Jaime Valles
Veteran
Thanks for the testing. How do you find the face tracking auto focus on the C70 vs the C200?
C300: C70. When is this bad boy going to start shipping?
- Thread starter derbrocks09
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puredrifting
Major Contributor
You seem highly averse to any video noise. I take it you have not shot film, especially S16? I'm comfortable with RAW on the C200 up to about 800 or even 1250 without an NR pass. But I shot
film for decades and even at those ISO, the C200 has far, far less grain than any film other perhaps ASA 50 stocks and the grain/video noise on the Canons is pretty pleasing for digital noise, the
most "filmic".
FWIW, I have never had a client remark about, talk about or even notice grain in decades. I noticed that when shooting REDs, other than the Gemini, REDs are remarkably noisy above ISO 800 and their
video noise isn't nearly as pleasant as Canons.
To each, their own, I just find it interesting that many people in our business seem to equate a little noise and grain as horrible, rather than use it or embrace it. I always liked mixing in a bit of Super 8
in mixed media projects because it was so incredibly grainy, sort of like a moving abstract painting at times. I liked the look. I used to shoot a video news magazine for Kinkos where we would shoot in the
stores all over the country, we shot all of that on Beta SP, then eventually DigitBeta (all interlaced of course), but I would always run around with my Russian K3 or a Canon Super 8, shooting BTS shots on super grainy fast stocks, then we would
go nuts in transfer and color it to make it look wild. The clients really liked it, but this was the era when the mixed media aesthetic was new and a thing. I rarely see mixed media these days in anything, that
look apparently went out of style and everyone wants everything from many different cameras to match.
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Ben_Ericson
Well-known member
I agree about the noise levels. I'm okay with a little noise. It beats the alternative, which is too much noise reduction and a plastic looking image. The mixed medium format seems to be much more popular on the higher end commercials in the last few years. Adidas, Nike, etc all use 35mm / Alexa / 16mm / S8 / Night Vision Cameras etc.
I'll just say I am a bit disappointed with the DGO sensor. I still see plenty of noise in 10/20 on the IRE. This is an acceptable amount of noise to me, but the highlights are suffering due to the newly designed sensor. I really don't see a huge improvement with noise levels when comparing to the C300ii.
That being said, I went out and shot something for fun and the camera is really really easy and fun to use. I shot for around 2 hours and the BP60 didn't even drop a bar on the battery level. I'll see if I can finish up a little cut for folks to take a look at if they're interested.
QuickHitRecord
Veteran
It seems to be more confident and stickier than on the C200, but I have to test it more. My fiancee and I both hate being on camera so it might be a while before I can test it beyond setting up two mannequins.
Personally, I really like tight, random, monochromatic grain but hate chroma noise and fixed pattern noise. I add grain to a lot of my documentary projects after stripping out the chroma noise. Regrettably, I've never shot anything on film before. Everything had transitioned to digital when I was in college. I do shoot film stills sometimes. The grain and imperfections I get from a roll of Portra 400 are really pleasing to my eye. But I would never bring my film camera along to a client shoot unless the client specified that they wanted film.
A large percentage of my work is for corporate clients and early on in my career, I was in-house at two different Fortune 500s. I've been chewed out for producing footage that had more noise than the director/client wanted more than once. The same thing happened with moire in the early DSLR days. And as a freelancer, I've been hired by more than one corporate client who thought the footage from the last freelancer they were working with was "too noisy". So, it's definitely something that's been beaten into me.
But having color and motion rendition that meet my aesthetic are equally important to me. Otherwise I would probably have switched over to Sony a long time ago.
I actually find the grain structure on my Red One MX to be the most pleasing of any camera I have ever used. It's tight, random, and monochromatic. Maybe we really are looking for different qualities in film/video grain. Like you say, to each their own!
rob norton
Veteran
Did you consider switching to a sony fx6? I think I'd prefer to shoot with one but am going to keep using my c200 for as long as I can get away with.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Interesting that you've actually had clients who fixate on that. I've never had that, makes sense why you seem more noise averse. If clients actually care about that, then it becomes important to you.
QuickHitRecord
Veteran
I thought about it a lot. The FX6 looks like a good camera. Definitely feature-rich. Taking into account how much Sony image quality has improved, I still can't get excited about it. I've shot a fair amount of FS7, FS700, and FS100 projects. Corporate clients are happy but sometimes I assign an unhealthy amount of importance to shooting footage that lives up to my personal aesthetics and the Canon cinema line has become a reliable way to get there for me. I can get a full corporate-rate check from a client but if I had to shoot it on their in-house Sony, it's still going to bug me that there is something out there with my name on it and it may not look as good as it could have. Maybe the new cameras will prove me wrong. I'm definitely open to it.
About 11 years ago, I spent a weekend shooting a trailer for a film that was bound for crowdfunding on my brand new 7D. Affordable shallow depth of field was still so new and the director was like a kid in a candy shop with what we were seeing in my dinky little SmallHD DP4. When the footage went into editing, he called me up to tell me how great the footage looked. Shortly afterwards, I got another call from him. This time he was panicking because there were shimmering green and purple bands in the actress's eyebrows. At the time, there really wasn't much that could be done short of paying for time in Davinci suite with a colorist. The director shuttered the whole edit, told me that I didn't know what I was doing (he was probably right), and hired someone else for a reshoot who then went on to shoot the feature film (I still don't have a feature under my belt).
My examples for getting berated for noisy footage aren't as dramatic, but this stuff sticks with you. It's what being a professional is all about -- you've already encountered most of the pitfalls and you've learned from them and made the appropriate adjustments.
QuickHitRecord
Veteran
I did a little unscientific testing on highlight rolloff this evening on the C70. Here are some notes and observations.
In short, I think it performs as well or just barely better than the C200.
So far, I really don't have any complaints with the image quality of this camera. I'll probably tweak the color matrix so it's a tick less magenta. But yeah, I think the IQ coming from this camera is plenty for me and almost all of my clients. If they want anything better, we can rent.
In short, I think it performs as well or just barely better than the C200.
So far, I really don't have any complaints with the image quality of this camera. I'll probably tweak the color matrix so it's a tick less magenta. But yeah, I think the IQ coming from this camera is plenty for me and almost all of my clients. If they want anything better, we can rent.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
This is valuable info and reinforces that I will buy another C200 or two to go with mine. If the C70 ends up looking very similar, I would go for the C200 form factor and SDI/Full sized XLRs/RAW in a heartbeat
over No RAW/Mini XLRs and no SDI. C70 looks interesting but not liking the mirrorless camera on steroids form factor.
QuickHitRecord
Veteran
I can already tell that those mini XLRs are going to be a pain. And you're right, it does go to show what a solid value the C200 is right now. You could almost get two used C200Bs now for the price of a single C70.
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ozmorphasis
Well-known member
thanks for these tests Nicholas. I'm going to try the camera out. In most tests I've seen, I still slightly prefer the image coming out of the c200 raw. The most impressive thing I've seen out of the DGO so far is the way that it sees into busy shadow detail. Shooting in forest, I'd take this camera in a hearbeat. Color nuances in midtones look richer to my eyes on the c200 so far. I can't buy a camera without a 10 bit middle codec though, so the c200 is out for me. I'll give the C70 a shot.
I canceled my fx6 order. I can't deal with no s35 for lensing reasons, and the main purpose of the camera is to have all of the conveniences built in for client work, which includes having the right lens ecosystem and I'm too invested on the EF and m43 side to switch to Sony right now. For pure image quality on creative projects, I still prefer the image out of my BM cams over both the Canon and Sony. But man, I'm tired of all of the workarounds/rigging for basic client work where efficiency and speed are king.
If the form factor ends up being too much of an annoyance, then I'll move on.
Interestingly, I'm seeing a smoother transition/rolloff on the c200 to my naked eyes on your test. In any case, it's close so I appreciate your test and look forward to playing with the cam when mine arrives. Especially prioritizing highlight retention and then seeing what can be done with the shadows since this sensor does so well in that regard.
You and your fiance need to get past your camera shyness for my selfish needs! I need highlight rolloff tests using skin tones! ; )
Again, thanks for sharing these tests.
I canceled my fx6 order. I can't deal with no s35 for lensing reasons, and the main purpose of the camera is to have all of the conveniences built in for client work, which includes having the right lens ecosystem and I'm too invested on the EF and m43 side to switch to Sony right now. For pure image quality on creative projects, I still prefer the image out of my BM cams over both the Canon and Sony. But man, I'm tired of all of the workarounds/rigging for basic client work where efficiency and speed are king.
If the form factor ends up being too much of an annoyance, then I'll move on.
Interestingly, I'm seeing a smoother transition/rolloff on the c200 to my naked eyes on your test. In any case, it's close so I appreciate your test and look forward to playing with the cam when mine arrives. Especially prioritizing highlight retention and then seeing what can be done with the shadows since this sensor does so well in that regard.
You and your fiance need to get past your camera shyness for my selfish needs! I need highlight rolloff tests using skin tones! ; )
Again, thanks for sharing these tests.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
It'll happen eventually. But I've been tracking the prices now for 6 months and C200s, regulars
and Bs, overall, have held pretty consistently for the past few months. No radical drop off of the
resale cliff like the C300 MKII had several times, yet. That alone probably means that most of the
market feels similar to many of us, the C70 is a cool camera but the C200 is a better choice for the
working pro if they don't need a high data rate mid level XF-AVC, which I have discovered, I rarely
need. For pure quality, RAW is superior and on the other end, clients I shoot LOTs of hours of footage for
appreciate the reasonable data rate 160Mbps XF-AVC.
If I had more "broadcast" clients, I would just shoot with the C300 MKII more.
There are a few bargains but they still get snapped up within minutes.
Ben_Ericson
Well-known member
The people reviewing these cameras must be getting paid by Canon, no?
The skin tone when testing the 16:9 mode at 6:48 is worse than what an iPhone would do in that scenario. The whole color pallet just looks off.
https://youtu.be/lWVSRhJ24Uk
I find it weird that Canon never updated their LUTs when they released this new sensor. The Canon LUT pack is the same download for all of the cameras, but this sensor replicates color much differently than the past Canon cameras I have used.
The skin tone when testing the 16:9 mode at 6:48 is worse than what an iPhone would do in that scenario. The whole color pallet just looks off.
https://youtu.be/lWVSRhJ24Uk
I find it weird that Canon never updated their LUTs when they released this new sensor. The Canon LUT pack is the same download for all of the cameras, but this sensor replicates color much differently than the past Canon cameras I have used.
NorBro
Major Contributor
Was saying the same thing the other day (which wasn't understood too well, ha).
Makes no sense...same LUTs for 8 years of cameras.
Here we go again.
Blame it on the LUTs.
Not the user error.
There are so many things that can go "wrong".
From camera settings (8 gamma and 5 color matrix, not to mention other settings), exposure, light ratios, etc.
If you guys think that LUTs are faulty, rent ChromaDuMonde and you'll see that they aren't.
Blame it on the LUTs.
Not the user error.
There are so many things that can go "wrong".
From camera settings (8 gamma and 5 color matrix, not to mention other settings), exposure, light ratios, etc.
If you guys think that LUTs are faulty, rent ChromaDuMonde and you'll see that they aren't.
rob norton
Veteran
I've been using arri rec 709 LUT on c200 footage for a while and was initially happy but it was never quite right. I recently started using abel cine's clog2-rec709 wide DR LUT and it looks a lot better.
Do you use their canon LUTs?
Ben_Ericson
Well-known member
There's not 8 gamma and 5 color matrix settings. A lot of settings have been removed.
The only Color Matrix options are; Neutral, Production Camera, and Video. EOS Standard and Cinema EOS have been removed. C-Log2 only has one gamut. I always liked BT.709 on the C300ii but it's gone on the C70.
C-log 2 is tough to grade some scratch. The included LUT has color spikes in the primaries when applied. The Arri LUT looks better to my eyes.
I own the C70. A neutral balanced look is just easier to achieve on the older sensors. My suggestion that a proper LUT might help get there easier. Is it a lot to ask for the to manufacture include that?
May not be a lot to ask from a manufacturer ... but with Covid ... Canon has sent all the boys home and not a lot is happening.
All of Canon CPS Factory Service Support staff are working from home ...
Lots of new cameras but no one is minding the store ... and if folks keep buying the goods why bother.
I agree that Arri LUTs seem to be a bit more consistent with the reality that most of us share .... Love the
Vision Color Arri Kodak Ektar 100_FC LUT ...
Nice to see new processors and settings ... but the rest of the monolith is hiding under a rock ... buyer beware.
All of Canon CPS Factory Service Support staff are working from home ...
Lots of new cameras but no one is minding the store ... and if folks keep buying the goods why bother.
I agree that Arri LUTs seem to be a bit more consistent with the reality that most of us share .... Love the
Vision Color Arri Kodak Ektar 100_FC LUT ...
Nice to see new processors and settings ... but the rest of the monolith is hiding under a rock ... buyer beware.
NorBro
Major Contributor
AbelCine was one of the first as long as I can remember to provide basic transformation LUTs (and all kinds of scene files back in the day).
I may have downloaded them at some point in the last many years, but I can't recall exactly which ones (I have had hundreds of LUTs on different computers as I have bounced around dozens of cameras).