Trip to Mexico

Trip to Mexico from Andrew Julian on Vimeo.

I brought my new Blackmagic Cinema Camera with me on a recent trip with my wife to the Bahia de Banderas area of Mexico. We stayed in Mismaloya, about 20km south of Puerto Vallarta. If I had it my way, the camera would have been glued to my hands for the entire trip, but considering it's not water-proof, I had to leave it at the hotel quite a bit.

We did a day trip north of Puerto Vallarta and explored towns, beaches, and did a small jungle hike. In Valle De Banderas, they were celebrating their town's anniversary, or at least I think that's what a banner said. At any rate there were many people out celebrating.

I love shooting with the BMCC! Little issues aside, it is an amazing camera! I love how it makes me slow down while shooting. Considering I'm getting about 25 minutes of raw footage on each 240gb SSD, and the fact that you can't delete clips or format the drive from the camera, makes me feel as if I'm shooting film. On this trip I had no way of downloading footage or formatting the drives. It felt like having an old slr film camera with me and just a couple rolls of film.

I shot all raw and processed the images in Lightroom. I had thought to take Resolve for a spin, but my main workstation stopped working and Resolve won't run on my laptop. I used a calibrated HP monitor.

I experimented with different color grades and you will see different styles in this film. There's even a single random BW shot in there. Uncompressed raw and 13 stops of dynamic range is a powerful mix. Being able to process the raw images in a variety of programs is freeing, and re-processing old footage with new color correction tools is something I look forward to.

Download the original if you want to see the full quality. Not much else to say really. It's good this camera will be shipping in larger quantities soon. Sorry to use an already over used phrase, but this camera is a game changer and needs to be in more people's hands! I can't wait to see what people shoot with it, and what the other camera manufacturers come up with to compete.

P.S. The reality of owning a camera called the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is at times a bit awkward. I'm finding myself saying things like, "No, I'll use the Black Magic." which tends to make strangers in the vicinity raise an eyebrow. Oh well. It's a small price to pay.

Music: I Wanna Go by Summer Heart

Gear used:

BMCC
Blackbird Stabilizer
Manfrotto Monopod
Sigma 8-16mm
Canon 24-70mm (no iris control yet, so all wide open at f2.8)
Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS Mark II
B+W ND Filters


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