Dynamic Range
Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 has three dynamic range settings:
Video The ‘video’ setting is perfect for live to air broadcast and lets you work faster
by recording to a high contrast look suitable for direct delivery or minimal
post processing.
Video uses Rec.709 primaries and has 6 stops over middle gray with another
3 stops in specular highlights. This is a good option if you want an accurate
starting point that still has a pleasing gamma curve.
Extended Video The ‘extended video’ setting is based on Blackmagic Wide Gamut with contrast
and saturation applied. The most notable differences to the video mode come
from the magenta/green axis having less saturation which is more typical
of print film, and even more highlight roll off than video mode which causes
highlights to desaturate more. It has a slightly flatter gamma curve that results
in less saturation.
Film The ‘film’ setting shoots video using a log curve that allows you to maintain the
greatest dynamic range and maximizes the information in your video signal to
help you get the most out of color grading software, such as DaVinci Resolve.
Blackmagic RAW
Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 supports the Blackmagic RAW file format. This format
offers superior image quality, wide dynamic range and a broad selection of compression
ratios. Blackmagic RAW features all the user benefits of RAW recording, but the files are very
fast because most of the processing is performed in the camera where it can be hardware
accelerated by the camera itself.
Blackmagic RAW also includes powerful metadata support so the software reading the files
knows your camera settings. If you like shooting in video gamma because you need to turn
around edits quickly and you don’t have time for color correction, then this metadata feature
means you can select video gamma, shoot in video gamma, and the file will display with video
gamma applied when you open it in software. However underneath, the file is actually film
gamma and the metadata in the file is what’s telling the software to apply the video gamma.
So what all this means is if you want to color grade your images at some point, then you have
all that film dynamic range preserved in the file. You don’t have your images hard clipped in the
whites or the blacks, so you retain detail and you can color grade to make all your images look
cinematic. However, if you don’t have time for color grading, that’s fine because your images
will have the video gamma applied and look like normal video camera images. You are not
locked in on the shoot and you can change your mind later during post production. Blackmagic
RAW files are extremely fast and the codec is optimized for your computer’s CPU and GPU.
This means it has fast smooth playback and eliminates the need for hardware decoder boards,
which is important for laptop use. Software that reads Blackmagic RAW also gets the advantage
of processing via Apple Metal, Nvidia CUDA and OpenCL.
This means that Blackmagic RAW plays back at normal speed like a video file on most
computers, without needing to cache it first or lower the resolution.
It’s also worth mentioning that lens information is recorded in the metadata on a frame by frame
basis. For example, when using compatible lenses, any zoom or focus changes performed over
the length of a clip will be saved, frame by frame, to the metadata in the Blackmagic RAW file.
36Settings
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