17k

I’m spending more time than is healthy watching Youtube clips about cameras and gear and compiling longer and longer window shopping lists of stuff I need want.

I’m a big fan of the Black Magic Camera gear, not that I have had a great deal of experience with their stuff, but mainly because there camera was the only one I could get my hands on to try out, RED were chatting away to me a fair bit about lending me a camera and then ghosted me completely for some reason, this was before I even got to tell them that I had no money and was currently unemployed!

Black Magic haven’t been any better really, fobbing me off and telling me to try the rental houses. Rubber Monkey have been great but they don’t have the Pyxis to rent only the pocket camera which was my only experience with their gear and that was enough for me really. I loved the look and they way it integrated into DaVinci Resolve, I like the company and their approach to their products and of course that they offer an incredible piece of software for free for people to use with limited restrictions unlike other software companies (Foundry, I’m looking at you!)

Things will need to change drastically in my own life before I’m able to put together and purchase a Pyxis rig for my Wildlife filmmaking and that’s OK (ish) as I’m watching closely to see what, if anything, BMD comes out with for NAB this year. But one thing that jumps out to me is the constant march to ever more resolution and I wonder if it’s really required. Most reviews of the Pyxis 12k seems to suggest that 12k is overkill and then end up shooting in 8k or 4k but using the entire sensor area which delivers outstanding quality, but this little GEM below jumped out to me on the No-Film school website not because of the numbers but because of the incredible lighting. This image reminded me of some kind of old master painting, which is more of a testament to the DP’s ability to light properly than BMD’s ability to cram 17k worth of pixels into a sensor.

I absolutely love the image above, and looking at the rest of the footage it really was quite sumptuous. I couldn’t explain the look from these cameras but even on the Pocket camera it was for me akin to being wrapped in a warm blanket after being pulled from the freezing North Sea! Poetic and gushy perhaps but compared to the footage as good as it is, from my Canon R5 MKll, it really felt like a different World to me.

In the World we live in today where everything seems to be overlit and we need to see every single pore, this film feels “real”. It would be great to see a comparison of this with say a 6k or 4k image sensor to see if 17k really brings much to the party, but one thing is for sure the look of this camera and lighting is in my humble opinon, truly outstanding.

Kudos to Ben Saffer and Charlotte Peters for what looks like a visually stunning film.