Canon XF705 Professional Camcorder

I think this could do some funk with a grade, added grain and some 239 bars. Similar FOV and DOF to S16 maybe. And for interviews pair it with my GH4 and 50 1.2

Im defo going to take it for a test run.. at which point Ill stick the the FS7.
 
Log, DPAF (for when I need it), 24-bit audio (hopefully with decent preamps), apparently wide (enough) lens, what looks like decent ergonomics... looking impressive (if more expensive than I'd like). Still want to know about low-light performance, battery life, and independent evaluation of IQ.

I need a camera for this difficult verite film I'm about to start shooting; it's going to be a tough gig on many fronts... I need a camera that'll get me good images in in all sorts of conditions and won't require a lot of gak (and that will hopefully be low-profile enough that I won't get robbed more than once). Just not feeling that a DSLR/mirrorless-style camera is the way to go for this. Same with C-series, FS-series, Amira, EVA1, etc; not sure those are the way to go here.

SO ANYWAY, this is interesting.

I'm also considering a Panasonic AG-UX180. Also want to see what Panasonic, Sony, et al release/announce at IBC.
 
morgan_moore said:
Lens wise starting wide is the critical bit.. and that tends to lead to less Xs of zoom.

I feel a RnG camera needs to be able to 'show a location' and film a driver while you are on the passenger seat.

As (to me) a handheld camcorder, I cant be stable above about 200mm anyway and there is digital zoom and cropping in post.

but if a lens is not wide. it is not wide.

15x'25mm' is way better than 18X'28mm'

S
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Funny you talk about width. I just read that they have announced a 0.8 Wide zoom thru and a 1.5 Tele adapter specifically for this camera. Better than nothing for sure.

Chris Young
 
I would reserve judgement on this camera until you use it on a pro shoot. FWIW, the XF-405 offers about 75% of this camera's feature set at half the price. This camera would interest me at $5k. At the price they are asking, it seems overpriced fow what it is and what it offers. I also agree, it needs wider wide end on the FOV.
 
Its overpriced.. but buy cheap buy twice.

The apparent thing about this camera (as someone looking for a reason not to shoot with my FS7) is that it ticks many boxes that make other camcorders (including XF405) completely unusable.

Its not that I think it looks good.. its that I think it looks 'not fundamentally flawed'

Other camcorders to me are fundamentally flawed by.. '29mm wide', lenseses without three reasonably tactile rings, lack of 10bit log.

They seem to have provided the minimum!

The video showing the bloke going for a walk on a foggy day is super dull, but does tick some interesting boxes like the wide in the car.
 
puredrifting said:
I would reserve judgement on this camera until you use it on a pro shoot. FWIW, the XF-405 offers about 75% of this camera's feature set at half the price. This camera would interest me at $5k. At the price they are asking, it seems overpriced fow what it is and what it offers. I also agree, it needs wider wide end on the FOV.
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Oh, without a doubt I'll be waiting for reviews to come out, and then I'll rent it for a weekend to test it before making any kind of commitment. $7000 is a lot of money to spend on a camera. But on paper it does everything I'm looking for to shoot events. Right now I'm using two C100 Mk I cameras, and while the image quality is great, I'd love to have a proper servo zoom + DPAF touch screen face tracking autofocus. I'll be paying close attention to it.
 
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cpreston said:
I can promise you that it does not do this.
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I agree, but have to ask the camera industry - why not? Throw the footage on a 60p timeline and you have normal event footage with 60 frames in reserve for any bits you want to slow down. Or 24p timeline and have 96 frames in reserve. Slo-mo from live events is usually only a fraction of the end product.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I agree, but have to ask the camera industry - why not? Throw the footage on a 60p timeline and you have normal event footage with 60 frames in reserve for any bits you want to slow down. Or 24p timeline and have 96 frames in reserve. Slo-mo from live events is usually only a fraction of the end product.
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Technically, it's not problem at all. All super-slow-mo live cams are spitting out real-time 60fps feed and doing insane high-speed(1,000+fps) simultaneously. It's just a matter of the manufactures implementing it/giving it to us on the "ENG" side. It's ridiculous that my iPhone 6 from 2014 could shoot 240fps slow-mo WITH audio and be played back in either real time or slow-mo, but I have $40k+ cameras that I have to choose and lock into real-time or slow-mo w/no audio.
 
The worst thing in a fast moving situation is im always flicking to real speed to get some wild audio of roughly the same thing.

I hope this camera can, unlike the FS7 flick from 4k to HD-HFR in one click.. some chance.
 
Run&Gun said:
Technically, it's not problem at all. All super-slow-mo live cams are spitting out real-time 60fps feed and doing insane high-speed(1,000+fps) simultaneously. It's just a matter of the manufactures implementing it/giving it to us on the "ENG" side. It's ridiculous that my iPhone 6 from 2014 could shoot 240fps slow-mo WITH audio and be played back in either real time or slow-mo, but I have $40k+ cameras that I have to choose and lock into real-time or slow-mo w/no audio.
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From a sensor readout perspective, how does a camera shoot both 60fps and 1000+ fps at the same time? I didn't realize this was possible.
 
There is usually an output on the cameras dedicated to the higher frame rates. Personally, I can't describe what is exactly happening inside the camera, but I'm assuming there is a bunch of technology/hardware working together and some parts and electronics and processing are dedicated to one output, and some to the other.

If you watch any sports, you'll see slow-motion replays many times from the same camera(s) that was just showing you the live action.
 
Bit rate in UHD maxes out at 160Mb/s, and FHD 120fps is 180Mb/s. Sony PXW-Z90 is 100Mb/s and FS7 gets 600Mb/s. Aside from being over-priced by $2K and arriving 4 years late... I'd still be interested to see how it does in low light, what the image quality and color science are and how the slow-mo compares with the FS7.
 
NorBro said:
There is usually an output on the cameras dedicated to the higher frame rates. Personally, I can't describe what is exactly happening inside the camera, but I'm assuming there is a bunch of technology/hardware working together and some parts and electronics and processing are dedicated to one output, and some to the other.

If you watch any sports, you'll see slow-motion replays many times from the same camera(s) that was just showing you the live action.
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The two types of HFR implementation I'm familiar with are:
1. Camera records at 120p, with audio, and saves it to a file as 120p. With this type of file, you can drop that into a 30p timeline and play it back in real time, with audio, or take parts of it and slow it down by up to 4x slow-mo (on 30p timeline). The Sony FDR-AX100 works like this.

2. Camera records at 120p, no audio, and saves it to a file as 24p or 30p or 60p (whatever you set the camera to, but not 120p). The file is saved with the slow-mo baked in, and no audio. Of course, you can speed up the footage on the timeline so it's back to real time, but you won't have any audio from this file. Sony FS7 works like this.

What I do sometimes is mount the FDR-AX100 or AX53 to the top of the FS7 and have them record in HFR while I leave the FS7 in 30p mode.

I don't know anything about the sports broadcast cameras, but I've never seen a camera with a separate output jack just for HFR.
 
The last time that I shot super-slow-mo for broadcast(easily 5 years ago, if not more), it was on an Ikegami that was one of the first live HD handheld cameras capable of going up to at least 1,000 frames per second(not just the garden variety 60-240). The camera was "dual path" out, with one path "live 60fps" all of the time and the second was the slow-mo playback path. The camera recorded the high-speed/slow-mo internally(continuous record/cache/buffer) and the playback of the slow-mo was triggered remotely from the truck and then played out of the second path in real time. The camera was an absolute beast and you had to wear a battery belt to power it for handheld work. Yes, a battery belt, like they had to do in the 80's. The guys on here that complain about the size and weight of C300's and Fs7's would curl up into the fetal position and just cry if they had to shoulder it(hell, I've spent my whole career handheld with ENG cameras weighing 25-30lbs+ and it beat me down). I was friends with the guy who normally shot it and when they first started using it they would actually have to stop and manually playback from the camera to get the slow-mo back to the truck. And this was for live sports broadcast.
 
cyvideo said:
Sure can MM.

"Optional Wide and Tele Accessories

There is an optional Wide Attachment WA-U58 and the Tele Converter TL-U58 attachments available for the XF705.

The Wide Attachment WA-U58 offers a 0.8x wider angle of view, and the tele Converter TL-U58 provides extended 1.5x longer telephoto range for the XF705 camcorder’s fixed lens."

https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/09/12/canon-xf705-xf-hevc-recording/

Chris Young
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Thanks! It’s available and in stock!

I see camcorders as for jumping into cars etc this is a critical product.

I’m definitely going to find out all about them and any similar Sony options.

It’s described on B+H as zoom through. I had one back in the day that was not zoom through.

I think this is really interesting
 
robfilms said:
my "only" wait and see issue will be for the much smaller 1" chip to offer the ability to suck in light as it's m4/3, aps and full frame breathren.
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The camera it replaces had a 1/3" sensor (well, three actually). It's funny how such a dramatic increase in size can be considered small... at the end of the day it's all about perspective.

Then again, you won't find a 15-20x lens for your m4/3, aps, FF camera... letalone one that is servo driven. This is not a digital cinema camera, nor does it pretend to be. You wouldn't know by all the hate it's getting in the YouTube comments, though. This thing is aimed squarely at broadcast/sports/live events where ease of use, rapid focus, long reach, and room to breathe matter a whole lot more than squeezing out the shallowest DoF possible. Having a moderate wide angle can certainly be beneficial, but the telephoto end is every bit a necessity (if not more). Morgan can keep his FS7... that's a completely different tool for a completely different type of production.

The PXW-Z280 is clearly the closest competitor to the XF-705, but it has some differences. Smaller sensors (but again, three of them) mean a different visual aesthetic, though they don't need debayering and could potentially resolve a sharper image. That is until you realize the 280 uses the same lens that was found on the PXW-X200 (where it was previously marked as a "Fujinon HD lens" - they've scratched that part off for this model). Makes you wonder if it's capable of even resolving anything close to 4K.

The Sony uses SxS as standard which are an order of magnitude more expensive than Canon's choice of SD media, though adapters for cheaper stuff are available if you're willing to shoot in compromised resolutions/bitrates. The codec might be the most interesting difference - someone pointed out that the Sony tops out at 600 MB/s while the Canon uses a seemingly paltry 160 in comparison - but they neglected to mention the XF705 uses H.265 which far more efficient. Fortunately both do 4K in 10-bit 4:2:2, which is lacking on a good number of video cameras in this space.

I think this one ticks a lot of boxes - on paper - but the footage online from the XF405 isn't that impressive to me and the 705 assumingly uses the same sensor. I really loved the 305 in its heyday, though, and Canon is known for good color science so hopefully this one will pull through. The options are pretty limited in the fixed lens category anymore.
 
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