C500: C500 II Streaking

modernhuman said:
But I’m interested solely in cinema and cinematic story telling. Not ENG.
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Same here. Not sure how many people would use the camera for ENG, but I'm sure somebody will.

It's funny, you referenced a film shot by Chivo 5 years ago (Revenant)...and it really got me thinking. I didn't really love the film (I felt the regularly scheduled wide angle pans kept taking me out of the story, it was a good film, sure, but there were times when it felt like the shots were ruling the roost rather than the other way around.) I've never really studied the film, but I started to look at it, because today we see lots of work being shot in some form of natural light, and certainly this film and others you've mentioned are influential in that (remembering of course, that shooting natural light is only a tiny subset of what it means to be cinematic, and is not the only way to tell a story cinematically).

So a couple of things I noticed about the film..a lot of it is noisy as huck. Sometimes it's because they are shooting in the dark, but often you can see where they are bringing up parts of shadows (Leo's face) so severely that they simply had to mask the whole frame with noise to keep it consistent. I think what I'm pointing out is, no matter how clean that Arri 65 is, no matter how much DR the camera has, no matter whether it's better than all the $16k cameras in the world. In that film, we never really get to see any of those qualities. The DR as I've mentioned is reduced down to whatever the delivery is, and for whatever reason, there is grain, noise, et al apparent in just about every scene (certainly the scenes where the decision not to light might have made for a less tense DI session).

The other thing that I noticed is that in the really high DR situations...the ones really similar to the shots Airwolf posted at the start of the thread, the ones involving an exposed window with detail outside, and a human face in a dark room lit by that window....well those shots are handled really differently than airwolfs. He tried to raise his shadows beyond what this camera could handle, and so it's easy to see how crappy things look. But in Revenant, given their Dogma-esque approach to lighting, they decided to simply crush those shadows beyond any hope. We're not talking black tshirts..we're talking skin. I really wonder why they did that...for creative reasons? (I'm sure in hind-sight it was definitely for creative reasons...:).

Now I don't really know how much shooting experience you have with Alexas, 65 or otherwise. I know I have none. But I just spent some time pushing around some of the shots I posted on the "C500II from a C300II perspective" thread. They were shot natural light, no fill, camera pointed into the sun. Kinda Chivo-Style. Human in the foreground, shot from the shadow side. As I messed with the images, it became obvious that everything I was seeing was cleaner than what I see in the Revenant. Now...I'm not saying the camera is capable of what the Alexa 65 is. I'm just saying that it's as clean or cleaner than what ended up in the final grade of the film, (also considering that film was likely denoised, and then renoised, because that just how it's done.) Even in the most extreme situations, the C500II is much cleaner than this thread has made it seem.

I know 2k is all that matters. But here's a 5k version of those clips from youtube. Don't be too harsh on the color grading, as it's not a final piece, but let me know if you see any streakiness, or even "revenant" style noise lurking in the shadows, which in 5k, and relatively "un-crushed" compared to the wilderness film, should be plainly visible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGy1SUJwF30
 
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Barry G said:
...no matter how clean that Arri 65 is, no matter how much DR the camera has, no matter whether it's better than all the $16k cameras in the world. In that film, we never really get to see any of those qualities. The DR as I've mentioned is reduced down to whatever the delivery is....
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I kind of wonder, who are you trying to kid?
 
At the end of the day, the C500ii has the most DR of any Canon Video camera i’ve seen so far. And it captures enough dr to not run into problems for me.

‘Blue Ruin’ was shot on there original C300 in 1080 50Mbps 8bit ~12stops DR. The C500ii is the same price and leagues above the original. Barry shoots some amazing images with it. And many documentarian cinematographers have utilized Canon C series cameras to make fantastic inagery. ‘Cartel Land’ and also work by James Longely. Seriously good stuff. I love testing these cameras and knowing where they stand, because when i use them, i want to know there limits as well as their strengths.
 
Hey Barry, very beautiful clip. It looks clean and has a nice natural look. Thanks for sharing :) I guess I mentioned the revenant, but I was referring more to Knight of Cups and To the Wonder. Haven’t really delved into the revenant. But I’m sure given the insane conditions and logistics, things had to be compromised, beyond just the no lighting mandate. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned from all this is I’d rather be filming then argue about cameras. We are talking about the last 5% or 10%. In the end it doesn’t matter. Good movies can be made with any camera. Tell a good story and the camera disappears. Keep up the good work Barry.
 
modernhuman said:
Good movies can be made with any camera.
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No no no no no.
You've got it all wrong.
This is a gear forum.
Since none of our devices can take stunning dual gain readout images like an Arri, we all need to throw all our gear, including phones, into the trash, and go apply for a job as a greeter.
Except, of course, for those with Arris.
Oh, that wouldn't work either, then there'd be too many greeters.
We're all stuck with our "it is not worthy" gear.
 
James0b57 said:
C-log in my experience, is already digging down into the shadows. For people that expose by eye, and coming from other picture styles, or other camera brands, this may cause heavy under exposure.

In this screen shot A is clog, and B is neutral picture style on the 1DC. Otherwise same exact settings taken seconds apart.
9336583108_23b0e7ee63_c.jpg


It can be easy to react to clog by eye the same way one might be used to exposing from other picture styles or other brands. It is another reason to get used to scopes and meters when switching between cameras.
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Not sure why anyone won't use waveform, unless it is not available in the camera.
 
So did we come to a conclusion on the original post? I ask because a friend of mine just shot a 2-camera interview with his C500MKII and my C300MKIII in a similar situation as the OP (backlit window in the BG), although this interview was professionally lit and exposures and ratios look great.....but BOTH cameras produced this line smear, most noticeable in the window shears
 
I have heard some Canon ops saying the problem is much improved by dropping the ISO to 400-500. Pure hearsay on my part as I'm not a Canon user. Though it appears to be backed up by some posts from here back in 2018:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?359784-C300-MKII-Ways-to-avoid-cmos-smear-banding-issues

Canon is well aware of the problem as it appeared right from the get-go and they for some strange reason seem to have done little about the problem other than issue a firmware update that did help but never fixed the problem. Check the image from an early test.

https://www.cined.com/canon-c300-mark-ii-review-dynamic-range/

dynamic-range-C300-mark-ii-vs-fs7-vs-alexa-gammalift_B-640x238.jpg

The problem is if you use a CMOS image sensor oversaturation protection circuit you tend to limit dynamic range. Some camera manufactures would rather bleed or leak off excess charge and cascade it across adjacent photosites when full well capacity has been achieved by a range of photosites. If you don't control over saturation one way or another you end up with a complete pixel reset and the voltage goes back to '0' volts. That causes a 'Black Sun effect' as was witnessed on some of the earlier BM cameras. Notably the first of the BMPCC pocket cams. Oversaturation can be controlled without spill but at the expense of having a lower dynamic range. A couple of brief overviews of the issues involved.

"According to the present embodiment, oversaturated pixels in an APS (Active Pixel Sensor) pixel array are flagged during readout. The saturation flag can be used to identify oversaturated pixels and replace the value read out from oversaturated pixels with a predetermined maximum value corresponding to a maximum brightness for the pixels in the image. (Note: This is what can limit dynamic range.) This removes the artifacts in the resulting image, and the pixels in the APS array that receive the most light appear brightest in the images that are produced. Oversaturated pixels in an active pixel sensor (APS) imaging device can produce artifacts in the resulting images in high contrast situations. Artifacts are objects in the image that appear black (as per original BMPCC) or smear with charge spill-over to adjacent photosites."

"Methods for achieving WDR can be categorized as non-linear or linear. Previous reports have described DR extension with non-linear methods by several means. A well capacity adjusting method controlling an overflow gate caused low SNR because of the non-linear response of charge collection."

Canon obviously want to claim the maximum DR they can and they do tend to claim the highest DR specs of many models across the market. Their answer to the problem when asked was when asked about it? "I took it to canon and they said it was just normal and to avoid shooting in backlight. I do not believe this is acceptable for a camera."

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/...Purple-Glitch-of-Death-C300-Mk-II/td-p/225914

So there doesn't appear to be any real answer to the problem you are seeing it but it looks like it can be minimized by using lower ISO. I'm just surprised to see it raising its head in this day and age with the C500 ii?

Why I tend to collect a lot of useless information is beyond me but sometimes it helps me understand certain issues. Information hoarding, a bad habit of mine.

Chris Young
 
For whatever reason, the black sun spot was addressed in the BMPCC but not the BMCC or BMPC.

The BMPC had the 4K sensor, and indeed keeping the ISO at its native whopping 400 kept the sensor clean. 200 was even cleaner but with a major loss in DR.

Bump it up to 800 and you'd have everything above x10.

A handful of cameras have sensor problems but they are not always visible in every situation...or written off by the public as underexposure (which can magnify these issues).
 
I really hadn't noticed any smear in my C500II, especially compared to my C300MKII. Then I did an interview in which a white banister on the right half of the frame created a nice, saturated purple streak on the left of the frame. The banister wasn't clipping and the footage was not underexposed and the ISO was 800. But there it was, staring me in the face. So Canon has not solved the problem, but the streaking definitely looked different than it does on my C300 MKII.
 
NorBro said:
For whatever reason, the black sun spot was addressed in the BMPCC but not the BMCC or BMPC.

The BMPC had the 4K sensor, and indeed keeping the ISO at its native whopping 400 kept the sensor clean. 200 was even cleaner but with a major loss in DR.

Bump it up to 800 and you'd have everything above x10.

A handful of cameras have sensor problems but they are not always visible in every situation...or written off by the public as underexposure (which can magnify these issues).
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The original BMPCC sensor had the circuit to control over-saturation. It had to be enabled which it was in a firmware update. If the sensor doesn't have the necessary substitution feedback circuits the issues cannot be fixed easily. FWIW I believe to do it external to the sensor means new hardware substitution circuits.

Chris Young
 
Interesting. One thing that was incredibly strange - which isn't discussed much because this camera was discontinued shortly after this - is the big URSA had two versions of it, V1 and V2 (supposedly the same sensor), but V2 didn't have the black sun spot and they never fixed V1 or the BMPC (which also had the same sensor).
 
Interesting points. Maybe URSA V2 had the additional circuit added into the camera hardware? Who knows what kind of magic goes on inside Blackmagic.

Chris Young
 
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