Canon R7 User Experience

[ntblowz]

PD power delivery is a painful plus for me as it is like switching to EV car, but once you are set you be pretty sweet, atm my monitor can power my MacBook Air and R5, Smallrig Vmount with PD-C can power any light, camera that can use vmount, and R5 or power the macbook, and my mi pro PD-C powebank can also power Atem mini (with the right adapter) for completely mobile liveswitching without the need of portable generator. 

[markr041]

I'm sorry, but the harsh highlight conclusion is wrong to me (overblown!). I have shot with the R7 for more than a week - two months. I have found the dynamic range to be quite good, and the handling of highlights on par with the R5 and the S5 - which I have also shot with. And the fx3.

In the posted video it is clear that many clips have blown highlights - in the the very first clip the crown is blown. The highlights are harsh and ugly indeed. Blown highlights, however, are from overexposure - from clipping highlights when shot. Clipped highlights are not recoverable from any camera. They are caused by the videographer not watching the highlights and thus overexposing.  There are blown highlights all over the video (including in faces). Yes, the video shows "harsh" highlights, but blown highlights - clipping - is never a fault of a camera.

Let me show you two frames from a video I shot today in Clog3 on the R7 with the kit lens. They are from the worst possible scene - a man with dark skin wearing a bright white shirt facing a bright afternoon sun. There are no blown highlights on either the face or the shirt or any other bright white part of the clips. The clips are not underexposed.

My "grade' was simply using the IDT transform in Resolve, from Clog3 to REC709. 

In all my experience I have not noticed any difference in the handling of highlights from the R5 or my Panasonic S5.

And, yes, I could push up the luminance more with plenty of room - nothing is clipped in these shots. Skin tone is right on. Bright spots on the face are not blown spots.

I'll post the full video when it is ready on YouTube, so you can see I am not cherry picking. The video was shot in harsh, bright sunlight and has plenty of highlights.. It does not look anything like the posted video from the OP.

[markr041]

In the above I don't mean to be so "harsh" on the OP...But maybe working with the camera for more than a week might yield very different conclusions about highlight handling.

[markr041]

My user experience. The above frame grabs are from this video, shot in harsh sunlight all the way. Just a simple 8bit REC709 transform from 10bit Clog3. Plenty of headroom to play with for what one might like the final look to be. And suitable for an HDR version. Sorry there are no beauty queens, but then there are no ugly highlights either. Did I do something wrong?

[herein2020]

6 hours ago, markr041 said:

I'm sorry, but the harsh highlight conclusion is wrong to me (overblown!). I have shot with the R7 for more than a week - two months. I have found the dynamic range to be quite good, and the handling of highlights on par with the R5 and the S5 - which I have also shot with. And the fx3.

In the posted video it is clear that many clips have blown highlights - in the the very first clip the crown is blown. The highlights are harsh and ugly indeed. Blown highlights, however, are from overexposure - from clipping highlights when shot. Clipped highlights are not recoverable from any camera. They are caused by the videographer not watching the highlights and thus overexposing.  There are blown highlights all over the video (including in faces). Yes, the video shows "harsh" highlights, but blown highlights - clipping - is never a fault of a camera.

Let me show you two frames from a video I shot today in Clog3 on the R7 with the kit lens. They are from the worst possible scene - a man with dark skin wearing a bright white shirt facing a bright afternoon sun. There are no blown highlights on either the face or the shirt or any other bright white part of the clips. The clips are not underexposed.

My "grade' was simply using the IDT transform in Resolve, from Clog3 to REC709. 

In all my experience I have not noticed any difference in the handling of highlights from the R5 or my Panasonic S5.

And, yes, I could push up the luminance more with plenty of room - nothing is clipped in these shots. Skin tone is right on. Bright spots on the face are not blown spots.

I'll post the full video when it is ready on YouTube, so you can see I am not cherry picking. The video was shot in harsh, bright sunlight and has plenty of highlights.. It does not look anything like the posted video from the OP.

 

I think you do not understand the very definition of highlight rolloff. You are showing scenes and examples where you were able to expose for the highlights without underexposing the scene or underexposing something that was important to you in the scene; in that scenario any modern camera will excel. Nowhere in your video or screen shots did you have an example of a person less than 3 feet from the camera backlit by a midday sun.

The very definition of highlight rolloff is when you have to prioritize something other than the highlights and how the camera handles the transition from the clipped highlights back to exposure values that are within the dynamic range of the camera.

Also, the examples you showed were definitely not worst-case scenario; in your examples you were pretty far from the subject and the direct sunlight was off camera to camera left; very easy actually to properly expose for regardless of skin tone and color of clothing mainly because the entire scene is well within the DR of the camera. You keep referring to "how the camera handles highlights" vs. how the camera transitions from clipped highlights to proper exposure.

My opening shots were a much worse scenario, very close to the subject with the subject strongly backlit by midday sun. That is a scenario that exceeds the DR of the camera so in that scenario you have to pick what you will sacrifice...midtones or highlights. Since the subject was a person, I chose to sacrifice (clip) the highlights to properly expose the midtones which is where her skin tones will be. If I had exposed for the highlights (i.e. the crown or background) she wouldn't have been much more than a silhouette (trust me, in camera I tested that first and it looked terrible). I also checked false color when bringing the footage into DR and false color showed her skin tones were properly exposed. And yes, I do this all of the time when the DR of a scene exceeds the camera's DR...I pick crushing the blacks to retain the highlights or blowing the highlights to retain color and detail in the mids or lows, etc. 

Yes, as she twisted and turned the highlights clipped including the ones on her face, but this is the reality of the types of projects that I shoot, events and projects where I have no control over the lighting and typically must let the highlights clip to get proper skin tone exposure. Properly exposing for those hot spots as she changed in relation to the sun would have greatly under exposed the scene and the shadow side of her body. When you are that close to the subject that is moving from backlit to side lit to front lit in direct sunlight there is no way to avoid highlight clipping unless you have a camera with way more DR than the R7; that's why shooting in midday in direct sunlight is the worst possible time to shoot, but due to our schedules it was what we had to work with.

If I wasn't trying to deliberately show how bad this camera handles highlight rolloff I just wouldn't have used most of the parts where she had hot spots on her face. If this was a commercial or paid shoot in the same situation, I just would have shot everything from the backlit direction or scouted a better location with shade, used a diffuser, used fill lighting, etc, etc....anything to reduce the DR of the scene to fit within the camera's DR.

[Kisaha]

The case studies are different, I wouldn't blame that much the camera though. It is a 1.499$ machine, I expect that much. And a bit overpriced as I mentioned before..

..i also mentioned in my limited first hands review, the sensor is in its simplest form (non stacked/non BSI) and I wouldn't expect much. The camera works at the limits of its hardware, added with a little bit of old school Canon magic.

I believe the "highlight rolloff" issue is exaggerated a bit but I would like to make a paid job with it first to make definite statements.

To put things in perspective, it is a low cost camera (compared to other top RF cameras) and it performs a little better that the sum of its parts. That's it. No R5 or C70 killer, or whatnot..

[markr041]

5 hours ago, herein2020 said:

 

I think you do not understand the very definition of highlight rolloff. You are showing scenes and examples where you were able to expose for the highlights without underexposing the scene or underexposing something that was important to you in the scene; in that scenario any modern camera will excel. Nowhere in your video or screen shots did you have an example of a person less than 3 feet from the camera backlit by a midday sun.

The very definition of highlight rolloff is when you have to prioritize something other than the highlights and how the camera handles the transition from the clipped highlights back to exposure values that are within the dynamic range of the camera.

Also, the examples you showed were definitely not worst-case scenario; in your examples you were pretty far from the subject and the direct sunlight was off camera to camera left; very easy actually to properly expose for regardless of skin tone and color of clothing mainly because the entire scene is well within the DR of the camera. You keep referring to "how the camera handles highlights" vs. how the camera transitions from clipped highlights to proper exposure.

My opening shots were a much worse scenario, very close to the subject with the subject strongly backlit by midday sun. That is a scenario that exceeds the DR of the camera so in that scenario you have to pick what you will sacrifice...midtones or highlights. Since the subject was a person, I chose to sacrifice (clip) the highlights to properly expose the midtones which is where her skin tones will be. If I had exposed for the highlights (i.e. the crown or background) she wouldn't have been much more than a silhouette (trust me, in camera I tested that first and it looked terrible). I also checked false color when bringing the footage into DR and false color showed her skin tones were properly exposed. And yes, I do this all of the time when the DR of a scene exceeds the camera's DR...I pick crushing the blacks to retain the highlights or blowing the highlights to retain color and detail in the mids or lows, etc. 

Yes, as she twisted and turned the highlights clipped including the ones on her face, but this is the reality of the types of projects that I shoot, events and projects where I have no control over the lighting and typically must let the highlights clip to get proper skin tone exposure. Properly exposing for those hot spots as she changed in relation to the sun would have greatly under exposed the scene and the shadow side of her body. When you are that close to the subject that is moving from backlit to side lit to front lit in direct sunlight there is no way to avoid highlight clipping unless you have a camera with way more DR than the R7; that's why shooting in midday in direct sunlight is the worst possible time to shoot, but due to our schedules it was what we had to work with.

If I wasn't trying to deliberately show how bad this camera handles highlight rolloff I just wouldn't have used most of the parts where she had hot spots on her face. If this was a commercial or paid shoot in the same situation, I just would have shot everything from the backlit direction or scouted a better location with shade, used a diffuser, used fill lighting, etc, etc....anything to reduce the DR of the scene to fit within the camera's DR.

First, I agree with you that a backlit subject in bright sun is the worst case scenario. And I respect the idea that for run and gun you cannot always select the best lighting scenario and one has to make choices given the camera DR is less than that of a scene. But I think in your video you did not protect highlights in general, even when the camera could handle the dynamic range (if shot in Clog3). There are lots of hotspots all over your video - even the waterfall water flows had hot spots.

Maybe you were deliberately making a video to show how ugly hotspots are - and you succeeded. I don't think that you were deliberately making as ugly a video as possible to dis the R7. Rather I think you underestimated how the camera handles extremes of light in your exposure choices because you had too little experience with it.

I have uploaded one screenshot (4K monitor, 4K video) of a frame from your video where there is a sunlit area and an area shaded from the sun. You chose to allow the sunlit area to be totally blown out, favoring the shaded area (for no obvious reason - there is absolutely nothing interesting going on in the shaded area). Yes, the shot is really ugly - half of the picture is blown out! But you could have prevented the blow out in your exposure choice and increased the mid-tones for the shadowed area. But you never gave it a chance.

I have uploaded a similar (ungraded) scene from my video where again half of the scene is in bright afternoon direct sunlight and the other part is in shade due to a building shielding the sun. But I chose to expose so as to protect the highlights. There is nothing blown out, and there is color (and some noise) in the shaded people (I applied no changes other than the transform from Clog3 to REC709 for this frame grab - I could make this shot look better by just a few adjustments in the shadowed area). But this unadjusted scene looks a heck of a lot better than yours, right? Btw, there are plenty of backlit scenes in my video, shot directly into the (low-in-the-sky) sun  - you just did not notice because there are no dominating-scene blowouts. I have shot with the S5, the R5, the BMPCC6K, the fx3 - hotspots look ugly from all of them. Specular hotspots, fine - but half of scenes blown out? Really?

Handling highlights does not mean just handling blow outs - it means how highlights from a capture of 11 stops of DR are transformed to 5-6 stops (REC709).

Yes, the APS-C sensor of the R7 has a smaller dynamic range than that of the best full-frame cameras, and it's shadow areas have more noise compared with full-frame. But shooting Clog3 and using proper IDT transforms gives you a lot more latitude than you evidently thought in your exposure choices. Btw, how exactly did you transform Clog3 to REC709? - the editing transform handles blow outs and highlights just as importantly as the camera.

 

[herein2020]

4 hours ago, Kisaha said:

The case studies are different, I wouldn't blame that much the camera though. It is a 1.499$ machine, I expect that much. And a bit overpriced as I mentioned before..

..i also mentioned in my limited first hands review, the sensor is in its simplest form (non stacked/non BSI) and I wouldn't expect much. The camera works at the limits of its hardware, added with a little bit of old school Canon magic.

I believe the "highlight rolloff" issue is exaggerated a bit but I would like to make a paid job with it first to make definite statements.

To put things in perspective, it is a low cost camera (compared to other top RF cameras) and it performs a little better that the sum of its parts. That's it. No R5 or C70 killer, or whatnot..

I agree with you, it is definitely a middle of the road camera, but I disagree that it is overpriced. As consumers we always want something to be a little cheaper, but the best way in my opinion to determine if something is overpriced is to look at its competition.

To me out of the cameras I have worked with, I would say the S5 is its closest competitor and the S5 outperforms it in low light, has a FF sensor, and higher quality body at $100USD less. However, the R7 of course has amazing AF and a massive native/Canon adapted lens lineup. So in my mind you are basically paying $100 more for Canon's DPAF over Panasonics DFD while losing DR and lowlight performance. If AF is more important to you than the other two (to me it is), then $100USD more seems like a fair price to me.

 

2 hours ago, markr041 said:

First, I agree with you that a backlit subject in bright sun is the worst case scenario. And I respect the idea that for run and gun you cannot always select the best lighting scenario and one has to make choices given the camera DR is less than that of a scene. But I think in your video you did not protect highlights in general, even when the camera could handle the dynamic range (if shot in Clog3). There are lots of hotspots all over your video - even the waterfall water flows had hot spots.

Maybe you were deliberately making a video to show how ugly hotspots are - and you succeeded. I don't think that you were deliberately making as ugly a video as possible to dis the R7. Rather I think you underestimated how the camera handles extremes of light in your exposure choices because you had too little experience with it.

I have uploaded one screenshot (4K monitor, 4K video) of a frame from your video where there is a sunlit area and an area shaded from the sun. You chose to allow the sunlit area to be totally blown out, favoring the shaded area (for no obvious reason - there is absolutely nothing interesting going on in the shaded area). Yes, the shot is really ugly - half of the picture is blown out! But you could have prevented the blow out in your exposure choice and increased the mid-tones for the shadowed area. But you never gave it a chance.

I have uploaded a similar (ungraded) scene from my video where again half of the scene is in bright afternoon direct sunlight and the other part is in shade due to a building shielding the sun. But I chose to expose so as to protect the highlights. There is nothing blown out, and there is color (and some noise) in the shaded people (I applied no changes other than the transform from Clog3 to REC709 for this frame grab - I could make this shot look better by just a few adjustments in the shadowed area). But this unadjusted scene looks a heck of a lot better than yours, right? Btw, there are plenty of backlit scenes in my video, shot directly into the (low-in-the-sky) sun  - you just did not notice because there are no dominating-scene blowouts. I have shot with the S5, the R5, the BMPCC6K, the fx3 - hotspots look ugly from all of them. Specular hotspots, fine - but half of scenes blown out? Really?

Handling highlights does not mean just handling blow outs - it means how highlights from a capture of 11 stops of DR are transformed to 5-6 stops (REC709).

Yes, the APS-C sensor of the R7 has a smaller dynamic range than that of the best full-frame cameras, and it's shadow areas have more noise compared with full-frame. But shooting Clog3 and using proper IDT transforms gives you a lot more latitude than you evidently thought in your exposure choices. Btw, how exactly did you transform Clog3 to REC709? - the editing transform handles blow outs and highlights just as importantly as the camera.

 

 

Well we will have to agree to disagree. I do agree with you that I chose to expose more for the shaded area in the referenced screen shot because I did not want the shaded area to be completely black because that's where the people were, and in other parts of the video I also chose to favor the mids and shadows over the highlights. I disagree again that the DR in the two compared scenes is the same. The direct sunlight hitting a white building combined with the deep shade is IMO a scene the camera simply cannot handle and is a higher DR scene than the one in your screenshot. Maybe I could have exposed for the highlights while crushing the blacks and somehow lifted the shadows later and gotten good results.....but I doubt it. I favored showing the people in the shadows vs the sunlight hitting the building in that particular shot. I know for a fact that with the C70 the entire scene wouldn't have been a problem.

I also agree with you that maybe I underestimated the editing longitude in post for the camera, I will need to shoot and test with it more to see how much shadows can be pushed and pulled in post without losing color detail. Personally, I hate having to lift mids or shadows in post; no matter what a manufacturer claims their camera's DR is, it's been my experience you start losing color fidelity very quickly when you start lifting shadows.

The clips were color graded in DR using managed color just like yours. The WFM for that clip shows I possibly had more latitude in the shadows than I gave the camera credit for. But it also shows the only way to have exposed for the highlights would have been to completely crush the shadows, meaning all of the people in the shade would have been impossible to see and probably unrecoverable in post. That's where that scene exceeded the DR of the camera and that's where highlight rolloff performance is important.

 

 

Here is the clip after the managed color space transform, as shown in the WFM.....crushing the shadows would have been the only option here due to the limited DR of the sensor. And yes, to you the people in the shadows wasn't interesting. but to me they were more interesting than the people farther away and I deliberately chose that clip to show the DR limitations of the camera. IMO the S5 and C70 would have done much better here, not sure yet if the R5 would have as well.

 

 

I would be curious to see, for the screenshot you sent, your before and after WFM. I genuinely want to produce the best quality this camera has, but so far I am unconvinced that we are comparing apples to apples here with each screenshot that you have sent so far. Since I mostly work with people, I will blow the highlights every time to ensure I properly expose the subject in the scene.  Your footage definitely looks very natural and organic, but I am not convinced with the examples you compared that the DR in the scene was the same. The first comparison with the front lit subject was definitely not equivalent to my backlit scene, and this screen shot also doesn't convince me the DR was the same.

It is easy to say it's the same....there's buildings, sunlight, and shade in both, but if the buildings are closer, the sunlight is brighter and the shade is darker, then it is definitely not the same. When the DR was within the limits of the camera it performed admirably well, but that's not the real world and many of my shots were in the worst possible lighting....midday sun and deep shade.

[hyalinejim]

One way of answering this question is to check how many stops above middle grey the R7 can record before clipping versus another camera, let's say the S5 or C70

1. Use a target that's lit with constant even light. I shoot a white monitor screen at night, slightly defocused, and with a lens and aperture that minimises vignetting
2. Set your exposure on the camera so that the waveform reads at whatever the middle grey value for that profile is. For CLog3 this will be published somewhere.
3. Slow the shutter speed until you reach the clipping point on the waveform. The number of clicks divided by 3 is the number of stops you get above middle grey.

For the S5 I think you might get around 6. For the R7 I'm going to guess that it will be around 4. Maybe the C70 gives more?

Another very quick way of checking R7 vs C70 is bringing in some CLog3 clips from the C70 into Resolve and seeing if the clipping point on the waveform is higher.

[herein2020]

2 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

One way of answering this question is to check how many stops above middle grey the R7 can record before clipping versus another camera, let's say the S5 or C70

1. Use a target that's lit with constant even light. I shoot a white monitor screen at night, slightly defocused, and with a lens and aperture that minimises vignetting
2. Set your exposure on the camera so that the waveform reads at whatever the middle grey value for that profile is. For CLog3 this will be published somewhere.
3. Slow the shutter speed until you reach the clipping point on the waveform. The number of clicks divided by 3 is the number of stops you get above middle grey.

For the S5 I think you might get around 6. For the R7 I'm going to guess that it will be around 4. Maybe the C70 gives more?

Another very quick way of checking R7 vs C70 is bringing in some CLog3 clips from the C70 into Resolve and seeing if the clipping point on the waveform is higher.

 

I agree, there's definitely scientific ways of doing this, personally I just get out and shoot and work with what I have at the time. Over time I get to where I know exactly what I can get away with in post. Without looking at any charts or results I know the S5 to my eyes combined with VLOG is still the best performing camera I've used to date; slightly ahead of the C70 and definitely ahead of the R5, R6, and R7 in terms of highlight rolloff and DR. 

One user here actually posted that I am exactly right...the S5 comes in at 0.5 stops ahead in DR of even the C70 based on some tests performed by a site that tests such things. There is no doubt in my mind that in the scenes where I had to clip the highlights to preserve the midtones or shadows the S5 would have excelled.

The R7 has many strengths for scenes within its DR, very nice colors, and is a very solid performer for both photography and video, but DR and highlight rolloff simply isn't its strong points. At its price point I wouldn't expect it to be able to keep up with the R5 or R6, but it is a little disappointing that in 2022 Canon's cameras still aren't ahead of the S5, S1, or S1H all of which use 2yr old Sony sensors.

[herein2020]

6 hours ago, markr041 said:

 

I have uploaded a similar (ungraded) scene from my video where again half of the scene is in bright afternoon direct sunlight and the other part is in shade due to a building shielding the sun. But I chose to expose so as to protect the highlights. There is nothing blown out, and there is color (and some noise) in the shaded people (I applied no changes other than the transform from Clog3 to REC709 for this frame grab - I could make this shot look better by just a few adjustments in the shadowed area). But this unadjusted scene looks a heck of a lot better than yours, right?

 

BTW...another tell that my scene had more DR (brighter sun / deeper shadows) is looking at the exposure of the skin tones from both comparisons in the shadows....the exposure of your skin tones and mine in the shadows are nearly identical, we both used the same post processing color grading method...yet my highlights are blown out. If the lows were exposed the same, then the highs were also exposed the same.....yet my highs were clearly brighter.

So yes, its easy to say it was improperly exposed or the highlights should not have been clipped, or to compare it to a different scene and say they should look identical, but in reality it is a lot more nuanced than that.  In my opinion everything you found interesting in your scene was still within the limits of the DR of the camera, whereas I wanted some fidelity in the deeper shadows and due to the brighter sun that I was dealing with ended up clipping the highlights but in the end we ended up with the same shadow exposure.

[Andrew Reid]

It is important to have a nice smooth roll off to overexposed areas of a shot. Even with the new Alexa which has endless dynamic range, sometimes you want to blow stuff out simply because it looks better or a large amount of detail in, say, a window distracts from the overall shot.

I will make this available for free for a few hours for anyone to try

https://www.eoshd.com/uploads/private/customerlinks/03062021/EOSHD_DREnhance140621.zip

Give it a go on the R7 footage and see if you get a smoother roll off, as it could be all about clipping too early in the NLE / OS.

[Kisaha]

I believe it has the 90D sensor, which is 3 years old (Canon says it is a new sensor, but I am not buying it, maybe a new processor) the C70 has the infamous S35 DGO sensor. R7 with the DGO sensor, now that would be something. Theoretically speaking, that camera could possibly cost double the R7 money, and that would be cheap.

[herein2020]

4 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I believe it has the 90D sensor, which is 3 years old (Canon says it is a new sensor, but I am not buying it, maybe a new processor) the C70 has the infamous S35 DGO sensor. R7 with the DGO sensor, now that would be something. Theoretically speaking, that camera could possibly cost double the R7 money, and that would be cheap.

I don't know anything about the 90D but that would make perfect sense. It would explain some shortcomings in the highlight rolloff and DR areas. It also would make sense that they reuse a sensor for their first mirrorless crop sensor camera; they did the same thing with their first FF mirrorless camera; they used the 5DIV sensor for the R.

I wouldn't be so sure about the DGO sensor from the C70. On paper it seems pretty revolutionary but in practice it is just ok. Canon has really hyped the DGO sensor but IMO the sensor isn't even the C70's best feature; the integrated ND filters, XLR inputs, internal RAW to SD cards, and no overheating are all better selling points than the sensor.

That is not to say the DGO sensor is bad by any means; it has great DR and highlight rolloff, but when compared to the recent Sony sensors it becomes a crowded field. I do think it has more DR than almost any other Canon sensor, but still lags a bit behind Sony's best sensors.

If I were able to pick any current sensor for the R7, I would pick the S5's sensor over the C70's.

 

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

It is important to have a nice smooth roll off to overexposed areas of a shot. Even with the new Alexa which has endless dynamic range, sometimes you want to blow stuff out simply because it looks better or a large amount of detail in, say, a window distracts from the overall shot.

I will make this available for free for a few hours for anyone to try

https://www.eoshd.com/uploads/private/customerlinks/03062021/EOSHD_DREnhance140621.zip

Give it a go on the R7 footage and see if you get a smoother roll off, as it could be all about clipping too early in the NLE / OS.

 

Thanks Andrew, I will definitely test it with my footage tomorrow. I know my highlights are clipped and unrecoverable but it would be interesting to see if it would be possible to fix the rolloff with a LUT.

[Andrew Reid]

As the DR guide covers, it might be a hardware decoding issue with the codec.

[Dave Maze]

I owned the R7 for about two months and used it with my C70. Was a nice b roll camera but on a gimbal in the 7k to 4k downres the rolling shutter was too much for me. Looked like jello everywhere. Also, the footage didn't have that wow factor I've gotten used to with the C70. It was a joy to use, but not worth keeping in my opinion. Honestly, I am hoping for a proper C200 upgrade with the DGO sensor in it... prefer that more traditional Canon cine body and miss not having an EVF. May just shoot all my YouTube videos on C70's from now on though. They do look truly great when exposed properly in Clog 2

[Andrew Reid]

How is the C70 mojo vs 1D C Dave?

Just as good, maybe even better?

Or does the 1D C still hold up pretty well

[herein2020]

21 hours ago, Dave Maze said:

I owned the R7 for about two months and used it with my C70. Was a nice b roll camera but on a gimbal in the 7k to 4k downres the rolling shutter was too much for me. Looked like jello everywhere. Also, the footage didn't have that wow factor I've gotten used to with the C70. It was a joy to use, but not worth keeping in my opinion. Honestly, I am hoping for a proper C200 upgrade with the DGO sensor in it... prefer that more traditional Canon cine body and miss not having an EVF. May just shoot all my YouTube videos on C70's from now on though. They do look truly great when exposed properly in Clog 2

That is surprising that you saw that much jello even on a gimbal. My gimbal lens currently for the C70 is the EF 24mm F2.8 prime, I was planning on using that with a speedbooster on the R7 as a gimbal camera or maybe the EF-S 10-22mm, I will feel like the whole R7 was a waste of money if I can't even use it as a gimbal camera.

What gimbal were you using and are you sure it was properly balanced? I use the DJI RS2 with the C70 and it has way more power than needed to stabilize the R7. Maybe your gimbal was near its weight limits or maybe it was the lens. Also, due to Canon's IBIS wobble, maybe turning off IBIS when using a gimbal is the answer.

Due to your post I will need to test this immediately, I don't want to get back from shooting a paying project to find that the R7 gimbal footage is useless.

What DGO sensor do you think they would use in a proper C200 upgrade? They already have the sensor in the C300, I feel like they are still designing the cripple hammer for the C200 if it happens at all which would probably be the sensor. IMO it will be tough to squeeze a C200 between the C70 and C300 unless they go with a FF sensor but somehow cripple hammer it in some way to not compete with the C300.

[Kisaha]

As I mentioned above, the R7 is no C70, and the DGO sensor is THE THING in Canonland right now. I also said that with a similar sensor,the R7C (let's call it that), would be a 2.990-3.190$/€/£ machine, and that's that.

The rolling shutter has been measured to something around 29ms if I remember right, which is almost double the GH6 number.

It doesn't surprise me that a hybrid 1.650€ camera is not as good at video as a 5.950€ specialized video tool.

@herein2020 maybe the RF 16mm would be a suitable gimbal lens? Small/super light/cheap/no need for an adapter and a good focal length (25.6mm equiv.) for gimbal work (at least for me, you maybe want more wide).

[herein2020]

3 hours ago, Kisaha said:

As I mentioned above, the R7 is no C70, and the DGO sensor is THE THING in Canonland right now. I also said that with a similar sensor,the R7C (let's call it that), would be a 2.990-3.190$/€/£ machine, and that's that.

The rolling shutter has been measured to something around 29ms if I remember right, which is almost double the GH6 number.

It doesn't surprise me that a hybrid 1.650€ camera is not as good at video as a 5.950€ specialized video tool.

@herein2020 maybe the RF 16mm would be a suitable gimbal lens? Small/super light/cheap/no need for an adapter and a good focal length (25.6mm equiv.) for gimbal work (at least for me, you maybe want more wide).

I think the RF 16mm would make a great gimbal lens for both the C70 and the R7, but I already have the Canon EF 25mm  F2.8 and the Canon speedbooster I have bolted to the C70, so even one RF lens in that mixture would throw everything off for me.  Also, the EF 25mm with a speedbooster would turn into a F2.0 vs the RF at F2.8, not much of a difference but still a small benefit.

Buying new lenses is very painful for me, I already have every EF lens I need for every job I have shot for the past 10yrs, so not having to start over with new lenses is the main thing I like about sticking with Canon's mirrorless. I'm no fan of adapters; but gaining a stop of light and turning crop sensors back into full frame with the minimal investment of a speedbooster kind of makes it not so bad to me.

If they do release an R7C I think it would just be the same sensor, a better cooling system, full sensor 7K and internal compressed RAW to the SD cards similar to the C70. More than likely the compressed raw option would be 4K30FPS only to further differentiate it from the more expensive models and more than likely the camera can't write data at the V90 rate anyway so 60FPS wouldn't be possible without other internal component changes. Putting the DGO sensor in the R7 would take too much of a redesign and eat into the sales of the C70 not to mention it would push the price past the R6. 

I think for its price point it performs pretty well, I still need to test its gimbal performance, that will be a big disappointment if the IBIS wobble makes it unusable for gimbal work.