Received my camera yesterday and I'm putting it through its paces getting ready for a couple of projects. I thought I'd share my thoughts randomly as I go through features, and invite anyone with the camera to share their experiences as well.
To me, this camera is a natural upgrade from the C300II given it's price point and feature set. Many of it's best features are similar to the C200, and given the price difference, I'm not sure I'd have made the jump from that camera, so that's my perspective at this juncture.
Color/Image quality in XF-AVC -- I probably shouldn't have been surprised by this, but I was...there is very little difference in the image coming from the C300II and the C500II at base iso with all the settings matched. The c500 is perhaps a tad noisier, and 2 tads more detailed in 4k than the older camera, but the color tone reproduction is virtually identical. This probably isn't a bad thing, as it makes my C300 much more likely to stay in the mix on projects (the biggest change seems to come from the v2.0 LUTs which change how the camera reproduces deeper blues and reds). Also, the C500 image seems to vary less with the matrix presets provided (there are only three, and they have less of an effect on skin tone reproduction than the C300's matrix settings do.) I miss the Canon EOS matrix setting, as it has shown to be the most accurate and in particular affects skin tones in a way that's similar (but better) than what I'm seeing Sony doing with the FX9 and Venice.
At higher ISO's I'm still doing testing, but the C500II appears to have less color noise, and less banding artifacts all the way up to 25,600, and 6400 is looking better than it does on the C300II. I'd expected perhaps a little less noise than what I'm seeing, but it's certainly a better quality of noise, in XF-AVC at higher ISO. (see below for more about the RAW)
Autofocus - I'd watched for the past couple of years as my C200 brethren demo-ed the superior DPAF of that camera, while I struggled often to have it work in many situations on the C300II. As a one man band most of the time, it's a critical feature for me. I definitely see improvement from what I've become accustomed to. The camera hunts a lot less, and with the speed/response settings turned all the way up, produces a very seamless AF experience simply by pointing the camera. In lower light (underexposed) situations, it appears to default to a "less accuracy, less hunting" algorithm, which is...better?...hmmm. But on the face tracking, I've found that once it locks on to a face, the camera works really hard to stay with that face through changes in head position and lighting. Impressive is what I'd call that. On the other hand, it doesn't lock on to faces in the distance as well as the FX9...(although it will follow a locked on face as it travels well into the same distance). I was a bit surprised to see that "face only" tracking will in fact switch to a non-face foreground element if it's given a second or so to do so. Much more to come on this.
RAW output -- This is simply where this camera excels. The image coming out of the Raw pipeline is cleaner, more detailed, and has vastly superior color to what I'm seeing from the XF-AVC. I shot some quick stuff of my lady last night under harsh, consumer warm white LED track lights, I used the 3200 wb preset, and the XF-AVC was what you'd expect --Color was a little dirty and "OK" but it was definitely messy. The Raw on the other hand, even before I touched it, had a much more normal looking palette of colors, and seemed to be distinguishing between the various colors in the scene in ways I wouldn't have expected, given the lighting. The bad news is I know I'm going to want to shoot everything in RAW, and that's going to get expensive. Luckily the CRL workflow in FCPX seems quite simple and there's very little penalty other than render time.
Thats it for today. Very curious as to what other users are seeing.
To me, this camera is a natural upgrade from the C300II given it's price point and feature set. Many of it's best features are similar to the C200, and given the price difference, I'm not sure I'd have made the jump from that camera, so that's my perspective at this juncture.
Color/Image quality in XF-AVC -- I probably shouldn't have been surprised by this, but I was...there is very little difference in the image coming from the C300II and the C500II at base iso with all the settings matched. The c500 is perhaps a tad noisier, and 2 tads more detailed in 4k than the older camera, but the color tone reproduction is virtually identical. This probably isn't a bad thing, as it makes my C300 much more likely to stay in the mix on projects (the biggest change seems to come from the v2.0 LUTs which change how the camera reproduces deeper blues and reds). Also, the C500 image seems to vary less with the matrix presets provided (there are only three, and they have less of an effect on skin tone reproduction than the C300's matrix settings do.) I miss the Canon EOS matrix setting, as it has shown to be the most accurate and in particular affects skin tones in a way that's similar (but better) than what I'm seeing Sony doing with the FX9 and Venice.
At higher ISO's I'm still doing testing, but the C500II appears to have less color noise, and less banding artifacts all the way up to 25,600, and 6400 is looking better than it does on the C300II. I'd expected perhaps a little less noise than what I'm seeing, but it's certainly a better quality of noise, in XF-AVC at higher ISO. (see below for more about the RAW)
Autofocus - I'd watched for the past couple of years as my C200 brethren demo-ed the superior DPAF of that camera, while I struggled often to have it work in many situations on the C300II. As a one man band most of the time, it's a critical feature for me. I definitely see improvement from what I've become accustomed to. The camera hunts a lot less, and with the speed/response settings turned all the way up, produces a very seamless AF experience simply by pointing the camera. In lower light (underexposed) situations, it appears to default to a "less accuracy, less hunting" algorithm, which is...better?...hmmm. But on the face tracking, I've found that once it locks on to a face, the camera works really hard to stay with that face through changes in head position and lighting. Impressive is what I'd call that. On the other hand, it doesn't lock on to faces in the distance as well as the FX9...(although it will follow a locked on face as it travels well into the same distance). I was a bit surprised to see that "face only" tracking will in fact switch to a non-face foreground element if it's given a second or so to do so. Much more to come on this.
RAW output -- This is simply where this camera excels. The image coming out of the Raw pipeline is cleaner, more detailed, and has vastly superior color to what I'm seeing from the XF-AVC. I shot some quick stuff of my lady last night under harsh, consumer warm white LED track lights, I used the 3200 wb preset, and the XF-AVC was what you'd expect --Color was a little dirty and "OK" but it was definitely messy. The Raw on the other hand, even before I touched it, had a much more normal looking palette of colors, and seemed to be distinguishing between the various colors in the scene in ways I wouldn't have expected, given the lighting. The bad news is I know I'm going to want to shoot everything in RAW, and that's going to get expensive. Luckily the CRL workflow in FCPX seems quite simple and there's very little penalty other than render time.
Thats it for today. Very curious as to what other users are seeing.
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. Not sure how this relates at all to this thread, but the more the merrier!