C500 MKII Leaked on Canon Rumors

I saw the commercial and BTS posted a while ago on NewsShooter and I saw some, what I would deem, unstable shots for a commercial.

Compared to every other Canon promo video that I have ever seen, this Jaguar commercial and BTS are amazing.
 
I saw the commercial and BTS posted a while ago on NewsShooter and I saw some, what I would deem, unstable shots for a commercial.
Unstable or unsuitable?

FWIW, I am unimpressed as well but, since people have been known to make pretty nice looking clips with C200, I'd just chalk this off to a director's/client's choice.
 
Unstable or unsuitable?

FWIW, I am unimpressed as well but, since people have been known to make pretty nice looking clips with C200, I'd just chalk this off to a director's/client's choice.

Unstable. The BTS shows the camera on a gimbal, but some of the actual shots that match up with the BTS are pretty rocky/unstable, considering they're on a "Russian arm".
 


2nd Commercial: http://adamkimmel-cinematographer.com/akvideos/82.mp4

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Wow. Night and Day. From conception to final result.


The Canon-Jaguar commercial (??), is nothing but a bunch of shots put together, with no meaning or purpose. Boring as hell, seen a million times, no message. On the cinematography aspect, Dodgy focus pulling, Overall IQ is just average and there's A LOT of purple fringing!

On the other hand, the Jeep and Audi shorts are TRUE commercials, that SELL A PRODUCT. Brilliant Creative Direction. IQ, what's expected from a well shot commercial, Shot on an ALEXA, as usual.


The Jaguar piece does a disservice to Canon IMO. Directors/DPs are always terrible Creatives and have no clue about what a Ad really is. Let's not forget Directors/DPs are simply employees to an Ad Agency hired to shoot what the creatives along with the marketing department have conceptualized.
As for the shooting, I've never seen such projects shots on anything other than on ALEXAs, because choosing anything else (cheaper) has ZERO impact to the final budget, and ARRIs are way beyond anyone else in terms of dynamic range, skin tones and overall IQ.


Lets see the C500mkII in other hands, whether it can at least compete to the cheaper REDs. For what I've seen so far, it still looks too videoish, unfortunately.
 
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Wow. Night and Day. From conception to final result.


The Canon-Jaguar commercial (??), is nothing but a bunch of shots put together, with no meaning or purpose. Boring as hell, seen a million times, no message. On the cinematography aspect, Dodgy focus pulling, Overall IQ is just average and there's A LOT of purple fringing!

On the other hand, the Jeep and Audi shorts are TRUE commercials, that SELL A PRODUCT. Brilliant Creative Direction. IQ, what's expected from a well shot commercial, Shot on an ALEXA, as usual.


The Jaguar piece does a disservice to Canon IMO. Directors/DPs are always terrible Creatives and have no clue about what a Ad really is. Let's not forget Directors/DPs are simply employees to an Ad Agency hired to shoot what the creatives along with the marketing department have conceptualized.
As for the shooting, I've never seen such projects shots on anything other than on ALEXAs, because choosing anything else (cheaper) has ZERO impact to the final budget, and ARRIs are way beyond anyone else in terms of dynamic range, skin tones and overall IQ.


Lets see the C500mkII in other hands, whether it can at least compete to the cheaper REDs. For what I've seen so far, it still looks too videoish, unfortunately.

I don't think the Jaguar film knocked the ball out of the park; it shows the versatility of the form factor but the images were a little flat for me. It is worth noting, though, it was made on a preproduction model. Plus, the client cropped-in on a few shots a little further than the director was comfortable with. That said, I'm not sure what the concept has got to do with anything?? The camera is not responsible for the concept or writing. You're comparing apples to oranges here. They may be two car films but they are very different for a number of reasons.

I can tell you the 5.9 RAW out of the C500 MKII I'm looking at right now looks amazing on my 27inch iMac. That's not to say, you'll see the C500 MkII on a lot of high-end TVC or drama sets, as that's a tough market to crack, but there's no doubt in my mind a lot of people are going to make some incredible footage with the camera.
 
...i didn’t think technology would replace people for at least a couple more years.
 
Cameras are so good that they’re responsible for the content now?
The skilled (big budget) content creators won't touch low end cameras because they have the budget for high end cameras, so by association, having or using a high end cameras often results in working with better creatives and thus you could in a non-direct way argue that a better camera often means better content.
 
The skilled (big budget) content creators won't touch low end cameras because they have the budget for high end cameras, so by association, having or using a high end cameras often results in working with better creatives and thus you could in a non-direct way argue that a better camera often means better content.

Just because you shoot on Arri doesn't mean you any have talent (not a dig at you personally Eric, I'm sure you're very talented). I've worked with dozens of talentless wankers on big-budget shoots; often, it's easier to hide on a well-crewed set.

And, a big-budget doesn't necessarily mean great content. Indeed, these days, the internet is awash with great content regardless of budget or production value. In my mind, the days of hiding your lack of talent behind an expensive piece of kit or big crew are dying fast...
 
And, a big-budget doesn't necessarily mean great content. Indeed, these days, the internet is awash with great content regardless of budget or production value. In my mind, the days of hiding your lack of talent behind an expensive piece of kit or big crew are dying fast...

Just in time for AI to take over. Phew!
 
Just because you shoot on Arri doesn't mean you any have talent (not a dig at you personally Eric, I'm sure you're very talented). I've worked with dozens of talentless wankers on big-budget shoots; often, it's easier to hide on a well-crewed set.

And, a big-budget doesn't necessarily mean great content. Indeed, these days, the internet is awash with great content regardless of budget or production value. In my mind, the days of hiding your lack of talent behind an expensive piece of kit or big crew are dying fast...
Sure, it's not a rule, but as a generalization, I stand by what I said; I didn't think I'd have to clarify I was generalizing. Generalizing here, most DPs who use Arri cameras and most sets that use Arri cameras are more talented and more creatively skilled than sets using cheap DSLR cameras. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, but generalizing and statistically speaking, I'd say that is how it is.

It's not that the camera makes one more skilled; it's just that one is more likely to get on bigger sets with better equipment if they are more skilled, and thus bigger sets with bigger budgets on average have more skilled people than smaller sets with smaller budgets. There are exceptions for everything, but again, generalizing here.


One of the big reasons that Arri reels look better than other camera reels is because Arri reels often have many 100 million dollar budget movies in them, so even if the competition has similar image quality, they have a hard time competing in terms of getting the best DPs with the best gaffers and set design etc. that go into 100 million dollar budget movies.

Going back to content, if a shoot cannot afford the best camera for the job, then they probably can't afford the best writer for the job either.

When I see a Jaguar commercial shot with a mid-range camera with mid-range lenses, then as far as content goes, I'd imagine they could only afford a mid-range team of writers and creators, and thus it's not surprising that creatively the commercial is lacking as is the video quality and overall production compared to an Arri commercial example.

Is that Jaguar ad even a real commercial for Jaguar? I would think they could afford better, it's posted on Canon's Youtube page, and I'm not seeing it having been posted anywhere by Jaguar. Anybody can go out and shoot random b-roll shots of cars and call it a car commercial.
 
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I agree with all that Eric, and no, I don't think the Jaguar film is a real TVC. As far as I'm aware the director has a relationship with Jaguar, shoots and photographs lots of car stuff. Again, that makes comparing it to a 'real TVC' just plain silly. If you judged the FX9 by the official music video shot by Alister Chapman you wouldn't go near the camera...
 
Footage looks sharp and clean. When the highlights go on that 10-bit footage, they go pretty hard though. From the knee up to clipping is tougher to wrangle than the Arri and Sony stuff I'm used to. It looks the trumpeter's face is just being held, but the detail is absolutely paper thin. I certainly wouldn't be using any kind of ETTR with the camera.

I'm going to assume all of that mixed lighting at the christmas market is a hellhole of sodium vapour and cheap fluorescents and crappy LEDs. There's so little colour to be pulled back out, that I have to assume there was bugger all spectrum there in the light in the first place. You've really got to nail your WB on location for such iffy lighting to play nicely, because you just don't have any real leeway to pull it around in post.

The 12,800 ISO wide shot of the city is pretty incredible though, a little bit of temporal noise reduction on it and it's totally usable. I don't think I've encountered "usable" 12,800 ISO footage before. The stuff I've seen from the Venice at 5000-6000 ISO has been significantly noisier. This thing may be the new low-light king.

The 6k raw clip of the tree seems great, and suitably beefy though, oodles of latitude a colour information to play around with.

The image stabilisation in the 10-bit stuff seems very effective too.
 
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