4K Chat

The BMC Pocket has that much noise or more and no one is complaining. At 100% even the Canon 5D MK III has that much noise and much softer and the 7D has terrible noise compared at 100%. Maybe I'm not seeing it. When in normal view is the noise visible or really just at 100%? Putting the Pocket and the 7D at an ISO of 400-800 and they are far worst with noise.

For those who sent cameras back, are the above three 100% frame grabs what you were seeing or was there significantly more noise or moire?

Edit:
Ok, when I click the "+" on the frame grabs the noise is very apparent. When viewing full screen as displayed it looks great.

Use Denoiser or something to get rid of the noise. I'm not sure why that is such an issue here.

The frame grabs look great. Extremely sharp. I can zoom in and read the tag on the t-shirt hanging in the first photo.

Don, Here are some MK III frame grabs from other P5 users (highly compressed). I do not see any sensor noise like Z100.

http://d1hw6n3yxknhky.cloudfront.net/019123773_prevstill.jpeg
http://d1hw6n3yxknhky.cloudfront.net/024409115_prevstill.jpeg
http://d1hw6n3yxknhky.cloudfront.net/018173929_prevstill.jpeg

Z100 can be great for HD but 4K is not that great IMHO.

My advice for those who want to buy the Z100 is to download sample footage from http://omegabroadcast.com/fmp/omega-detail.php?-manuRecID=firstpage&-recid=4326 and try to get rid of that sensor noise which is more visible in 4K resolution.

Don

In another forum Alistair Chapman says to remember that there is 4 times the pixel count so adjust the viewing distance accordingly. To me this is incorrect - one of the things about 4K is that to get the benefit you sit near the screen. I have looked at still grabs from my 7D and consumer HFS 100 on my 1920x1080 computer monitor (so they are "actual size") and can see a lot less noise (more "blocky" especially the HFS100) but nothing like the noise from the Z100 at actual size (which to my mind is how you should do the comparison, I found some Red footage online and did they same test with that and it looked very clean. I realise that comparing a $50,000 camera (when you kit it out) to a $6,000 camera is a bit unfair but if the image was more "blocky" but essentially clean I would have been happy with that.

TE

Rekindle- I sent mine back because it was defective. The noise was much worse then what we're looking at here.

SevArt, I've been over those clips a dozen times. I agree with kk5hy about the first one, it looks very sharp. Also remember seeing a frame grab and seeing the footage in motion a two different things in terms of perceived quality. The MarkIII shots look cleaner but they also look softer.

Engineer I understand what you're saying about being close to the screen but Alister's point was reasonable also. If you're looking at the image at 100% on an HD monitor inches from your face you're going to see a lot more noise then you would viewing it normally. Anyway noise isn't the only consideration here, some other thongs that come into play:
Price- this camera is a bargain (if it works…).
Lens- from wide to 600 odd mm. That matters.
An EVF- that matters if you're in the field a lot.
Self contained, fast setup, no extra crap to drag around.
60fps at 4K. Give me a break. That's mindblowing.

There will undoubtedly be a better option available within the next year, but I've got stuff to shoot now and I'd prefer to shoot it in 4K if I could.

The stupid thing is, I am normally not a "pixel peeper", what drew my attention to the noise was that I could see it in playback when looking to edit the footage in Premiere Pro. It was then I did the screen grab to do the comparison.

I agree that for the price it is an impressive piece of kit but part of my background is in coding and multiplexing for digital TV. I would be very concerned as to how this footage would stand up to heavy compression for streaming. Let me know how you get on with your second camera.

TE

Blackmagic finally released an update and some footage from the BMPC 4k:

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16615
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/first-blackmagic-production-camera-4k-footage/

Sev,

Just had a look at your three frame grabs from the Mark III and the Z-100

I know that you are looking at the noise but what is also apparent is the Z-100 images have quite a lot of purple fringing (check out that man's hand) and chromatic aberration (look at the corners where there is sky). The Mark III images have none. I know that purple fringing depends on the type of image (usually heavy back lit with massive contrast - dark tree branches against white sky etc) but I think the Z-100 lens has not matched the Mark III in this respect.

I agree with you and I added my opinion about purple fringing too in another earlier post.
I wanted to show something very obvious which is the sensor noise in 4K resolution.

Many will say "That's a good camera for 4K stock" but I am not agree with low quality just because it's STOCK.