C300: C300 Mark II or Sony FS7? Need help to pick one out, Will be buying either one

I can not get pass the picture coming out of the fs7. Can't put my finger all the way on it but the fs7 looks so far from cinematic if that is what I would be going for. I actually prefer the look of the a7s at times over the glossy commercial look of the fs7. I searched and searched to find footage that made me want to fork over the funds to get this cam, but nothing. Although I think the new c300 mark II has a similar glossy commercial look it loos more cinematic and has a more organic look to the that of the sony.
 
reem12 said:
I can not get pass the picture coming out of the fs7. Can't put my finger all the way on it but the fs7 looks so far from cinematic if that is what I would be going for. I actually prefer the look of the a7s at times over the glossy commercial look of the fs7. I searched and searched to find footage that made me want to fork over the funds to get this cam, but nothing. Although I think the new c300 mark II has a similar glossy commercial look it loos more cinematic and has a more organic look to the that of the sony.
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C'mon, not even that one above your post?? It's hard to find it but it's there. I will update my post to show more examples that I've found.
 
morgan_moore said:
Having graded C100 footage I can say the FS7 eats it for breakfast, the C100 is ungradable.
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What Joe is probably referring to is not the actual grading, but the organic nature of the image quality and color that Canon's cinema cameras provide. Grading is irrelevant if the color science of the camera is not inline with the creator. From their lowly consumer cameras to the upper echelons of film making it's no secret that Sony cameras have a very "clean" look to them, and this turns many filmmakers away. Nothing really wrong with that, it's just a different look.
 
The onboard of the C100 is 25mb 1080, the FS7 does 300mb 10bit 4k log, I don't think it is controversial to suggest it might be better. The C100 is of course completely irrelevant to this thread.

Id guess the C300ii is even sweeter than the FS7 :)

S
 
morgan_moore said:
The onboard of the C100 is 25mb 1080, the FS7 does 300mb 10bit 4k log, I don't think it is controversial to suggest it might be better. The C100 is of course completely irrelevant to this thread.

Id guess the C300ii is even sweeter than the FS7 :)

S
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Hey, Morgan, I see you're from UK. What's the popularity of Canon Cinema line vs Sony in UK? Most of the guys are from USA, I am from Europe and was wondering how's the situation in England like.
 
alohype said:
Hey, Morgan, I see you're from UK. What's the popularity of Canon Cinema line vs Sony in UK? Most of the guys are from USA, I am from Europe and was wondering how's the situation in England like.
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C300 has been the king of broadcast and higher corporate. The FS7 has a buzz right now (or did until last week?) as it is basically affordable by any semi serious owner operator. I think that buzz is deserved as it is the first (sub F5) Sony that has not been critically flawed. Personally I always thought the C300 was overpriced and the C100 underspecced.
I am not sure what the C300ii brings to the market - things I would appreciate, maybe, but clients tend to go for HFR! Of course the Canon is still an ergonomic sack of rats.

A few of my FS7 shots..
 
Base rate is 29.97, shooting frame rate is varied. What makes some of it look horrid is the 300 degree shutter. I'd ignore that video, not least because of the vomit inducing commentary...
 
reem12 said:
I can not get pass the picture coming out of the fs7. Can't put my finger all the way on it but the fs7 looks so far from cinematic if that is what I would be going for. I actually prefer the look of the a7s at times over the glossy commercial look of the fs7. I searched and searched to find footage that made me want to fork over the funds to get this cam, but nothing. Although I think the new c300 mark II has a similar glossy commercial look it loos more cinematic and has a more organic look to the that of the sony.
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Agreed. None of those clips look bad at all, very nice lighting and art direction but there is something off in the motion rendering to me and the colors all look blah. It's interesting that in three different clips, all with heavy grading, all of the people look dead, there is no life in the skin tones at all. The FS7 does nothing for me, I like the footage coming from by C100 much better. Sure the Sony has specs galore and nice HFR but the look just isn't there.
 
Personally, I would take the C100 1080P over the FS7 4K. Something about the image of the FS7 is just not great IMO. If course you can work the footage a ton and get a nice image...but then again you pretty much can with almost any camera if you work it enough. Just not worth it for me with the FS7.
 
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I really like IQ from the FS7 but I can understand people who doesn't like the footage. The image is extremely well resolved, clean and have very few artefacts (apart from HFPS). To clean and to good I might say so often I have to trash the image adding grain and a film curve before it looks good. Then again sometimes the clean and natural image is just what a client needs so it works to do both clean and trashy.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
Personally, I would take the C100 1080P over the FS7 4K. Something about the image of the FS7 is just not great IMO. If course you can work the footage a ton and get a nice image...but then again you pretty much can with almost any camera if you work it enough. Just not worth it for me with the FS7.
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This C300II example doesn't do much for its image. This is a very large budget piece and it doesn't look great at all quiet frankly.
https://vimeo.com/124750526

We all must have very different tastes because when I look at the videos posted by Aloha in the last page I see some great looking images. I'm glad my clients love the look I'm giving them on my FS7. I'm shooting for an ABC special in May that requested FS7 and have rented my FS7 a few times to production companies who loved the look and were very happy with the camera rental. They have used C100/C300 in the past and were frustrated with limited frame rates.

Aren't we fortunate to have so much choice in the sub 10K market.
 
puredrifting said:
Agreed. None of those clips look bad at all, very nice lighting and art direction but there is something off in the motion rendering to me and the colors all look blah.
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agreed, and if you ask any high level colorist worth their salt, the hardest thing to modify is skin tones(regardless of codec/format your recording too) which is why The Alexa is such a staple in the film business. Canon RAW has an almost magical look to it that I have only seen from arri and red thus far.

FrameFarmMedia said:
This C300II example doesn't do much for its image. This is a very large budget piece and it doesn't look great at all quiet frankly.
https://vimeo.com/124750526
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It DOES look like absolute dog poo, but terrible script/director/dp/gaffer aside, the camera was probably running handicapped firmware(it has an almost 30p kinda feel to it). I'm sure if they had given that production crew an ALEXA with a matched set of anamorphics the results would be the same. Sad for a product launch piece, Vince Laforet must be having a good laugh!
 
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Osslund said:
I really like IQ from the FS7 but I can understand people who doesn't like the footage. The image is extremely well resolved, clean and have very few artefacts (apart from HFPS). To clean and to good I might say so often I have to trash the image adding grain and a film curve before it looks good. Then again sometimes the clean and natural image is just what a client needs so it works to do both clean and trashy.
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I don't know if you've already tried this or not, but I found that diffusion filters help out a lot with the clinical image. Older lenses too if you can get away with it...
 
Other than Morgan's phenomenal short piece I thought the FS7 videos looked terrible. The ferns and greenery look electric and some of the skin tones look a bit too rosey.

For those struggling to define that sony video look I would recommend these two articles:

http://www.dvinfo.net/article/post/making-the-sony-f55-look-filmic-with-resolve-9.html
http://www.dvinfo.net/article/production/camgear/what-alexa-and-watercolors-have-in-common.html

In short he finds that one prominent aspect of "Filmic look" comes from how colors don't gain any more saturation after they reach a specific luma level. The alexa does this after a certain point, where as the sony cameras he tests continue to amp up saturation until they clip dramatically.

After reading this article when it was first written I started to dial down the saturation of my highlights and was very happy with the results. The method works quite well with properly exposed C300 footage. If you light to "View assist" on the C300 when you push the highlights in post the roll off is quite nice and desaturates gently. I admit I am certainly looking forward to that extra stop in the highlights!

The big miss step that I see in the C300MK2 demo film was coloring those highlights. We all know that highlights should appear white, when you push them around on the color spectrum it spells out video to our eyes. If you've seen the BTS video for the mk2 you can see some great color coming out of the camera. Also there are clipped highlights in every other shot, not sure if those are retained on an HDR display or not, if that's the case they should have had an alternate color pass for non HDR computer monitors.
 
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