1DC: S35, 1080p // Low Light?

E

ectobuilder

Veteran
How would the S35 1080p of the 1DC compare in Low Light to the 5D Mark III (I have experience with the 5D Mark III)?

My dilemma is I have a shoot coming up outdoors and it will be rainy right around the sun goes down.

I'd love to take an A7SII but it is not weather sealed and I want to avoid using a rain coat. Therefore I am thinking of using a Canon body with weather sealing that has the best low light capability. Hence why I am considering the 1DC but I don't have any experience with it.
 
5D MKIII, IMHO, is VERY soft. 1DC seems to have a sharper image. I have 5D MKIII footage on my reel intercut with a lot of C100 MKI, C300 MKI and the 5D MKIII looks like mush in comparison. 1DC is more like the EOS images from what I have seen.
 
I've always heard that the 1DC's 1080p is simliar in softness to the 5D's 1080p, perhaps just a tad sharper, but still soft. In 4K the 1DC is very nice and looks sharp.

I've also thought that the 1DC's low light is pretty comparable to the 5D Mark III's.

I haven't used the 1DC, so can't comment beyond what I've read, heard, and seen from online samples.
 
You need to separate the three modes in the 1Dc: 1080p, S35 (1080p) and 4k

What I'd call the 1080p mode is a full frame mode. You can shoot the 1Dc full frame, 1080p with 60fps. This mode is like classic Canon 1080p—soft.

The S35 mode (also records a 1080p image) resolves much better. But it still uses the traditional Canon codecs like ALL-I and IPB.

The 4k mode is the best (obviously). Shoots to mjpeg, 422, intra frame compression as well at around 500mbps.

I've only used the S35 for tests. Don't know why I would ever use it, other than if I had a cinema S35 lens, but all my glass is FF. File sizes are no excuse...

If you know you'll do 2k/1080p DI, just capture 4k and do a one time conversion to new 2k masters. Or rather... do as you like of course, but that's what I'd do.
 
When I had a 1DC, I almost always shot in S35. It could cut with C100 footage just fine. It's a tad bit softer and the compression isn't nearly as efficient as it is on the C100, but it looks great compared to the FullHD mode. The 1DC was known to be slightly better in low light than the 5DIII, but I never did a full test of the S35 mode. I don't remember it suffering in low light, though.
 
I remember someone saying when recording in 4K on the 1DC, the HDMI outputs a clean 422 8bit 1080p down sampled from the 4K, that was supposed to be the best 1080p 24 they had ever seen? I know James Miller, did some great stories shooting the 1DC recording 1080 24p 422.
 
B.Berry said:
I remember someone saying when recording in 4K on the 1DC, the HDMI outputs a clean 422 8bit 1080p down sampled from the 4K, that was supposed to be the best 1080p 24 they had ever seen? I know James Miller, did some great stories shooting the 1DC recording 1080 24p 422.
Click to expand...

The 4k mode is the highest quality mode the 1Dc offers. It's a 1:1 pixel readout in a roughly 1.28x crop (relative to FF).

If you KNOW you'll only need HD AND you're fine with hooking up an external recorder, you can use the 4k mode to record a HD stream, uncompressed 8bit, 422 to the codec of your choice via HDMI. You can record 4k internally at the same time as well.

If you skip the internal recording you'll miss out on the 4k master. Personally, I prefer the smaller setup of only using internal 4k recording and then generating the files I need from that master on my computer. Since the images recorded to the mjpeg are clean, I have seen no issues when doing that one time transcode to ProRes on import.

Then again, if you hook up a recorder and shoot to a SSD, you can pretty much keep the camera rolling, if all you need is solid HD.
 
1DC s35 footage is fine. And the 4K files are very nice.

I agree with Andree. Better to shoot in 4K. I also have the 5DIII and find the files soft. When there is an option to shoot in higher resolution and there are chances that there may be need/demand for the 4K version later, why not to shoot in 4K? I have got the most unlikeliest video getting interest from clients and demands for the 4K files. Even though clients need the final output in 1080, they are these days asking for 4K, so that they can create multiple angles. After briefly testing the 1080 files of the 1DXII, I am only shooting in 4K.

A weird idea of a leaking CF card. If I can plug in a CF card to CF card slot of 1DC and somehow it is connected to a SSD in the backend so that directly files can be recorded to SSD....
 
indiawilds said:
A weird idea of a leaking CF card. If I can plug in a CF card to CF card slot of 1DC and somehow it is connected to a SSD in the backend so that directly files can be recorded to SSD....
Click to expand...

There were a couple of products like this a few years ago. The ones I saw were Kickstarter type of beta products that were unfinished. But they were up and running and "working". I think today most people just buy a couple of extra CF cards.
 
I've used the 1DC in 4k mode --> hdmi out --> blackmagic video assist -- > 1080p prores 422 and am pretty happy with the results compared to the normal 4k and the files are a fraction of the size. Very sharp, even better than the Super35 mode, which is pretty good as well. Much, much better than the full frame mode. Had the 1DC as a b-camera to an Ursa Mini 4.6k and it looked very good.

CLOG looks a little different in each of the modes though (especially 4k vs S35), so still digging into that. Still much better dynamic range than a picture profile.

Of course, if you are dealing with rain, it's probably best just to stock up on CF cards and shoot 4k/S35 internally without a monitor. They both look quite a bit better than the full frame modes on the 1DC/1DX/5D3
 
One major difference between 4K and the other modes is the aspect ratio. It is annoying that Canon never bothered with 16:9 UHD. Sure, you can always crop of the edges, but not every client is happy with that. Also, the ultra clean 4K HDMI also needs to be cropped to less than 1080p.
 
cpreston said:
It is annoying that Canon never bothered with 16:9 UHD. Sure, you can always crop of the edges, but not every client is happy with that. Also, the ultra clean 4K HDMI also needs to be cropped to less than 1080p.
Click to expand...

Horses for courses. I love that we get the DCI format. The more consumer oriented UHD resolution 3840x2160 is contained within the full 4k 4096x2160 frame. There is no quality loss involved by reformatting to UHD or HD from 4k or 2k (2048x1080)—in a UHD/HD timeline the extra width is simply cut off like you say. It would of course be useful to have guides showing the outer limits of the 16:9 frame for easier composition.

Since I haven't used external recording with the 1Dc I haven't really thought about it very much, but that would be another of those 'gotchas': the scaled "HD" output when recording 4k internally actually needs to be 2k and not HD on the HDMI out. But I have a feeling it's HD? Then you'd end up with a letter boxed images on your external recorder due to the 1.9:1 DCI aspect ratio. And THEN you'd get a small quality loss if you wanted to fill a HD frame in post.
 
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