C100: Having troubles matching two Canon C100 MIIs

C

c0rpse

Member
I'm working on a series right now and I chose to shoot with the Canon C100 MII. Mostly because my personal cam is a C100MII and I really like the picture, especially in WIDE DR.

Problem is, I rented a second camera and they don't match. Was I naive in thinking that the same brand, model, PP and settings should match?

My camera is as it always is, but the other one, at the same settings, was more magenta against a white card.

I went through and double, tripled checked all settings. Reset all PPs and even transferred settings from SD card from mine to theirs. Still wasn't matching.

Next I went into edit the WIDE DR picture profile and manually adjusted the white balance until they matched. This seemed to have worked as I was using a controlled light source and nothing really changed.

Unfortunately, I just looked at the footage from the shoot yesterday and there's still a noticeable difference. The wall behind the subject is rendering different on both cameras (that's the best example I have)

It's important to note that I did tests with different lenses and this was not the issue. When shooting everything, and I mean literally everything, was set the exact same way. (except for the WIDE DR white balance that I had to adjust after testing to bring them close together in my tests)

Any ideas on what to do? I'd rather not have to adjust the PP white balance settings manually to a white card every time we change lighting setups.

Oh, and I didn't like the results I was getting with an auto white balance. Both cameras seemed to favour it going slightly green for something reason. Did not like.
 
Does the C100II have a Reset All Settings to Factory option?
Is there a WB offset option, separate from PPs?
 
jcs said:
Does the C100II have a Reset All Settings to Factory option?
Is there a WB offset option, separate from PPs?
Click to expand...

It does, and that was pretty much the first thing I did.

It only lets you have access to WV offset in each PP. That's what I was adjusting. I don't believe there is a separate area outside of the PP option.
 
drummondb said:
Would you care to share some examples?
Click to expand...

Sure.

The first was the first day before I noticed the difference. All camera settings from exposure, WB, PP etc all the same:



The second is after I noticed the problem. I setup both cams with the same lenses and light source and manually adjusted the Wide DR color profile's white balance until they matched. On the day (using different, mixed lighting conditions) this is what the result was
 

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I wish I could help but I can offer that I too rented an extra C100 for a shoot in January. I reset the rental camera to factory settings, then transferred my custom settings from my camera to it. All appeared well but I didn't shoot tests (bad move on my part). Handed it off to my other camera operator, same deal, we shot WDR and when I got the footage into post, they didn't even come close to matching. I shot chip charts and white and gray card when I could but definitely not for every setup or lighting change, the shoot was very run & gun. The rental camera had a washed out, low contrast greenish look while my camera looked great, like typical WDR, my favorite setting for the C100. Actually if I look at your frames above, my camera looks like your first frame and the rental camera looked like your second frame, only worse. Luckily the client was not picky about matching the cameras precisely so with some heavy duty and repeated pass color correction, I at least got them into the same neighborhood.

All I could figure was that different samples have different burn in or hours, causing the color matrix to deviate? I never thought to check firmware versions. Good suggestion drummonb
 
Just an update. I returned the other camera to the rental house and got another one from a different supplier. The images now match perfectly.

Thanks for the responses, everybody!
 
puredrifting said:
I wish I could help but I can offer that I too rented an extra C100 for a shoot in January. I reset the rental camera to factory settings, then transferred my custom settings from my camera to it. All appeared well but I didn't shoot tests (bad move on my part). Handed it off to my other camera operator, same deal, we shot WDR and when I got the footage into post, they didn't even come close to matching. I shot chip charts and white and gray card when I could but definitely not for every setup or lighting change, the shoot was very run & gun. The rental camera had a washed out, low contrast greenish look while my camera looked great, like typical WDR, my favorite setting for the C100. Actually if I look at your frames above, my camera looks like your first frame and the rental camera looked like your second frame, only worse. Luckily the client was not picky about matching the cameras precisely so with some heavy duty and repeated pass color correction, I at least got them into the same neighborhood.

All I could figure was that different samples have different burn in or hours, causing the color matrix to deviate? I never thought to check firmware versions. Good suggestion drummonb
Click to expand...

Sounds like you and c0rpse rented the same camera...... what are the odds of that?
 
Little off topic, but I just did a shoot for the first time with my C100 mki and mkii. I set the temperature 400 higher in the C100 mkii and they matched perfectly. Such a relief from trying to match it with The 5D3.
 
crammond said:
As in you have to do the ABB more often?
Click to expand...

Generally speaking, yes. I film all indoor so that exposes the camera to all types of HID lighting. I typically ABB before every session/every power-cycle of the camera when on auto WB. I generally don't have time to go manual and meter the space. I'm not experienced enough to eyeball lighting and manually adjust OTF and even if I could, I doubt it would return a clip that didn't need tweaking in post. Clip-to-clip WB dither is very unprofessional...
 
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