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Canon C500 Mark II

Derek Doublin said:
And there-in lies my dilemma. I've been mostly shooting with Canons for the last 10 years, and to me the Canon look is extremely prevalent in every Canon I've used. Colors look great, but skintones push heavily towards magenta which is more obvious in certain lighting conditions than others. And frankly, there is a certain look to the image that screams "Canon" to me.
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I believe it was Ron Dexter, ASC who used to say that you never had to accept the manufacturer’s equipment as-is. He would chop up and rebuild his newly-bought equipment to suit his needs, inventing and improving things along the way. Here’s his website: https://rondexter.com/

I think there’s a lesson to be learned there. Though many of us these days are forced into using a particular camera system due to budget, politics, or just simple ergonomic necessity, we don’t also need to accept the camera manufacturer’s color science. Most high end cameras can accept 3D LUTs and CDL corrections or custom Looks and apply them over the camera’s native Log gamma and color space. Something as simple as balancing magenta skin tones or improving highlight roll-off can easily be addressed under the hood in a way that is basically invisible on set. If that sounds good to you, it may be worth looking into. For myself, making my own LUTs and Looks have helped me avoid the dreaded ‘Sony look’ on my F5, and I have also used this method on Red and Alexa cameras over the years.
 
Satsuki Murashige said:
I believe it was Ron Dexter, ASC who used to say that you never had to accept the manufacturer’s equipment as-is. He would chop up and rebuild his newly-bought equipment to suit his needs, inventing and improving things along the way. Here’s his website: https://rondexter.com/

I think there’s a lesson to be learned there. Though many of us these days are forced into using a particular camera system due to budget, politics, or just simple ergonomic necessity, we don’t also need to accept the camera manufacturer’s color science. Most high end cameras can accept 3D LUTs and CDL corrections or custom Looks and apply them over the camera’s native Log gamma and color space. Something as simple as balancing magenta skin tones or improving highlight roll-off can easily be addressed under the hood in a way that is basically invisible on set. If that sounds good to you, it may be worth looking into. For myself, making my own LUTs and Looks have helped me avoid the dreaded ‘Sony look’ on my F5, and I have also used this method on Red and Alexa cameras over the years.
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Very true. I've not really jumped into the deep internal menus of my Canons. I tried with my original C300 but they were rather confusing and the amount of alteration I could do to the image seemed limited. My Red Dragon was pretty intuitive in those regards and allowed me to tune the image rather easily. I've not yet tried with my C200. Maybe I'll mess around with that this weekend.
 
I've been to a couple of the seminars for the C-500 II. As a RED Scarlet W user, I didn't want to like this camera. However, it is so easy to use. I'm over people thinking that if it's easy it must not be pro. The gap is closing in so many ways. As a run and gunner, it's a serious consideration!



Derek Doublin said:
Yeah, I know what you mean. When I kept the ISO at around 640, the Dragon just shined with a specific texture that looked so cinematic to me. And the colors just looked so damned good. And there-in lies my dilemma. I've been mostly shooting with Canons for the last 10 years, and to me the Canon look is extremely prevalent in every Canon I've used. Colors look great, but skintones push heavily towards magenta which is more obvious in certain lighting conditions than others. And frankly, there is a certain look to the image that screams "Canon" to me. It's not a bad thing, it just seems like I work a little harder to create a "cinematic" image to me whereas with that Dragon (with the right settings), I would just look at the monitor and think, "Damn. That looks like a friggin' movie right there." I realize the term "cinematic" is a hotly debated, unscientific term and means different things to different people. To me, when I look at an Alexa image or a Red image, I think "movie". When I look at a Canon image I think, documentary or corporate/editorial video. Under a microscopic, I know this all has to do with the usual variables of highlight rolloff, latitude, noise, bitrate, color fidelity, chroma subsampling, yada yada yada. To keep it simple, most people just say "cinematic" or that image has "mojo".

I just got off the phone with my tax attorney and I'm being advised that if I have a big camera purchase to make soon, then I need to make it in the next 5 weeks because I'm gonna really need that write-off this year. My original plan was to just wait, rent both of the C500 II and the Gemini, do my own shoot off, and make an educated decision from that experience. Now I'm calculating how much waiting will cost me in spent tax dollars. I may have to just make a decision without a test, which sucks.

I wish there was more C500 II stuff out there to look at. The most promising thing on the internet is just this, which doesn't really show me a ton. It looks like a really, really nice Canon image to me, but with shallower depth of field. Though, to be fair, I'm not sure a Gemini in this scenario would look vastly superior.

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Rikki Rockett said:
I've been to a couple of the seminars for the C-500 II. As a RED Scarlet W user, I didn't want to like this camera. However, it is so easy to use. I'm over people thinking that if it's easy it must not be pro. The gap is closing in so many ways. As a run and gunner, it's a serious consideration!
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I think you’re right about the gap closing, and this current generation of cameras might be the one that does it. That video I posted earlier in this thread shot by the Gemini (the one I really liked which was making me consider the Gemini as my next purchase), well it turns out there is a companion video to it, shot by the Blackmagic Pocket 6k. I know this thread is about the C500 II but what these two videos do show is how close these cameras are getting and that you can achieve any look you want when you are capturing enough data. I think I still prefer the Gemini here, but it’s so close, I’m not sure one image is worth $20k more than the other, lol.




I’m starting to think the C500 II might be the route I decide to go. I do like that it will be a relevant camera for quite sometime, which I don’t know if I can say for the Gemini. Red really needs to make a camera that has internal ND’s and is more power efficient if they want to stay relevant. They need to make an out-of-the-box system that is ready to shoot, is lightweight and takes smaller batteries. They need to make a camera that goes up against the C500 II and the FX9.

The only things I don’t currently like about the C500 II are the lack of full frame over-cranking beyond 60p and no interval recording (so strange they left that out, even the C200 has it).
 
I was talking to a well known DP of a Showtime documentary last month about the C500 II and he mentioned that he wished it had a 4k 4:4:4 XF-AVC option like the C300 II does. Does anyone know what the bitrate is of 4k 10 bit 444 XF-AVC? I'm guessing it must be close to Canon Raw Light or Canon would have stuck it on there. I do wish it was included because a lot of clients want the best quality but they also don't want to deal with Raw. It'd have been nice to have a 444 compressed option.

And I'm surprised we haven't seen any more C500 II sample videos released. The camera ships in the next few weeks and there really isn't a ton of stuff out there. I imagine come January we'll have plenty, I just figured we'd have seen some more brand sponsored short films/footage put out there by now.
 
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The image quality is slightly better than the C700 due to new processing hardware mainly. The firmware still isn't finalized, about 2/3rds the menus are still greyed out as of last week.

I've seen the camera 3 times now. It is safely the best digital cinema offering from Canon to date. And that's a good thing.

One thing you'll discover quickly, and I'm sure many YouTube reviews are immenent. You'll be looking at 512GB CFexpress cards and up for this camera to record 5.9K Cinema RAW Lite, more of what that memory landscape actually represents and is a moderate tech limitation. Interestingly most of the good options are 2020 product releases on that front.
 
Jiri Vrozina said:
Canon c500 mk2 does not look good here versus FX9, Venice .
https://youtu.be/2-kYtjH3eEs
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I never trust tests of others. You never know what they do. How many botched Red tests are out there? Shoot your own test.
I did my own test with a C500Mk2 prototype and I can firmly say that it does what a 2020 full-frame raw camera is expected to do regarding DR, noise, and colour when underexposed. YMMV.


Hans
 
Jiri Vrozina said:
Canon c500 mk2 does not look good here versus FX9, Venice .
https://youtu.be/2-kYtjH3eEs
Click to expand...

I saw that and it was quite surprising and disappointing. If the image quality of the XF-AVC codec in the C500 II breaks up like that under various exposures, it's going to make me reconsider this camera. I don't want to be stuck having to shoot in Canon Raw Light for every single shoot. The XF-AVC option was a huge selling point in my opinion. According to this test, you basically cannot over expose or under expose the C500 II much at all while shooting in XF-AVC. For a modern cinema camera, there should be more flexibility in the exposure than what I'm seeing in that test.

Here's the link to the exact timecode in the test where the C500 II falls apart:

OVER AND UNDER EXPOSURE TESTS - Venice, FX9, C500 II, FS 7

Phil Holland mentioned that the firmware is still being worked on. I really hope that the C500 II in this test is a preproduction model with an early version of the firmware. As it stands, this video shows us the first real weak spot on the C500 II. And I can see this being a real issue for documentary shooters where they don't have complete control of their lighting and need to push the camera a bit.
 
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Just finished a 3 weeks documentary shoot with the Canon C500markii, including a shoot on the Ronin 2 out of a helicopter at 6800m (22000feet)!!!
The camera has just performed perfect without any issue.
Here are a few things:
boot up time: 3 seconds!!!
LCD is improved from the C200, it ´s bigger and better, it looks like the peaking is also improved. Unfortunately the new LCD does not work with the C200.
Baseplate is improved with a 3rd screw in the back.
DR is about 1 stop more than C200.
picture looks very organic.
Image stabilization works great for quick handheld close ups.
The Full Frame sensor just looks amazing!!!
If you have any questions I will do my best to answer.
 
C500 Mark II LM-V2 Monitor is Not Compatible with C300 Mark II OR C200

C500 Mark II LM-V2 Monitor is Not Compatible with C300 Mark II OR C200

my Canon tech rep just confirmed that the C500 Mark II LM-V2 Monitor is Not Compatible with C300 Mark II OR C200.

I had been told previously been told by Canon that the LM-V2 was going to be compatible.

Günther Göberl said:
LCD is improved from the C200, it ´s bigger and better, it looks like the peaking is also improved. Unfortunately the new LCD does not work with the C200.
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why? its already built for EF lenses with interchangeable pl mount. It has internal ND already built in as well. what would you gain by being in RF?
 
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