C500: C500 Mark II: Observations from a C300MkII point of view

jcs said:
If ARRI can make ProRes look pretty much the same as ARRIRAW in terms of color, Canon should be able to make XF-AVC match CRL in terms of color.

Canon's digital IS: from EOS R experience, it's useful for static handheld, as well as standing pan/tilt, including fast motion. Walking, running still needs a gimbal etc.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize how useful the digital IS was until I tried it on a gimbal with the EOS R. It was useful for static handheld shots, but it was extremely good for removing the small jolts that would hit my overloaded gimbal with the EOS R and and the 24-70 f/2.8 L. Also, I should do more testing, but it appears to compensate for rolling shutter jello as well. I couldn't see any real differences in the IQ either.
 

Test of the C500 Mark II face tracking. I wanted to put the camera into a "worst case" lighting situation for AF. Here with very low light levels, challenging color, and lots of movement, and specular background highlights and backlighting.

Shot at ISO 12,800. 29.97 4k Xf-AVC. Key light is 2700K Sodium Vapor Practical. Hair light is Mercury Vapor practical. White balanced for the Mercury Vapor.

Primary Grade is a heavy, urban "sodium vapor" look. Second grade is closer to the original footage. This was a location scout, so lets not talk about the camera work :-).

In use, the Face detect only lost focus during sudden, close proximity movements toward the camera. It seemed more of an issue of focusing speed with this lens than the FDAF itself. This shot would have given my C300 II fits. https://vimeo.com/385056873
 
Last edited:
Barry G said:
I think I wasn't clear enough. I meant for someone upgrading from a C300 II, not the C200. That said, I've been putting XF-AVC through its paces in terms of ISO (with both cameras) and also under some challenging lighting. I've looked at the C500 shots, and they look really good to me. When I get time to process the C300 clips I'll post both. I think as the ISO rises, the C500 looks better and better.
Click to expand...


Ah, this makes total sense. Always funny how the new camera always has one new feature/carrot to dangle in front of you. When I get my rental next week I'll do some side by side tests with the C200. Will be interested to see where C500MKII AVCHD lands between the C200's AVCHD and RAW. Coming from a C200 I'm anticipating being happy with the quality improvement over the 4:2:0 AVCHD - because that's essentially a UHD C100.
 
Wow, that is miles better than the C300 II. I don't even think the C300 would recognize a face under those conditions, much less be able to track it.
 
This is another test of the FDAF with more typical room/studio lighting. (Color is a little challenged on these shots -- all the neutrals, my Lily-white dancer, plus a mix of the Aputure light and some yellowish light filtering in through 40 year old skylights.)

this is with the Face Only setting. By adjusting the response and speed we were able to get it to not try to lock on the target in the foreground of the second clip. Still strange why "face only" would try to grab foreground objects (probably because it doesn't know what they are due to them being significantly blurred. It has yet to try to grab the background with face only turned on. Liking what I'm seeing. Again, the only place it struggle is relatively fast movements in close proximity to the lens. Might benefit from higher response and speed settings. Overall, I think the tuning canon has done has smoothed out even the fastest settings so it never really "snaps" focus...it's more of a home base slide.

Edit: I've replaced this video with a new one with some additional studio clips, a much better grade (the studio shots are a mix of Raw, Xf-AVC Clog3 and XF-AVC WideDR, and I'm just getting the hang of dealing with each, in this edit, I've gotten them relatively close to each other, which wasn't that hard except for the WideDR.) I've also added more takes of the night exterior. This grouping shows pretty accurately when the Face AF works and when it doesn't, in a low light (with back lighting and background highlights) situation. While it's not perfect, I'd say it exceeds my expectations, doing what it should do, and failing when it should fail as well. Certainly given the kind of movement, it's something I couldn't have done manually (and probably would have required some rehearsal to achieve with a good focus puller).
 
Last edited:
cpreston said:
Wow, that is miles better than the C300 II. I don't even think the C300 would recognize a face under those conditions, much less be able to track it.
Click to expand...


It would see it momentarily, and then just hunt wildly all the way to the background. In Face priority, I've seen the C500 II hunt a little, but it's a a very short range..like the camera loses the face and it only goes looking in a small range fore and aft of the last tracking spot.
 
Hey Barry, do you see an interval mode for timelapse on your C500 II? The C200 has one. But I've not heard any reports of the C500 II having one.
 
robotfist said:
Hey Barry, do you see an interval mode for timelapse on your C500 II? The C200 has one. But I've not heard any reports of the C500 II having one.
Click to expand...

I do not see one mentioned in the manual, and haven't come across it in the menu's. I'll look when I have a second.
 

C500II & C300II ISO comparison - This one was interesting. In some ways the C300 stands up better than I thought it would, although in the end, the differences between the two cameras, shooting XF-AVC, are clear, and Canon has made some significant improvements in the newer camera.

At 6400 ISO and below, the cameras actually have relatively similar noise profiles. The C300 noise is more colorful and a little chunkier, the C500 noise is mostly luma, and is finer, and more uniform. The C500 image displays noticeably more detail at all ISO's and at the highest ISO's, while the noise is quite present, there seems to be less internal NR being applied, and the detail hardly budges all the way up to 25,600. The C300 detail starts to degrade behind a wall of chunky noise at the highest ISO, by comparison. Also at these higher ISO, the c500 color profile stays very consistent, whereas the C300 got warmer, the shadows got greener, and some of the darker color patches and skin tone areas start to break up. The last few 4 clips look at how well the most compromised images can be cleaned up in post, with a final comparison of the cleaned up C500 25,600 image compared to it's -3 gain (ISO200) Image. While it's fairly easy to see the differences, they are pretty subtle, and remember that the 25,600 is receiving 7 stops less exposure than the 200 image. This is an astounding result, and shows how much work Canon has put in to make this camera function better in almost any kind of light.

A couple of notes about the color. The C300 skin tones are looking warmer throughout, and I'm not sure what this is. I'd say it's less accurate than the C500 image, as Nellie's skin in actuality is almost colorless except for a few red marks on her face. I may have not changed the color matrix setting on the C300 from my preferred Canon EOS profile, which generally warms skin tones a bit. I will check.

Secondly, I was adjusting exposure by dimming the Aputure 300dII light, which was bounced into 2 4x8 white boards 10 feet from the subject. At 25,600, the light was set at 3%, and the ambient room light (light leaks around my skylight shades) started to influence the color slightly. I corrected ISO 6400-25,600 in the same way for both sets of clips, although you'll still see some variation in color. Even with those corrections, the C300 image seems to shift a fair amount at higher ISOs compared to the C500.

I've made the ProRes render available for download, for those interested in such things. (I would be). Please do not repost without permission.
 
Last edited:
Hey Barry it looks like WB/color is changing with exposure? Ideally, we want exposure invariant color (as ARRI does so well).

Comparing e.g. eyebrows, it's clear the C500 II with its oversampled sensor is producing a lot more real detail vs. the C300 II- looks good.

Digital IS on the EOS R at level 1 reduces detail slightly (crop followed by rescale in camera), level 2 is a more significant loss in detail and I never use it (use a gimbal and turn off digital IS (Crane 2 handles the EOS R fine with 24-70 F2.8 II / 16-35 F2.8 II + CMIT5U + furry wind protector + plastic preamp). Since the C500 II is working with an oversampled high detail source, digital IS can work really well, even at higher levels (and still provide more detail than the C300 II).
 
jcs said:
Hey Barry it looks like WB/color is changing with exposure? Ideally, we want exposure invariant color (as ARRI does so well).
Click to expand...

I don't think that's what's happening here, at least with the C500 mark ii (the C300 does appear to be seeing some shifting, which is something I've seen since day one, so yeah). If you look at the two clips at the end, those are the extremes of the range on the C500, and other than a slight shift in the background color (from the ambient light ..and extremely dimmed Keylight... mentioned in my post) they are virtually identical.

I should have probably done this the conventional way by changing the shutter along with the ISO, but I was running two cameras and only had the model for an hour, so keeping track of a few more button presses wasn't in the cards...so this is what we have. From what I can see, the color is quite consistent throughout the ISO range. I can confirm it via a chart pass without a model next time I'm in the studio.

As for Arri doing this better..well it should, given its price and reputation...but the day an Arri camera can shoot at ISO 25,600, or 12,800, or even 6400...that is the day we should talk about it. :-)
 
Last edited:
Hipster Youtuber: You old guys were so stupid with your heavy pig “ENG” rigs and that’s so antiquated! We’re much smarter than you old farts with our fly-weight little cameras and WE also have IS! How about THAT?!? Your rigs never had IS, now DID they, gramps?

Veteran shooter: What do you need IS for?

Hipster Youtuber: Duh. To eliminate camera shake.

Veteran shooter: Why are you experiencing camera shake?

Hipster shooter: Because the camera in not heavy enough.
 
@Barry G
thanks for those tests. I find it the AF pretty impressive. What lens or lenses did you use for this?
 

This is a new version of a video I posted earlier that includes some additional studio clips, a much better grade (the studio shots are a mix of Raw, Xf-AVC Clog3 and XF-AVC WideDR, and I'm just getting the hang of dealing with each). I've also added some new takes of the night exterior, with a variety of grades of the Xf-AVC - considering the source for these was a sodium-vapor practical key, recorded with the daylight preset, and shot at 12,800, I'd say the xf-avc on the C500II ends up being a lot more malleable than the C300II, mostly because the color noise is lower, allowing for more hue adjustment.

This last grouping shows pretty accurately when the Face AF works and when it doesn't, in a low light (with back lighting and background highlights) situation. While it's not perfect, I'd say it exceeds my expectations, doing what it should do, and failing when it should fail as well. Certainly given the kind of movement, it's something I couldn't have done manually (and probably would have required some rehearsal to achieve with a good focus puller).
 
Last edited:
Hi Everyone. Thank you so much Barry G for all the work you've put in, it really is very much appreciated. I wonder if anyone has noticed any loss of sharpness or increase in noise when going from FF to S35 (in XF-AVC especially).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top