C100 or 5DIII

[zerocool22]

Hey,

I am about to shoot a project(short film), but I am still wondering what camera to use. I will need to do a side by side to make my mind up. So I am looking for the camera that has the most cinematic look out of the box. (I will have access to kino flo's, Arri 1000W and a HMI for lighting, as I know the most important will be the lighting, lenses will be a zeiss kit). I know the 5D III RAW beats all options, but because there is fast deadline coming up + there will quite some footage shot which requres a lot of diskspace. So the 5D III ML RAW is not an option.

So any experiences with them both, and what will you recommend for the most cinematic feel about em. 

 

Thanks!

[Geoff CB]

Budget?

I've seen a couple features shot on the C100 for low budget work, it's plenty good enough. Also the turn around is very quick and it's easy to grade. Pair that with a Ninja Blade or the Video Assist and you should be golden. 

[User]

I ran a 5DM2 for a long time before moving to the C100M2 and I'm much happier with the image. Also, I had more issues achieving deep focus on the 5D. As I understand it, a 35mm sensor is the cinematic benchmark for look and feel.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

The 5D is a little more robust in grading, but the C100 is so ridiculously easier to work with that I don't see much point. Like Geoff said, grab an external recorder for 4:2:2 and go to town. Great battery life, internal NDs, the option for Dual Pixel AF, S35 sensor, excellent ergonomics, and very respectable high ISO performance.

[BenEricson]

C100 for the painless work flow... If you could rent a 1DC, that would probably be great as well. You would need a monitor.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

Keep in mind that the C100 EVF is atrociously bad. You'll need a loupe, external EVF, or external monitor w/loupe if you need better.

[Policar]

I owned both since they came out, but recently sold the 5D. The C100 is a little... boring... but the image is in a totally different league. Better than the 5D III RAW technically even but a little less "magic" to it, there's a little more tonality and pop with the huge sensor. It's my favorite no fuss image below the Alexa, if not the best technically.

Be careful how you expose. There is less flexibility in post than you might get with some other cameras. The EVF is indeed unusable so a loupe is a good idea. 

[zerocool22]

Thanks, Yeah i hear ya. Its just i got access to both camera's with zeiss compact primes. So it is not a cost thing. 

Strange that I hear the 5d is better at grading, I should test that as grading will be a important factor. 

The only thing that scares me is the highlight rolloff of the c100. The highlights are quite hard edged in comparison with the 5d.

About exposing the  c100 and the 5d. I should not worry about overexposing 2 stops like the a7s or underexposing a stop on the gh4 for getting the best image am i?

[User]

Set your zebras at 90-95%. There is still some small room for recovery should you pass 100 IRE. I like the WDR picture profile for day shooting. Do not use Clog or WDR for low light shooting. Caucasian skin tones at 60 on the waveform. The C100 renders a WAY more detailed image than the 5DM3. That little extra tonality and pop that Policar describes coming off a big sensor is not worth sacrificing the wonderful detail of the C100 4k sensor. Story is everything. 

[squig]

1 hour ago, zerocool22 said:

About exposing the  c100 and the 5d. I should not worry about overexposing 2 stops like the a7s or underexposing a stop on the gh4 for getting the best image am i?

Best to expose to the right with the 5D unless you like fixed pattern noise. I overexpose quite a bit and recover the highlights in post (raw).

 

18 minutes ago, User said:

The C100 renders a WAY more detailed image than the 5DM3.

Are you talking about h.264 or raw? Huge difference.

[User]

2 minutes ago, squig said:

Are you talking about h.264 or raw? Huge difference.

OP states that raw on the 5D3 is not an option for the production, so naturally I'm talking about h264.

[squig]

4 minutes ago, User said:

OP states that raw on the 5D3 is not an option for the production, so naturally I'm talking about h264.

I don't really get the not an option thing. Hard drives are really cheap these days. I set up a 12 terabyte raid (big enough for a 35 day feature shoot) on my mac pro for $1000.

[User]

8 hours ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

The 5D is a little more robust in grading,

Are you talking raw or h.264? If it's h.264, it's been my experience that extra DR of the C100 beats the 5D when grading.

6 minutes ago, squig said:

I don't really get the not an option thing. Hard drives are really cheap these days. I set up a 12 terabyte raid (big enough for a 35 day feature shoot) on my mac pro for $1000.

Maybe. But we are not the OP and he has stated that 'he' require a quick turnaround for the situation 'he' is in.

[squig]

If I couldn't scrape up a couple of hundred dollars for a raid, I'd definitely go with the C100 for the extra DR, resolution, low light ability, and rolling shutter.

[User]

Exactly.

[jgharding]

Also C100 with Ninja 2 is great. You get 422 at high bit rates, and it's painless because the HDMI sends the stop/start from the camera.

[User]

44 minutes ago, jgharding said:

Also C100 with Ninja 2 is great. You get 422 at high bit rates, and it's painless because the HDMI sends the stop/start from the camera.

As I understand it, using a recorder offers little or no real benefit (unless one only shoots heavy movement/ motion ie. leave fluttering on trees, rivers/ oceans etc. and even then it's near impossible to see the difference) other than encoding to a more edit friendly codec. It's 8bit 4.2.0 all the way though Canon are working some serious mojo magic along the pipeline.

[Policar]

15 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Thanks, Yeah i hear ya. Its just i got access to both camera's with zeiss compact primes. So it is not a cost thing. 

Strange that I hear the 5d is better at grading, I should test that as grading will be a important factor. 

The only thing that scares me is the highlight rolloff of the c100. The highlights are quite hard edged in comparison with the 5d.

About exposing the  c100 and the 5d. I should not worry about overexposing 2 stops like the a7s or underexposing a stop on the gh4 for getting the best image am i?

5D RAW holds up better in the grade than AVCHD, but its internal codec–no matter the settings–is a lot worse than AVCHD, you can get banding and stuff sometimes even with the higher bitrate.

Highlight detail is pretty good with the C-line, but you need to know how to treat the footage. There's a lot of highlight detail (1-2 stops better than a dSLR) but still 2-3 stops less than an Alexa and a stop-ish less than a Dragon, A7S, F5, etc. so you have to be a little careful. Use your waveform monitor and don't be scared to hit 109IRE if you need to just be careful not to throw away super whites in post because they aren't visible by default and YUV to RGB conversion can destroy them. Use an incident meter until you get the hang of it or you'll tend to overexpose. Or just like don't overexpose. The rolloff looks a bit "video" but it's pretty easy to clean up. Go into Resolve, bring your 109 IRE down into legal range, then if you need to apply a hue vs saturation curve and set it so it only effects the brightest areas (brightest 1/4 of the curve) and drag the top end down to like 20% saturation or 0% saturation until the highlights clip to white instead of to a more saturated color. Looks great after that.

This is assuming you shoot Canon Log, the same thing should work in WideDR. I wouldn't shoot anything either than those two and they're both fine.

External recorders aren't necessarily worth the trouble but for low light they can help. For >3200 ISO or for fine detail (foliage, etc.) the C100's AVCHD can fall apart a bit but it's actually a pretty good codec unless you love torturing stuff in post.

[hmcindie]

22 hours ago, squig said:

I'd definitely go with the C100 for the extra DR, resolution, low light ability, and rolling shutter.

I'm gonna go on a limb and say that the 5d shooting RAW has the same RS as the C100 once you adjust the timers (You can get it to 16.9ms).

 

9 hours ago, Policar said:

5D RAW holds up better in the grade than AVCHD, but its internal codec–no matter the settings–is a lot worse than AVCHD, you can get banding and stuff sometimes even with the higher bitrate.

Only if you shoot cinestyle. But if people stick to neutral then there's usually no problems with banding.

[Policar]

17 minutes ago, hmcindie said:

I'm gonna go on a limb and say that the 5d shooting RAW has the same RS as the C100 once you adjust the timers (You can get it to 16.9ms).

 

Only if you shoot cinestyle. But if people stick to neutral then there's usually no problems with banding.

Usually... but not when you expose a stop and half over and pull down on a flat subject like the sky, which isn't even that unusual. I owned the 5D 3 since it arrived three days after release day. It's a bit of an issue in real world conditions, even shooting neutral. "Usually" not a problem, but more of one than you'd like. Whereas with C Log on the C-line, you're not supposed to ETTR for the same reason... but you can without much consequence. 

Both are better than any true log on 8 bit, however, like Sony, Panasonic, or Arri without switching to 16 bit space in After Effects even.

I'm not saying you can't get good results with the 5D, though. Really nice image in all respects but not impressive as regards resolution in wides, old news though. Neutral has a good look. Cinestyle is indeed bad and overrated. 

I'm just saying if you have the choice... why make the worse one for the proejct. If you don't have a choice, either will be more than fine. Back in my day we shot dvx or 16mm reversal! I'd take a 5D around then.