austinchimp

Thanks for this Nate. This is a comparison I've been very interested by lately. im another owner of both the 1DC and recently the A7rii although I haven't had time to perform any straight comparison tests yet. im determined to shoot s-log on this camera (a7rii) if it kills me, although I'm still getting that feeling that the 1DC has just inherently more natural and cinematic colour, or at least it's easier to get there with the Canon. S-Log so often gives me a sinking feeling when I first apply a Lut to it, while seeing a Lut on the 1DC footage is so satisfying as it comes to life. Then tweaking the canon footage is a joy, while S-log seems like a struggle to get it look half way normal. i traded my old a7s for the 1DC after not getting along with the colour but I've been drawn back to Sony by the size of the camera and the video features. Really hoping it works out as the 1DC is incredible but a bit big to lug around with me all the time in the kind of work I do.

The Rx100 m4 is a great camera, something you might not suspect from its small form factor. I think it would easily be good enough for stock footage and as it's very small and inconspicuous that helps with shooting in public spaces. It's a little noisy at high ISO compared to the A7S and A7Rii but that's too be expected. I use it often in 4k and have been very impressed. The slow motion was why I bought it, and in good light it's fantastic up to 250fps. Really spectacular. It's also small enough to stick in your pocket when you go out the door and not worry about the weight. The downside is that it's very small so I wouldn't like to spend hours using it as a main camera. But as something to whip out and grab some footage it's superb. Image stabilisation is good but as with all IS systems it's not a miracle worker.

in my tests transcoding 1DC 4K MJPEG to prores LT creates a significant loss in quality, with compression artifacts and colour blocking. I used mpeg streamclip for the transcode on my Mac book. Viewing at 100% on a complex frame showed that very clearly.

Image doesn't look as good as the newer GoPros with Protune to my eyes. And with the cheaper standalone gimbals at least you can upgrade the GoPro easily as new models come out.

true, and after working extensively with the original A7s, Red raw and now the Canon 1DC I can confirm that they all need skilful tweaking straight out of the camera. The difference for me has been that with Canon and Red files the first hour or so of grading is correcting the colour (removing weird casts, exposure, getting skin in the right area, making it look natural) and then I can go onto working the general look and feel. Where as with Sony - in any colour profile you choose - the first stage of 'fixing' the image so that it looks natural never really ends. I find it very hard to ever reach a point of having a natural look I'm satisfied with, and then any additional change I make to the image tends to knock all my previous work out of whack. With the Canon files, once I've got it to a natural, neutral point, further creative grading seems to go much smoother and doesn't stray out of a natural getting image as much. What I'm basically saying is that in my workflow Sony A7s footage requires me to constantly wrestle with the image to stop people looking like aliens or zombies, whereas in Canon footage I can push and pull the image much further while people tend to remain looking like people. As a working pro those hours saved and reduced stress is hard to put a value on. as an idiot, I greatly appreciate this!

For me it's not even a case of Sony etc having to apply an 'artist's eye' to colour - it's more simple than that. The colour that Sony cameras produce just do not (reliably) look realistic to the human eye. They may be 'technically' more 'correct' but there is science to how human's perceive colour and Canon nail that more consistently. It may be a case of having to do more research into how human visual perception works and then reproducing colour accordingly, but I don't think it's all down to artistic magic - although there is an element of that in all areas of film making. With a scientific study of what humans find pleasing and natural to the eye, it should be possible to produce colours to match, right?

That's fascinating Andrew. Selfishly (as I don't think many people here are 1DC owners) I'd love to hear more about this comparison. I own a 1DC and an A7s mk1 as well as a RX100m4 and love all of them in different ways but the one I don't use these days is the A7s because I could never get colour right, even after spending hours tweaking it. And I tried almost every colour mode and custom setting. Now I have to credit that camera for making me a much better colourist which I benefit from with the 1DC, but Sony colours just don't hit the spot for me with as much frequency as Canon. When I see footage from the A7s 1 or 2, or the A7R2, I always have an internal stuggle between "It's technically incredible and looks modern and 'on-trend'" and on the other hand "why doesn't it look real? Why am I even noticing the colour instead of focusing on the content?" I liken it to modern CGI. You know it looks incredible, it can be aesthetically beautiful and you appreciate what an achievement it is - but you don't feel it in your heart because your brain instinctively doesn't feel it's real. Whereas Canon, for all their numerous faults, do produce colours that hit you emotionally. Your mind relaxes into them and accepts them as real. Sony footage often seems like a highly accurate simulation of reality rather than reality itself. I try reallllly hard to love the Sony footage, I used my A7s heavily for a year on everything I did, but there's always that niggling feeling in the back of my mind. Shooting with the 1DC is just satisfying, even though it's large and heavy and lacks any video specific features and slow mo. Nobody is hoping for Sony to hit the bullseye as much as me btw. I'm just still waiting to be convinced.

Very interesting camera progression. I think the different form factor is going to be an interesting adaptation for you. Were you dissatisfied with the 1DC at all? I admit I do think about selling it for financial reasons but I've been using it quite a bit for work recently and am constantly amazed by the image. To me it doesn't feel like film, and doesn't feel like the super modern Sony image. It's something quite particular, especially colour wise. I find that, even though I have ups and downs with it, I can talk about this camera endlessly. There's something quite special about it in my view. Still, if Sony were to sort out their colour issues on the A7s and R lines I'd probably move back to them as I like having a small, light and discreet body.

Hey Marcel, I always wondered about the shooting of 9 Songs, must have been a rather interesting project to make. Any good stories of your experience?

Nice neutral grade. Shame it was such a grey day!

Nice work. Think the first one of the man and woman is a bit magenta in the skin - which is one of my big problems with Sony footage. But the rest look nice. A little dull because of the cloudy weather but to my eye they look natural. I'm just looking forward to people starting to really push this camera with creative work, I'm sure it can create a beautiful image. The only issue for me has always been the amount of time and skill you need to fix the magenta-green twist in S-Log compared to Canon colours.

Yes I think that's a nice example of the teal and orange look, but it's still - to my eyes - a very definite stylised look. I do like the way it deals with the highlights in that footage but the skin is a strange and unnatural shade if you're looking for naturalism. Looks like one of those Osiris LUTs which makes this difficult to judge. Sickly skin is the one thing I want fixed in the A7Sii. If that's fixed over the A7s then I'm onboard.

I'm still waiting for the first example of a truly natural grade from the A7sii s-log3. All the graded footage so far looks like the instagram-filter s-log footage I really dislike (ymmv). For me the natural look is the acid test of a camera's capabilities. Washed out artistic grades hide a multitude of sins.

I'm waiting to see some better footage. Not sure these guys exposed or graded this particularly well. At first glance it looks to have slightly better skin than the A7s - similar to the A7RII but not a giant leap forward. Still looks slightly thin and clinical.

Ah it's part of the magic of the camera. While A7Rii and NX1 topics are arguing about specs and pixel peeping the 1DC inspires conversations about life and mortality..

Haha I'm not sure it's much of a sale topic any more - I'm still quite fond of keeping it! The only reason I'd want to let it go is because I'm not sure I'll get the money's worth out of it with the kind of projects I've got coming up, and if I did sell it I'd probably downgrade to a A7RII instead just to have something decent and 4k capable. I know I'd miss it if I let it go. It's strange how you can get attached to certain pieces of technology and not to others. There's something old-school and heavyweight about the build of it and the feel in the hand, as well as the picture it creates which is very satisfying. Kind of how Ed David talks about the Sony F35. You feel like you could take it to a war zone and back and it wouldn't let you down. Not sure I feel the same about any of the Sony mirrorless cameras, despite my fondness for my A7s.

Yes I can't imagine that Canon wouldn't cripple any new 4k DSLR quite heavily given their deeply conservative approach to market segmenting. Looking at how the 1DC seems to have been largely ignored by Canon's marketing teams, it's prohibitively high price at launch, and firmware that was left undeveloped and missing key video features - it doesn't seem that they knew what to do with the camera. So will they now release a capable, high quality cinema machine at a price which threatens their existing Cinema line? Hard to see that happening. The 1DC seems to have been a one-off. I think it's more likely that if Canon release a 4k 1DX it will be heavily crippled in bit rate/codec, missing in features such as peaking and C-Log, or priced so high that it's not a threat to the C300II. And therefore not an advance on the 1DC.

Sorry, didn't mean to spam the forum. Delete this post if necessary. I agree that there's nothing quite like it, and the picture quality is likely to be up there for the next few years at least. Canon aren't likely to make another DSLR form camera with 4k that rivals this as that would cause big problems for their cinema line. So if you want professional-level 4k and best-in-class stills capability and that bang-on Canon colour then this is your only option. Not that this is a sale pitch or anything...

I'm sadly thinking about selling my Canon 1DC with two Canon batteries and 1 after-market battery and 2 memory cards for offers over £4300 in the UK, maybe to Europe. I f*cking love it but it was a big expenditure for me and some of the projects I was planning to use it on aren't going to happen now due to changing circumstances. As it's a crime to sit on this camera without using it I thought I'd see if anyone else can take it who'd use it the way it deserves. If anyone's interested get in touch. I can take pictures and answer any questions. I only had time to snap off a quick photo of the shutter actuations page this morning before work - only decided to put it up here today. Serious enquiries only please, and I can't really drop the price without going into a loss from what I paid for it recently. <28,000 actuations on the camera. It was purchased second hand and shows signs of wear but the thing is built like an absolute tank so it's in good condition. Colour in 4k C-Log mode absolutely destroys pretty much any other camera I've ever used, including Red Dragon and my Sony A7s. It's absolutely the best 4k and still combo there is, there's something really special about this camera and even though I haven't had it that long I have a real emotional attachment to it. I don't have the original box so it's just camera, 3 batteries (which are very expensive) with original Canon charger. And 2 fast CF cards - 128gb and 64gb Komputer Bay cards which I've tested and are very reliable with this camera. Add a lens and you're ready to shoot. If I don't sell it I won't mind keeping it, don't really want to put it on Ebay so trying here to see if there's any interest. Paypal preferred method of payment for all-round safety and peace of mind.

I made the mistake of upgrading to El Capitan too hastily today and experienced the same corruption when using OpenCL acceleration. What saved me was installing the latest CUDA driver from Nvidia and then switching to CUDA acceleration in Premiere project settings. That seemed to work, which is strange as before OpenCL was the stable one while CUDA gave me all kinds of problems.

How is it meant to be running android?

To me it looks reminiscent of the image I get from the 1DC. I wouldn't call it soft - more smooth. I much prefer it to the over sharp NX1 footage for example.

Loving the colours - seems like V-Log has an inherently cinematic look. Very impressed, already I much prefer this to Sony's S-Log2.

For me S-Log3 and the S-Gamma.cine are the two things I'm most interested about in this camera, and the reason I'm probably going to upgrade from my A7s. The hardware seems to be similar as are the stills - I'm very disappointed it won't have phase detect focus as I was hoping to finally be able to use this camera for stills with my Canon lenses. But if this tiny camera can push out an image with the same colour and feel as the FS7 in S-Log3 then it'll be huge for me. Colour was the reason I felt I had to invest in a 1DC as well, when really I want a small Sony body to cover all my needs.

Nice. I think this film has grown on me over time, and of course it's something a lot of us can relate to in our own ways. I noticed the film damage and dust this time. Is that a new addition? This version really does look like old film, which is really cool.