puredrifting
Major Contributor
Damn, I'm leaving this room then! ;-)
C500: C500 Mark II: Observations from a C200 point of view
- Thread starter chris f
- Start date
Damn, I'm leaving this room then! ;-)
cyvideo
Veteran
Another point of view on the FX9, plus and minus points. Plus a bit of footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88otJKaFkH0
Chris Young
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88otJKaFkH0
Chris Young
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I know what you mean, Sony does things the Sony way, which often isn't the way I'd like to have things function. I'll be using the FX9 this week on three interviews and will also take it out to shoot long lens b-roll
of windsurfers, surfers and will just take a day to bop around town shooting misc. stuff that looks interesting. I've not generally been a fan of Sony cameras since we got rid of our DSR 500WS back in the day. I loved
the F900, all of our Betacams but beginning with the EX1, I preferred Canon and Panasonic color science. As a Canon/RED/Arri/Fuji user, I occasionally rent the FS7/MKII but the FX9, based upon what I have seen so
far in a full day of training and hanging with the product team, shares a lot more with the Venice than the FS7 MKII and I think the Venice is a pretty good camera.
I'll reserve judgement until I actually do some real shoots with it starting Monday, but so far, the FX9 is pretty impressive to me. It does a lot of little things right that the Canons don't. Case in point, if I want a servo zoom lens for
my C200 or C300 MKII, I have to pay $4k for the CN E 18-80 t/4.4, it has it's own powered handgrip control, that awkward power cable that I have to replace with a Zacuto cable. Fair enough, I like the CN E compact servos,
they are good lenses. But the FX9, I can get the SELP 28-135 f/4 G OSS for $2,500.00 in a package deal with the FX9. It's FF. It can be controlled from the Sony grip, it looks good, has a manual/AF focusing clutch mechanism that is
the same as my XF16mm f/1.4 for my Fuji X-T3, which I like, that way of switching back and forth works well.
Of course, the CN E zooms are only S35 plus they are considerably more expensive, and ergonomically, more of a PITA to deal with with the cable, handgrip, etc. I like the lenses, but the overall integration is better
on the Sony, in FF, at $1,500.00 - $2,000.00 cheaper.
That's just one little thing that I've seen on the FX9 that impresses me, it's the little things that all add up. Yes, the menus suck compared to my Canons, but there are lots of nice, fine tune options in there that are either not on the
Canons or is simply implemented better on the Sony. The button layout is more cluttered and less intuitive to me on the Sony. Being a Canon owner, the button layout and menus on the C200/300 MKII make far more sense.
I'm very interested to shoot some Sony SLog3/S-Cinetone footage to compare against the RAW from the C200 and the XF-AVC from the C300 MKII. A lot of people are reporting that the Sony holds together pretty well when pushed
and that the Sony footage is giving a run for its money against some other camera's RAW. We'll see about that.
G
Guest
Guest
All cameras are good enough that anyone can just get the
cameras they like and go shoot good things.
Typically Sony is technically the best, and Panasonic and Canon have cameras people prefer aesthetically.
That is what is so weird about this choice, the Sony’s are actually looking aesthetically good now too.
You can tell a lot about a camera from the bad footage out there as much as the good. And I’m seeing a lot of very green footage from the FX9 being posted on Youtube and Vimeo. I’ve been super interested in the FX9, but I’m not a fan of the Sony green. While this new Sony looks light years better than their previous cameras, and is getting a lot of praise for their new color science, I don’t think they’ve entirely eradicated it just yet. You can see it in a lot of the home videos posted where little to no grading has taken place.
G
Guest
Guest
Pretty amazing times, where this is the criticism of cameras these days.
Sony when shot by amateurs looks crap.
Canon can only do 13stops DR, and it only does proxies when recording in raw.
I will say, cine cameras have a lot of pressure coming from the consumer sector. Consumer tech is so advanced, makes even the latest dedicated video cameras look like clunky bricks.
If they don’t out do the Alexa in the next round, or if the AlevIV doesn’t outdo itself, there will be no point to upgrade. Already, there is no reason to buy an Fx9 or a C500ii unless you want auto focus in a midtier pro video body.
It must be very difficult to make a 15+ stops usable dr sensor.
To be fair, anyone who knows how to properly compose, light, and grade, can reduce or even mitigate the “video” look. But that is far easier said than done, and i certainly can’t hide the video foot print majority of the time. Even my Alexa footage looks rather videoy.
Despite having little to complain about, it still does not bode well for the cinema camera long term. With shrinking budgets for them and us. And the mad sweeping momentum of RnD money infused into the cellphone sector.
If i shot a lot of interviews, and got paid well, i’d swap over to the Fx9 or C500ii likely. But otherwise, i tend to agree. We have some highly polished looking video cameras that won’t be competing with true cinema cameras in a true head to head race.
I used to complain about cameras a lot, and that was because 8bit 50Mbps was being called a “cinema” camera just a few years ago. These recent additions are more exciting because of auto focus than purely based on image quality. And as i don’t particularly care for auto focus at this time, i don’t particularly care about these cameras one way or another. But i can’t really complain either. They did it. They made a nice camera for under $20K.
Haven’t felt this optimistic about cameras since the HPX500.
While I've seen plenty of balanced footage from the FX9, you are right that there is a lot of yellow (green) coming down the pipeline from this camera. In some ways it's attractive, but to me it feels like a "look" has been applied. More baked in looking, and I've been curious if it's the camera, or the user. I personally think this camera has improved a lot from the FS7 in terms of color science, but I really haven't loved most of what I've seen from it, mostly due to that color bias. I just shot a music video with my GFX100, which has a Sony sensor in it, and the yellows are the same...in this case it was under NYC street lighting and looks really great (gritty, rich colors)...but I'm not sure I'd want it for my day job, you know.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I read somewhere that Alister Chapman has developed a LUT that he is giving away or selling really inexpensively that mitigates that green overload. I'll be checking this out when I shoot some SLog3.Cine this week, I can compare the Sony LUT with the Alister LUT.
G
Guest
Guest
It was camera #6 in the recent Reduser FF camera comparison. Slog3+Alister Chapman’s lut.
Post 24:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...hootout-2020&p=1884729&viewfull=1#post1884729
But would be more interested in your hands on perspective.
Grug
Veteran
I’ll take the faint yellow/green cast of the new colour science over the older magenta cast any day. It’s much nicer out of the box.
That said, it never took more than a few seconds to balance in Davinci anyway, so I don’t see it being a big deal.
I’ve been going over and over the options in my head, and I think I’m getting closer to deciding to simply stick with my F55 over “upgrading” to the FX9 or C500ii. The FX9 simply doesn’t have the feature-set to match the F55, and although the Canon offers almost everything I want feature-wise, beyond faster boot-time, better internal NDs, and the more compact form factor - I’d still be losing 16-bit raw, global shutter, 240fps @ 2k, and the option for S35mm 4k 120fps (when paired with the R7).
Given the comparable dynamic range between the two, it’s really hard to justify the upgrade. The only thing that keeps me hanging on for the moment is the thought of the time I’d save on-set thanks to the boot time, NDs, and faster gripping/rigging due to the lighter weight in certain circumstances.
rob norton
Veteran
Why don’t you buy an Alexa mini LF?
Grug
Veteran
I came very close to putting down a deposit, but rental rates here have already dropped from about $2000/day to $1100/day for the MILF. That's a 1% rental rate, or 100 rental days to pay one back. Doesn't make sense to own with rental returns like that, it'd take too long to turn a profit from it.
I've never quite figured out how these expensive cinema cameras are renting for so cheap in Los Angeles. I rented an Amira for $250/day last August. You can rent a Monstro for $400. In fact, as I write this, I'm looking at a listing for a fully kitted out Alexa Mini, with EVF, 4:3 & ArriRaw licenses, 6 VMount batteries, 3 256GB cards, quad charger, PL and EF mount and Wooden Camera grips & arms for $445/day. I mean, that's crazy cheap for what that system costs.
Too many cameras are sitting idle and $400/day is still better than nothing. The LA market is peculiar that way. I looked up Red listings on eBay a few days ago. Lots of gear is available.
Technically speaking, a 100-day is 300% ROI. 100% ROI would be the net sum to the owner over 365 days equal to the original investment
Because you don't count the number of rental days but the net total financial sum coming to the original investor - be it an owner/op or a rental house - over a year of ownership. The two key elements here are the time frame and the amount of revenues vs. expenses.
A net investment of $112,000 would need a net income of $112,000 (income tax treatment could be treated separately or as a package, depending on the local tax laws) to be 100% return on investment over one year period. It doesn't matter if you rented it for a huge sum in one day, ten days or, given the likely market value, a hundred days.
Look at it purely as a financial transaction. You bought some stock for $112,000. Within a year it doubled to $224,000. Your profit is $112,000. That's a 100% ROI.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp
It's the same thing.
Stills2HDConvert
Well-known member
Rate and static are the same thing?
Not.
One is a vector. The other is not.
It amazes me how many people can make a living at making videos but who can't understand basic things like exposure, basic math, how sensor sizes relate to each other.
The list is a lot longer.
There is a reason there is one person who is an engineer who designs the stuff and another person is the creative.
DLD's link provides the right answer https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp :
While ROI is a static / scalar value, I'm not sure that calling rate of return makes sense as a vector, which is typically an array of scalars of the same type (in 2D & 3D can indicate a direction. A unit vector (|[x,y]|, |[x,y,z]| = 1.0) with a time scalar (t) can indicate a velocity). A rate is a derivative: (x2 - x1)/(t2 - t1), dx/dt, also known as a velocity (1st derivative of position), taking the derivative of velocity we get acceleration (now we've gone nonlinear), and the derivative of acceleration is jerk, and of jerk is jounce, and it goes on- snap, crackle, and pop. Who says math/physics folks don't have creative abilities and a sense of humor lol!
Top creatives / artists are also competent with math / science: e.g. DaVinci, Michelangelo, aka Renaissance people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Renaissance_figures
Instead of calling out people with gaps in knowledge, wouldn't it be better to provide correct information to help them (and all readers) learn?
While ROI is a static / scalar value, I'm not sure that calling rate of return makes sense as a vector, which is typically an array of scalars of the same type (in 2D & 3D can indicate a direction. A unit vector (|[x,y]|, |[x,y,z]| = 1.0) with a time scalar (t) can indicate a velocity). A rate is a derivative: (x2 - x1)/(t2 - t1), dx/dt, also known as a velocity (1st derivative of position), taking the derivative of velocity we get acceleration (now we've gone nonlinear), and the derivative of acceleration is jerk, and of jerk is jounce, and it goes on- snap, crackle, and pop. Who says math/physics folks don't have creative abilities and a sense of humor lol!
Top creatives / artists are also competent with math / science: e.g. DaVinci, Michelangelo, aka Renaissance people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Renaissance_figures
Instead of calling out people with gaps in knowledge, wouldn't it be better to provide correct information to help them (and all readers) learn?