Colorist BMD Micro Color Panel Full Review

all right it is 1100 p.m. I just wrapped up a pretty grueling session and in this video I'm going to share my experience of using the micro color panel on real world color grading projects I've been using it as my main panels over the past few days and I wanted to test out how it Stacks up against the mini panel this is a follow-up video to my unboxing video I posted last week I'll leave a link somewhere somewhere okay so first off some context I Ed the mini panel out of necessity but I don't love its layout it takes up way too much room on my desk and also I can't stand the feel of the buttons so I've outsourced most of their commands to these over the top macro pads which means I only use the balls and ings a few knobs on the back of the console for a few select things mainly pulling keys and tracking when I'm not grading it just sort of sits there in front of me hogging up most of my desk space and it's too big of a panel to hot swap in and out when switching from work to play so I've actively been trying to make my grading setup more modular and take up a smaller footprint needless to say that when I saw this micro panel announced I was very motivated to get my hands on one shut up and take my money now I'm very aware I'm not the end user Blackmagic had in mind when they were designing this product but nonetheless I thought you know it would be able to hang and this would be a good stress test okay so to better showcase the features of this panel I've switched to this top down view I'm sorry that my ghostly hands are blown out this is my webcam there's nothing I can do I really couldn't rig up a system that I was satisfied and I think overall this works the best I am connected currently using Bluetooth and I just wanted to Showcase that uh it's super easy to connect no problems and I will be doing this demo over Bluetooth only just to show that it works just as well as wired I'd be hard pressed to notice a difference okay so starting off with this cluster here which I probably found myself using the most obviously the WIP still feature is great so holding down wipe still and the gain ring allows you to move the reference wipe which is great I absolutely love this and I used it all the time so the alt functions of Play Still I found I used a lot as well so for shift down play still toggo your gallery which is super handy but even better is the shift up Play Still which when I have multiple clips selected it puts it into my split screen view which I use all the time and having this right there I I mean I had it ma to a macro before but just having it on my panel now is super handy now the cursor is interesting I don't think it has a whole lot of uses unless you're on the iPad but I found it was super handy during live streams this cursor shows up on in my client's viewport so if I'm talking about something very minuscule I was like oh what about that Topo Chico bottle in the background do you want me to do that and I can literally point at it so it's actually been really handy just not in the way you'd expect it to be add key frame is super clutch because that does not exist on the mini panel and I'm stoked to have that right there add window is if I do just by itself it does an ellipse by the way I use the reset button all the time it's great uh if I do shift add window it does the linear box and if I do shift down on the window it actually will track backwards and forwards which is sweet if you want regular controls of the tracker you have those as well shift down and right or left will do the direction of the tracker and then if you hit the pause button it'll stop the track as well so having all the tracker controls on this small panel is absolutely crazy and last but not least I absolutely love the ability to change the input sizing using the Rings so shift down the gain ring Zooms in and out with the gain ball you can reposition and then the gamma ring does your rotation as well as you can change the aspect of your X and Y not that you'd ever want to do that but and finally the cherry on top I found the perfect use for this slot here I can rest my stylus and it fits so snug love it so what I've really been liking is the fact that I've been able to free up a lot of the slots on my macro pads to do other functions rather than have redundant ones that the mini panel already had that I refused to use simply because of ergonomics and my weirdly picky and OCD brain that really cares about how buttons feel I know hash need thatth okay so moving on to what I don't like well to start out the custom user button isn't a feature yet as usual Blackmagic is shipping us sort of Half Baked products but what else is new I guess I'll have to do a follow-up video in the near future once that feature is actually a feature I'm hoping that's when resolve 19 comes out of beta by the way this these panels don't work unless you are running resolve 19 so I had to begrudgingly update to the beta build which is something I never do really freaks me out but here we are okay so one of the main reasons why I picked up this panel besides its form factor is the feature that allows you to control the power windows with the balls and Rings I was trained professionally on bas light and I missed that feature so much the minute I saw this was part of this panel I just ran and pre-ordered it right then and there because I really prefer controlling my shapes with that system rather than using knobs but there are a few flaws with this and I hope black magic can just iterate and improve on it here's what I don't like so I know I'm splitting hairs here but with this current setup it just has me question whether it's even worth controlling shapes with the panel the response is just too slow whereas with my stylus it's a lot faster yeah I can only control one parameter at a time but because of that speed I still think I'm quicker with the stylus and the great thing about the control panel in theory is you can control multiple parameters at the same time placement size and softness all at the same time if we could control the speed at which these respond and just like up the sensitivity this panel would be insane okay rant over moving on the rest of my gripes on this panel all boil down to just not actual problems more just m opportunities for example the offset button when you do shift up it toggles to log but when you do shift down nothing happens like why can't this just take me to the HDR Wheels there's no control for that obviously I have it in my macros but that would be super cool then all of the knobs what if when you hold shift it does one thing and then shift down it does another and also why is there a Luma miix knob still like who is using Lumix so much that they need a knob for it like why is that still a thing I will say the learning curve is a little steep especially if you have larger hands this is quite a small board so when you're kind of maneuvering between the shifts and getting used to the lay of the land you can end up doing a lot of mistakes so for example when you do play Still and you hold down wipe and do it you can accidentally touch the gain ball so you got to watch out for that like when you're using the shift functions for the lift gamma gain wheel you just really have to make sure you're holding down the shift cuz otherwise you end up doing changes to your image that you didn't want to do so just little stuff like that with time they all get better but just so you guys know so all that being said while this panel does have some pretty hefty drawbacks that will make it unusable for some I think it really punches above its price point in terms of features and functionality and I can see it being a huge timesaver and just like productivity multiplier for small operations like wedding videography or uh you know content creators and people like that I think this will serve them really really well now any sensible colorist would immediately switch back to the mini panel for numerous reasons but I'm not a sensible colorist and I just like the form factor and the feel of the buttons too much that I'm going to make this work there's stuff that this can do that the mini can't so it sort of all comes out in the the wash I'll be just as fast with a way smaller footprint on my desk which at the end of the day is what I'm trying to reduce now if I were just starting out and I was kind of torn between this panel and the old micro panel I would 100% go for this one kind of a no-brainer it's cheaper has way more functionality and yeah you just get way more bang for your buck I'm kind of surprised Blackmagic hasn't completely just discontinued the micro panel maybe they did I just saw that the micro panel was still available on B&H so I don't know at any rate 100% this the only upper hand that the original micro panel has is the fact you know the balls and rings are far more better feeling and premium they're the same as the mini so if all you do is use lift gamma gain all day then I guess yeah go for the old micro panel speaking of which since you've stuck around till the end of the video I'm going to announce a giveaway that I just thought of literally two minutes ago and I've decided is time to pass my old micro color or micro sure my old color panel now this is the micro man I'm so tired to hand off my micro panel to someone who will make better use of it these have served me well over the years we've been through thick and thin borderline emotional right now uh but yeah I think it's time for me to give back and and let you guys W have a stab at winning these so this contest uh or giveaway let's do yeah so follow me on Instagram I'll put the handle here and DM me this is to enter uh DM me your name uh why you got into color grading and your top three favorite movies of all time uh they don't have to be because of the color or anything just like movies that you absolutely adore and you watch over and over again and there yeah you're top three uh and yeah I will keep this open until what do we think uh June 30th and then yeah I'll pick a random DM mostly probably based on what movies you choose but don't be going and choosing like super artsy stuff I'm not into that uh um yeah thanks all three of you for watching and I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: Andrew Ceen

Views: 5,831

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Id: Xni13XjzZ24

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024