Recently, I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to sell my Blackmagic Pocket Camera. While I’m still in love with the image it produces, there are other cameras that I’ve been lusting after which fulfill different purposes that I’m now more interested in (including the Canon C100, the Fuji X100S, and the Canon XA25), and which don’t require the trade-offs that the Blackmagic demands.
Nonetheless, no one has taken me up on my offer yet, so this weekend, I decided to take the Blackmagic camera to Fremont Market and give it another spin. While I was initially just planning to shoot a bunch of b-roll and make a video montage, I ended up shooting several documentary-style videos.
As usual, these were shot using my Blackmagic, my cheap-o Polaroid rig, and a Tascam DR-05 (on-board microphones). Some of the audio is pretty rough, but my objective here was to maintain as low of a profile as humanly possible. All audio was recorded in impromptu interviews, and I think mic’ing people using a lavalier would have taken away from the spontaneity and made people less open on camera. It’s a trade-off for sure, but I think the audio is adequate.
Here’s a video of local artist Brittney Lyons, and her incredible gum wrapper art:
Here’s a brief profile I shot of Beanfish, a local company which creates delicious fish-shaped foodstuffs:
Here’s a local band, Elephant Gazebo, performing “Wrecking Ball.” Fun times:
My takeaway from these videos is that, while I think the footage still looks amazing, I really feel like I need at least a couple more lenses to get the most out of this camera. The Super 16mm sensor gives MFT lenses a crop factor of nearly 3x. Wide angle shots are challenging with my current, limited lens selection, as are shots with shallow depth of field (my favorite).
I remain conflicted about this camera, but I’ll keep trying to find logical uses for it before putting it on sale on Amazon.