FS7: Sony FX9 v Canon C500 mkII
- Thread starter Liam Hall
- Start date
dmitrizigany
Veteran
Yeah... my hope is that the A7SIII (if it ever comes out) will be a good b-cam to the FX9.
Sony has the advantage that all their cameras use the same mount. Canon should really have put the RF mount on the C500mkII.
Sony has the advantage that all their cameras use the same mount. Canon should really have put the RF mount on the C500mkII.
nyvz
Veteran
I'd have to disagree on that... Can't see how any of those canon cameras you've listed work as good B-cams as they don't match on resolution, codec, sensor size, or available log curves. I'm curious why you think the a7s2 leaves a lot to be desired compared to 5d/c100/1dx when it has slog2/3, 4k FF XAVC-S with full sensor readout, and all of those shoot cropped soft 4k or only 1080p and only clog1, no clog2/3, no XF-AVC, with comparatively limited dynamic range, right?
Well this is all personal, but IMO the A7sII is the absolute worst camera I've ever used. And I've been shooting digital since the Canon D30 in 2001...
EVF is terrible for still photography, and for video, the LCD screen is simply not usable for pulling focus, judging exposure (no waveform either), etc. So it necessitates an external monitor and the associated franken rig, defeating the purpose. Battery life is laughable, and god forbid you want to decipher any of the Picture Profiles. My original 5D2 was more usable than the A7sII.
Also, yes the A7sII has "s-log" but have you ever tried to match it with another Sony camera? It's an exercise in frustration. After half a decade, nobody has definitively documented how to get the A7sII to match the FS7, F5 or F55. There are countless threads on this forum and others with suggestions of how to match them, but there is no consensus. It's a crap shoot.
Again, just my opinion, but the Canon B-Cam options are a much better bet.
Yeah after using an RF mount camera, I'm quite surprised they stuck with EF for the C500ii. As soon as I picked one up it was immediately evident that RF is the future for Canon, and with the seamless ability to mount EF lenses to RF without losing performance or quality, it seems like it would have been a no brainer?
nyvz
Veteran
Hmm I guess different experiences. I also had a 5D2 and the A7S2 was a huge step up, in fact few cameras still justify an upgrade from the a7s2. I don't see how the LCD on a 5d2 is better for focus... no 3in LCD is good for focus, but as I mostly use the A7S2 as a b-cam or gimbal cam I'm never using the LCD for focus except with focus magnifier. Battery life is ok, but not great, but not much worse than most other extremely compact video camera except for some much newer ones with bigger battery packs. Yes the picture profiles are useless as are pretty much all sony picture profiles based on hypergamma and 1D gamma curves. S-gamut.cine with saturation boosted helps a lot, but s-log always works best. Regarding matching, I'm usually only matching my a7s2 to an fs5 which match quite closely actually. But yes they don't always match an fs7 that the couple of times I tried, in those cases it just seemed to be a green bias or gamut sensitivity difference though. They look great with the standard slog2/3 LUTs intended for fs7/f5/f55 though... Those are all workable, but Canon's softness, noise, and aliasing are pretty unavoidable. Try looking at some comparisons on the dpreview video stills comparison tool sometime. On almost every small Canon body, 4K looks like 1080p and 1080p looks like 720p, not to mention aliasing and dynamic range issues from low quality readout modes in video. I guess when it comes down to it at least the c500ii and fx9 both have c300ii and fs7 though not small b-cams for ~1/3 the price (used).
That said, I finally upgraded from my a7s2 after all these years, working on selling it off soon, but will miss the slog since my new camera wont be as easy to match.
nyvz
Veteran
Seems pretty clear from the CVP tests that the c500ii is pretty similar to an fs7 for DR, maybe 0.5 stop less than fx9 and 1-1.5 stop less than venice, but definitely better at the very high ISOs than the fx9. All makes me wonder if either are really worth it vs an fs7+speedbooster or c200/c300ii unless you need 6k raw (c500ii) or AF (FX9), which almost no one really does...
Also what are the chances the FX9 sensor is the same as the S1H?
Also what are the chances the FX9 sensor is the same as the S1H?
theraptor56
Active member
I'd think a Sony mirrorless with one of the newer sensors and AF would be a much better B Cam than the A7sii. The color would be easier to match with the newer sensor.
There've been some rumors about C100 MKIII and 1DX MK III on the Canon side. IMO, it's quite likely that C100 MKIII will be RF, since 1DX should be EF and releasing two similar models makes little sense. This way, C100 MKIII won't directly compete with C200.
All at the rumors stage right now.
The same sensor that's inside S1, S1H, Z6 and fp? I'd say it's nigh impossible to be identical but not impossible to be a heavily tweaked version of it, with a far more powerful processing engine within a much larger body.
FWIW, S1H clips that have been posted online so far have been kind of meh.
It's impossible to compare the FX9 and C500mk2 from the CVP test because there are so many variables on both cameras and there was little useful information about very significant settings. IMHO, a useless test and the only valid way is to get each camera and set it up for how YOU want to shoot and then make the comparison.
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Grug
Veteran
Just had my first hands-on with the C500ii today. There was a lot to take in:
- Sensitivity. I took my lightmeter in to see how accurate the rated sensitivity of the camera is - 800 ISO on the camera matches 800 ISO on the meter perfectly.
- Boot Time. The camera boots on in 3-4 seconds, and can be recording within 4-5 seconds. AMAZING performance. I LOVE this. It will make batteries last a lot longer on set, as you'll never hesitate to turn the camera off when you're not using it.
- Lens mount changes. Not terrible. It's just four screws to remove. It'd be better if they'd at least made the screws for the mounts captive, that would save some time and trouble. But I think lens mounts could be swapped out in just two minutes or so (if needed) on-set (if you hustle).
- Dynamic Range. Nothing scientific here, but we had some hot Australian summer sun coming through the windows at the far end of the room. And with the camera exposed for our interior, it was holding all of it, which was impressive. I'd have no concerns about the camera's DR being limiting in any way.
- Menus. About on par with the nonsense that Sony put into everything bar the Venice and the F5/F55 (prior to the v8 firmware). They're pretty awful. You can setup a custom user-menu which will be very important for daily use. Fortunately there are physical buttons on the camera body to allow instant access to White Balance, Shutter Angle, Frame Rate, ND Filters, Focus Aids, LUT on/off, and Exposure Tools. So I think once you've got the camera setup the way you want it, it'll be reasonably painless.
- ND Filters. Having 2/4/6/8/10 stops of ND onboard, and accessible in seconds is wonderful, and a tremendous range (for people who want to shoot at T/1.4 outdoors in bright sunshine without having to add external NDs). But I really wish Canon would offer a different configuration of filters (ND 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9) that allowed the camera to do 1-5 discrete stops of ND instead. Having a 5-stop range to fine-tune exposure would save more time on set than having the wider 2/4/6/8/10 range, but having to constantly put in and pull out a 1-stop ND from the mattebox for fine-tuning.
- Exposure Tools. These appear to tell you what's happening with the underlying exposure to your log image, not the LUT on top of it - which is GOOD. That said, we couldn't properly confirm this, as the demo camera appeared to have a glitch, as we couldn't (for love or money) get a LUT to display on the on-camera Monitor or the rear-mounted EVF. We were able to gets LUTs feeding out of the SDI port, and that at least worked properly (and well).
-Data Rates. There's no "if"s, "and"s or "but"s about it - 6k Canon Raw "Lite" is HUGE. One 512Gb card will get you 30 minutes of recording (in both regular and 60fps recording), which means (at a minimum) you'll need 2TB of media, realistically 2.5-3TB if you want to be safe to record a whole day without having to re-use cards. And that much data, means you're not going to be able to data wrangle to spinning drives. SSDs (preferably m.2 ones) are going to be essential to any Raw workflow with this camera. So that's another cost to factor in (and potentially one that we have to absorb and bill out to clients, as it won’t be safe to trust many of them to sort out the kind of high-speed drive setups that this much data will require). Having two CFexpress card slots is great though, that gives you up to a full hour of continuous 6k raw footage (until larger capacity cards arrive at least).
- EVF-V50. The rear-mounted EVF. It's okay, but underwhelming. A bit too dim for my tastes, and only just on the border of sharp enough. It's certainly not unusable (as some have been in the past), but the onboard LCD screen is so much better, brighter, and easy to confirm focus on - that I don't think I'd bother with the rear-mounted one. A loupe on the LCD would be easier to work with.
- PRODUCTION ERGONOMICS. Although I feel pretty certain the camera is going to do really well with solo-operators, and smaller, self-contained crews. The ergonomic requirements for cameras working in conventional production environments (with a 1st and 2nd AC) are very different, and I have some doubts over how adaptable the camera will be for that (with all of the controls on the operator’s side of the camera, and the LCD screen not offering a conventional control interface). For the sake of conventional productions, I hope Canon either makes the OU-700 Remote Operation Unit for the C700 compatible with it, or better yet, provides a firmware update, that allows the touchscreen LCD to replicate a similar “6-button” interface (the kind now found on basically every cinema camera). That one change would instantly make the camera much more viable for conventional production styles. An additional camera module that adds a second EVF/LCD port, a v-mount/gold-mount battery plate, and at least three DTAP or RS accessory power outputs would also go a long way to allowing the camera to crossover into the conventional space.
I find myself sorely, sorely tempted by the feature-set and size/weight of the C500ii. As it offers so many of the features I’m looking for in an A-Camera. But the complexity of the menus (hopefully surmountable via the custom menu and large number of physical, assignable buttons), the difficulties of having purely operator-orientated controls when an AC in involved, and the issues we had with LUTs not working for the onboard screens (hopefully just a software glitch that will be fixed soon), all give me pause.
- Sensitivity. I took my lightmeter in to see how accurate the rated sensitivity of the camera is - 800 ISO on the camera matches 800 ISO on the meter perfectly.
- Boot Time. The camera boots on in 3-4 seconds, and can be recording within 4-5 seconds. AMAZING performance. I LOVE this. It will make batteries last a lot longer on set, as you'll never hesitate to turn the camera off when you're not using it.
- Lens mount changes. Not terrible. It's just four screws to remove. It'd be better if they'd at least made the screws for the mounts captive, that would save some time and trouble. But I think lens mounts could be swapped out in just two minutes or so (if needed) on-set (if you hustle).
- Dynamic Range. Nothing scientific here, but we had some hot Australian summer sun coming through the windows at the far end of the room. And with the camera exposed for our interior, it was holding all of it, which was impressive. I'd have no concerns about the camera's DR being limiting in any way.
- Menus. About on par with the nonsense that Sony put into everything bar the Venice and the F5/F55 (prior to the v8 firmware). They're pretty awful. You can setup a custom user-menu which will be very important for daily use. Fortunately there are physical buttons on the camera body to allow instant access to White Balance, Shutter Angle, Frame Rate, ND Filters, Focus Aids, LUT on/off, and Exposure Tools. So I think once you've got the camera setup the way you want it, it'll be reasonably painless.
- ND Filters. Having 2/4/6/8/10 stops of ND onboard, and accessible in seconds is wonderful, and a tremendous range (for people who want to shoot at T/1.4 outdoors in bright sunshine without having to add external NDs). But I really wish Canon would offer a different configuration of filters (ND 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9) that allowed the camera to do 1-5 discrete stops of ND instead. Having a 5-stop range to fine-tune exposure would save more time on set than having the wider 2/4/6/8/10 range, but having to constantly put in and pull out a 1-stop ND from the mattebox for fine-tuning.
- Exposure Tools. These appear to tell you what's happening with the underlying exposure to your log image, not the LUT on top of it - which is GOOD. That said, we couldn't properly confirm this, as the demo camera appeared to have a glitch, as we couldn't (for love or money) get a LUT to display on the on-camera Monitor or the rear-mounted EVF. We were able to gets LUTs feeding out of the SDI port, and that at least worked properly (and well).
-Data Rates. There's no "if"s, "and"s or "but"s about it - 6k Canon Raw "Lite" is HUGE. One 512Gb card will get you 30 minutes of recording (in both regular and 60fps recording), which means (at a minimum) you'll need 2TB of media, realistically 2.5-3TB if you want to be safe to record a whole day without having to re-use cards. And that much data, means you're not going to be able to data wrangle to spinning drives. SSDs (preferably m.2 ones) are going to be essential to any Raw workflow with this camera. So that's another cost to factor in (and potentially one that we have to absorb and bill out to clients, as it won’t be safe to trust many of them to sort out the kind of high-speed drive setups that this much data will require). Having two CFexpress card slots is great though, that gives you up to a full hour of continuous 6k raw footage (until larger capacity cards arrive at least).
- EVF-V50. The rear-mounted EVF. It's okay, but underwhelming. A bit too dim for my tastes, and only just on the border of sharp enough. It's certainly not unusable (as some have been in the past), but the onboard LCD screen is so much better, brighter, and easy to confirm focus on - that I don't think I'd bother with the rear-mounted one. A loupe on the LCD would be easier to work with.
- PRODUCTION ERGONOMICS. Although I feel pretty certain the camera is going to do really well with solo-operators, and smaller, self-contained crews. The ergonomic requirements for cameras working in conventional production environments (with a 1st and 2nd AC) are very different, and I have some doubts over how adaptable the camera will be for that (with all of the controls on the operator’s side of the camera, and the LCD screen not offering a conventional control interface). For the sake of conventional productions, I hope Canon either makes the OU-700 Remote Operation Unit for the C700 compatible with it, or better yet, provides a firmware update, that allows the touchscreen LCD to replicate a similar “6-button” interface (the kind now found on basically every cinema camera). That one change would instantly make the camera much more viable for conventional production styles. An additional camera module that adds a second EVF/LCD port, a v-mount/gold-mount battery plate, and at least three DTAP or RS accessory power outputs would also go a long way to allowing the camera to crossover into the conventional space.
I find myself sorely, sorely tempted by the feature-set and size/weight of the C500ii. As it offers so many of the features I’m looking for in an A-Camera. But the complexity of the menus (hopefully surmountable via the custom menu and large number of physical, assignable buttons), the difficulties of having purely operator-orientated controls when an AC in involved, and the issues we had with LUTs not working for the onboard screens (hopefully just a software glitch that will be fixed soon), all give me pause.
Thanks for the rundown. Curious about the mystery port on the side of the camera that CVP referred to in their Q&A video. When I saw that , first thing that came to mind was the settings monitor from the c700. Would really make this camera a powerhouse. Any info on that port?
Colin Nusbaum
Member
Almost certainly for the WFT-E9 wireless transmitter. So that way you'll get the settings you want easily, but on a separate device. The question is, will the live view via ipad have low enough latency to make it really interesting.
powervideo
Well-known member
I'm very happy with the Nikon Z6 shooting in N-log as my interview B-roll camera with my Sony F5. I prefer it to old A7S MkI I had.
Liam Hall
Veteran
Not sure why yours is greyed out, on the camera I had you could switch them on in the monitoring menu. One annoying feature was when you changed Custom Profiles in the Set-Up menu it would automatically switch off all your LUTs.
The other issue I had was I couldn't get both HDMI and SDI working at the same time. probably a preproduction FW issue like yours.
dmitrizigany
Veteran
But I cannot use my e-mount lenses on the Nikon Z6. (I can see that being a non-issue on an F5 that doesn’t have e-mount anyway)
I do really really hope that the next Sony A7 camera can at least output 10bit 422 to an external monitor. That would make them infinitely more useful as b-cams...
You cannot use SDI and HDMI at the same time on the c200. Similar to the RED not being able to display SDI, HDMI, and Viewfinder/screen all at the same time. Wonder if this will be a limitation.
scorsesefan
Veteran
I'm impressed with the night footage on the FX9. I suppose this is down to the FF sensor, but the area over her shoulder where the night sky blends with the Ferris wheel lights is a tough read for any sensor and I think the Sony handled it well.
patrickbaldwin
Well-known member
Actually you can use e mount on a Z6.
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/...-nikon-z-thanks-to-techarts-2mm-thick-adapter
No idea if it is any good though....