[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

The night sky being black is a good thing. Waiting for a full moon will give you more ambient night light which is the opposite of what you actually want. You want to be able to light your scene with as little limitations as possible. The less ambience, the more control you have. Not that some ambience is a bad thing though. Indeed, ambient light in your background will give you depth and you may even want to experiment with adding nighttime fill light to your background at a more natural color temperature. Remember that all lighting, in terms of bright and dark, highlight and shadow, is relative. You may want to fill in your background by lighting it with a cool soft source and then compensate the brightness in the restaurant by increasing the intensity of your tungsten sources. In this way, the background will be bright enough to see as being a background, but still dark relative to the rest of your frame, i.e. The restaurant and your characters.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

What’s most likely to me is that the camera is putting out 48hz and your monitor is unable to recognize that refresh rate. What is the monitor that you are trying to use? I would check the spec to see if it can recognize 48hz.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Schneider ND/IR combo filters are excellent as are Tiffen ND. Schneider and Tiffen are really the standards for 4×4/4×6 motion picture filters. Not cheap but a worthy investment that will outlast any camera in the same way that good lenses are the investment, not the body.

If you are really trying to save money, I would recommend looking at your lenses and deciding what the most common filter thread is between them. If you use Canon lenses, this is probably 77mm. Then look into getting a variable ND filter that can just screw in to the front of your lens.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

What frame rate are you trying to shoot in?

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Shooting at night in a scenario such as this you will find it too be far less of a problem than you expect it to be.

The night sky will essentially be black due to your exposure limitations and as you will be so surrounded by tungsten sources the color temp of the night sky should be overwhelmed by the additional lighting. Especially if you have other lights to control key and fill, this should not be a problem. Just try to block your actors in the tungsten light rather than the ambient light of the night sky.

Blending color temperatures is not really a problem if you have the ability to overpower one of them which it sounds like you certainly do. I would just try to make sure that you have a reliable monitor on set.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

It seems to be specifically saying “HDSLR” in the description so while that means that no, it was not designed intentionally for the BMCC, it very well could fit. Most people find that DSLR rigs tend to fit the BMCC well. The issues may arise with ergonomics and the cables that plug into the left side of the camera. At that price though it’s probably worth it considering that you have 30 days at B&H to decide if you don’t like it.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Check to see if you Ikan monitor support loop through. If this is the case then you can take the HDMI out signal from the monitor and put it to your recorder.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

I definitely recommend using an external monitor as the one on the camera is not sharp enough for critical focus or judging color. It also suffers severely from off axis color shift and glare reflections. I personally recommend the TVLogic VFM-056W or the SmallHD DP7 Pro LCD or OLED if you want to spend on it.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

Interesting that it is only video and not audio. It’s true that it very well could be an error due to the transferring method. While it is a $99 investment, Shotput Pro is really worth every penny when it comes to issues like this. If nothing else it can rule out the transfer as the problem so you have peace of mind and the issue narrowed down.

It isn’t on any other clips right? I would try a test conversion to a format like ProRes or even H.264 to see if the glitch comes through.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3

[Matthew Sonnenfeld]

This forum is also for the BMPCC!!

This is strange though I have had my EF lose date information as well. I did a shoot yesterday and loaded the files and it said it was 1/29/14. Could be a firmware issue. Might be worth reporting it to BMD and see if they have any word on it. Unfortunately this is an issue that I have not really seen much discussion over.

Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X, Panasonic HPX170, Canon 7D
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
2008 Mac Pro 2.6 Ghz 8 Core, 10GB RAM
AJA IoXT, Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Blackmagic Mini Monitor
Adobe Production Premium CC, Avid Media Composer 7, Final Cut Pro Studio 3