Canon C300 Mark II flopping vs the Sony FS7 at rental?

[Steve Oakley]

I'm kind of laughing at this spec war. In reality, where some folks live. how often are you shooting HS ? if you in particular are doing it all the time, then get a camera that does that very well, which is likely an F55 or some flavor of RED or Alexa. Most of the time we are all shooting at normal 24/25/30/50/60 for the normal shots everyone does. Actually the break down is a bit more messy as 60 is usually 720p for the networks using that, every one else is 1080 / 59.97i .. even if you are running 29.97p and its just what the camera is spitting out to make people happy down stream. The lack of knowledge of how video signals actually work never ceases to amaze me. anyways...

back to this reality thing. how often are you shooting HS ? likely if you are *AT ALL * its probably 10% or less of your shots. Then, how fast ? is there some reason you are cranking the rate to the max ? Just because you can ? Just because you can say you are shooting 180 or 240 ? Is there aesthetic or technical reason and choice to do so ? or  you just are because you can ?

Except for maybe some sports things, 120 is all I need for 24 playback. in fact I'm usually running lower - 48,60, 72 or 90. 120 just starts to look ridiculous for those "dramatic moments" things. very often 48 or 60 is perfect for making something more dramatic without getting into over doing it zone. With rare exception I find no need to go over 120 and if I do, I'm renting The Right Tool For The Job™. 90fps is what I've used when shooting race cars and aircraft in flight with just right results. 240 ? it would just be too slow, even 180 would be over the top.

The C300mk2 offers up not just nice color as a general term, but a lot of great subtle gradation of color that sony isn't touching for the most part. Rec2020 is great, cine gamut exceeds what your eyes can see. Canon captures this. in grading you can really push the images around and do some pretty extreme stuff and its still holding together fine. This is especially true shooting 2K 444 12bit where there is so much to work with.

12bit vs 16bit : besides eating up more space, in this place called reality is it : 1 possible for the sensor to actually resolve that much color ? 2 are the A/D's actually resolving that much gradation or is sensor noise more a factor and you really only have 12-14 bits of gradation ? In audio, while everyone probably use 24bit these days, most A/D's can only really resolve about 18-20bits of resolution from the signal. preamps, wires and the mics themselves all play a role in what can really be recorded. it also asks the question of if there is any audible difference. certainly I can hear the difference between 44.1, 48 and 96khz sample rates, but a good clean 16bit recording with good A/D's ( pretty much most gear these days, even the cheap stuff ) has this covered. Likewise when it comes to color depth, you are at some point just playing a numbers / specs game because : the sensor isn't outputting that much gradation, the A/D's are at that point picking up as much noise and variance between pixel sites as image data... and you don't have a display that can show it. At least not yet, or that doesn't cost as much or more than the color and you don't have one... nor does just about anyone else. So at what point does all the extra bits buy you ? nothing, except larger files and bragging rights which is what a lot of this is. 

 

[plexi]

The more people that rent an FS7 over the C300MKII the better. Just makes my work look better than the competition. Purchased the C300MKII almost a year ago and I have been in constant work ever since.