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

Barry G said:
Not my area of expertise, but it seems like there are a number of lower cost monitor/recorders (Blackmagic, liliput, etc) that can take a 12g-SDI signal and either display at 4k or downconvert to whatever. As for Canon, the manual doesn't offer much help. From it's perspective, the Mon terminal is for monitoring and is 2k. The SDI terminal is for recording and can output 5.9k, 4k, 2k (not sure if that's referring to whatever raw signal is being recorded internall...so 4k and 2k would be cropped sensor? or not). I wonder if any of the dealers on here could offer some help as to what will work with the SDI terminal.

from the manual
Using the SDI OUT Terminal
The digital signal that is output from the SDI OUT terminal includes the video signal, audio signal, time code signal and the recording command signal. You can connect an external video recorder to the SDI OUT terminal to record 5.9K, 4K or 2K video. For details about configuring and using external recorders, refer to the instruction manual of the external device used.
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Thanks!

I like the C500ii for situations where i’d likely only need the one sdi out anyway. But i am interested in the new 4K Teradek stuff coming out. And i recently sold off my HD panels in anticipation of 4K monitoring. So, i am all about it, if the C500ii does 4K out. Pretty great feature going forward.

My Red doesn’t do 4K out, but the evf and red lcd can do that zoom in. Just hope their next gen bodies do 4K sdi.
 
James0b57 said:
They are gorgeous.
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And...last years model...is half price!

My extravagance for this camera was getting the EVF-V70. I've had it for a few week, but the $300 doohickey you need to attach it to the handle finally arrived yesterday. I've been testing it out on my shoulder, and I really love it. The image is rich and sharp and, to me, perfectly sized (some others have complained that it portholes, but I'm not seeing that at all.) Still awaiting the expansion unit, so I can get this thing properly balanced for shoulder work, (but it's not really that bad, and certainly lighter, in it's current configuration.)
 
I used to think it port holes, because of two reasons:

1. Had to apply pressure to the eye cup and push into the frame. Not a lot of pressure, but more than say Sony, Panasonic, or Arri
2. If a pad or cushion is used, then the image may slightly be obstructed,

I should add that a friend who wears glasses said he had no problem seeing all corners.


but nothing that can’t be figured out. Was just different from what i was used to. The Red Oled is similar but different, if you press into it, it kind of suctions onto the eyeball, and pulling away too quickly feels very very weird, so i end up not pushing into the eye piece and the the screen slightly vignettes in full screen mode. Adding an eye pad fixes that issue. Sony and Arri EVF’s are better, but they are also almost twice the price for some of them. The Venice one has perfect black. Absolutely insane. The Arri has fantastic optics. Felt comfortable. If a third party EVF felt that good, i’d consider it.
 
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Here's an interesting set of benchmarks on the Canon and Core 98wh batteries. In general the C500II gives a conservative estimate of battery life with the Canon batteries, and greatly overestimates the Cores. -- in the end the Cores last about the same as the 90wh canon batteries.

 
Awhile back somebody asked about the 120fps quality of the C500 Mark II compared to the c200. Don't really know how the older camera handled that frame rate, but I finally took the time to test it out on the new camera. I don't see anything about the image that would give me pause using it. There is no apparent aliasing or line skipping going on. The resolution at 120fps seems identical to the standard frame rates, (although I haven't thrown up a chart to test this). While not quite as detailed as an oversampled 2k, it doesn't seem to me to be lacking, given it's a 1:1 sample.

There is some noise with the Super16mm crop, but it's nice looking, and it cleans up fine. It reminds me a lot of what the original c300 looked like in terms of noise. (in lower light shots of Moki, the look is pretty close to super16 film stock.)

Here are a couple of short clips.




 
Looks a lot better than the slow-mo I'm getting out of the c200. C200 120fps isn't "bad", just obviously soft next to the raw.
 
Nick M said:
Looks a lot better than the slow-mo I'm getting out of the c200. C200 120fps isn't "bad", just obviously soft next to the raw.
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I was surprised to find the 120fps on our $1,500.00 X-T3 to be so much better and more usable than the 120 fps on our C200?
I can't use the C200 120 fps, it's just too soft and mushy. The Fuji is totally usable to me.
 
puredrifting said:
I can't use the C200 120 fps, it's just too soft and mushy. The Fuji is totally usable to me.
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Hopefully Canon (and to a lesser extent the other manufacturers) have learned that intentionally crippling capable hardware will just end up losing market share. I don't ever expect there to be "perfect" camera for every situation, but it looks like the C500 mkII is a good step in the right direction.

Fortunately for us at least, 120fps acquisition is relatively rare and XT-3 rental is dirt cheap for the 1 shoot a year that we would use it.
 
puredrifting said:
I was surprised to find the 120fps on our $1,500.00 X-T3 to be so much better and more usable than the 120 fps on our C200?
I can't use the C200 120 fps, it's just too soft and mushy. The Fuji is totally usable to me.
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I haven't been very happy with the higher frame rate codecs on the XT3...they don't really stand up to grading well. (never used the 120, the 60p is fine as long as you don't touch it.)

I don't really ever shoot 120fps, (which is why its taken so long for me to test it on the C500II)...but I feel like its putting out a proper 2k resolution...a little surprised that it doesn't on the c200.
 
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I've been shooting a few time lapses with the C500II over the last week. Some of this is native 5.9k Raw, and some 4k XFAVC. Not really a highlight reel...more of a COVID19 mix.

 
Came across this thread while trying to douse my anger at Canon announcing c300m3 yesterday, having purchased my C5m2 7 months ago. Having been a diehard c3m2 user for the majority of my work (run n gun professional sports), i had been exited to bring full-frame back to life. I had been singing the praises of C52 to anyone who would listen, but now im holding a camera that DOESNT do 120/4k and looks to have less DR, and more noise, than the C3m3. Why does Canon insist on doing this to us??

I digress...
Some have asked about the usefulness of the internal IS, and for me it was a game changer. First thing i did when i got the C5, was run through the woods with my kids, non-is lenses, all handheld, no rigs. While this is not meant to replace gimbals, the results were more than impressive. Even on the most extreme shots, they are very much usable and actually bring more life to the shot than a gimbal.

https://vimeo.com/388789799


It should be noted that the internal IS on both the C52 and C33 does not work when shooting RAW or when using an IS lens with IS switched on the lens. Also found that when i used Sigma IS lenses, the camera showed “is disabled” unless i enabled it on the lens itself. That was strange.

Not sure i would go back to S35 anyways. Even for 120/4k
 
donnyriz said:
Came across this thread while trying to douse my anger at Canon announcing c300m3 yesterday, having purchased my C5m2 7 months ago. Having been a diehard c3m2 user for the majority of my work (run n gun professional sports), i had been exited to bring full-frame back to life. I had been singing the praises of C52 to anyone who would listen, but now im holding a camera that DOESNT do 120/4k and looks to have less DR, and more noise, than the C3m3. Why does Canon insist on doing this to us??

I digress...
Some have asked about the usefulness of the internal IS, and for me it was a game changer. First thing i did when i got the C5, was run through the woods with my kids, non-is lenses, all handheld, no rigs. While this is not meant to replace gimbals, the results were more than impressive. Even on the most extreme shots, they are very much usable and actually bring more life to the shot than a gimbal.

https://vimeo.com/388789799


It should be noted that the internal IS on both the C52 and C33 does not work when shooting RAW or when using an IS lens with IS switched on the lens. Also found that when i used Sigma IS lenses, the camera showed “is disabled” unless i enabled it on the lens itself. That was strange.

Not sure i would go back to S35 anyways. Even for 120/4k
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Totally. That is actually the best use of the IS I've seen, some to think of it. In the less controlled real world handheld, it really does help smooth things out. Being 6K, likely the image is still plenty sharp too, yeah?

The nice thing, all cameras from the C500mkii on up are all so good, that unless you needed some specific feature, like 120fps 4K, then you really are in a good spot. They are cameras that are good enough, as to not ever really get in the way. Very few limitations.

Easier said than done, but best to get a camera you know you can enjoy, no matter what comes out next. As for the next decade, it isn't likely we'll be able to have the best camera for more than a short while. Even if someone bought an Alexa today, they will drop the 4K sensor. Digital cameras are still in the growing pains. The nice thing is, that they are finally not annoying. They're all very usable, but especially from Fx9 on up, they are all really nice. Still tons of room for improvement, and yes upgrades, but at least they are no longer shite.
 
donnyriz said:
Came across this thread while trying to douse my anger at Canon announcing c300m3 yesterday, having purchased my C5m2 7 months ago. Having been a diehard c3m2 user for the majority of my work (run n gun professional sports), i had been exited to bring full-frame back to life. I had been singing the praises of C52 to anyone who would listen, but now im holding a camera that DOESNT do 120/4k and looks to have less DR, and more noise, than the C3m3. Why does Canon insist on doing this to us??

Some have asked about the usefulness of the internal IS, and for me it was a game changer. First thing i did when i got the C5, was run through the woods with my kids, non-is lenses, all handheld, no rigs. While this is not meant to replace gimbals, the results were more than impressive. Even on the most extreme shots, they are very much usable and actually bring more life to the shot than a gimbal.

https://vimeo.com/388789799


It should be noted that the internal IS on both the C52 and C33 does not work when shooting RAW or when using an IS lens with IS switched on the lens. Also found that when i used Sigma IS lenses, the camera showed “is disabled” unless i enabled it on the lens itself. That was strange.
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I think when you compare FF DR to the C3003 S35 DR, they aren't that different. Certainly C5D seems to think so with their Xyla test. My experience with the C500II has shown that while it has noisy shadows, especially in raw, it's due to a very hands off approach in terms of NR on canon's part, and when you apply some quality NR in post, it cleans up so well, and even the deepest shadows are holding a lot of detail. I'm curious to see if there's any real difference in the highlights on the new camera, but the shadows do look a lot more like Arri's (or the C500's with some noise reduction applied.)

I agree with James that your IS samples are quite impressive...certainly better than I've ever seen in my use of it. I mostly find it works for me in "human tripod" mode, and for that I'm thankful. Still trying to figure out a way to walk with it and make it work. Maybe the over cranking combined with a wide lens is what's making your footage look so good.

As for the "strange" IS behavior relative to IS lenses...all of that is pretty much documented in the manual...something that most of us failed to read a few months back...
 
donnyriz said:
Some have asked about the usefulness of the internal IS, and for me it was a game changer. First thing i did when i got the C5, was run through the woods with my kids, non-is lenses, all handheld, no rigs. While this is not meant to replace gimbals, the results were more than impressive. Even on the most extreme shots, they are very much usable and actually bring more life to the shot than a gimbal.

https://vimeo.com/388789799
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Agreed. Some of those shots look really nice. I personally would be too afraid to actually use this feature. The dancing lens flares and occasional warp stabilized looking shots don't do it for me. I would rather see some camera shake than digital processing.

I just don't see anything that shows me that it's something that couldn't be done in post (quickly and non destructively.)
 
Digital image stabilization, is definitely not for the shaky handed. Though, seems to work best when someone already is pretty stable, or has OIS on the lens.
 
With the electronic image stabilisation in the cameras, it's very important to understand how they work. They're using gyroscopes inside the camera to register the motion of the sensor and then the warp adjustments are based on that information. This gives it a precision that software-based warp stabilisers can only dream of - but it also comes with caveats.

If you bought in to the forerunner of this tech on kickstarter, the SteadXP (as I foolishly did), you'll know that a short shutter angle is ABSOLUTELY KEY to getting good results. The motion blur from a 180 degree shutter angle is just too extreme to not see significant warping issues as the software tries to warp motion-blurred edges back into shape.

At a shorter shutter angle (90 degrees is okay, 45 degrees is better) the software has sharp edges to work with, and becomes much more effective.
 
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