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

Noel Evans said:
Im a bit confused by the way people are interpreting LUTS. LUTS aren't a magic button, hit it and - yay its graded! .. I feel like a parrot
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Indeed 'one click' is not graded.. it is 'normalised'

At the mid/low level a very normal LUT would be used to give a client a 'one click' solution to normalise the Log footage - this should work as well as baking a 709 look in camera.

So a LUT should get you to where you would have been if you had baked.

The advantage is that the base log file holds a huge amount in reserve - either to correct on set error, match cameras, or to allow true colour work where the skilled colourist moves the story forward through colour.

I feel like a parrot too :)

S
 
yoclay said:
The functional color space is much larger than most of the corrections people make. It is much larger than a "look". Only when approaching the edges of the spectrum are the differences visible. I can guarantee you that no one would know the difference between an FS7, F55, Arri Alexa, Red Dragon or any other 14 stop DR cameras today when looking at a film cut together or most images in typical shooting environments. I do a lot of grading for myself and others, and I know this from experience. A Sony "look", or a Canon "look" is largely mythology today if you have an S-LOG or C-LOG image. Where it does matter is if the look is baked in, on the many gammas, profiles, or even REC709 from one camera to the next. In those cases your working methodology and personal preferences make a large difference.
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I'm no expert - I stick to my own job and just shoot the stuff! But that's pretty much what I thought - as long as you have a lot bit depth and a lot of DR you can make anything look like anything else - you can change a dark blue pixel to a bright pink one if you wanted to!

Steve
 
95% you can.

But.. and Im now going to swap my argument around 180 degrees and argue for basic camera colourmetry :)

You have to be able to isolate that blue pixel in the colour software.

Now consider this , I have a dark purple object in my frame, and I also have black (subject matter) in the frame that has gone dark purple due to IR contamination in camera.

Now when you instruct your colour suite to grab all 'dark purple' pixels it also grabs all the dark purple pixels that should have been black.

Similar occurs in lighting, you just cant get back missing spectrum.

Ref to FS7 v C300ii my personal observation is that both Canon and Sony, have pretty solid colour rendition unlike some of the indy makers..
 
As someone who's been burned by IR issues in the past. I can agree with this.

Most cams can be graded to match. But there are subtleties in each one. DP's like Shane Hurlbut and Art Adams do some quite expansive testing that shows this carries through to the different log and raw modes.
 
yoclay said:
I can guarantee you that no one would know the difference between an FS7, F55, Arri Alexa, Red Dragon or any other 14 stop DR cameras today when looking at a film cut together or most images in typical shooting environments. I do a lot of grading for myself and others, and I know this from experience. A Sony "look", or a Canon "look" is largely mythology today if you have an S-LOG or C-LOG image.
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its statements like these that slowly discredit the knowledge-base on this forum.
 
Buy FS7 and earn money on it for C300II - it's simple as that. There's a very high demand for FS7 right now. And even if you won't be able to make money on it within 2-3 months (doubt it) sell it, you won't loose a lot.
 
morgan_moore said:
errm.. C300i is completely outdone by the Fs7 IMO
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FS7 killed C300 MK I on the sales charts.

As a side note - Sony has shown an improved/updated version of two of its older A-mount lenses yesterday - 24-70 and 16-35, each 2.8/F - and asserted that their Alpha line is not dead yet. To support that claim, they showed both lenses on A77MK II and A99 ... and then, suddenly, A99 price was lowered to $1,600. Rumors of A99 MK II have been around a long time. In a competitive market a 4K enabled A99 seems like a no-brainer. If a 4K 5D MK IV/ C is announced by this fall, A99 MK II might not be too far behind.
 
DLD said:
FS7 killed C300 MK I on the sales charts.
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Do you mean in the first few months of their respective releases? Or during the first few months of the FS7's release? Certainly not over the period of their lifetimes...
 
nyvz said:
Do you mean in the first few months of their respective releases? Or during the first few months of the FS7's release? Certainly not over the period of their lifetimes...
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Since FS7 release in late 2014, clearly.

C300 MK I sales suffered terribly when it was priced at $12,999 ... which is why it's no longer priced at $12,999.

greenheron said:
"FS7 killed C300 MK I on the sales charts."

Hahahahahahahahahhah. That is rich.
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I'll wait for your eloquent explanation of the $5,000 price drop.

dustylense said:
Seriously.
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Obviously, a team project.
 
The price drop? Because they have released 2 new cameras in the C-line both with updated sensors and new processors. No eloquence needed, just plain logic.

I've still yet to see a Fs7 on any production around LA. I see the C300 nearly everyday in multitudes.

I'm not trying to knock the Fs7. It looks like a fine camera.
 
DLD said:
Since FS7 release in late 2014, clearly.

C300 MK I sales suffered terribly when it was priced at $12,999 ... which is why it's no longer priced at $12,999.
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Do you know that or are you just guessing? It is not hard to believe fewer people are buying a 3 year old camera than a 6month camera. There is plenty of used and rental C300 stock to go around, in fact so many people bought them they are dirt cheap to rent and easy to borrow which makes it hard to want to buy them, however that and the price drop doesn't necessarily mean the FS7 is outselling them in itself though it does seem likely.
 
steve phillipps said:
Seriously???! I read that several times to see if it was sarcasm but doesn't look like it - seriously???

Steve
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Just my experience. Always found the MX to have similar DR to C300 Mk I (12 stops), poor highlight rendering (magenta blobs), not-great per-pixel sharpness, poor color rendering until the latest redcolor matrices. Skew on par with the rest. Just not a wonderful image, but when the MX came out it was still pretty decent next to the competition. Then Alexa wiped the floor.

Clearly your experience has been different. Maybe you've managed to get more out of the Epic MX than I have. I always found the Alexa to be far better and would shoot with it when I could. Dragon is another story. Light hog, but otherwise excellent. Great color, DR, resolution, look.

That said, I defer to your experience. I have only shot a bit on the Epic and posted much more on the Alexa, so of course I prefer the Alexa. I found the C300 Mk I to produce a nicer image at 1080p than the Epic MX once graded/downscaled and with less effort, but the Epic MX had more raw data to work with if you could afford to light for it (it's a lot hog, especially under tungsten) and its limited DR and then spend the money in post to grade it right... Prometheus looked better than any C300 feature. Duh. But the average low end tv cam op got better results with the C300 than the MX since it's easy as hell to use and great low light and out-of-camera color.

I was more in that latter group. So for me the Alexa was always the cheaper option (or Canon when there was truly no money or I was shooting on my personal kit). Just personal preference, indicative of the lower-end stuff on which I work. But still.... the Epic MX is nothing to write home about by today's standards. It's pretty last-gen. The Dragon is a lot better, to be fair, though I expect the C300 Mk II to compete very very well with it and be as strong or stronger 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time is expensive.... but will probably be gorgeous. When you have the money to support that workflow, you get Prometheus. Which still has worse color rendering and DR than any given Alexa show, but a great look and sharpness. I lack the skill and patience to achieve that. Kudos to you if you have it--you'll go far.
 
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Policar said:
Just my experience. Always found the MX to have similar DR to C300 Mk I (12 stops), poor highlight rendering (magenta blobs), not-great per-pixel sharpness, poor color rendering until the latest redcolor matrices. Skew on par with the rest. Just not a wonderful image, but when the MX came out it was still pretty decent next to the competition. Then Alexa wiped the floor.

Clearly your experience has been different. Maybe you've managed to get more out of the Epic MX than I have. I always found the Alexa to be far better and would shoot with it when I could. Dragon is another story. Light hog, but otherwise excellent. Great color, DR, resolution, look.
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I've shot a fair bit with the Epic (and in fact I seem to be one of the few people who even like it ergonomically!) I always thought the image looked superb, which is why I was taken aback by the statement about the C300 II being "much better" than it. Most of the high end BBC natural history stuff has been Epic over the last few years - one great example of it being "Life Story" which I thought looked fantastic.
But you're right, just my (limited) experience and opinion. And I do admit that I've not shot with too many cameras over the last 5 years - to be precise, tape and P2 Varicam, Epic and Phantom HD - that's the full list!
Steve
 
Having owned an Epic until just recently and rented a C300 when I needed one, to say the C300 looks better than down scaled 1080p from 4k/5k from the Epic is laughable.

And the Epic MX is not a "light hog" under any light. tungsten or daylight.

That is patently false.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Having owned an Epic until just recently and rented a C300 when I needed one, to say the C300 looks better than down scaled 1080p from 4k/5k from the Epic is laughable.

And the Epic MX is not a "light hog" under any light. tungsten or daylight.

That is patently false.
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Agreed.

This thread is descending into farce.
 
The Scarlet I tested (was that Epic sensor?) was basically 400 ISO.. a light hog!

The image was sweet though - proper raw.

S
 
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