Geoff Boyle's Digital Cinematography Camera Evaluations 2018

Samuel H

Samuel H

Major Contributor
Really nice camera evaluations here:
http://www.cmltests.net/Digital-Cinematography-Camera-Evaluations-2018.html

And here:
https://vimeo.com/geoffboyle

My latitude / dynamic range summary:
Alexa is still the standard
Venice6k has 0.5 stops less DR than Alexa
Varicam and RED gemini have 1.0 stops less DR than Alexa
UrsaMiniPro, C200 and Monstro8k have 1.5 stops less than Alexa
Surprise special guest has -2.0 to -2.5 stops less than Alexa
Fuji X-H1 has between 2 and 3 stops less DR than Alexa

I hope the surprise special guest is the BM pocket 4k, which may be the case because I see no compression artifacts, but maybe it's just me looking for a confirmation that the p4k has just slightly less DR than the UMP...
 
Had not seen that, thanks for posting

He's rating everything at one stop less DR than I do: it seems I can stand a bit more noise in my images, which is not surprising at all given where my stuff goes. Apart from that, his relative ratings are very similar to what I found looking at his footage (with some half-a-stop differences one way or another on some cameras). A very interesting bit he wrote is that the Venice "has the most consistent colour across the exposure range"; this used to be a strong point for the Alexa; well done Sony.
 
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Something odd is going on with the Monstro

I'm surprised he picked the Fuji X-H1 as the only mirrorless/DSLR camera, but not the Panasonic GH5S?! I guess because so many people have had a love of Fuji lenses (and Fuji film stock).
 
In his write-up, maybe 20% of the space is dedicated to how much he liked or disliked the menus. So yes, that's very important to him.

Re: Fuji on this test: it seems Fuji is making the hybrid cameras with the most DR right now, since this test by macgregor puts it ahead of the a7III, and Panasonic has always been way behind in this respect. My guess is that this explains why it's there and the others are not.
 
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Bern Caughey said:
Remember reading awhile ago that Geoff decided to not evaluate the FS7 because the menus were too complicated.
Click to expand...

That is a bit blind.. because on set with manual iris lens I dont think I touch anything on the camera apart from record an S+Q.

Yes the camera needs setting first to Slog, but thats it.
 
I think a key reason the FS7 wasn't included this time was that he already had plenty of cameras to look at, didn't want to hassle with chasing down too many more, and Geoff plays more in the Venice/Alexa/etc end of the biz.
 
That person may have asked about the C700 FF (Full-Frame) camera, which is the new C700 model.

I didn't actually look at the link until now and Geoff mentioned a 6K sensor for the C700 so maybe he did test the C700 FF, but is calling it the C700. I don't know.

The regular S35 C700 has a 4.5K sensor.

(Either way, it would be good to know which model he tested as it's very easy to confuse them...and people do.)

---

EDIT: Looking at the available downloads, he does mention both (if there is no typo); the C700 FF and the regular C700.

One option says: "C700-FF-S35"...which is interesting because I wonder if the tests were done in the S35 mode and not the FF mode of the C700 FF.

The other says: "Canon-C700-Rendered"...not sure if those clips are from the C700 or C700 FF.
 
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Sorry, I wasn't clear (and wasn't very helpful) in my earlier comments. Geoff & Co. looked at a C700 FF.

On July 4 Geoff wrote:
We start on Monday and have Arri Alexa, BMD UMP, maybe another BMD, Canon C200, Canon C700 FF, Kinefinity Terra, Kinefinity Mavo, Panosonic Varicam Pure, maybe an EVA some issues there, Sony Venice, maybe FS5-2 not sure, 200T & 500T Kodak Vision 3.
Maybe another camera from elsewhere.
It looks like no RED cameras. In the past I've gone out of my way and hired them or paid people to fly to the tests with their personal cameras. I'm not doing this again. Every other manufacturer helps.
I know that Graeme is keen to see what we get from the cameras but...


And then on July 30th, after the tests he wrote in his personal comments (check Bern's link above):
Canon C700 FF 6K to 4K in camera: We had the full V/F on this and it’s a lovely one �� the menu system was a little easier to use. Recording to XF-AVC internally was easy but recording the RAW output to 6K and 4K relied on using an external Codex recorder which results in a camera that is too big and ungainly to use. No issues with startup time. We had all the usual issues licensing the Codex reader, it shouldn’t be this hard. I think Canon really missed a trick here by not releasing a FF camera that included the raw recording from the C200.

I would rate the camera at EI 500 with a highlight latitude of 3.5 stops and shadows of 3.5 stops.
DR is 7 stops beyond the charts.
I’d set the camera to 800 and my meter to 500 to get the best from this camera.
Note: Again yellow clips early.
 
I am trying to wrap my head around "yellow clips early".
Can someone explain how a red, green, and blue (RGB) based sensor clips yellows early?
 
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Jim Feeley said:
I think a key reason the FS7 wasn't included this time was...
Click to expand...

Perhaps your correct, but he did write, “I rejected the FS7 during the evaluations because I hated the way it felt and its menus. I did say that this was not objective!”

Lower priced professional cameras are bloody good!
https://cinematography.net/CineRant/2017/09/13/lower-priced-professional-cameras-are-bloody-good/

That post was almost a year ago, which goes to show how long these tests took to put together.
 
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