Canon XF705 Professional Camcorder

I fooking hate these 'reviews'. no one is going to use this to film some fields and then not grade the footage.

The camera is for vox pops and following people around. Skin tones? Management of backlight portraits.

Clearly Brian has no friends and not even the social skills to set up a sequence in his local cofee shop.

Is it comfy to hold?
Can you neatly stow a lav receiver?
 
https://youtu.be/glC1I-wK4Z4

Canon XF705 4K footage of Caerus Mardi Gras Parade 2019 in Hattiesburg, MS.

I apologize in the beginning for this video. It was spur-of-the-moment and most of my attention was focused on keeping the camera steady on my lightweight tripod (top-heavy with at least 10 pounds) and dry under my windblown parka which was tied over it by the sleeves. I used to do view camera photography. The coat worked well as a dark cloth. I could not see the screen without it.From now on I am going to shoot with my SD PIX-E5 mounted on the back cold shoe with my dark cloth over the entire rig except the lens opening and the protruding microphones (I have my VP88 and Rode NTG3 camera mounted). I might even be able to figure a way to flip and reverse the image to match a view camera glass. That used to work wonders for composition. I am going to try one of my old dark cloths on it but I will probably end up with something waterproof and lighter weight. (I am old enough that I don't care what anyone thinks about what I look like or do). LOL

On this day the camera had to take care of itself. Everything (WB, Focus, Gain, IS) was on auto except the all-auto button which was off (the reason it was off is because it will set the shutter at something that I don't want). The ND was set at 1/16 because the sun kept almost shining and overexposing with any less ND. The WDR profile was used. Frame rate 60P. Shutter 180 degrees. Default in-camera sharpening. Standard image stabilization was on. It was a blue day all the way. I decided to leave it that way.

The sound was the left channel of a camera-mounted Shure VP88 mid-side microphone with the VP88's decoder set on medium stereo width with the left channel run into a Sound Devices MixPre D preamp with 80 Hz cut and default SD limiter settings. This was run into the line input for Channel One of the XF705 with Channel One recorded into Channel 1 and 2. I did this because all of the sound was on my left.


As usual change file names to .MPG, convert to ProRes 422 HD in Media Encoder, edit in Premiere Pro, no image manipulation, export to h.264 mpeg at 50 Mbs and upload to YouTube.

I uploaded 4K and it played at 4K for a while but presently seems to be available only in 1080 HD. (Maybe too many people are playing it - LOL)

https://youtu.be/TCcnvkYtQIE

Shorter better 4K 30P version with color by Film Convert WB 6800 Fuji Eterna profile and uploaded in 25 Mbs file
 
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https://youtu.be/S-j1mnelebk

This is a drumline video shot on the XF705 in 4K. Start at 20:00 if you do not have time to watch. Shutter is 180 degrees at 60 fps and ND is 1/16. Everything else is auto because of the constantly changing light in the late afternoon of a partly cloudy day. The gain was mostly around 3.0 and the aperture f8 when in direct sunlight. The camera hotshoe-mounted Shure VP88 mid-side microphone is set to its self-contained mid-width stereo mode fed into a Sound Devices MixPre-D preamp set in stereo mode and then fed into the XF705 at line level thru inputs 1 and 2. The .MXF files are renamed to .MPG and converted to .MOV ProRes 422HQ files for editing in FCPX. After editing it is converted by FCPX to H.264 30 fps at 20 Mbs 4K resolution and uploaded to YouTube.
 
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Thanks for your comment. I agree about the distraction of the 1/120 shutter. I don’ t have enough experience to see things like that at first. I will use 30 fps and 1/60 next time. Is that what you would do?
 
Likewise always shoot at 60P with 1/60 shutter. Gives smooth motion of 60P without the extra edginess and if you really want the slow frame rate look just put on a 30P timeline and the NLE will miss every other frame and it will have the correct shutter speed for the slower frame rate.
 
The old rule of shutter at twice the frame rate is really applicable with 24/25p as that rate is not too far off the persistence of human vision, which is around 20/30th of a second. The eye detects a slight flicker as the image is dying in the minds eye therefore 24/25 second shutter is not the best to use for creating the impression of smooth motion as it is close to the persistence of vision. That's one of the reasons along with the power mains frequency that TV adopted 50i and 60i, for smoothness. The shutter speeds shooting at a 50th at 50p or 60th at 60p are well above the persistence of vision so no real need to double shutter speed. Plus you also save a stop in light loss over 100th or 120th. Persistence of human vision is used to explain the 24p flicker phenomena though in fact that is not strictly true and has been argued back and forth since the days the first moving images were produced. With regards to film projection to reduce the appearance of flicker, virtually all modern projector shutters are designed to add additional flicker periods, typically doubling the flicker rate to 48 Hz (single-bladed shutters make two rotations per frame – double-bladed shutters make one rotation per frame), which is less visible. (Some three-bladed projector shutters even triple it to 72 Hz.) A better explanation on the whole question of frame and flicker rates can be found here.

Chris Young

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Persistence_of_vision.html
 
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The latest version of EditReady (2.6.2, 1237) will open, play and convert the XF705 .mxf files. There are several choices for conversion. I use ProRes 422 HQ which produces .mov file with data rate of 1.53 Gbit/s at 60 fps.
 
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Canon XF705 HEVC file conversion comparison using EditReady and Adobe Media Encoder on basic 8-core iMac Pro.

I filmed two nearly identical one minute segments with the motion of a bird feeder swaying in the breeze in front of bushes, one at 29.97 fps at 160 Mb/s for a 1.18 GB file and one at 59.94 fps at 160 Mb/s for a 1.16 GB file.

I tried converting directly from the SD card and from the IMac SSD and the times were the same.

Converted to ProRes 422 HQ:

EditReady time on the 29.97 file 1:14
EditReady time on the 59.94 file 2:14
Adobe ME time on the 29.97 file 0:57
Adobe ME time on the 59.94 file 1:25

Both converters yielded same value Gb/s files, approximately .8 for 29.97 and 1.6 for 59.94
 
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This here is some nice looking XF705 footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcldZjLKi24

The same person has a bunch of other videos shot with the camera that also look great. I still have my eyes on the XF705, but with the pandemic going on I'm not making big purchases anytime soon, as all my work has dried up. Also, I'm waiting for the eventual, inevitable price drop. $7000 is too much for this camera, especially when the C200 is now only $5500.
 
Yes, nice looking footage. No doubt this is a nice camera although it looks quite large & heavy. I agree, I have always thought $7,000 was a tough sell.
 
Large and heavy doesn't bother me too much because it's still going to be a smaller overall package than a C200 plus a bunch of lenses to cover the same range as the Xf705.
 
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