FS7: Sony FX9 v Canon C500 mkII

I'm presently shooting for television using S-Log on FS7 cameras and over exposing roughly two-stops (by eye) for lower noise.
Using EI Mode, S-Log 3 / Arri LC Cinema, (same LUT to viewfinder only), Using the Doug Jensen Master Class exposure method
of setting the ISO switch to 800, and the Zebras to 72 IRE. I am looking at something white on the monitor and turn exposure down to kill the zebras,
yet sometimes open exposure up if the image looks too dark. Usually shooting wide open'ish and rotate the first ND filter in and out
to show the director the desired exposure after I send the footage off and never see what happens to it...

IF the FX9 using S-Cinetone can give me a WYSIWYG exposure and a gorgeous picture, using the viewfinder or a dumb monitor - without intentionally overexposing, THAT alone makes me want to upgrade to an FX9. I'd sleep better if I knew the editing software would automatically pop open with the
correct settings and the image would look exactly the way I'd shot it.


(I also think the amazing autofocus, four-channel adjustable audio, Metadata Stabilization, and dual ISO open up some great possibilities).
 
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Cynthia Webster said:
IF the FX9 using S-Cinetone can give me a WYSIWYG exposure and a gorgeous picture, using the viewfinder or a dumb monitor - without intentionally overexposing, THAT alone makes me want to upgrade to an FX9.
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Canon C series does this. Has done since day one. Kind of. But yeah, I know what you mean.
 
JPNola said:
I was not aware of that. I'd want more than one card, however. At least 4. If shooting Cinema RAW Light a 512gb card has only a 30 minute capacity.
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In CRL, 128GB card gets you 15 mins, 256GB gets 30 mins, and a 512GB gets you 1 hour.....that is on the C200.
 
JPNola said:
I was not aware of that. I'd want more than one card, however. At least 4. If shooting Cinema RAW Light a 512gb card has only a 30 minute capacity.
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Also, the 512GB CF Express card and reader is for a limited time on the initial orders of the C500 MK II
 
Jim Martin said:
In CRL, 128GB card gets you 15 mins, 256GB gets 30 mins, and a 512GB gets you 1 hour.....that is on the C200.
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I left out some info. That 30 min capacity is for "6K".

512GB CF Express card- Cinema RAW Light: 5952 X 3140: 2.1Gbps: 30 Mins


I went straight to the most data hungry mode since, in my mind, that is what one should plan for when deciding how many cards to buy. The "worst case" scenario, as it were. If you are buying the C500mkII over the Fx9 for the internal 6k, you should plan for shooting 6k, no? 512gb card won't get you much record time in 6k CRL.

Were it me I'd want 4 512gb cards at minimum. And that's another $1800-2400. Which was my point. Now we're up to somewhere in the range of $18,000-$20,000 for this C500mkII puppy after adding cards and some accessorizing such as shoulder-plate, v-mount module. To do it "right", say, six 512gb CF Express cards, the Canon v-mount module, PL mount, accessories- around $22,000. $28,000 if you include the OLED VF.

It can be done for less, obviously.
 
Liam Hall said:
If it's like my A7III it should be easy to navigate around using the joystick, though, not as easy as a touch screen.
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Whilst operating though? That's the aspect I wonder about, control of the AF functions in situations where it isn't as simple as click someone's face then run the take.

Sttratos said:
Grug, is your interest in the C500 II to replace your Arri? Because the way I see it the C500 II is a "poor man's" Alexa. It's interesting as a cinema camera. But I would rather have the Alexa. Unless I was pressured for 4K, which I'm not. Keeping the Alexa and adding the C500 II would make little sense for me. Even if thinking about it as a second camera. I would probably go smaller or something for that. If not for a cinema camera I would rather go FX9 as you don't need RAW or none of that. So it would be interesting to know your application for it, since you have an Alexa too.
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I've got a neck injury that doctors have said (in no uncertain terms) that I should stop hoisting 20kg camera packages around for. So (VERY sadly) my big Alexa has to go. The question now is, what to replace it with? I have a quote on the Alexa Mini LF coming through, which would be the safest choice in a lot of ways. But I'm really not enamoured with the external nature of the power supply, I have some questions about the odd scaling ratios needed to get to 4k and 2k deliverables from the 4.5k sensor (although it's hard to argue with how nice the pictures look from it in spite of that), and I know that in 12 months time we're going to have a new S35mm camera from Arri that will no doubt incorporate Codex's fantastic new HDE system into its raw recording (which will reduce Arriraw file sizes by 40% at capture, rather than just at ingest, as they do at the moment with the Mini LF). Also, it's a $100,000 camera here in Australia.

I had a play with the Mini LF earlier this week though, and outside of the external power supply and the silly amount of metal that's gone into Arri's own 'studio' build out of the camera (I know I could easily shave 1-2kg of weight off it with a simplified rig), it's really quite lovely. They have fixed the overwhelming majority of the ergonomic issues I have with the original Mini. The three steps of internal ND in the Mini do seem a bit more limiting than what's offered by the Venice and C500ii, but the difference with buying an Arri is that they are willing to customise the NDs to my personal specs (giving me 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 instead of 0.6, 1.2, 1.8 - so that I can finetune exposure much more easily on the fly, which is really the key to saving time with internal NDs). I also have a lot of money invested in Arri's WCU-4 FIZ system, and getting the Mini LF's full integration with that is another point to consider.

The Canon, by comparison, offers up almost every feature the Arri has, at 1/3 of the price. Whilst also not being beholden to some of the limitations that are wrapped up in the Arri's older sensor design - so it's considerably less power-hungry, offers a proper 4k downsample from the 6k sensor, and looks like it'll probably squeeze an extra two stops of usable ISO sensitivity out compared to the Arri.

Now a lot of people get caught up in the "native colour science" of all these cameras, but the reality for me is - I don't shoot anything that just has the stock rec709 LUT dropped on it. And ALL of the cameras made in the last 5 years have enough latitude and colour information to push them where I want them to go in the grade.

There's a lot of pros and cons to balance out with all of the available choices. But the reality is, with >4k resolutions, high bit depths, variable framerates, low weights, compact size, I think it's pretty safe to assume that any of these cameras will have us covered for the next 6-8 years comfortably. So the question of which you want to live with is a longer-term decision than perhaps the previous round of cameras provided.

Sttratos said:
That's the beauty of PL lenses. It's basically universal. I own only a zoom lens in E-mount for the low ball jobs.

Although this FF thing is slowly throwing a wrench in the PL mount practicality. Reason I'm in no hurry to join the FF bandwagon.
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I prefer PL because it doesn't budge. But if AF can be as useful as it's starting to appear to be, that really does change the paradigm a bit - I'm thinking of big dolly push-ins to close-ups that can be nailed perfectly, every take, without any time lost to laying out marks for focus. It really could add a lot of time back into the shooting day.
 
Grug said:
... But if AF can be as useful as it's starting to appear to be, that really does change the paradigm a bit - I'm thinking of big dolly push-ins to close-ups that can be nailed perfectly, every take, without any time lost to laying out marks for focus. It really could add a lot of time back into the shooting day.
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There's a new A7 RIV thread on the Sony NEX forum started by McBob. A brief summary of his experience, A7 RIV nails it every time.
 
Cynthia Webster said:
IF the FX9 using S-Cinetone can give me a WYSIWYG exposure and a gorgeous picture
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It cant.

The world is usually 10-12 stops (but varies with the weather). Rec 709 is about 8.

There has to be give somewhere to get 12 or more into 8.

unless
-Huge fill lights to reduce the scene DR
-flat profile that looks horrid
-accept clipping
-shoot in a controlled studio
-shoot on foggy days

So forget a nice picture with a baked profile unless you have a huge truck... for any camera
 
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morgan_moore said:
It cant.

The world is usually 10-12 stops (but varies with the weather). Rec 709 is about 8.

There has to be give somewhere to get 12 or more into 8.

-Huge fill lights to reduce the scene DR
-flat profile that looks horrid
-accept clipping
-shoot in a controlled studio
-shoot on foggy days

So forget a nice picture with a baked profile unless you have a huge truck... for any camera
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Have you seen the S-Cinetone examples Sam? A hint of magenta, but other than that it looks great for a straight out of camera look. I see a lot of people buying the FX9 simply for this feature.
 
In my weird world baked will never work outside the studio or without a big lights package. What with the light changing varying the scene dynamic range in the natural light world :)

But yep can you post an example - my mind is not entirely closed.
 
morgan_moore said:
They are OK - better than my EX1 or FS100 as the just went wrong towards clip.

IMO a bit flat. And also look at my list.. Phils shoot.. in a studio with controlled light.

The horse film is red and a bit sunny 16 in relation of the camera to the light - it needs grading.

BUt of course for the lo-ball client these are an OK trade off for no grading. Its certainly not a disaster :)
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Yes, but still miles better than what we normally expect from Sony.
 
Joshua Milligan said:
I personally think this example looks fantastic.

https://youtu.be/ajpyDpFZBwQ
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In Japanese culture "luck" and "lucky numbers" are a big thing ( generalizing, there ). For the demo video they chose to have the subject wearing Andrew Luck's jersey. But that turned out to be un-lucky seeing as Andrew Luck, to everyone's complete surprise, announced his retirement during this year's pre-season. They went with Luck and that turned out un-lucky. Is the number 12 also bad luck like the number 13? Maybe it is now. Or maybe the jersey being Luck's was a lucky thing since Luck retired, has been in the news because of that, and the video turned out to be a timely tribute to newly retired Andrew Luck.
 
These are new to me, maybe you've seen them already:

The first is a long and meaty video with Alister Chapman going through the Fx9 in a streamed session:


This next one is footage from the Fx9 ( or at least claimed to be ). The footage is rather vanilla in terms of cinematography, large depth of field. But maybe that is a good thing for purposes of studying the color science. Also, the footage is day exterior so it provides some insight into the Fx9's dynamic range. It is a bit disappointing that someone had the rare opportunity to shoot with the Fx9 and all they did with that was to go out and shoot a bunch of tourist footage.



^^more cows in that footage to go with the cattle in the official Sony footage. What's with the Fx9 and cows? The camera is at risk here of becoming known as "the cow camera". Or worse, "the bullsh*t camera".
 
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traviswears said:
What I'm most curious about is to see the FX9 side by side with the FS7. So far FX9 color does look nice but without being able to directly compare it to the FS7, in the same scene, it's hard for me to tell just how much of an improvement it is. I've shot with the FS7 for over 3 years now and although it's color is definitely not perfect by any means, it's not too hard to get a nice looking image from it.
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you will see definitely a big jump in sharpness. The downsampled 6K will be a big improvement. I shot a lot with the EVA1 which has a 5.7K sensor and the difference to the FS7 is clearly visible.
 
This is a dumb question, but my only dual iso experience has been with Varicam. Say you move to 4000 iso on the FX9. Does it allow you to rate it down from that base? On my LT I rate down from 3200 base to 2000 for certain situations to kill most noise and still be cleaner than moving up from base 800.
 
Newsguy said:
This is a dumb question, but my only dual iso experience has been with Varicam. Say you move to 4000 iso on the FX9. Does it allow you to rate it down from that base? On my LT I rate down from 3200 base to 2000 for certain situations to kill most noise and still be cleaner than moving up from base 800.
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I'm sure it will. That's how they've implemented it on the Venice.

That said, I don't think you'll need to with the FX9. Take a look at the footage Philip Bloom shot with it, the noise performance at 12,800 ISO is above and beyond anything I've ever seen at that level.
 
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