C200: Not really sharp, focus and moire

J

J.Brown

Well-known member
I've shot a lot on the C200 since launch but I'm actually surprised by a couple of things.

First I never find the footage to snappy when looking at 4k in 1:1. Compared to FS7 I can comfortable display 1:1 and it's detailed and snappy. I only use internal mp4 recording.
Second I find AF to be extremely unreliable to the point I rarely use it. Faces turned a bit, eyes blinking, eye glasses just makes AF to drop.
Thirdly I often see moiré with plaid clothes and other fine patterns.

What even boggles the mind is the slow boot time and totally unnecessary rebooting when going between recording and playback.

I think Canon have lots of work to get a new C-line camera out that does it right.
 
J.Brown said:
I've shot a lot on the C200 since launch but I'm actually surprised by a couple of things.

First I never find the footage to snappy when looking at 4k in 1:1. Compared to FS7 I can comfortable display 1:1 and it's detailed and snappy. I only use internal mp4 recording.
Second I find AF to be extremely unreliable to the point I rarely use it. Faces turned a bit, eyes blinking, eye glasses just makes AF to drop.
Thirdly I often see moiré with plaid clothes and other fine patterns.

What even boggles the mind is the slow boot time and totally unnecessary rebooting when going between recording and playback.

I think Canon have lots of work to get a new C-line camera out that does it right.
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Maybe you should sell the C200 and get an FS7.
 
I don't own a C200 and I already have FS7. I'm just disappointed when shooting with the C200. No proxy files but poor internal recording. Maybe I should consider this to be proxy files? Raw shooting isn't practical I'm afraid.
 
J.Brown said:
I've shot a lot on the C200 since launch but I'm actually surprised by a couple of things.

First I never find the footage to snappy when looking at 4k in 1:1. Compared to FS7 I can comfortable display 1:1 and it's detailed and snappy. I only use internal mp4 recording.
Second I find AF to be extremely unreliable to the point I rarely use it. Faces turned a bit, eyes blinking, eye glasses just makes AF to drop.
Thirdly I often see moiré with plaid clothes and other fine patterns.
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What lenses are you using on your camera? In my experience when using fast Canon glass, the autofocus is fantastic. Also, which lenses and what apertures you're using them at will have a big effect on how sharp your footage is and how accurate the autofocus is.

If you're only shooting internal mp4 recording I wouldn't expect much more than a C100. To take advantage of what makes the C200 a great camera for the price, you've got to shoot in raw.
 
It's not really practical shooting long interviews in raw right? Or shooting interviews whole day?

I have used the same lenses on C200/FS7 so it's just the poorer C200 faults.
 
The C200 is a RAW camera. Anything else is mediocre at best, and only included as a convenience.

If RAW doesn't work for your type of shooting, the C200 probably isn't the camera for you. That's why I haven't bought it either.
 
Jaime Valles said:
The C200 is a RAW camera. Anything else is mediocre at best, and only included as a convenience.

If RAW doesn't work for your type of shooting, the C200 probably isn't the camera for you. That's why I haven't bought it either.
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I'll have to respectively disagree. "IF" you need a camera that straddles both sides of the fence of live event work and a controlled production environment, this camera is uniquely applicable. I often have to capture hours of high res live imagery that has the characteristics of a higher end image...and also need to switch gears to a higher end production set. For those in a similar camp...this camera is a great option. Its a fast workflow.

So it all depends on what you shoot for a living. I personally think the C200 is a weird, but cool camera in this respect.
 
With external drive recorders and the falling costs of CFast 2.0 cards, I shoot interviews all day in Cinema RAW Light. It's big but manageable if you keep on top of it or download at home instead of on location. Cinema RAW Light looks pretty good when graded.
 
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I just sold my C300 Mark II for a C200. I've tested them both side by side and against my RED SW. The canon's will produce moire more often on fine detailed clothing, but they are by no means soft when shooting with a good lens in RAW.
 
You need a ~5.7K sensor to deBayer and downsample to 4K for True 4K without aliasing: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?356356-Actual-Camera-Resolution-Before-Aliasing
That's one reason why the C300 II and C200 look soft compared to other cameras. The C200 can look sharper when shooting Raw Lite (and so can the C300 II when shooting external raw, including ProRes Raw) as post deBayer provides a higher quality result, but will never look as good as ~5.7K (or more) downsampled to 4K.

To get alias-free (no moire) footage, even with fine detail, you need 5.7K (or more) with an appropriate optical low pass filter (that's a key factor). Take a look at Sony VENICE 6K footage or Red Monstro VV 8K footage in 4K on YouTube to see what this looks like (ideally on a 4K monitor):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVCRusEX8Fs , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1-Jmq7BLFE . Pretty mind blowing compared to what the C300 II / C200 provide (one of the reasons I sold our C300 II + the 1DX II provides more detailed 4K footage with a smaller 1.34 4K crop. C300 II has more DR and better codec options (+ XLR audio, NDs)- someday we'll get all in one :) ), C200 has internal raw. C300 II AF worked fine for us (1DX II is easier with touch screen).
 
puredrifting said:
With external drive recorders and the falling costs of CFast 2.0 cards, I shoot interviews all day in Cinema RAW Light. It's big but manageable if you keep on top of it or download at home instead of on location. Cinema RAW Light looks pretty good when graded.
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I bought a SolidPod for $340 on sale and harvested a 2TB mSATA drive from a Samsung USB drive for $426 so for $766 I can record for 266 minutes in CRL.
I ended up buying and extra caddy for the SolidPod so I have 3.5 TB available via 3 caddys.
Or you could buy a $120 adapter and use an SSD as long as you have power for the SSD.
I have a 7.68TB SSD that cost $1284.
That would record 17 hours of CRL.
Then you'd have to spend all night pulling it off.
CRL isn't that bad. My BMPC records at 1TB an hour. Twice the rate of CRL. And every frame is a cinema dng file. Blessing and a curse.
I use it for instances when I need global shutter.
 
Bottom line is that the internal mp4 recording isn't up to the challenge compared to cameras at about the same price. The limit testing I've done with C200 raw is that it looks better but to me that's not really an option.
 
Well, this doesn't sound very good at all. I still haven't shot with a C200 but have been thinking of buying one for the H264.

Do you have an examples of the moire?
 
I've shot quite a bit of XF-AVC 8-bit UHD on my C200 and I have not experienced any moire issues. Then again, I don't pixel peep a lot and care more about what our clients say than test charts.
I find the UHD 8-bit from the C200 pretty impressive looking as long as I do my part with lighting and exposure.
Please post your test results J.Brown. Haven't seen any other C200 tests or reviews over the past year that highlight
or find this with the C200?
 
https://vimeo.com/196783643 . See the C300 II alias at ~2:00.

C200 examples here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?360165-1080-raw&p=1986752028&viewfull=1#post1986752028

I've seen worse with fine detail clothing. It doesn't happen frequently, but when it does, it can make a shot unusable (requiring a wardrobe and/or shot change).

Again, to eliminate aliasing, oversampling + the appropriate OLPF is required. That's why ARRI chose 2880 for HD: 1920/.67 = 2878, or 1920/2880 = .66666667 etc, and why ~5.7K is needed for True 4K.
 
Moiré pops up often. I notice it but it hasn't ruined things, it just looks ugly. When it comes to resolution it works fine shooting in 4k and delivering 1080p but to use all 4k resolution in 1080p at 100% clearly shows the compression robs the image of the last bit of detail. I often have to sharpen in post to get it looking okay.
 
J.Brown said:
Moiré pops up often. I notice it but it hasn't ruined things, it just looks ugly. When it comes to resolution it works fine shooting in 4k and delivering 1080p but to use all 4k resolution in 1080p at 100% clearly shows the compression robs the image of the last bit of detail. I often have to sharpen in post to get it looking okay.
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I did see a bit of it in JCS clips. In my shooting though, it has not been a problem.
 
puredrifting said:
I did see a bit of it in JCS clips. In my shooting though, it has not been a problem.
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Yeah I didn't see it very often with the C300 II. Was more of a disappointment as value-for-cost after having owned the 5D2 (has aliasing and moire), then the 5D3 (problem completely solved), then back again with the C300 II (and having paid $16K for it). So far haven't seen major issues with the 1DX II shooting 4K (1080p aliases though works fine for most close up shots and people/faces). Canon appears to have fixed the aliasing/moire with the C700 FF sensor (5.9K > 5.7K threshold); that sensor or its successor likely to be used in future C series cameras.

As for what people like, the softness of the Canon cameras tends to make people look better, straight out of camera. I'd prefer real detail whereby we can use diffusion filters and/or do diffusion in post. That said for fast work, the softness is a benefit for many applications.
 
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