this type of banding under LED lights? Example video: https://reels.creativecow.net/film/bmcc-rolling-light

    Second, we noticed that on the footage with the ENG lens that there was some chromatic aberration on the edges of some of the highlights that bloomed from the light source. This may be user error, as this rig didn’t have an EVF to pull as sharp a focus and may be partially what is causing the problem, however, I wanted to see if anyone has any thoughts. There is a slight magenta bloom on top of the mic in the picture, but it doesn’t show up as well as this was shot in Film mode and hasn’t been graded yet. Example image below:

    Sorry for the long post, but we’re trying to see if we can use five camera setups with ENG lenses or if we should rent Cabrios for the concert. Probably seems like a no brainer, but for us the Cabrios would be significantly more expensive to rent and we want to make sure we haven’t overlooked anything.

    Marco Solorio replied 11 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
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