Over on the Blackmagic Design YouTube channel, Manchester-based director of photography Dima Kalenda tests out the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K in low-light conditions. Shooting at night in anamorphic 6K using Blackmagic RAW, Kalenda wanted to use the camera with only one light source, relying totally on practicals for his late night shots:
“When Blackmagic gave me this new camera to test, I wasn’t asked to use any specific features of the camera. I had total freedom to do what I wanted. My task was to play with the camera and try to push it to its limits. I thought with a project like this, it was better to show how a camera of this caliber and flexibility can be so forgiving to work with.
“I tried putting it into environments where you have much less control and where you have to work with what you get. So we shot all of these scenes between 7:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. to really test its low light capabilities. All I did for lighting was use everything that was available at that location and one LED Colorspike as a fill light that you can control with an app off your phone. And that was it!”
Read more: Zero Two Filmmaker Dima Kalenda
Zero Two was captured in Anamorphic with the Atlas Orion anamorphic primes (18mm, 32mm and 50mm focal lengths) stopped down to T4 and T5.6 to avoid a softer image, and utilizing the camera’s dual native ISO at 3200 for better low noise performance. Kalenda had hoped to rent vintage Kowa anamorphic lenses for the shoot, but was unable to secure the correct EF to PL mount adapter, and instead opted the use Atlas Orion lenses, which were already available in EF and PL with interchangeable lens mounts.
“This camera can obviously do very big things and gives you a lot of flexibility,’ Kalenda says. “With all of the latitude you get with this camera and Blackmagic RAW, you can just dial shots into the camera and then jump in and see if it works. I was shooting everything from intense sunsets to low light at night while under street lights to truly see what this camera was capable of.”
Watch the video below:
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