karoliina

I have photographer friends who see nothing wrong with the Canon's strategy and they have R5s for still photography. I bought R5 for both stills and video, and this overheating limitation and the extreme cool down timer came as a total surprise. Tony Northrup was saying before R5 release that Canon will probably Canon it somehow and Canon did Canon it. I was optimistic when I preordered but it turned out to be different than I expected. I haven't done actively videos for Youtube channel anyway so it hasn't affected me so much yet. It just is annoying that the camera turned out to be limited on the video side. I was kinda expecting that Canon is evil, and Canon is indeed evil. But on the other hand, Canon does the best lenses, best AF and so on, and for still photography the R5 indeed is pretty much answer to our all wishes. If I buy a video-solution, for sure it is not going to be a Canon C-line product. I am not thanking them limiting my experience with the R5 by getting Cinema EOS no matter how good Cinema EOS they would make. I am instead hoping that Blackmagic would do dual pixel kind of AF to their future cameras and I could move all video production back to Blackmagic. Blackmagic is not evil, they are friendly to the small customers and they move fast (despite they have had quality problems in their cameras before, it is not intentional, they just have agile approach to silently overtake and dominate the world of video/cinema production for the whole ecosystem, from capture to production/editing, all of it, and do it with being friendly to small customers and not abusive like corporations).

I paid 4900 euros for the camera and expected to be able to shoot at least 4K HQ with it as much as I can when placed preorder. I aknowledged that there could be problems with 8K video, but I was not worried because 4K HQ 10 bit 422 would be fine with me most of the time. And it turns out the cripple timer cripples also the 4K HQ. I think apologist attitude "oh yeah Canon has all the right" smells deeply rotten. I don't care what Canon thinks, they have ruined the video capabilities of the expensive camera I purchased and traded my 1DX mark II (which did not overheat even in 4K 60p) to. I expected the new camera to be better than the 1DX mark II in video. And it came with Jesus-specs that would show Sony who is the king of video. Then it turns out, after already paying the camera (had to pay in advance to actually get it), that it has timer that ruins all usable video modes. The low quality pixel binned 4K mode most definitely is not what I traded my 1DX mark II for. Because 1DX mark II was able to do high quality 4K all day long, no C-log, but it had EOSHD-C-log installed which was fine. With this timer, my choices are worse image quality than the camera it replaces or live with the timer I never expected to even exist. Canon has betrayed me as a customer. I am not so rich that it would be indifferent to me as a customer if I get fooled by a manufacturer that sells intentional lemons instead of products they marketed. Canon has no excuses to treat its customers like this. It is despicable. I have no reason to be kind and with apologist attitude towards Canon and than them for ruining my video shooting experience in contrast to the previous camera I had from them. I did not buy this camera for its 4K low quality mode. I could have bought Sony A7RIV instead, if I wanted a camera with pixel binned low quality video, high dynamic range sensor and high megapixel count for still photography. I bought the Canon instead because I expected it to perform better as a hybrid camera than the Sony A7RIV as it had all the things I had been wishing for: 10 bit video, raw video, full sensor readout, Canon DPAF, eye-AF etc. in the same package. It looked like the perfect camera for me. However, Canon completely ruined the video shooting abilities of this camera to category "not suitable for shooting video", unlike marketed, and unlike what I paid for. I will use any hack available to shoot video with my R5. And if Canon "fixes it" in the next firmware releases by removing these hack capabilities, I will never upgrade the firmware.

I used to have Hackintosh. It was really fast with Blackmagic raw. However, every time I rebooted, I could not be sure if it will boot up again. Some silent Apple update, reboot, nothing works anymore. Have to go trouble shooting on command line on recovery mode and delete some kernel module (driver) files that had magically appeared after browsing workaround tutorials circa half hour. Then it booted. And same next time. Got tired of it. Genuine Mac boots every time if the hardware is not broken. Of course, better choice with components could have resulted in more reliable Hackintosh. But I did not try that.

I am too enjoying the 1DX mark II with log profiles (including the EOSHD C-Log which I purchased). It has the best Canon sensor and the mjpeg codec at that bit rate is such high quality that I traded my Blackmagic for it. It is only eight bit but still about as good as Prores if bit depth is left out from consideration. I test drove Sony A7SII but starting from body, ergonomy and controls, Sony had no chance, wanted 1DX2 and as an engineer I suspected from the beginning that the 1DC vs 1DX2 fuss was just imaginary and 1DX2 isas good as1DC or better in video mode. We kept GH4 as secondary light camera but the quality from 1DX2 is so much higher in both video and stills that I don't use the GH4 very often and in fact might trade it for DJI Inspire 2 with Zenmuse X5S MFT-camera which seems to be a GH4 killer (5.2K CinemaDNG raw or Prores). Sony shoud come with ten bit camera and it would be again at winner position.

Background: I have been using Marvel's advanced cine profile. It has been fairly good flat profile for 1DX mark II that exposes the whole dynamic range of the sensor available. Ie black is zero and white is 255. The 1DX mark II 4K mjpeg mode uses color standard which captures whole range from zero to 255 unlike the h254 which clips to Rec 709 levels discarding 0-16 and 236-255 levels. Then came EOSHD C-log which I purchased and installed on my camera. Histogram reveals that it has been lifted from black and white so that it clips around 235 and it clips to virtual zero which is way up from zero. This reduces dynamic range because it leaves portion of the sensors levels as not utilized. It has the same flaw as the Technicolor Cinestyle. i would suggest an improvement as follows: a new version of Clog which has both black and white lift removed, allowing to expose full range but still be flat. Please do it. I could do it myself but the Clog is locked (did not test but typical for authors of flat profiles is that they use the detrimental for user's freedom -locking function). Until then I switch back to Marvel's cine. Reason: I want flat profile to protect from clipping, not to make the camera in fact to clip earlier. Clog clips earlier.

Sorry to disappoint you, but none of the Canons are good replacement for Micro Cinema Camera. All Canons in HD mode are disappointing crap vs your mentioned GH4 or Micro Cinema Camera. C-log does not fix the muddy pixels. Only 5DmarkIV and 1DX mark II and 1DC produce video quality which can replace the Micro Cinema Camera. If you want Canon HD-video, you can as well buy used 5DmarkII and you lose about nothing vs your list (except for more moire than 5DmarkIII), Canon HD video has not improved at all since 5D mark II came. Even 1DX mark II produces crappy HD-video and is only usable in 4K mode. In fact you can buy used 5D2 for less than new Rebel and it is a good camera in still mode, much superior to Rebel in image quality. I had my 5D2 until 1DX2 came despite also owning BMCC and GH4. GH4 loses badly in still mode to the old 5D.I had Magic Lantern installed and the MLraw out of it was reasonable quality despite of the moire.

I use Sennheiser HD-600 (when editing) but not on location (been thinking upgrading them to HD-650, HD-800 would be even better but those I can not afford). On location I use Sennheiser earplugs like these: https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/1703/fbmrk/Sennheiser-Momentum-In-Ear-Android-tulppakuulokkeet. They provide good sound isolation and are tiny, but still have quite amazing sound quality, does not feel so much a downgrade vs. the HD600 at home. I have used the pair of HD-600s already for over 10 years and I am very happy with them still today (except because they are open, they are not suitable to location because they do not block outside noises at all). The closed around ear headphones tend to sound quite disappointing so I do not own those, I just use either the high end Sennheisers or the little plugs.

The downside of the Cinestyle is that it discards values 0-16, it has lifted blacks. This is not good and it was a workaround for the h264 codec. However, in case of the 1DX mark II, such lifting of blacks is unnecessary. I have switched on using Marvel's Cine instead of Cinestyle nowadays. For me it seems to provide good results. I sold my BMCC and I still don't regret it. BMCC had more DR yes and better bit depth in raw yes, but by all other means the Canon wins. And actually I need to sometimes shoot some interviews/presentations etc. quickly (at work), and the grading step takes away time. The BMCC was not usable without using the Film mode (the in-built video mode was crappy). With 1DX2 I can use a picture style and settings (picture style settings and white balance and tone settings) that will give the final image I like and I can shoot the interview without doing any grading. If I just plug my Sennheiser ME66 into the mic input of the 1DX2, I can even record the audio with the one take and don't even need to synchronize that. This way I have more time on editing the clips than adjusting colors and syncing audio. And even if the subject happens to move, the subject stays in focus, thanks to DPAF. And FCPX ingests these mjpeg clips just like that without conversion (unlike BMCC raw files). It is extremely quick now to do a quick video at work with the 1DX2 - quality is nice and the productivity is fast. What I could complain. For serious cinema production with actual cinema budget, I would anyway choose a RED most likely, but since the 1DX2 has great image quality in 4K, it could be a B-camera (IMO). For indie and second hand work camera this one suits me very well as A-camera. 1DC would have not been any better for my use in this regard. And the Cinema5D review confirms my expectations as an engineer, a sane engineer would not implement two picture style systems in camera and a sane product manager would not allow two different competing systems where one is inferior to the another, to be implemented in the camera. Therefore in 1DC and the 1DX2 the C-log probably is yet another picture style which only happens to be locked. There probably is no separate engine that would implement it and there most likely is no difference between a flat style and C-log in the signal path in the 1DX2 or 1DC on that regard. It is possible that the C-log has built-in adjustments which are beyond the abilities of the picture style editor, but the engine is the same, and probably it should be possible to implement a picture style (without Picture Style editor, but more low level approach) that would provide exactly the same results as C-log. The picture style file format specification would be obviously needed for that and some knowledge on what to write to the file. The rest is then about writing a little program that does all that. Magic lantern guys might have just the required kind of expertise. They could most probably reverse engineer picture style format and implement this.

Ebrahim, I doubt that it EF-S would work. I once almost broke my 5D by attempting to put EF-S on it by mistake. Keeping mirror up while shooting with EF-S, if works, is asking for trouble. Camera goes to power save mode and boom the mirror box is broken... DPAF is excellent for shooting people. For shooting cats, it is still good, but not perfect and sometimes loses focus because the face detection is not tuned for cat face. In my video the focus is lost in the shot the cat walks towards the camera because of getting too close to the camera (less than minimum focusing distance), these were all shot with 70-200. But I have shots were the focus was lost because Canon's algorithm disagreed the cat would be subject of interest on the scene. Maybe AI/neural network based AF will solve this kind of problems sometime in the future. Knowing Canon, I would be positively surprised if 1DX3 would have it.

Handheld cat video, 1DX mark II + Cinestyle, trivial grade in FCPX with color corrector: No audio (because internal audio is crap).. First shot under the text is Landscape profile as it is. The camera was set to Landscape by mistake. Other shots are Cinestyle.

Also I have been pixel peeping my 4K frames. When the sharpness is dialed all the way down, I do not see any sharpening effects. It looks to me like Blackmagic, not like Canon video. Every video frame is so high quality that I can use them as stills if I want. I definately could not stand stills from the standard Canon video. 1DX2 FullHD video, based on a short clip I did with it, works like on any other Canon DSLR, and I am suspecting that all the abovementioned deficiencies in the resulting image do apply. However, I will never use it. The 4K mode is so nice. I am after all not missing my BMCC and no longer dreaming about UM4.6K. Actually there was a RED day at e dealer that arranged my 1DX2 purchase. I was thinking of going there, but the 1DX2 is too exciting camera to bother to go to RED-demonstration. I think the only real inferiority with the camera is limitation to 8 bit and no 10 bit not to speak of 12-14 bit raw. If the 1DX2 would shoot raw video at 4K, it would make UM4.6K, UM4K and Red Raven at least, obsolete.

Here is histogram. Shot with 4K 25p and Marvel Cine pf2. See histogram: starts from zero and ends to 255. Also what I am seeing supports the histogram, I got captured from pitch black to clipping, as I intended to do for this test. So my early gut feeling is that this is the (first?) Canon camera where picture styles behave differenty. Favorably differently.

Are you sure this difference of C-log and picture style applies to 1DX2. I was just doing unscientific testing with flat profiles today: I used standard profile and then flat profiles, Marvel Cine and Techicolor Cinestyle. It happens that when I expose from zero to 255 in histogram (well becomes 16- because Cinestyle has fixed black point at 16 which is unfortunately also visible on histogram) and then I compared clipped areas. The standard just clips a lot more than the Cinestyle. There is a difference between images coming from the video engine and from the jpeg-engine. 1DX2 video is from the jpeg-engine. What applies to jpeg engine applies to 1DX2 video as well unlike on other Canon DSLRs except 1DC. If the jpeg engine has dynamic range of 10 stops no matter what, then what has been told above holds true. However, looking the clipped areas, the histogram and what I got in the exposure, my findings do not support what was told above. The Cinestyle looks and functions differently on my 1DX2 than on my 5D2, clearly. The 5D2 video image gets to the image worsening system, and it can be easily seen on the footage. Not sure about 1DX2 but viewing my frames I do not have supporting evidence that this would be the case with 1DX2, need to do further testing. Would be nice to have "hacked" Cinestyle that would allow getting rid of the 16 black floor because its reasoning is not valid for the high bit rate mjpeg codec. The h264 discards below 16, but the mjpeg is not that aggressive at all. Therefore it would make sense to use modded Cinestyle but sadly it is locked for further editing. At least I can expose Cinestyle from 16 to 255 vs in 5D it is impossible to use the whole range, the histogram leaves unused area to left and right. I also tried to apply Cinestyle LUT to both C-log and Cinestyle images. Same LUT works to both it seems, the difference is way smaller than for example Canon vs Blackmagic flatness.

That is pretty sick. If you are correct, the person who designed the picture style system to apply the picture style after the conversion of raw image data, not prior the throwing away of the dynamic range, must have had a really bad day. Any sensible programmer would not have agreed to do that.

IMO the 1080 is the typical Canon video. Can't stand that mode. Difference in quality is large Canon 1080 video vs the 1:1 pixels from the jpeg engine on 4K. Can someone experienced with C-log explain what is the difference of C-Log or other log picture style that can be made with picture style editor? Highlight rolloff indeed is sharp on Canon standard profile but who (if anyone else than some early 1DX2 testers) shoots with Canon standard. And how Cinestyle compares to C-Log and why C-log would be superior? I am an engineer what I am seeing is a gamma curve and then another flavor of gamma curve, what exactly would be the advantage of C-Log?