BLACKMAGIC POCKET CINEMA CAMERA

Not until Pond5 reviews them. How long is the current wait?

Mine just delivered by UPS, now to open the box and hope for the best ;)

OK, plugged in, battery and lens attached. Installed an SD card level 10 (may not be fast enough for actual video). Turned camera on and it shows "No SD" so now what? Tried a few times and get same no SD card message on bottom banner.
Also formatted SD to exFAT and 128 kb.
Any ideas?

Ok, formatted a different SD and have ready now. The entire camera feels warm when holding. BMC support acted like they have never heard of a warm camera. How about it guys, warm is normal?

Don it's good for use on cold days.

- Cannot find any data about normal operating temperature.
- Review times have risen to 3-4 weeks.

BMPCC has a peltier-element inside that cools the electronics. If you use it in a warm environment the camera gets much warmer than other cameras.

An Update on Power Consumption; by John Brawley:

"The morning after this review first appeared, I received an email from John Brawley, an Australian based cinematographer and some-time camera beta tester for Black Magic. He pointed out that the camera uses a Peltier cooler, the type used in Astrophotography cameras, and this is why battery life is short and the camera feels so warm. This is not something that I knew, or have seen mentioned anywhere else. John's comments are reproduced below, with permission.

"The sensor is actively cooled. Like with some supercharged processors in computers, it uses a Peltier effect or thermoelectric cooling system to maintain consistent sensor temperature. This is really important in maintaining and minimising fixed pattern noise (noise in the blacks) as well as dead pixels showing up and also to prevent what you would have experienced on dSLRs...overheating of the sensor causing the camera to have to stop to cool down.

The thing with thermoelectric cooling is that it uses power to cool. The more it needs to cool, the more power it will suck. So on a hot day when the camera is struggling to dissipate heat through the chasis it will use more power to maintain the sensor temperature.This is also the case with the larger BMCC, and why some users experience the chassis getting quite warm to touch. It's also why you see such wildly differing reports of battery duration. It just depends on how hot the camera is.

So if you've had the camera on for a while then it's warm. Once it's warm, it uses more power to stay cool.

The advantages of thermoelectric cooling is absolutely consistent sensor performance and no requirement for a cooling fan. The downside is that is sucks a lot of power and it's variable. The only other cinema camera to do this cooling approach is the 60K Arri Alexa. ;-) "

More info at: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/camcorders/black_magic_pocket_camera.shtml

Look at the review at Luminous Landscape it includes the above heat reference and other useful info.

Don you have to use the cards BMC recomends. On the forums there are people saying just what you said.
Either the camera shows no card or the video has a ton of dropped frames.
Yes the camera gets hot. I use mine as a pocket warmer. :)

Just ordered the extreme pro card and a bunch of batteries. Last night just looking through the menu the battery power dropped from 100% to 20% without shooting anything, yes it sucks battery power. BMC says the battery should last 50 minutes, I don't believe it. A big change from 5D MK III.

So when using Premiere Pro CS6 I don't see an export to Prores. Do ya'll just export to QT PJPEG? Also Divinci doesn't seem to have option for QT PJPEG. So what are ya'll exporting processed clips to as far as container and format?

Time to go play with it ;)